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> I'm all for lifting of sanctions, but Cuba needs to up its game first. Rewarding the autocratic and oppressive Castro regime makes no sense. Democratic reforms, regime change, freedom of ownership, open elections, multi-parties, the right to sue, the right to travel, a free press, the right to petition, etc must all be respected.

Sure. You must be demonstrating every day for the same sanctions to apply in about all the Middle East countries the US has bases in, right? Moral arguments don't really mesh with real politics. Sanctions against Cuba are a relic of the Cold War, but the US does business every day with countries with a worse humanitarian track record.

I'm pretty sure Saudi Arabia never had nukes pointed at us or tried to. Ignoring the reality of the cold war and the brutality of Catro's regime and pretending everything is fine now is pretty ignorant. Modern Cuba still is the same disaster its always been. Why must the US reward the Castros? Why can't they make themselves a more viable trading partner? You're not entitled to my business, plain and simple.

Whataboutism isn't addressing my issues. Sadly, knee-jerk anti-americanism passes for "intellectualism" around here. Funny how an oppressive anti-capitalist state is applauded on a forum dedicated to VC funded startups. Oh, the irony.

> I'm pretty sure Saudi Arabia never had nukes pointed at us or tried to.

This was in 1963. And they sure don't have nukes now, or are likely to acquire them. Not to mention that you're conveniently forgetting US nukes in Italy and Turkey around the same time, or the Bay of Pigs invasion.

> Why must the US reward the Castros?

Why should it punish the Castros while turning a blind eye to Bahrain, who is busy oppressing its population with a brutality the Castro regime hasn't displayed in a long while?

> Whataboutism isn't addressing my issues.

If you didn't address the issue from a moral angle, your position may look a bit more solid than it is right now. Why not admit morality has a very small role to play in international politics, whatever narrative government dress it up in for internal consumption?

> Sadly, knee-jerk anti-americanism passes for "intellectualism" around here.

Oh, I'm not giving a pass to any government, don't worry.

I'm pretty sure Saudi Arabia never had nukes pointed at us or tried to.

You mean the Russian nukes from 1963? Those that were a response to the nukes the US placed all over Turkey and neighbouring countries? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_missile_crisis

>Pardon me if I think my nation should tolerate nuclear missiles 90 miles off our coast from a country aligned with our enemies

Don't you think people of other nations may have the same intolerance to their enemies' nuclear missiles deployed right on their borders? The Cuban missiles were symmetric response to deploying the Jupiter missiles in Turkey - which is right on the border with USSR http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGM-19_Jupiter

"They were all removed by the US as part of a secret agreement with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis."

Do onto others what you don't want others do onto you :)

Perhaps the Jupiter missile deterrent was a bit impolite, but the USSR did enslave many hundreds of millions of people while showing every intention of growing this number.

The US "enslaved" vast numbers of people through proxy too, and contributed to several genocides by propping up various puppet regimes.

The US may have been morally superior at home but played just as dirty in large parts of the world.

The USSR was a totalitarian communist empire openly determined to conquer and enslave the entire world. The USA was a champion of liberty that pursued strategies intended only to defend the free world against the USSR. Your moral equivalency game indicates you're either ignorant of recent history, or that you're on the other side.

I hope this is sarcasm.

Sure, the USSR was a totalitarian state. That said, both sides pursued an aggressive, expansionist policy via proxy. The "champion of liberty" installed thoroughly repressive regimes all over South America which had little to envy to the Soviet Union. It didn't prove itself above manufacturing border incidents to trigger the Vietnam war, either. Was the USSR worse? Certainly. But this doesn't make the US the good guy in the story.

The propaganda of the Cold War is breathtaking in its effectiveness. The USSR are the bad guys, comic book villains out to destroy the world. The US are plucky do-gooders, fighting to save the world from evil yet again (after single handedly winning WWII). There is no room for nuance. There is no grey area in perhaps the greyest of all conflicts since the Great Game. Both the US and USSR inflicted terrible damage to nations all over the world through proxy wars, intelligence agency coups. The ramifications of those conflicts are still felt throughout Latin America, the Middle East, and South East Asia.

And that all gets swept aside by "The USA was a champion of liberty that pursued strategies intended only to defend the free world against the USSR." Read the Wikipedia article on "Covert United States Foreign Regime Change Actions" [0], and see how many of those nations benefited in the long run, and how some incredibly brutal regimes were installed or propped up throughout the third world, simply because they weren't communists.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_re...

You should have said "the anti-American garbage that leftist teachers are feeding to grade-school kids is breathtaking in its effectiveness" but in order to do that, you'd have to have some understanding of the true (not the political) version of history.

What's really amazing is that you think your 1960s, nihilistic, self-loathing, theyre-all-the-same cynicism is thoughtful and original, and you assume that the reason I disagree with you is that I haven't heard of such a notion before, and must not be as educated as yourself...

Well, even without opening a history book (sadly, "leftist teachers" did not get rid of Allende all by themselves), one would think that the US military adventurism of the last decade would have equipped US citizens (I'll go out on a limb and assume you are one) with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Governments have most often been waving various pretenses to make their actions look good. Manifest destiny, the white man's burden, the necessity to bring the socialist paradise... "Championing liberty" is just one of them. But you don't "champion liberty" by setting up something like the School of the Americas[1], or selling arms to Iran to fund Contras terrorists[2]. This is a different concept, which is "protecting your interests by whatever means available".

1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Hemisphere_Institute_fo...

