Invade Cuba, Why Not? - Donald Trump And The New Geopolitical Reality

Cuba has been a royal pain in the ass since Fidel Castro took over in 1959.  The Bay of Pigs, John Kennedy's ill-planned, amateurish invasion of the island made the US a laughing stock, hardened the Communist regime's resolve, and made Cuba the center of American regional geopolitics from then on. 

The Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 when Kennedy demanded that the Soviet Union remove the missiles it had deployed in Cuba and aimed at the United States nearly precipitated a nuclear war, and from that time on until the fall of the Soviet Union Cuba was the focus of American and Russian attention. 

Cuba's economy relied on Russian support - food, oil, hardware, technical support - and it was more than ever an important player in the American-Soviet rivalry. 

After 1991 when Russian support dwindled to nothing and the Castro regime was forced to rely on its own resources, the country fell into even greater economic crisis.  The American embargo to force the Communist regime to capitulate did little to shake the foundations of the regime and only added to Cubans' misery. 

The Mariel Boat Lift was Castro's answer to America's plea for freedom of movement and expression, and he emptied his prisons and sent hundreds of hardened criminals the US's way.  Miami which had thrived with refugees which came to Florida immediately after the Cuban Revolution and the rise of Castro, was inundated with these undesirables; but the US had always had the policy of 'If they're Cuban, we'll take them'. 

Since then Cuba has limped along, somehow surviving.  The United States under Barack Obama loosened the embargo rules and permitted some Americans to travel to the island, hoping that some kind of accommodation might be achieved; but no dice.  The regime after Fidel's death was no less hard and fast in its authoritarianism and no less hostile to the United States. 

The Soviets and the Russians are long gone. The only hardline Communist country is North Korea and its support of Cuba is desultory at best, so Cuba is no real threat to the United States.  Leave it alone and let it collapse under its own weight might be the best option; but America cannot do that just as the North could not leave the South alone in America's civil war period. The South's slavery, challenge to free labor, and its open hostility simply could not stand, and when the South attacked Fort Sumter, it was the casus belli the North had always wanted. 

Many economists have concluded that the Southern agrarian, slave-based economy would have collapsed on its own. It had no industry to speak of, no shipbuilding or shipping, and relied on British transport for its cotton. The North was rapidly industrializing, growing powerful and influential, and the South could not possibly have lasted much longer. 

Yet the North was anxious to pull the trigger.  A combination of abolitionists, free labor advocates, and Northern nationalists combined to insist on full-scale war.  The South shall never rise again after we are through with it, they said.  

And so it is with Cuba.  The Communist regime simply cannot last much longer, so why not just let it fester and come to its own logical conclusion?  Because it's there, that's why.  Time to get rid of it once and for all, pay it back for all its insolence, obduracy, and drumbeat of Hate America!

Trump is on a roll.  Venezuela was a piece of cake, a few special forces with air cover and the dictator, Maduro, was history; the oil fields were ours, and another pissy, uncontrite socialist regime over and done with.  Hamas and Iran have proved harder nuts to crack, but the American President has shown chutzpah and cojones in a defiantly militant posture.  

It has been almost fifty years since the ayatollahs have changed the country into an oppressed gulag, have sown terror throughout the Middle East, have built a nuclear arsenal and declared that it would eventually annihilate Israel and kill all Jews, and again it was about time to get rid of it. 

This is not to say that Donald Trump is the Wild West gunslinging cowboy he is made out to be.  He is just playing the Machiavellian geopolitical game that America's arch-rivals Russia and China have been playing for years.  China wants complete Han control of the Uighur regions of its west, the re-integration of Tibet into China, and the final assimilation of Taiwan.  

There is nothing new in that either from a geopolitical or natural perspective.  China has never been bothered by American-style moral exceptionalism, has always been an imperialist society, and has never once given American concerns about freedom, liberty, and cultural identity a second thought; and human nature is never satisfied with what it has. 

