The Cuban missile crisis prevented the U.S from fully occupying Cuba; but now that the Soviet Union is gone, does Cuba still have nukes? If not, then how and why is Cuba not being terrorized right now?
The Cuban missile crisis prevented the U.S from fully occupying Cuba; but now that the Soviet Union is gone, does Cuba still have nukes? If not, then how and why is Cuba not being terrorized right now?
But does it have the motivation to? Remember that any economic action with a significant impact on the US will hurt China as much if not more. That would potentially hurt the legitimacy of a government premised on bountiful growth. The West is mostly getting involved with Ukraine because Russia has brought war to its front doorstep. Europe is willing to do immense damage to itself to send a message. But is China willing to do that for a country with little strategic value? I doubt it.
Economic action against US will absolutely hurt US more than China. That’s not even debatable. China is self sufficient in terms of manufacturing, and it’s actively developing a dual circulation economy as a buffer against problems in global economy and sanctions. Meanwhile, US is entirely dependent on China and it would be absolute chaos if China chose to restrict exports of even a few key items to US.
The west is getting involved with Ukraine because it’s a proxy war with Russia. Framing it any other way is counter to decades of history that led up to the conflict.
While it’s true that Ukraine has more strategic value to the west than Cuba has to China, that doesn’t mean there is no strategic value. Demonstrating that China is able to effect US foreign policy sends a very strong geopolitical message.
But is this enough of a motivating factor that China would be willing to hurt itself? In the short term, the US forms roughly a fifth of the Chinese export market and 3% of total GDP. Long term, using their position as world’s manufacturer has a risk of causing other countries to shy away from relying on China. Countries are perfectly fine taking their business elsewhere if it means they’re nothing going to have China’s desires held over their head. We’ve seen some of the same happen with reliance on the dollar.
Now balance that against Cuba from China’s view. There are ideological parallels, of course. But besides that, China gets no real economic benefit from Cuba. I just don’t see China sacrificing trillions of dollars over time mostly for ideological reasons.
China knows that US is a geopolitical rival, and US has been pretty open about its intentions to break China. Cuba could provide the necessary justification to accelerate decoupling from US that would override any immediate financial concerns.