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Editorial addressed
Your Aug. 3 editorial, “What if: Cuba is rebuilding ties with Russia and China” correctly diagnoses the growing threat of Russia and China in the region, but then asks the question, “what if” the Obama thaw had continued? This is where the question of cause and effect arises.
On July 5, 2023, Chris Simmons, a former chief of a counterintelligence research branch on the Western Hemisphere at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, revealed in the Miami Herald that in 1992 China began reasserting itself in Cuba with 50 Chinese officers embedded in a single building within the Bejucal facility, and smuggling arms into the island.
During Bill Clinton’s thaw with Fidel Castro in 2000, Russia reasserted its position in Cuba. In September 2000, Clinton shook hands with Fidel Castro at the United Nations, and less than a month later he eased Cuban sanctions, allowing cash-and-carry transactions with the Cuban government and military. Cuban-Russian relations had deteriorated throughout the Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin administrations, but were renewed by Vladimir Putin. In December 2000, Putin flew into Cuba and said the abrupt rupture of the close alliance between Moscow and Havana a decade earlier was a mistake.
Castro handed over power to his brother Raul in 2006. It was Raul Castro and his son Alejandro Castro who negotiated “the thaw” with President Obama and White House aide Ben Rhodes that was announced on Dec. 17, 2014. When American diplomats traveled to Cuba to negotiate normalizing relations with their Cuban counterparts in January 2015, they were greeted by a Russian intelligence warship that docked the day before.
What were the results of Obama’s opening to Cuba? The Cuban military commercial empire expanded substantially during the detente that began on Dec. 17, 2014, until the Donald Trump administration changed course. Although Washington had a diplomatic presence in Cuba since 1977, the first U.S. diplomats to suffer serious and inexplicable brain injuries in Cuba occurred under President Obama. Speculation centered on Russian or Chinese actors causing the injuries, with the acquiescence of Cuban intelligence services.
To make matters worse, Raúl Castro presided over a military parade in Havana on Jan. 1, 2017, to mark the 58th anniversary of the communist revolution, with troops chanting: “Obama! Obama! We’d like to confront your clumsiness, cleanse you with rebels and mortar, and make you a hat out of bullets to the head.”
Not normal.
John Suarez
Executive director
Center for a Free Cuba
Falls Church, Va.
Is COVID-19 election plot?
We see front-page-splashed corporate media coverage about the rise of COVID-19 — again? Coincidentally, prior to 2024 election?
Is it an anxious thirst for more questionable mail-in leftist voting tactics?
Pro-America citizens, beware! We do not want fake wins from any side ever.
Is it rerun intimidation against America’s freedom all over again? Smells of desperation! Very deserving of factual verification by trusted experts.
Imelda Coronado
Mission
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