President Putin of Russia has made no bones about his respect for his country's imperial past. Czarist Russia was a social, cultural, political, and military leader; and it is time to restore those very ambitions and values to the new Russia. 

President Erdogan of Turkey has similar sentiments about the Ottoman Empire, a time of Turkish world domination under Islamic rule.  It is time for modern Turkey to return to those same hegemonic, imperial roots. 

Trump is simply joining Putin, Xi, and Erdogan in their geopolitical outlook.  Spheres of influence, whether Ukraine, Taiwan, Venezuela, or Cuba - and by extension the Middle East. Trump's first strike posture is completely within this new geopolitical zeitgeist.  He is simply abandoning one-world idealism and returning to hardline nationalism.  The world is not a happy picnic ground. 

The US under Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon claimed Southeast Asia as America's; and they initiated a war with Ho Chi Minh, a nationalist patriot, because of his Communist intentions.  The Domino Theory was prevalent - if Vietnam falls, then so will Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and God knows what else. It was time to nip that probability in the bud, and so the US began an unwinnable war. 

It was only after such a humiliating defeat that America pulled in its horns, rethought foreign policy and geopolitics.  McNamara, LBJ's Defense Secretary went to Vietnam many years after the Vietnamese victory and begged forgiveness.  We shouldn't have done what we did, he said to deaf ears and then went on to become President of the World Bank and changed its ethos and policy structure to favor 'poverty reduction', a kind of international mea culpa for Vietnam.

However, the seeds of regional dominance were still in America's garden basket, and Ronald Reagan undertook a small-scale support of rightist forces in Nicaragua and El Salvador - our sphere of interest - and subsequent American Presidents had their moments - taking out Qaddafi in Libya and Noriega in Panama, but nothing major until Afghanistan and Iraq.  

'Mission Accomplished' said George W Bush after the fall of Saddam Hussein, but of course nothing was accomplished.  Both resurgent Islamic militias in Iraq and the Taliban in Afghanistan eventually regained power. 

The only difference now is that Donald Trump is no longer using exceptionalist cover for his actions.  There is no need to justify taking over a country because of democracy.  It is enough to say that we simply want it, that it is in our national interest.  It is bald aggressiveness, aligned quite nicely with Russia and China.  In fact it is a triumvirate of equal-minded adversaries.  That is what is new. 

The American Left of course cries foul.  Trump is an imperialist dictator who has abandoned any sense of justice, compassion, understanding, and peace.  He is a blundering, arrogant, authoritarian pig who has no moral inhibitions. 

Yet how short the memory of these critics.  America has always been like this.  Thomas Jefferson the architect of Manifest Destiny, the philosophy which stated that America was destined to be one country from sea to sea, was unapologetic about American expansionism, the clearing of brush, titling land, and moving the Indians as far west of the Mississippi River as possible. 

So, no tears.  The Cuban regime has threatened to send explosive-carrying drones to Florida and bomb key targets.  This would be the casus belli Donald Trump hopes for.  Just one pathetic little Latino drone coming our way would be enough for a massive invasion of the island, and getting rid of the hated Castros once and for all. 

It might not happen, but then again it very well might.  Trump is on a roll, so why not?

A Harem Of Excellence - Thirty Billionaires Travel With Trump To China And The Left Is Outraged

‘Not a black face among them', Bob Muzelle shouted as he read the list of high-tech executives invited to travel to China with Donald Trump in a high-stakes meeting with President Xi Jinping.

No, Bob was right, there were none. Not a one, not a single, solitary one. 

'He could have picked...' but there Bob stopped, fumbled for names, looked at the ceiling and around the room, and stumbled on. Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, he was just a black academic trotted out by the Biden Administration to show the American public that black people were not just basketball players and blues musicians, and that they had brains as well as parquet floor and guitar aptitude.  

Tyson was on MSNBC time and time again citing the impending climate doom and heralding Biden’s efforts to slow global warming.  No, not Tyson; but then, who?

