"Cuba," the spear that America wants.

Why is the United States so obsessed with Cuba?

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John Bolton, the national security adviser in the early Trump administration, had previously given a speech on U.S. policy in Latin America, calling Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela "three-nation tyrants," also blaming the three countries for violating human rights, causing instability in the region, and supporting communism.

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Bolton's speech marked a turning point in the Trump administration's policy toward Cuba, because after that a series of sanctions were announced to punish Cuba and reduce relations with Venezuela.

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Despite U.S. pressure, Cuba remains one of Venezuela's closest allies, a major source of oil to Cuba.

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The second-generation Trump administration tried to use its executive power to deprive the United States of its thorns by encroaching on Venezuelan sovereignty and taking President Nicolas Maduro to the United States and appointing his own men to run the country instead, declaring to appease cheers that it would take "Cuba" next.

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In the history of the founding of the United States, both Florida and Cuba were still under Spanish rule. Spain originally opened Cuban ports for international trade, but later U.S.-Cuban trade increasingly replaced Spanish trade relations.

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When the United States bought Florida from Spain in 1819, the United States then planned to annex Cuba. In 1848, the United States offered $100 million to buy Cuba from Spain, but Spain rejected the offer, and later it emerged as evidence of an attempt by the United States to re-purchase Cuba in a confidential document known as the Ostend Manifesto, but it again failed from dissenting global pressure.

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Cuba made several attempts to declare independence from Spain until, in 1898, the United States declared war on Spain, when the Spanish-American War ended, Spain acceded to the Treaty of Paris; as a result, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam gained independence.

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The United States formally occupied Cuba on January 1, 1899, claiming the need to intervene militarily in Cuba to protect U.S. interests; May 20, 1902, the United States ended its military occupation in Cuba; and the "Republic of Cuba" was officially established.

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The next year, Cuba let the United States lease the Bahia Hondas and Guantanamo areas for use as filling stations and naval bases, as well as sign a reciprocal trade convention between the United States and Cuba.

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The United States intervened militarily in Cuba several more times, and tried to stay behind the establishment of the Cuban government; it also used tariff laws as a tool, bringing Cuba into the grip of the Great Depression.

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July 26, 1953, Fidel Castro led a revolution but failed to take refuge in Mexico, and three years later returned to Cuba to engage in a guerrilla war with Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

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In 1959, Fidel Castro and a group of guerrilla warriors achieved revolutionary success, overthrew the rule of US-backed President Fulgencio Batista and then established a socialist state in Cuba.

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The Cuban government under Fidel Castro gradually strengthened relations with the Soviet Union, declaring the confiscation of all foreign assets in Cuba to be state-owned, including managing the United States by seizing all Cuban island operations without paying compensation, including 21 sugar factories, utilities and banks.

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US President Dwight D.Eisenhower responded by lowering quotas on sugar imports from Cuba, freezing Cuban assets in the US, enforcing almost all trade sanctions, and severing diplomatic relations with the Castro government.

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Fidel Castro decided instead to export sugar to the Soviet Union, which was the source for Eisenhower to stop sending oil to Cuba, which was tantamount to pushing Cuba closer to the Soviets; Castro eventually had to sign an oil deal with the Soviet Union and take control of American and British oil refineries in 1961.

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The Cubans became paranoid of the regime led by Fidel Castro and, fearing that their descendants would be instilled in their minds by the communist government, sent their children secretly to the United States. Between 1960 and 1962, more than 14,000 Cuban children were transported on planes to the United States by the Catholic Welfare Agency in Miami and the United States Department of State to host the operation.

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A major crisis followed the 1961 U.S. defeat, President John F.Kennedy sent a force of 1,400 Cuban refugees trained by the CIA to overthrow Fidel Castro in the "Bay of Pigs" War, but the Cuban army was able to overcome it within three days.

