UN Vote Exposes U.S. Pressure and Hypocrisy Over Sanctions on Cuba

This year, seven countries opposed the resolution after a pressure campaign by the Trump administration. “The United States has used its diplomatic pressure to get people to vote against this resolution,” says political analyst William LeoGrande. 

TRANSCRIPT

“The United Nations General Assembly has been voting for more than 30 years on the resolution calling on the United States to end the embargo against Cuba. And for the last dozen or more years, the vote has been basically only the United States and Israel against the resolution,” said William LeoGrande, Professor of Government at American University.

“This year, of course, we see that there’s a somewhat larger number of countries voting against the resolution. It’s seven, I believe it was, and a few more voting to abstain. The countries who voted against the resolution are either countries that depend on the United States, like Israel and Ukraine, or countries with very conservative governments that are voting against Cuba for ideological reasons.”

“A number of the other countries are those at odds with Russia—countries that see Russia as an adversary and see Cuba as a friend of Russia. And I think that’s their motivation. Unfortunately, the United States has used its diplomatic pressure to get people to vote against this resolution.”

“It’s really futile, because you can force a country to cast a vote, but it doesn’t mean that they actually support your position. This year, some of them gave in to diplomatic pressure and voted against the Cuban position. But that doesn’t mean that’s what they really believe.”

“Is Cuba supporting Russia in the war in Ukraine?”

“I don’t believe that Cuba is providing military assistance to Russia in this conflict, as some people have claimed. It may very well be that there are Cubans fighting on the Russian side as mercenaries. The Russian government was paying substantial sums of money to people who were willing to sign up to fight in Ukraine. Cuba is in the midst of a very tough economic situation.”

“And one can understand that the attraction of those bonuses might be enough to draw some Cubans to Russia to enlist. But my understanding is that the Cuban government has put some people on trial as mercenaries for having tried to organize a pipeline of people to go to Russia to fight.”

“Now, Cuba at the United Nations has consistently voted for a diplomatic solution to the conflict and has said in the past that the invasion itself was not truly consistent with international law.”

“Is there any evidence that Cuba sponsors terrorism?”

“I don’t think anybody who’s looked carefully at the issue believes that Cuba is a state sponsor of terrorism. Cuba has been a victim of terrorism ever since 1959. The purpose of putting Cuba on the terrorism list is because there are a variety of sanctions that come into effect—economic sanctions—and, more importantly, the international financial system doesn’t want to deal with terrorist states or terrorists.”

“And so, by the United States designating Cuba as a terrorist state, it makes international banks unwilling to do business with Cuba. And that just makes Cuba’s international economic relations all the more complicated, all the more difficult. That’s the reason that Cuba’s been put on this list—not because of anything Cuba has done.”

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz stated, “There is no blockade. That is absolutely false.”

LeoGrande responded, “The argument that some people make—‘Oh, well, there’s no embargo because Cuba can buy chicken from the United States,’ or ‘there’s no embargo because people can travel back and forth between Cuba and the United States’—that’s just nonsense, right? I mean, there clearly is an embargo.”

“There are very few things that can be sold to Cuba, and there’s almost nothing that Cuba can sell to the United States. There are limitations on travel. There are limitations on remittances. There are limitations that the United States places on third countries that want to do business with Cuba. So this claim that the embargo doesn’t really exist is just a talking point—and it’s a dishonest talking point.”