'My people', Bob thought since after decades spent in the trenches of the civil rights movement he considered himself black. In fact so insistent was he on minority identity despite his patrician New England roots, that he had a DNA test done to see whether any of the blood of the illegitimate mulatto offspring of Great-great Grandfather Samuel Pilkington, Virginia plantation owner ran through his veins. 

It didn't and in fact his genetic history only showed grandee blood on both sides of the family, an unbroken string of slave owners, Three-Corner Trade shipbuilders, New Bedford investors and insurers.    

 

So it was of great disappointment, chagrin, and frustration that Bob could come up with no names - no black luminaries that should have featured on Trump's list. 

Of course even if there had been a black man on the list, Bob would have demanded that he decline the offer. No self-respecting person of color should be seen in the same company as that racist pig Trump no matter how important the event. It was a moot point however since there were none invited, none even on the seconds list, none even as third-tier alternates. 

'Talent', said Marco Rubio, Secretary of State filling in as Press Secretary while Karoline Leavitt was on maternity leave. 

That's what this President values, not diversity for its own sake.  Americans of brilliance, outstanding effort, ability, and above all contributions to the United States are what the President admires and favors.  The days of divisive, corrosive diversity and identity politics are over

Bob wasn't sure which was worse - that this was a lily white assemblage...well, if you discounted the Asian or two on the list - or a horde of billionaires.  Bob had spent recent weeks working with Socialist Mayor of New York Zohran Mamdani who was proposing new taxes on the wealthy.  'The billionaire is not American', said Mamdani which sent those who had helped build the new New York scurrying for the exits for safer tax havens in states where their enterprise was appreciated. 

The fact that the hated Evil in the White House, the Hitler reincarnate, despiser of the poor, colossus of hate had put together a black-free assortment of billionaires was double indemnity, the perfect storm of capitalist, conservative malignity. 

Engine Charlie Wilson, former Chairman of General Motors in its prime famously said, 'The business of America is business', and not one of the Trump invited executives declined the offer.  

This was not pampered athletes refusing to be feted at the White House in a show of arrogant ignorance. Why on earth would the attendance of these physically talented but politically naive slam-dunkers matter in the least?  Their refusal to attend was a sign of the worst, most grinding self-importance, nothing more. 

To a man, the corporate executives invited by Trump engineered, built, and extended the reach of impossibly far-reaching technological advances, were happy to engage with China, their arch-adversary but one that they mightily respected.  Their loyalty to the man, Donald Trump, was secondary to their allegiance to America - and yes, of course, to expand their own corporate influence and become even wealthier, but that was a foregone conclusion anyway.  The competition between Chinese and American AI companies was what fueled innovation. 

'Scurrilous', said Bob, still scrambling to come up with black entrepreneurs whom he might sponsor for the next high-stakes trip abroad if not this one but coming up empty once again.  Why couldn't the President have just an ounce of give, invite someone, anyone of color, to show that America was not the old white nation of the past.

'Genius clusters' are groups of unusually brilliant men who happen to live at the same time.  How to explain the Founding Fathers? To a man, they were individuals of insight, intelligence, moral fiber, historical grounding, and unique creativity.  

Churchill, De Gaulle, and Roosevelt were another such cluster.  Roosevelt brought America out of the Great Depression and presided over the the Allied victory in Europe.  Without Churchill’s resolve, will, courage, and absolute conviction of moral right, the Battle of Britain would never have been won.  De Gaulle in exile was a heroic figure to whom occupied France turned for moral and political support.

Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, J.P. Morgan, and Andrew Carnegie formed another genius cluster and together they built the foundations of American industry. 

Huang, Musk, Gates are part of a far larger, more far reaching, and more revolutionary genius cluster, a remarkable testament to America's culture of talent and opportunity.  Former President Biden did his best to shut down this engine of prosperity, progress, and geopolitical influence. His DEI (Diversity Equity Inclusivity) focus on race, gender, and ethnicity rather than talent and ability was an attempt to disable a culture of excellence by insisting that excellence was a matter of white privilege.

It is amazing that these technology innovators were able to do what they did even in the miasma of forced ordinariness. Affirmative action was a curse - a voodoo, zombie affair, an inversion of value. 

