Trump just confirmed his belligerent approach to Cuba in a delightful tweet about an hour ago. His exact words:

“If Cuba is unwilling to make a better deal for the Cuban people, the Cuban/American people and the U.S. as a whole, I will terminate the deal”

That pretty much tells the story. Again, I strongly recommend anyone thinking they can travel to Cuba that they reconsider and not do this. And this also gives us a strong indication where Trump stands on whether he’ll hang on to even a shred of the Obama presidency. The answer is a firm and angry “NO!”

Good points John McKee. Castro’s complex legacy cannot be fully comprehended without placing it in context. Some additional thoughts, very schematically:

1) Cuba was the first Latin American country to stand up to that big bully to the north (with help from the USSR, but still …) and one of its “cardinal sins” was to inspire other countries with upstart tendencies like wanting to replace a brutal dictator with someone who paid a bit more attention to the little folk. Accordingly, Cuba’s military support for rebellions was always associated with social development programmes (very much like the Bush Administration said it wanted – but failed – to do in Iraq and Afganistan).

2) The positives of Castro’s legacy focus a lot on the attention given to making the poor and downtrodden less poor and less downtrodden: universal education leading to almost 100% literacy rates; accessible and affordable (free) health care for all. The fact that it’s the little folk who benefit from such actions is of no interest at all to people who have no difficulty paying for good schools and health care. Fat cats like them couldn’t care less if a poor woman has to choose between feeding her family, getting a root canal fixed for one of the kids or paying the heating bill. Those are the issues that Castro’s Cuba paid attention to and that was another of its “cardinal sins”.

3) Conversely, the categories that suffered during Castro’s early administration were the relatively better off who’d enjoyed a great deal of freedom and privilege under Battista’s brutal dictatorship. Most of them fled the country to the USA where they received a lot of financial and material assistance. I tend to resent the fact that their fate is automatically taken to be somehow more “cruel” that that of the people who had been living in poverty and deprivation.

4) I wonder to what extent the executions of opponents to the regime may not simply have been a continuation of practices that prevailed under Battista. If you were the son of a wealthy landowner (as the Castros were), you got off easily. It was quite a different story if you were a guy living in a roadside shack in cane-growing country.

Lastly, Al Jazeera interviewed a woman whose name I didn’t get. She’d been in and out of Cuba for decades and recently detected a new phenomenon which she called “Cubanism”: i.e. pride in being Cuban in Cuba. They are therefore even less likely to bow to yet more bullying from the North. And the rest of Latin America is no longer the submissive bunch they once were. Interesting times on the horizon. Scares the dickens out of me, too.

It was discussed today in the Wall Street Journal that Trump has already placed a big name right wing Cuban-American in his Treasury Dept transition. The purpose of that appointment was to send the message that Trump really does intend to scrap the Cuban détente Obama had achieved.

Conway went public earlier today to say that Trump’s approach to the Cuban situation will be to make a series of unbelievable ultimatums to the Cubans – essentially telling them to bow down and admit Trump is the boss. If the Cubans don’t go along with this nonsense (and there is no indication that any sane Cuban would), then Trump will have his excuse to rip up the deal and walk out in a huff. Which is of course the point. It’s a win-win for Trump. If the Cubans say no, as they most likely will, then the situation gets presented as the Cubans having blown the deal when it was actually Trump’s arrogance that killed it. If the Cubans say yes to Trump’s bullying tactics, then Trump gets to say that it was his superior strength and negotiation strategy that saved the world from Obama’s “failed foreign policy”

I don’t think you should go overboard about softening the legacy of Castro, but it must be remembered that he came to power during a period when American policy in Latin America was ruthless and fully in support of every vicious dictator. Your CIA assisted military coups, wholesale assassinations, widespread torture and the deprival of basic human rights to millions.

Wherever in the world (Asia, Africa, the Pacific Islands), the process of decolonization has been delicate and prone to instability, but the US in its paranoiac fear of the Red Menace, made it doubly difficult and bloody for the peoples to your south. FARC, Chavez, the Contras… and the death squads that persist to this day.

Gingrich will publicly celebrate Trump’s “statesmanship” and talk about it being the equivalent of Nixon going to China. Anyone who points out the obvious conflicts will be screamed at as treasonous sniveling snowflakes.

What will Pig Newton’s reaction be when Orange Donald invites tyrant Putin to a sleepover at the White House?

Mischieviously, I’d like to see Obama, himself, attend the funeral. The Trumplicans would burst their seams with shock and awe. IMO, doing so would confirm the good intentions of his administration and mark a massive difference with the future one. The Cubans living there are the descendents of those who didn’t have the wherewithall to flee to the USA.

On second thought, that would be the mother of distractions away from the awful choices being made by the President-elect for his cabinet. Can’t stop day-dreaming about the foreseeable reaction, though.

