Photo: A 2023 march in solidarity with Cuba in New York City. Credit: Liberation photo
The inclusion of Cuba on the U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism list (SSOT) has dramatically exacerbated the harm done to the Cuban people by the U.S. blockade that has been imposed on the Island for the past 62 years. The SSOT designation is just one of the many component parts of the blockade put together by the United States, and one of its most destructive. Trump announced his intention to add Cuba to the list in January 2021, but President Biden signed the order on his second day of office. As a result, Cuba has fallen into one of its most difficult economic periods. There are now widespread fuel, electricity, and food shortages that have made covering basic necessities a hardship, thanks in no small part to the SSOT designation.
Cuba has strongly protested the designation. This May, Bruno Rodríguez, the Cuban Foreign Ministry stated that “the clear and absolute truth is that Cuba does not sponsor terrorism, but it has been a victim of it instead, including State terrorism.” Indeed, Cuba has been the victim of numerous terrorist acts since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. One of the most notable incidents was in 1997 when CIA-trained Cuban exiles carried out a series of hotel bombings in Havana.
Support for removing Cuba from the SSOT designation has the support of people’s movements around the world as well as the United Nations. Last year, the UN General Assembly had an almost unanimous vote to lift the blockade and remove Cuba from the SSOT list. The only no votes were from the United States and Israel, while the only abstention was from Ukraine.
While the Biden administration has not said that it will remove Cuba from the SSOT, cracks are beginning to emerge in their policy. On May 15, Cuba was removed from a list of countries that the United States says are not “not cooperating fully” in the fight against terrorism. While the removal from this list doesn’t have a consequential impact on the blockade, it is an indication that international pressure to remove Cuba from the list is working.
Cuba was first added to SSOT in 1982 by Ronald Reagan, who justified Cuba’s inclusion on the list by alleging that Cuba supported terrorist activity in Latin America. In reality, Cuba’s designation as an SSOT was just one more way that the U.S. was able to tighten the blockade. Since 1982, there have been numerous reviews by the State Department to determine if Cuba should remain on the list. One of the most extensive such reviews was conducted in 2005, in which the State Department determined they would keep Cuba on the list because the Cuban government maintained the position that “acts by legitimate national liberation movements cannot be defined as terrorism.”
Cuba was finally removed from the list in 2015 by the Obama administration during a relative warming of relations in an attempt to promote the development of the private sector in Cuba. The removal of Cuba from the SSOT and the easing of other restrictions provided relief to the Cuban economy. However, this relief was short-lived. In one of his final acts in office, President Trump added Cuba once again to the SSOT list. This time, the justification was that Cuba was hosting peace talks between the Colombian government and the ELN, which the U.S. government designates as a terrorist organization.
What is the SSOT list?
The SSOT list was first created by the U.S. in 1979 and provides a means of justifying additional unilateral sanctions against countries the U.S. views as adversarial. The legal basis for being added to the list is simply for the Secretary of State to determine that a country has “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.” By this standard, the United States itself should be designated as an SSOT along with Israel and Ukraine. However, the current list of countries designated as SSOTs are Cuba, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Iran, and Syria.
Designation as an SSOT has both formal and informal consequences. Formally, the categories of sanctions stemming from the designation are restrictions on foreign aid, a ban on defense exports and sales, limitations on the sale of certain dual-use items (ie, could be for civilian or military use), and a slew of other miscellaneous restrictions. Informally, the most significant impact is what is called “over-compliance.” This is a practice where banks and businesses are so concerned with accidentally violating one of the sanctions that they decide to stop dealing with a country altogether.
Some of the largest fines ever levied on financial institutions have been on banks for processing Cuba-related transactions that were determined by the U.S. to violate its sanctions. In 2014, French Bank BNP Paribas was fined an astounding $8.9 Billion, the third largest fine a bank has ever received. Then, in 2018, France’s third largest bank, Société Générale, was fined $1.3 billion for processing Cuba-related transactions between 2004 and 2010. In 2022, Centennial Bank, which handles the accounts for the Cuban embassy in Washington, D.C. decided to cut all ties with Cuba and shutter the accounts.
The complexity of the sanctions regime and the massive fines imposed if an entity is found to be in violation of the sanctions has made most banks and businesses refuse to conduct business with Cuba at all. This is a form of intimidation imposed by the U.S. that has the effect of blocking the import of necessities like food, medicine, and fuel into Cuba, all the while the U.S. claims that these items are not subject to sanctions or restrictions.
Effects of the blockade
The intensity of the blockade, in no small part due to the SSOT designation, has created massive shortages in Cuba over the past few years. There have been widespread blackouts as well as shortages of medicine, food, and fuel. The U.S. claims that the sanctions only target the Cuban government and do not have an effect on ordinary Cubans. In reality, the sanctions are functioning exactly as intended. The current U.S. policy towards Cuba was first set out in 1960 when then Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lestor Mallory wrote in a now declassified memorandum that the U.S. should take action to deny “money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of the government.”
The creation of hunger by the blockade is not some accidental effect but the primary goal. Earlier this year, even the wheat mills in Cuba were running at only a third of their normal capacity and there was a shortage of bread. In April, organizers with New York-based nonprofit, The People’s Forum, started a fundraising campaign to send 700 tons of wheat flour to Cuba to help alleviate some of the shortages. Organizers stated that they contacted fourteen different U.S.-based flour mills and distributors, and not a single one would sell flour for export to Cuba. In the end, organizers said that they had to purchase flour thousands of miles away from a Turkish supplier at a substantially higher cost.
The blockade has the effect of making many imports impossible, while in other cases, it greatly increases the time, cost, and complexity of importing goods. The economic effects of the blockade cannot be understated. March of 2022 and March of 2023, it is estimated that the blockade cost the Cuban economy $4.86 billion dollars. Not only that, but it is estimated that Cuba’s economy would have grown by 9% over this period without the blockade. Instead, the Cuban economy grew by just 1.8% in the year 2022.
It’s time to take Cuba off the SSOT list! Let Cuba live!
