Even when you think they’re about to sink and regime change seems like it’s around the corner, the Cuban and Venezuelan governments hang on and on and on. It’s not as if the United States government hasn’t tried to bring down these two members of the “troika of tyranny.” Since January 23, the U.S. has imposed a series of escalating sanctions against the Maduro government in support of interim President Juan Guaidó. Regarding, the 60-plus year old Cuban regime, earlier this month the Trump administration announced it would partially implement Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, which allows lawsuits against Cuban companies using properties confiscated after the 1959 revolution. This was after a series of sanction-tightening measures against the Cuban regimes that started in June 2017.
But as Chris Sabatini writes for Foreign Affairs, the U.S. policy of “isolating government[s] in the hopes of sparking a popular uprising,” has its flaws. The most important one being, that these countries can now rely on China and Russia. China and Russia have played an oversized role in Maduro’s hold on power. The two countries have lent around $100 billion to the Maduro regime, keeping the Venezuelan government afloat in the midst of the country’s spiraling economic crisis. At the UN Security Council, both Russia and China used their veto power to reject an American resolution calling on new elections and uninterrupted distribution of humanitarian aid in Venezuela.
In Cuba, Russian influence remains in the island. In 2017, economic relations between the two countries grew by almost 70 percent. More recently, Russia approved a $43.27 million loan for Cuba’s defense sector, and Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft announced increases in shipments of hydrocarbons to Cuba to offset the decline of shipments from Venezuela. For its part, China has become one of Cuba’s major trade partners. As of 2018, China became Cuba’s primary source of imports, close to 30 percent of total trade, while over 30 percent of Cuba’s exports go to China. Chinese business has also integrated into the island’s key sectors including telecommunications, mining and energy.
