r/cuba • u/young_well • 1d ago
CMV: American Sanctions only work up to a point, past this point they only serve to reinforce resistance to pro-American values.
I saw this post on Cuban sanctions and I think Cuba may be the first case example of a modified laffer curve for sanctions, where sanctions have failed to achieve their effects because they have been applied capriciously and excessively. In the traditional laffer curve which applies to taxation, when you tax the people past a certain optimal point or point of inflexion, the returns on taxes or tax revenues begin to decrease significantly. I hypothesize that it is the same thing about sanctions; USA sanctions on Russia have backfired spectacularly, those on Iran have begun to have a declining effect (given the increasing normalisation of ties with Russia & China), etc.
In effect: even though sanctions are designed to achieve political ends by ensuring either regime change or civil revolution; they fail to achieve their ends when they are implemented capriciously.
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u/Nomen__Nesci0 1d ago
They don't work because they never have and never were expected to. They've been criminal for decades but known not to work from the start. The CIA and politicians of the time who put them on said as much on record. That they are not meant to cause a change in governance, but to cause as much suffering to women and children as possible to degrade society and serve as a warning to anyone else who may want to challenge US global control.
It's consistently amazing to me how the exact same people who post libertarian nonsense with absolute confidence post about everything else with as much confidence despite never doing even a few minutes of reading and research. The original meme brained overconfident idiots.
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u/JosephJohnPEEPS 1d ago
Yes. Capriciousness is the issue. The US was in an ongoing conversation with Cuba about sanctions with a carrot and stick. Then Trump came and just hit them as hard as he could with the stick in response to no move on the Cuban part.
In that scenario, Cuba was just forced to abandon negotiations. You can’t sit there and bargain when someone has proved that they’ll beat on you apropos of nothing in the dialogue in order to show off to someone else (Miami Cubans in this case).
You have to get up and deal with someone else no matter how costly it is unless you’re willing to be a vassal.
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u/quickie_iodine 1d ago edited 1d ago
Can't say much about Cuba, but I'm Russian and I live in Siberia. Apart from Visa's and MasterCard's departure we haven't felt that much of an inconveniance. And these payment systems matter only if you plan on traveling abroad or paying for foreign services, but even then you can get a foreign bank account in "friendly" countries or have other workarounds etc.
Now I am not saying that it's good that sanctions are not achieving their aims, I would prefer to live in a fully de-Sovietized and Western-aligned Russia instead, but I guess you just can't enforce your will on a country as big as this, even if you are the sole superpower in the world.🧐
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u/Embarrassed_Scar5506 Havana 1d ago
"...but even then you can get a foreign bank account in "friendly" countries or have other workarounds etc."
Mind if I ask you how does that work? I am Cuban and as far as I know is imposible to get a bank account in a foreign country unless you get a residence permit there.
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u/quickie_iodine 1d ago
I don't know about Cuban passports, but with Russian ones you can open bank accounts, IRL or remotely, in Central Asian countries and even in Turkey. At least that's what it used to be ~3 months ago. You can open bank accounts without residence/citizenship if you give power of attorney to credible legal firms.
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u/Embarrassed_Scar5506 Havana 1d ago
Thanks for the answer. That's imposible to do with a Cuban passport, I guess Russians can do it because Russia has a lot of leverage in international diplomacy.
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u/quickie_iodine 1d ago
Some of the recent developments have been rather chilling for Russians as well, i.e. more and more banks are refusing to open accounts. Unless you have a lot of money, you are not worth the hassle.
BTW, did you know that the US has a similar problem? No bank outside the USA would open an account for an American citizen because the tax authority is hell-bent on collecting information on offshore accounts. They also force you to pay taxes even if you don't live in the US. Many people have been renouncing their US citizenship because of this.
That's why I don't consider America as a primary destination for immigration, would rather live somewhere in the EU...
Also, Cubans can get Spanish passports through descent or through 2 years of residence in Spain, maybe you should look into it if you haven't already.
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u/Embarrassed_Scar5506 Havana 12h ago
Pardon my ignorance, but I don't know why an American citizen would want a bank account outside USA. I want a bank account outside Cuba because foreign companies don't work with Cuban banks and therefore getting one would increase my chances of finding a remote job and being paid. Many companies want to outsource their jobs to underdeveloped countries, and Cubans are willing to work for low salaries that most latinos would reject.
Thanks for the suggestion, I am trying to get Spanish citizenship through descent.
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u/young_well 1d ago
Interesting to know that Visa and Mastercard’s departure wasn’t much of an inconvenience. How is the “scene” for receiving inbound financial transactions like? How easily can someone send money to Russia?
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u/quickie_iodine 1d ago
Raiffeisenbank, OTP bank and some other European banks still work here and still send/receive money.
Then there are transfers through CIS countries, Unistream and similar payment services etc. And then there's USDT and crypto wallets. Every young Russian and every other not-so-young Russian has a Telegram account and Telegram has a plug-in crypto wallet and exchange.
If you do everything properly, the transfers are neither expensive nor complicated.
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u/fiveseconds49 18h ago edited 12h ago
Cuba should've been an US territory long a way before the communist disaster that happened after 1959, this is what 95% of Cubans would want to see. But of course, Russia will not allow this, as Cuba plays an important military role just being 90 miles away from the US.
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u/ScaredChampionship32 17h ago
Russia wouldn’t be able to do anything if the U.S. were to liberate Cuba, they’re still preoccupied with Ukraine. Also there’s less incentive nowadays to keep Cuba as an important Russian ally, the U.S. and Russia won’t be enemies under the Trump administration.
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u/young_well 1d ago
PS: I believe some will argue that Cuba has circumvented or survived these embargo & sanctions because of Russian, Chinese & Venezuelan support. That is a true but rather simplistic assessment of the situation and to accept that view will be to accept the view that USA lacks the geopolitical power to bend countries (within the Monroe doctrine’s purview) to its will. A more realistic assessment would be admit that the sanctions in Cuba etc are failing to achieve their strategic aims inspite of the great hardships they are inflicting on the Cuban people, because a point of inflexion has been passed after which diminishing returns have set in.