The billionaire trip to China might be a final wakeup call to Americans seduced by Biden era distortions.   This mission of undoubtedly the best creative, innovative minds in the country showed the credulous, progressive Left that the days of diversity are over and a restoration of originalist values has returned. 

'This cannot stand!', shouted Bob, but by this time he was not sure what 'this' was. There was no denying the fact that there were no black faces on the roster of the best and the brightest, no Nobel Prize winners in all of Africa, no meteoric rise of African Americans to the top of American society so where to look?

There could be, there might be black faces if the spurious, damaging culture of entitlement, victimhood, identity and white patronizing were to end, if black men and women were taken off life support and immersed in the same sink or swim waters as everyone else.  

A culture of competition, free enterprise, economic mobility, and ambition always enables the best and the brightest to emerge, rise, and profit. 

If that demeaning, stultifying, oppressive liberal group-think persists, there can be none of the dramatic social changes that enable success, and black people will suffer under the common but never admitted assumption that they are simply not up to it. 

Americans should all look up to Musk, Huang, Gates et. al. and want to be like them, not hate them because they are white billionaires.  That seditious lie, that insidious conclusion must be dismissed once and for all.  

Racial Harmony - An Old Freedom Rider Tries To Relive Ebony And Ivory But Finds 'Whites Need Not Apply'

Vicki Batten was an old Freedom Rider - on the busses to Montgomery to march with Martin and Ralph across the Pettus Bridge in Selma.  Ah, what a heady time! she remembered. More like a camp jamboree than serious business until, of course they were set upon by Bull Connor's dogs, beaten like tramps by his thugs, thrown into jail with nothing but bread and water. 

'I would never have had it otherwise', she said, reminiscing about those times, the halcyon times of racial integration, ebony and ivory, black and white, arms linked singing 'We Shall Overcome'.  She still wore an amulet given to her by a young black boy, a gri-gri he had been given by his former slave grandmother, given by her grandmother as she was loaded aboard the slave ship taking them to America. 

'Dis keep dem evil sprits gone fo' evah', the boy said to Vicki as she set off on the long march for freedom.  'Now Olodumare is wif you'. 

She had tears in her eyes as she remembered that day, that boy, and the sun rising over the Pettus bridge, the stink of the tannery on the far banks of the river, the solidarity, the camaraderie, the brilliant, unalloyed hope for a better future. 

She and her classmate were on their way up to Poughkeepsie for their Vassar reunion.  It had been many years since she had visited her old school, and she was filled with fond memories of girlhood, first love, and the intimations of her professional calling.  When visiting professor Harold Bloom read from Blake's The Tyger, she was moved to tears and knew at that moment that her life was to be dedicated to beauty. 

'Do you think Felicia will be here?' Vicki's classmate asked as they made the final turn onto the campus, already festooned with welcome Class of 19___banners, white tents put up in the quad, caterers already fussing with tablecloths and silver services. It was a beautiful May day, and the weekend promised to be a memorable one. 

Felicia had been Vicki's first love and the two were an item during a year together - strange, unique, and a curiosity since those were the days when that kind of love was far more undercover and not supposed to exist, especially not at such a high-toned campus like Vassar. 

'A flirtation', snapped Vicki, hoping that she would not have to be reminded of her sexual dalliance under the covers at Stratham House; but the thought had crossed her mind.  What would she say to her after so many years? especially since Vicki had gone on to marry, have children, and lead a quietly traditional life - except of course for Selma. 

To her surprise and pleasure, Felicia was at the reunion and even more surprising, she too had been in Alabama during the time of civil protest. Now she was in a different political place, a different emotional country, and far from Selma, but she had been moved by the same integrative spirit at the time.

Now, the paths taken by the two former lovers had diverged significantly after the Freedom Rides.  Vicki had followed her heart and joined the civil rights movement, but for one reason or another meandered into redistributive wealth, climate activism, and world peace.  She had never once lifted her nose from the grindstone, and was as passionately committed to these existential causes as she had been for the black man. 