I think the upcoming government (controlled by Trumplicans in a manner that the Founding Fathers had tried their best to make impossible) will stick with Cuba as a safe enemy: too small to push back and all that. But then, Trump has indicated that he might be stupid enough to pick on a nation big enough and unprincipled enough (his term) to push back. … China seems to be high on that list. MMmmmmm. How much of the USA debt is held by China? I wonder who holds the big stick in this scenario?

BTW, Putin was full of praise for Fidel. Has anybody seen a reaction to that from the President-elect?

Joseph may well be right, and it could be a good thing if he is. It’s possible that there enough GOP heavyweights who are happy to do business with Cuba now that the promise to rip up the new détente might go by the wayside. We’ll have to see whether Trump listens to that group or if he pays attention to Fox News, which is solidly against anything but the most draconian position possible.

Joseph is right that continued insistence on keeping Cuba in the corner would only serve to prove that these guys just want to roll the clock back on Cuba by 60 years, in the same way that they will be rolling the clock back on all of us here in the US by eight years. My question there is whether the Right truly cares what anyone else thinks about their motives. The Right’s behavior since the Election has been off the chart belligerent, and there’s no sign that this will slow down until Trump is out of office. It’s also possible that the Right may use the death of Fidel to find an excuse to sidestep this promise. But at the same time, Castro’s brother is still in charge there, so as far as much of the Right is concerned, no change has happened.

And it’s a good point – Right Wingers like Limbaugh still love their authentic Cuban cigars, and yes, they love that they can get away with obtaining them on the QT. It’s another form of gloating and showmanship for someone like Limbaugh.

We really will have to see which gravity holds the greater influence on Trump when it comes to Cuba. Does he really want to encourage relations with Cuba? Or is it more important to him, as it is to Fox News, to completely rip up every single thing that Barack Obama did upon entering the Oval Office 8 years ago? My instincts are that he is more partial to the latter, as it’s the more childish and aggressive move. But I must acknowledge that I could be off on this.

As a matter of fact, not sending is incredibly bad. The republican party is the party of punks, not us.

Well let see. To follow a bunch of treasonous bastards or to follow your heart?

Send someone to the funeral. This ones easy.

For starters, there’s no actual reason for Obama to send anyone to Castro’s funeral on an official basis. Fidel stepped down as the country’s head of state (which is the only legitimate reason for the US government to send a delegation) years ago*. Obama can send an unofficial delegation, or attend himself as a “private citizen” but there’s no real reason for any American to attend.

As to Kevin’s point about the Cubans, I doubt it. The WHOLE reason for the anti-Cuban attitude for the past 50 years was FIDEL CASTRO. The generation that had the vehement anti-Castro attitude is dying out and they’d ALWAYS said that they would never deal with a Cuba ruled by Fidel. Now, there is a faction of Cuban-Americans that still wants nothing to do with Cuba as long as the country’s Communist, but a much larger group welcomes the opportunity to have open contact with relatives still on the island. And, a fair number of “conservative” business owners (you know—Trump’s REAL base) welcomed the rapprochement (even if they didn’t go out of their way to applaud the move—and you just know cigar aficionado, Rush Limpballs, has been loading his humidor with Cuba’s finest, although, maybe, he liked them better when they were illegal). It’s time for the anti-Castro faction to put up or shut up. By continuing to object, they’re only proving they want a return to the corrupt Batista days (since, of course, most of the original “exiles” were the ones who benefited from Batista’s letting American casino and hotel owners—and mobsters—do as they wanted).

*A fairly recent exception was when Obama attended Mandela’s funeral. But Castro was no Nelson Mandela (not the least of which, Mandela won the Nobel Peace Prize but also Mandela helped to lead a peaceful transition to Black majority rule under an ethos of multiculturalism (he’d seen how Whites had fled neighboring countries following Black majority rule and helped assure South African whites they were welcome partners in the new South Africa).

It’s clear that the guys aren’t waiting for The Year of The Bully to begin before starting their assault. There’s an obvious message coming from the tone of both Gingrich and Rubio’s comments, and from the sneering coverage by Fox News already. They are telling President Obama “Shut up. Don’t say anything. Don’t do anything. Just sit there and remember that you’re a failure and that nobody cares what you say anymore.” They are telling Dem voters similarly to shut up and not annoy “real Americans” with their views. This will only get worse as we get into January. I honestly believe that if these people could do it, they would physically toss the Obama family out of the White House.

As for Cuba, Trump has already demonstrated that he takes his cues from Fox News. Expect the Trump State Dept to immediately pull back from the rapprochement that Obama attempted to begin. There are some GOP guys I know who think Trump will keep it going, but I don’t think he wants to anger the Cuban voters in Florida who showed up for him. It’s a lot more likely that Trump will tear up the Cuba détente, along with everything else that the Obama Administration accomplished in 8 years. As of January 21, I would not be planning a trip to Cuba or any trade with them. The embargo will be back up in full with an ultimatum from Trump that Cuba will never agree to obey. Which means we’ll be back where we were in 2008 again.

One can never be too careful I suppose. ;^)