2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras

Please. I lived in Soviet Union and United States for decades (in each). Not it wasn't a totalitarian evil empire. It was an empire. It didn't tollerate criticism of its government but:

* It provided free healthcare

* It provided free housing

* Crime rate was law

* It provided free and quality education (from kindergarten all the way to the highest degrees)

> The USA was a champion of liberty that pursued strategies intended only to defend the free world against the USSR.

Wait, are you being sarcastic. I am confused. Poe's Law in full effect here, ladies and gentlement.

Ignoring the genocides and the gulags for a minute, let's simply explore your theory that the USA and USSR were morally equivalent. The USSR conquered and imposed brutal slavery on every eastern european nation. The USA did not conquer any of the western european nations. We didn't even conquer Cuba. If we had the military power, why wouldn't we?

> The USSR conquered and imposed brutal slavery on every eastern european nation.

Slavery, like US had up until the mid 1800 and with the following oppression and segregation laws?

Or the country that based itself on ethnic cleansing and genocide of countless American Indians.

> The USA did not conquer any of the western european nations

No but it raped all the South American states and some East Asian states (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia).

Also Middle East. Started Wars.

> We didn't even conquer Cuba.

Sure tried. And send saboteurs to plant IEDs, blow up bridges, plants. Destroy machinery. Can you say "War Of Terror" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Project)

> If we had the military power, why wouldn't we?

Ok USSR didn't conquer Australia. They had the military power. Why didn't they. Probably didn't want to. And didn't care about.

>your theory that the USA and USSR were morally equivalent.

mid-20th century significant share (if not half) of the world population was enchanted with the ideas of socialism/communism with those ideas symbolizing justice and freedom (not mass oppression as it ultimately turned to be). In that respect, _back then_, they were morally equivalent or at least close to it. We know better _now_, after observing of many decades of that failed experiments.

>The USSR conquered and imposed brutal slavery on every eastern european nation. The USA did not conquer any of the western european nations.

They all had their respective zones of occupation in Europe, Korea, Japan after the WWII. With time socialist regime in USSR zone turned to be the regime of "conquest and slavery", while capitalism in the western zones, South Korea and Japan happened to be more freedom conducting. For example South Korea wasn't fan of being occupied by US (for example among others http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autumn_Uprising_of_1946 ) and it took decades for it to ultimately start benefiting from having been occupied by US instead of USSR. Again, back then, it wasn't that clear for huge number of people, and it took decades for the differences to appear clearly.

>We didn't even conquer Cuba. If we had the military power, why wouldn't we?

you think it is easier to fight in Cuba jungles than in Vietnam one or that Cubans would be less fierce fighters than Vietnamese?

Russia was more than welcome to sanction Turkey.

> What kind of comparison is that?

Mexico is a giant country with huge (though dwindling) oil reserves, and the advantages of NAFTA (all the Detroit automakers have relocated down there).

Cuba and the DR are similar sized geographically and demographically, and have similar climates and resources.

> The DR is practically a failed state.

Don't know why you say that, DR has been politically stable for decades and is economically similar to many other small Latin American countries.

> What kind of comparison is that? The DR is practically a failed state.

You've already gotten down voted enough, but wow. DR has had a 7% growth rate for the last 20 years, one of the highest in the Americas...

Your others points are equally off.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Dominican_Republ...

While per capita GDP is a useful number that reveals some information about the economics of a country relative to the world stage, I may be alone in finding that its often misleading - particularly when we're talking about what life is like for the common man.

In those cases, I tend to find that things like: The Big Mac Index [1]; the more general World Price Index (a standardized basket of goods) [2]; or the even more general Purchasing Power Parity [3]; are better reflective of the human scale question, which IMO is "for a common wage, what can be purchased, and how expensive is it."

Basically, its great if our per capita GDP is 2x someone else, if our local prices are also 2x, then our actual wage goes roughly the same distance. Another way is: if I had the equivalent of a $1M in Cuba, went to Mexico, and exchanged it with no fee, how would my relative purchasing power change.

Major Caveat: Findings for PPP are heavily dependent on your reference basket of goods.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Price_Index

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity

Ending the embargo would probably sweep away their failed economic experiment within 10 years. Keeping it in place gives their leadership an excuse for why the economy is so bad.

"...Its other, capitalistic, neighbor Mexico has 2x that GDP per capita..."

Initially, I thought... that HAS to be wrong... because Mexico has 10x the resources that Cuba has. But I looked it up... and you're right... Mexico only has 2x the GDP.

Not really taking any sides here on the whole capitalism v communism thing...

But Mexico has 120 MILLION people, 100 times the energy reserves AND trade with the US... and it STILL cannot even double the GDP of a nation with 11 MILLION people and an embargo (ie - NO trade with the US)... (Cuba: 6,051 Mexico: 10,307)

That's pretty pathetic. I mean REALLY? You have 10x the resources, 100x the energy reserves... and you can only muster twice the GDP ??? Something's not right about that.

I guess that's not really a comment on Cuba as much as it is a comment on Mexico. I didn't realize it was that bad... I don't blame Mexican immigrants for trying to come to the US.

Twice the GDP per capita. The "per capita" part is important.

The GDP of Mexico is 20 times greater than Cuba's. The population is 10 times bigger.

Of course as you point out the lack of an embargo, access to oil, etc would lead you to expect that Mexico's per capita GDP would be higher than Cuba's. Whether you'd expect the factor by which it's higher to be 2 or more or less is an interesting question that I'm not qualified to answer. ;)

> Something's not right about that.

Yes, your understanding of the meaning of "per capita GDP".