Felicia on the other hand had turned the corner, looked at her sexual and political dalliances as youthful fantasy, and become a corporate lawyer who was proud that she had defended both Amazon and Microsoft in famous anti-trust cases. She came to the reunion dressed to kill, all Armani and Arpege, a fashion plate looking like a well-tailored Catherine Deneuve, desirable but aloof. 

Vicki felt shabby standing next to her.  A life of social commitment did not pay well nor was it expected to.  Money was the root of oppression, racism, and climate denial; but still and all, she wanted to look like Felicia and in fact be like Felicia who warmly invited her to their summer home on Nantucket or their winter place on St. Bart's. 

Vicki had heard about Felicia, Amazon, and Microsoft - the Vassar Alumnae Magazine literally gushed with pride over her achievements - but Felicia had heard nothing about Vicki.  A life in the trenches meant keeping your head down. 

'When this shindig is over' said Felicia, warmly embracing her old friend, 'we must have lunch'.

Other than that fortunate, happy occasion of meeting Felicia again, the reunion was a routine affair. Quiche, chardonnay, girl talk, chatter about children and grandchildren, a few noteworthy alumnae talking about art, the human genome, chips, and rare earths, but nothing more.  Vicki was glad it was over, thinking more about her coming lunch with Felicia than the affairs of her classmates. 

'Why are you still in that rat's nest', asked Felicia when the two met a month later at the Four Seasons.  'As corrupt as can be. BLM LaShonda whatever in prison for fraud and embezzlement. Your inner cities sinkholes, rabid, disgusting....Oh, I'm being too forward, aren't I, darling?'

Felicia, however forward and intemperate her remarks, had hit the nail on the head.  When Vicki thought to reup her allegiance to the cause of racial justice and made overtures to the Black Women's Social Caucus, Washington's most prominent civil rights non-profit, she was met at the door, shepherded through metal detectors, frisked and asked to empty her pocketbook. 

'Sorry 'bout that', said her host. 'Can never be too careful these days'.  On the walls of Letitia James' office there were no photographs of King, Abernathy, Rosa Parks, or even Malcolm X, Rap Brown, and Stokely Carmichael, icons of the black cause, heroes of the movement. "We don't do that shit no mo'" said Letitia. 'Them's history and we's the present'; and from that moment on Vicki knew she didn't belong.  Better not to mention Selma, Bull Connor, Montgomery or any of the rest of it.  

'What did I tell you?', Felicia said when she and Vicki met again.  'Not that you've spent your life for a lost cause', Felicia went on, 'because of course you did what you thought was right, but still and all in all, you were barking up the wrong tree'

A pause for reflection.  What had started off as a happy, unified, collegial, and happy event - blacks and whites together, singing in unison, arms locked, embracing, and just happy to be together - had become a racially divided, racist, identity-flaunted nightmare.   How did this happen? 

'Is Harold Bloom still alive?', Felicia asked.  Vicki was unsure but after checking found out that he wasn't.  How she had been impressed by him, by Blake, and by the deliberate parsing of those few, spare lines of Tyger! Was it too late to return to the fold?  Of course it was.  She should have retired years ago, but hung in there. 'Sunken costs', said Felicia.  Too much invested regardless of the innocence and yes, ignorance of the investment. 

Florida beckoned.  Vicki knew that she should not be thinking condo in 'The Free State', the fascist state, but she was tired of northern winters, slush, and potholes.  She would have preferred to go out in a blaze of glory, the signing of another civil rights bill perhaps, something to mark her efforts; but she couldn't shake that niggling comment of Felicia - she said sinkhole but she really meant shithole - and decided that a Tampa beach would be the anodyne appropriate for a tired warrior. 

Felicia was in the news again, arguing corporate interests before the Supreme Court. Vicki was happy for her, Frost's the road not taken Vicki's fate, but let bygones be bygones.  Those camp songs on the Freedom Rides were something, weren't they?