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The next year, a U.S. spy satellite discovered that Cuba had allowed the Soviet Union to build a nuclear missile launch base on the island; Kennedy then called on the Soviets to withdraw their weapons, and ordered the Navy to blockade Cuba, triggering a thirteen-day-long confrontation.

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The United States entered into negotiations with the Soviet Union, with Kennedy secretly agreeing to withdraw U.S. nuclear missiles from Turkey and pledging not to invade Cuba if the Soviet Union withdrew its missiles from Cuba, which the Soviets accepted the agreement on.

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While Castro's government continued to advance its support for radical communist groups in African and Latin American countries, the United States' policy towards Cuba did not abandon its efforts to overthrow the Castro government on a continuous basis, either.

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In 2008, Fidel Castro was so troubled by health that he had to resign, and handed over the presidency to his brother Raoul; the following year after the election of US President Barack Obama also signaled the possibility of normalizing relations between Cuba and the US.

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Raúl Castro resigned as president in 2018, ending the "Castro" family's more than 40-year tenure of political power.

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In the era of early President Donald Trump, he saw differently from Obama, with Trump seeing that the Obama administration's leniency of the measures did not help the Cuban people, but instead enriched the Cuban regime, adding that the United States would not lift the sanctions until Cuba released all political prisoners.

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As Trump 1 prepares to retire in 2021, Cuba-U.S. relations slump back to the same point, when the U.S. State Department puts Cuba on the list of countries that support terrorism again.

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Cuba is less economically viable than Venezuela, the country with the world's largest oil reserves, but Cuba has many rare and important mineral deposits, including the world's third largest reserve of cobalt, a key mineral used in lithium-ion batteries and other advanced technologies.

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The blockade of Cuba in the Trump 2 government has left tankers inaccessible to Cuba. Fuel tankers from Russia are reportedly trying to breach the blockade, but the United States is trying to extract it by claiming that those tankers are a "ghost fleet" that must be dealt with.

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In addition to the sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, it has made the well-being of Cubans difficult, Trump has tried to intimidate countries with tax measures so as not to reach out to Cuba. Trump has also enacted legislation that allows American businessmen to claim the return of property seized by the Cuban government in the past.

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Most recently, the Trump government charged criminal charges and issued arrest warrants for Raúl Castro (age 95 / year 2026), former President of Cuba (2008-2018) and Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, along with five other Cuban soldiers for conspiring to murder a U.S.-Cuban citizen and destroying property in the shooting down of a plane belonging to a refugee group called "Brothers to the Rescue," located in Miami, in 1996.

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Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Ganel Bermúdez has condemned the United States for "lying and distorting events," used political tricks to find a pretext for invading the island of Cuba, and insisted that the shooting of the plane was done rightly to protect Cuba's territory.

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Long-standing sanctions have prevented Cuba from entering the modern technological age, so Cuba must exist in a blockaded socialism, emphasizing caring for its people rather than economic development.

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Although Cuba is not an industrialized country, the country has instead succeeded in thoroughly literating its citizens before any other country in Latin America, and has also tried to expand health care to include all Cubans. Cuba then also exports teachers and doctors throughout Latin America and elsewhere.

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However, many Cubans continue to blame their own leaders for mismanagement of the economy, letting inflation soar, and having a false investment strategy, bringing with them the hardships of the Cuban people, to the extent that it affects society, with demographic data indicating that Cuba is facing one of the fastest population declines in the world, dropping to 25% in just four years, as its birth rate declines and outmigration soars.

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Cuba has survived 66 years of U.S.-led sanctions. Trump's reuse of measures from the time of the Cold War to overthrow the Cuban government has caused Cuba to face oil and energy shortages. 11 million people have been severely affected. So the question is, what exactly is Trump want from Cuba, an island just 90 miles (145 kilometers) away from the U.S. state of Florida?

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Source from the article: The blockdit is addicted to it.

https://www.blockdit.com/posts/6a1d5768802754fa241a862a