Cuba's been an ally ever since the end of the Spanish-Civil war. What if it wasn't? I hear some fringe activists with the name "Castro" have been protesting, but I don't think they'd ever go anywhere.
No way Cuba could go anti-American. The US had an unbeatable weapon in the sugar quota. If the US cuts the quota, who are they going to sell sugar to--the Soviet Union?! (The idea is so absurd that even the Cuban Communists never suggested it. For one thing, the USSR, if not self-sufficient in sugar, was itself a very large sugar producer; but of course even if it were economically feasible, a Cuban-Soviet league of any kind was politically unthinkable.)
As for that Castro guy who was killed in the shipwreck of his boat the *Granma* as he tried to re-enter Cuba from Mexican exile--I think his chances of coming to power were negligible, but in any event there is no way he was the "Communist" portrayed by Batista. Castro had been a member of the Ortodoxo party of the anti-communist Eddy Chibas. And as Castro noted in 1956, "What moral right does Senor Batista have to speak of Communism when he was the Presidential candidate of the Communist Party in the elections of 1940, when his electoral squibs hid behind the hammer and sickle, when his photographs hung next to those of Blas Roca [the Cuban Communist Party's general secretary] and Lazaro Peña [the Communist general secretary of the Cuban trade union federation from 1939 to 1947], when half a dozen of his present ministers and confidential collaborators were outstanding members of the Communist Party?" https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/isj/1970/no044/enzensberger.htm
Cuba could no more survive hostility to the United States than could Long Island.
Cuba could no more survive hostility to the United States than could Long Island.
This. This conversation has generally assumed that the Cubans are the masters of their own fate, but that has never been true. First Spain and then the United States have decided the fate of the island since its discovery. If a Cuban government arose that was not to the Americans' liking, troops would barely need ships, they'd wade over from Key West.
This. This conversation has generally assumed that the Cubans are the masters of their own fate, but that has never been true. First Spain and then the United States have decided the fate of the island since its discovery. If a Cuban government arose that was not to the Americans' liking, troops would barely need ships, they'd wade over from Key West.
Hostility may be ASB, but what about Non-alignment? Still a snub at the US, but a tolerable one.
Hostility from Cuba is bordering ASB, you just transposing our relations with Canada with those from an Island that is in all but name the 51st State.
Cuba is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, their currently what 19th richest country now? As a country their doing just fine for themselves, sure there are real limits to who they can ally with but America is their biggest customer and you don't piss off the guy who buys 70% of your exports.
Cuba is WAY more than just a huge exporter of sugar cane and tobacco in 2016. There are also huge plantations of several tropical fruits grown in Cuba that are exported to the USA--bananas, mangoes, pineapple and more recently lychee and longan. And given the many kilometers of beaches all around the island, no wonder why it is the #1 tropical resort destination from North America and Europe.