Multidimensional War Against the Cuban People

By Pasqualina Curcio – Jul 17, 2021

The cynicism of the US towards the heroic Cuban people never ceases to amaze us. How is it that after 60 years—let’s be clear, 60 years, 3 generations—of genocidal blockade against the island, the US government calls for and promotes “humanitarian aid” for a supposed humanitarian crisis? Moreover, it does so when, in spite of calling itself the world’s leading power and registering a GDP per capita 7 times greater than that of the Caribbean island country, has not even managed to contain the virus.

The United States tops the world list of countries with the highest number of people infected and killed by COVID-19. The incidence rate of COVID-19 (number of infected persons per million inhabitants) in the USA is 104 per million inhabitants, that is, 4.5 times higher than that recorded by Cuba, which is 23. As for the mortality rate (number of persons dying per million inhabitants), that of the USA is 1.87 and that of Cuba 0.15, that is, 12.5 times more people die in the USA than in Cuba, despite the unimaginable shortages in Cuba resulting from the 243 unilateral coercive measures imposed by the White House in the midst of the pandemic. Seen in this light, who in the world needs help at this time if not the American people? They have no morals.

The actions recently promoted by the US government against Cuba are part of an unconventional and multidimensional war that, according to US government manuals, are developed in the following way: they create, with different actions, real conditions to generate uneasiness, anguish and social and political destabilization in the population. Actions that are always accompanied by a narrative that, on the one hand, amplifies the events, for example, what is a small riot is shown to the world as a social explosion; and on the other hand, blames the government, their policies and their economic model for what is happening. Phrases such as “dictatorship,” “failed state,” “failed socialism,” “violation of human rights,” “repression,” “terrorist” are always part of the discourse seeking to derive the justification for, according to them, urgent “humanitarian aid,” which as we already know, is the euphemism for military intervention. They always do so in the name of “democracy” and “freedom.”

Unconventional wars cannot, under any circumstances, develop without the media dimension, which is intrinsic and transversal to the rest of the dimensions.

According to Manual TC 1801 of the US Department of the Army, the other dimensions of unconventional warfare are the economic dimension (this is never missing), the psychological dimension which goes hand in hand with the media dimension, the objective of which is to terrorize the population with messages premeditatedly elaborated in laboratories and through which they try to sow hatred in order to unleash fratricidal wars, also seeking to demoralize the population of the target country.

Then there is the diplomatic dimension, where the leading role in our region has always been that of the OAS. In fact, Almagro, secretary of the Ministry of the Colonies, has already spoken of the supposed failure of the “dictatorship” in Cuba. In this dimension also appear the NGOs, financed by USAID and NED, pretending to be defenders of human rights, with speeches of alleged violation of these rights by the Cuban government. The declarations of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet could not be missing either, adding to the strategy of disinformation and confusion. In this case, Bachelet, without a single piece of evidence to show, said that she was very “concerned about the excessive use of force against demonstrators in Cuba and the arrest of a large number of people, among them several journalists.” She also spoke of people being held incommunicado and missing and demanded the urgent release of the detainees who, according to her, were demonstrating “peacefully.” All this is very similar to the case of Venezuela, where the Lima Group and European parliamentarians had joined in.

Then there is another dimension, that of internal politics, whose objective is to destabilize the streets through demonstrations that they try to show to the world as if they were peaceful, in a strategy similar to the guarimbas and the trancazos in Venezuela, but which in reality are armed groups with all kinds of weaponry. Groups that, in Venezuela, went so far as to burn people alive. Of course, in the media they are shown as very “peaceful” while the security forces that try to control the violent demonstrations are described as ”repressive.” Let us not be surprised if a violinist or a nudist appears in these “peaceful” demonstrations in Cuba.

So far nothing is alien to Venezuelans; we have lived all this. Just as we have been victims of the other dimension, one of the most powerful: the economic one, which is acting day by day, sometimes invisibly and covertly, in each and every household. The recent queues to buy food or essential goods in Cuba, a consequence of an alleged shortage, are not accidental. Beyond the genocidal blockade and the economic effects of the pandemic, this shortage, which is programmed and selective, is part of the war manuals; if not let’s ask the Chileans of Allende’s times, the Nicaraguans during the Sandinista Revolution, the Soviets at the end of the 80s, or the Venezuelans recently. Failure to place essential goods on the shelves in sufficient quantities generates long lines and with them discomfort, anguish, annoyance—sensations that are amplified and enhanced through the media that hold the Cuban Revolution responsible for all this. The economic weapon is the alteration of the distribution channels of these products together with hoarding. What we affirm is written in the declassified documents of the actions against Allende as part of the CIA plans.

Nor should it be accidental, but rather on the contrary, orchestrated with the rest of the actions, the fact that the counterrevolutionary web portal Eltoque created in 2014 began to publish an alleged exchange rate of the Cuban peso with respect to the US dollar in informal markets. Today the gap between the official exchange rate (24 pesos/US$) and the aforementioned portal (60/US$) is 36 pesos/US$. According to these portals, the peso has depreciated 200% since January 2021. We Venezuelans know this economic weapon very well: in the framework of the unconventional war they have induced us the depreciation of the bolívar, already confessed by US government spokespeople, 3.5 billion percent since 2013, resulting in hyperinflation and all that it implies economically and of course politically. They have done so through the web portal dolartoday.

Not to mention the financial blockade, on which the Cuban brothers have a doctorate, and the constant electrical sabotages, as well as the trade embargoes that hinder the acquisition of fuel. In the economic dimension, obviously, the call for a general strike cannot be missing. Countless calls for strikes were made by the extreme right wing in Venezuela in the framework of the guarimbas.

All these dimensions of the unconventional war against the Cuban people are part of the desperate plans of the US Southern Command, revealed in its recent report of March 2021, dedicated to Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Southcom head Craig Faller said that they are ready to defend “their territory” (as if the entire continent of the Americas were theirs) against the “interfering and terrorist” pretensions of China and Russia. In the aforementioned report, the US confesses its fear of the commercial incursion of these countries in our region and its intentions to neutralize them, which includes controlling Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

An unconventional war is underway against the Cuban people, which seeks, by various means, to provoke, destabilize, demoralize and, of course, confuse the international community. As always, the people of Fidel, Che and Martí, while offering humanity five vaccines against the pandemic, continue to provide us an example of courage and resistance in the face of criminal imperial pretensions.

Featured image: Thousands of people attend a demonstration in support of the Cuban Revolution in Havana. Photo: Ernesto Mastrascusa / EFE

(Resumen Latinoamericano-English)

Pasqualina Curcio

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Economist (Central University of Venezuela). PhD in Political Science from Simón Bolívar University (Venezuela). Master in Public Policies of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Administration (Venezuela). She is a Full Professor of the Department of Economic and Administrative Sciences of the Simón Bolívar University. She was Deputy Minister of Collective Health Networks.