As the Russian Navy’s “training class” ship sits docked in Havana’s harbor, we are now told that it is there for a four-day “visit,” during which its crew will “carry out a wide range of activities,” and Cuban citizens will be invited aboard, for . . . what? Tea and blini?

Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Cuba was largely dependent upon its relationship with the Soviet Union to shore up its fragile economy. Since that time, the Cuban economy has faltered and virtually collapsed. President Obama saw the opportunity to help Cuba begin throwing off the shackles of Soviet authority by restoring diplomatic relations and easing existing economic sanctions previously imposed by the U.S. Unfortunately, Donald Trump, in his presumed superior wisdom, did away with all of that by reversing Obama’s reversals. And President Biden has done virtually nothing to improve the situation.

So now, Cuba is ripe to become, once again, a vassal state of Russia. Its current President (more accurately, dictator), Miguel Diaz-Canel, himself a staunch Marxist-Leninist socialist, stands firmly behind Putin’s Russia, loudly voicing approval of the “special military operation” in Ukraine and opposing NATO’s proposed inclusion of countries in close proximity to Russia’s borders, such as Sweden and Ukraine itself. Sound like someone else we know all too well? Perhaps a man who has been much in the news lately, one of Vladimir Putin’s many puppets: Aleksandr Lukashenko, the President of Belarus.

The presence of the Russian warship in Havana is only one of a recent series of Russian incursions into Cuba. The island nation has lately been the recipient of tens of millions of dollars worth of desperately-needed oil, along with the promise of future development and investment. No savvy businessperson could seriously think that this is all being offered out of the goodness of Putin’s (or anyone’s) heart. There has to be a tit-for-tat in there somewhere.

This may all seem to be business as usual for Russia — except that it is happening on America’s doorstep. Is it “deja vu all over again”? If so, let us hope that we — the United States — don’t make the same disastrous mistake we made following the breakup of the USSR some 30 years ago, when so many wanted so much to believe that the new Russia was now our trusted friend. Or just last year, when Putin expected us to accept as fact the preposterous claim that the enormous buildup of Russian troops on Ukraine’s border was merely a routine military exercise. I would hope that we’re smarter today, and that we recall the words of Sir Winston Churchill: “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Just sayin’.

Brendochka
7/14/23