Friday, August 9, 2013

THE BEAR AND THE BEARDED ONES

RUSSIA IS WOOING CUBA AGAIN AND PUTTING CRUISE MISSILES ON OUR DOOR STEP.

  The Bear Is Back On The Island along with the Dragon. Can any good come of this?


  Russia recently dispatched a cruse missile equipped war ship to visit Cuba. This visit points to growing military, intelligence, and economic ties with the island nation ninety miles off our shore that regards us as enemy number one.  The Missile Cruiser MOSKVA is the flag ship of Russia's Black Sea Fleet. This is certainly no replay of the Cuban missile crisis of the 1960s the Russians don't appear to be building ICBM launchers on Cuba. They have every legal right to cruise about with their war ships and visit friendly nations just as we do. They also have every legal right to establish whatever naval arrangement they can make with Cuba which may put more cruise missiles within range of our territory. But we have no real legal recourse under international law to prevent this development and the Russians will no doubt claim that we aren't targeted. But why are both the Bear and the Dragon in Cuba if not at a minimum to prevent or delay us in using the Panama Canal ( which China's Cosco Shipping Corp now operates under contract from Panama) to reinforce our Pacific fleet with elements from our Atlantic fleet. We've been surrounded for a reason.

 The Missile Cruiser MOSKVA is being accompanied by the tanker IVAN BUBNOV. On the way from the Black Sea to Cuba the MOSKVA test fired a cruise missile, again nothing illegal in that, but are you starting to get the subliminal message?

After calling at Havana the two warships will visit Venezuela, and Nicaragua, apparently there is no one who hates the U.S. that the Bear doesn't like. Back in February Russian Prime minister Dmitry Medvedev announced that Moscow is cancelling most of Cuba's $30 billion Soviet Era debt, and denounced the U.S. embargo against the island nation.

 As usual our national media while printing a few back page stories on the roaming MOSKVA doesn't seem to grasp the significance but why should they be any less clueless than our government. Wake up America! The Cubans seized the United Fruit Company's Cuban assets about a half century ago. United Fruit played footsie with the heinous dictator who preceded Castro into office, financially survived the seizure  and probably gave Castro ample cause for seizing those assets, an event that may as well now be ancient history. But we hold out for a pay back. If Russia can forgive a $30 billion state loan we can ignore the private claims of U.S. businesses that lost capital in the revolution 50 years ago. We have proximity to Cuba, tourist can visit by low cost ferry service as they once did from Miami and Key West before Castro. We are a market for their sugar and bananas, we have tens of thousands of family members with cousins and other relatives on the island. By treating Cuba as an enemy we open the door to Cuba to potential real enemies actually capable of doing us real harm. Both the Bear and the Dragon so far have not brought prosperity to Cuba, their relationship is geographically unnatural.

  Cuba needs to participate in the North American Free Trade agreement and to have normal diplomatic relationships with the United States. Forget about communism. Russia gave it up formally and China has dumped it in all but name only, in favor of state capitalism. Cuba hangs on to the label for the same reason that China does, the party is a handy authoritarian ruling apparatus. Cuba's economic status would improve dramatically with a normalization of relations with the United States. As long as we refuse to extend a hand in friendship they do not agree to service our long obsolete historical demands, and instead play into the hands of our potential real enemies who simply are ruthlessly exploiting them. If we were capable of real politic and strategic diplomacy we'd normalize relations now. In only a few years the Dragon and the Bear would be history as major influences on the island and unwelcome as any type of permanent military presence. As long as we continue to make impossible demands and appear to pose a threat of invasion, the island will turn more to the Dragon and the Bear to the greater harm  of both societies. Cuba needs to be part of a U.S. Caribbean co-prosperity sphere not a Chinese one. Wake up America! 


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