Comments by "MarcosElMalo2" (@MarcosElMalo2) on "A Chinese Listening Post in Cuba: What It Means for the US || Peter Zeihan" video.

Cuba “controlling” the straits is such a distant theoretical possibility that it doesn’t bear more than a fraction of a second of concern. Bringing Cuba into NAFTA is so crazy it might actually work. Certainly it could be a good carrot to offer the Cuban government. Pete also makes a good point about how Cuba could fit into NAFTA via Mexico. Mexico is and has been rapidly industrializing, and has spent the last 20 odd years developing an educated workforce. In some ways, their educational system is superior to ours—vocational but focused on industrial technologies. Anyway, I know there are NAFTA haters in Pete’s audience. If you’re one of these folks, you really ought to investigate how NAFTA works in practice between Mexico and the U.S., starting with the automotive industry. Or plastics and other petrochemical derived products. Or aerospace. It’s more than cross border trade, it’s cross border integration of manufacturing, and it keeps us and our neighbor to the south competitive vis-a-vis other economic partnerships.
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@whazzat8015 The U.S. invaded Cuba in 1898, when Cuba was a Spanish colony. We invaded on the side of the Cuban rebels seeking independence from Spain, and we were successful. Bay of Pigs wasn’t a U.S. invasion. It was Cuban freedom fighters that attempted to invade, with some financial support but no U.S. military involvement. Read an actual history of it. I don’t agree with U.S. policy towards Cuba, but I really hate when people equate the Bay of Pigs and the missile crisis with “invasion”. The facts are that neither one was a U.S. invasion. I see this myth a lot these days, with ignorant people comparing Cuba with Ukraine to justify Russia’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine.
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⁠⁠ @Lucas-hb1uq The hostility between Cuba and the U.S. wasn’t one sided during the Cold War, nor was our policy unjustified. However, the U.S. could have and should have shifted its policy when the Cold War ended, over 30 years ago. I’m not at all sure where your “70 years” comes from, though. Are you just ignorantly making up numbers because you are unaware that Castro came to power in 1959?
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Look up the “resource curse”. Venezuela’s abundance of oil has led to its failure to develop its economy. It’s not completely the fault of socialism and U.S. sanctions. The problems were there before Chavez.
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@Mr.T-SI Interesting counterfactual with some merit wrt Cuba. However, Iran was and is 100% hostile to the U.S. since the Shah was overthrown.
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