The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Why Is a US - Cuba Deal Inevitable? || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: August 30, 2023

Most people would scoff at the idea that Cuba could end the US as a major power, but that small country has something no one else does...Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/why-is-a-us-cuba-deal-inevitable

Hey, everyone, Peter Zion here, coming to you from the Collegiate Wilderness, where I'm going to bag a few 14ers this week. Today we're going to talk about Cuba. Now, Cuba, the island, pinches access to the core territories of the United States. What makes the United States of world power is not just the fact that it's basically a continent in size, but it's got the greater Mississippi right in the middle of it, which overlays the world's most productive, arable land. Water is the most efficient way by an order of magnitude to move things around.

And so as long as you have a long waterway, in an area where you actually have things to ship, you can't really help but not mess it up. And believe me, we've been trying for decades. And if you look at the last four presidents, and yet we're still here. Now, Cuba, because it straddles the access points to the Gulf of Mexico, has the possibility to end to that, to end the United States as a major power. But that would require a lot more military force than Cuba is capable of producing itself. So the biggest threat to the United States going back well over century has been that some foreign power will build a partnership with the Cubans that will break American power. And that's one of the reasons why JFK reacted so strongly during the Cuban missile crisis because he saw it rightly as a Soviet effort to, on the cheap, end the United States. Now, since the Cold War ended and Cuba lost its Soviet sponsorship, I have been expecting a warming of relations and a change in the bilateral relationship.

for some time. Under Barack Obama, we got a hamfisted attempt at that that was basically negotiated over a short period of time with very little buy-in from the president because he didn't like to have meetings with anyone. And what we got was a deal of limited economic opening minimal political connections. And it was a bad deal, start to finish. It was sophomoric, it was lazy, but above all, it was stupid. And so when Donald Trump came in, he killed that deal saying that we know, we should have gotten a better deal, and he is right. But then he proceeded to not do a damn thing. And that was sophomoric, and that was lazy, and that was stupid. But consider in today's political climate that the two most polar opposite presidents that we've had both recognize the

opportunity, even if they proved completely incompetent at building something out of it. So, there is movement, there is possibility within diplomacy and economic diplomacy, to shift this. Now, the window of opportunity we had after the Castro's died is obviously gone, and the new regime, which is the old regime,

just with like the third stringers, has definitely thrown in its lot to a little bit with the Russians, but the Russians don't have the money that they used to, so now the Chinese. Now, if you've been following my stuff, you know that I don't think that the Chinese and the Russians

are going to be around all that much longer. It's certainly not an ability to project power a hemisphere away. So this is going to come up again and again and again and again. And hopefully the next time around, we will have a competent president who is capable of making a basic deal with a country that has less than 1% of America's economic and military heft that is right on our doorstep that can't possibly reach for support. It gives you an idea of just how little I think of both of the two previous administrations.

I don't think that's going to happen under the Biden administration. However, there are a lot bigger fish to fry right now. and at the moment the Chinese are still there, and as long as the regime in Cuba feels that it has a foreign lifeline, it's going to grab on with both hands. So a deal on this is inevitable. Doesn't mean it's imminent. All right, that's it for me.

You guys take care.