The endless Cuban embargo has achieved absolutely nothing positive for the US. To the contrary, it has been extremely useful for the defenders of the Communist model. Instead of letting the Cuban economy collapse under the weight of Marxist idiocy, the Americans have diverted the blame for the starvation of Cubans onto themselves. Now it’s impossible to convince anybody that the Cuban economic model is untenable because Cuban poverty is blamed on the embargo.
Within Cuba, the embargo is used as a very effective tool of dispelling the internal resentment with the regime. This strategy is partly responsible for the regime’s longevity.
This is yet another example of economic sanctions being completely counter-productive.
Clarissa's Blog 
I think this is called having a defining opposition. I agree totally, although I am not as certain as you are that Cuba’s economy would collapse without the embargo.
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The Soviet economy collapsed, didn’t it? And Cuba with its lack of natural resources and completely reliant on hard labor to produce its all-important single crop stood even less of a chance.
I’ve been to Cuba several times and it has become a USSR in miniature.
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Marxists are always sure that their economic model will last forever. But Marxist economies always collapse, embargo or no embargo. Marx was just an illiterate militant pseudo scholar, hence the problems.
I have read a lot of his books, and I know very well what I am talking about.
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Many years ago I knew some Cuban Americans, not only those who had emigrated shortly after the revolution as adults, but their adult(ish) children born in the US (and a few young adults whose families emigrated when they were in their teens).
From what I remember, as a rule the most virulently anti-castro were the ones born in the US (followed by their parents). The third group realized just how screwed up things were in Cuba but weren’t obsessive about it.
All realized at some level that the embargo was counterproductive (and was actually helping Castro) but the first two groups couldnt’ let go of it (so much of their identity was tied up in visible opposition to the regime that longer term strategic thinking was essentially impossible for them).
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Oh yes, the Cuban diaspora is the most limited, pig-headed and unreasonable group of immigrants I have ever encountered.
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Watch out, Russians will think you’re getting soft on them and have to redouble their efforts…..
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Yes, the Cuban immigrants are even worse than the post-Soviet ones. Although, I’m hearing that the new generation of Putin-era immigrants from Russia to the UK is worse still than even the Cubans. 🙂
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That is my folks right there, right-wing as hell and think that everything Democrat is Communist and that Obama is the antichrist. Of course they support the embargo and would love to kill Castro with their bare hands, many of my older relatives have been living in the states for so long and yet they don’t think of themselves as Americans at all, the younger relatives are like aliens to the old folks.
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China’s economy has not collapsed. Neither, I think, did Vietnam’s after the U. S. left almost 40 years ago. Of course, North Korea has an even stronger embargo going on than does Cuba.
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The people in China are starving save for a small minority. That’s where all those extremely cheap goods that are inundating the world are coming from: people are working for miserable pay, just to survive.
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And Vietnam is doing much much worse than even China.
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China is as far from the Marxist economic doctrine as the sun is from the earth. 🙂 That’s the only reason why it’s not collapsed so far, despite all the terrible problems the country is experiencing. Marxism is a good old way to the abyss.
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