The US has an air force, a navy, and all kinds of other shit Cuba just doesn't have. And there's not really anywhere to run on Cuba, it's a small country. Plus we could stage forces in Guantanamo. Having a million guys with rifles is of limited utility if you don't have the heavy weapon systems to back them up. I'm sure it would be a huge clusterfuck, but the US could absolutely maul Cuba if it wanted to. It could just do what the Saudis have done to Yemen and destroy all the civilian infrastructure, blockade the ports, and wait for everyone to starve. Unless Cuba could pull a bunch of hypersonic anti-ship missiles out of nowhere they'd be fucked with no way to retaliate.
Achieving an occupation of Cuba would require murder on the same scale as the Korean war. They can not occupy the country against millions of people willing to fight them without exterminating the people willing to fight them.
It would make Russia in Ukraine look positively friendly.
I'm not sure why they'd occupy. Cuba has nothing going on economically except sugar and the US grows plenty of sugar beets. Honestly, Idk why we'd invade Cuba at all except maybe to make an example of them. But then I don't really understand why the political class still has a hate boner for Cuba after all these years, either, so maybe I'm just not imaginative enough.
A not insignificant amount of US foreign policy is driven by the fear of looking "weak" to the US public. Look at the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and how that dropped Biden's approval numbers. One major contributing factor to getting Reagan elected was Carter doing the right thing and handing over the canal to Panama. And the Vietnam war definitely went on as long as it did in part because every president back to Kennedy thought it would be political suicide to just "give up".
With Cuba, any olive branch a politician tries to extend gets painted as being soft on "dictators". Bernie got flak for speaking positively about Cuba. Karen Bass did too. Obama tried to open up relations more (maybe, I've also heard he just parroted the company line about how Cuba needs to become capitalist before the US will have a relationship with them) and also got raked over the coals. Politicians will not try and change status quo with Cuba because there's no incentive too.
At some point though, it would be useful to discuss the US public's role in empire and how we think anything less than pushing everyone's nose in the dirt is "weak".
I agree that the case for invasion is low. It doesn't make much strategic sense mainly because it would be extremely costly, long, difficult, and would not really be much of a gain. The position of the political class is probably driven mainly by the Cuban diaspora of business tyrants that were pushed out of the country.
US can theoretically beat a lot of countries with its full force but also I feel like if Cuba got invaded it wouldnt be the whole US war machine behind it. It would be some stupid CIA led shit again.
I don't see how the US can invade Cuba with 1.2 million paramilitary forces and 2million able bodied people ready to be called up at any time.
3.2 million people are like 25% of the population of Cuba.
The US has an air force, a navy, and all kinds of other shit Cuba just doesn't have. And there's not really anywhere to run on Cuba, it's a small country. Plus we could stage forces in Guantanamo. Having a million guys with rifles is of limited utility if you don't have the heavy weapon systems to back them up. I'm sure it would be a huge clusterfuck, but the US could absolutely maul Cuba if it wanted to. It could just do what the Saudis have done to Yemen and destroy all the civilian infrastructure, blockade the ports, and wait for everyone to starve. Unless Cuba could pull a bunch of hypersonic anti-ship missiles out of nowhere they'd be fucked with no way to retaliate.
Achieving an occupation of Cuba would require murder on the same scale as the Korean war. They can not occupy the country against millions of people willing to fight them without exterminating the people willing to fight them.
It would make Russia in Ukraine look positively friendly.
I'm not sure why they'd occupy. Cuba has nothing going on economically except sugar and the US grows plenty of sugar beets. Honestly, Idk why we'd invade Cuba at all except maybe to make an example of them. But then I don't really understand why the political class still has a hate boner for Cuba after all these years, either, so maybe I'm just not imaginative enough.
A not insignificant amount of US foreign policy is driven by the fear of looking "weak" to the US public. Look at the withdrawal from Afghanistan, and how that dropped Biden's approval numbers. One major contributing factor to getting Reagan elected was Carter doing the right thing and handing over the canal to Panama. And the Vietnam war definitely went on as long as it did in part because every president back to Kennedy thought it would be political suicide to just "give up".
With Cuba, any olive branch a politician tries to extend gets painted as being soft on "dictators". Bernie got flak for speaking positively about Cuba. Karen Bass did too. Obama tried to open up relations more (maybe, I've also heard he just parroted the company line about how Cuba needs to become capitalist before the US will have a relationship with them) and also got raked over the coals. Politicians will not try and change status quo with Cuba because there's no incentive too.
At some point though, it would be useful to discuss the US public's role in empire and how we think anything less than pushing everyone's nose in the dirt is "weak".
Because it would be 100% necessary to.
I agree that the case for invasion is low. It doesn't make much strategic sense mainly because it would be extremely costly, long, difficult, and would not really be much of a gain. The position of the political class is probably driven mainly by the Cuban diaspora of business tyrants that were pushed out of the country.
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Not just Cubans either 😏
:kim-drip: This one weird trick will prevent the global hegemon from obliterating your sovereignty :nuke:
US can theoretically beat a lot of countries with its full force but also I feel like if Cuba got invaded it wouldnt be the whole US war machine behind it. It would be some stupid CIA led shit again.