Argentine President Javier Milei Fires His Foreign Minister for Voting Against US’ 62-Year Blockade of Cuba

This year, like last year, only two countries voted against lifting the blockade: the US and Israel. But Argentina was meant to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them. 

Once again, the United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly voted to condemn the US’ illegal economic blockade of Cuba, now in its 62nd year. In total, 187 countries voted in favour of lifting the blockage and just two against: the US and Israel. The only country that abstained was Moldova, which has a pro-Western government that is trying to join the EU.

Rest of World vs US + Israel (+ Argentina, kind of)

This map, courtesy of Ben Norton’s Geopolitical and Economy Report, offers an emphatic illustration of just how isolated the US is on this issue. It is, quite simply, the rest of the world, including long-standing US vassal states like the EU, the UK, Japan, South Korea, Australia and Canada, against Washington and Tel Aviv:

In a heated exchange with the State Department’s Matt Miller in yesterday’s press conference (see below), AP’s Matt Lee asked, “So at what point… are you guys going to realize that the entire world except you and Israel thinks that the embargo is a really bad idea and should be stopped” — to which Miller responded: “Look, I think we are quite clear on the opinion of other countries around the world. And it’s one with which we disagree…we make our own policy determinations.”

Drop Site’s Ryan Grim and AP’s Matt Lee pressed the State Department on the U.S.’s recent UN vote to continue its embargo on Cuba—a decision opposed by 187 countries, with only the U.S. and Israel in favor:

Lee: “So the vote happened today in the UN on the Cuba embargo. You know… pic.twitter.com/0kFSW9tZm3

— Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) October 30, 2024

Cuba has presented the non-binding resolution, “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba” every year (bar 2020) since 1992 — the year the US extended the blockade to third countries. Each year, the resolution passes almost unanimously. Last year, like this year, the only two countries that voted against were the US and Israel. The only notable difference is that it was Ukraine, not Moldova, that abstained. This year, Ukraine did not even vote.

One of the biggest surprises in this year’s non-binding resolution was the inclusion of Argentina among the 187 countries that voted in favour of lifting the blockade. Argentina’s faux libertarian President, Javier Milei, has done everything he can to align his government’s foreign policy with the US and Israel, even going so far as to apply to join NATO as well as offer to send military equipment to Ukraine and move Argentina’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Indeed, this was the first time since his arrival in office that Argentina has broken with that alignment.

Initially, some of Milei’s fiercest supporters in the media, such as La Derecha Diario, argued that by voting in favour of free trade and against commercial blockades, Milei was staying true to his libertarian principles, which couldn’t have been further from the truth. There is also the fact that Argentina has always voted against the US blockade of Cuba, even during the Mauricio Macri government, so this would have been a mere continuation of more than three decades of bipartisan policy. But that wasn’t true either.

Hours later, it emerged that Argentina’s Foreign Minister Diana Mondino had, intentionally or not, voted the wrong way, for which she was unceremoniously fired. As Ben Norton notes, “the vote was 187 vs 2… Milei wanted it to be 186 vs 3” — thereby rendering Argentina just as globally isolated as the US and Israel. Even the right-wing governments that Milei likes to associate himself with, such as Orban’s Hungary, Meloni’s Italy, Noboa’s Ecuador, and Bukele’s El Salvador, voted in favour of lifting the blockade.

To justify Mondino’s dismissal, President Milei’s office said Argentina was “categorically opposed to the Cuban dictatorship” — just as it was categorically opposed to China’s “murderous” dictatorship… until the government desperately needed Chinese money to keep Argentina’s economy semi-afloat. Now, all of a sudden, Communist China is, in Milei’s own words, “a very interesting trading partner”.

As we noted at the time Milei said that, the fact that even Argentina’s fanatically anti-Communist government is now seeking to forge closer economic ties with Beijing as investments begin to dry up will have no doubt riled a great many people in Washington. Mondino’s support for Cuba’s UNGA resolution will have made matters even worse. For a country that is supposed to be totally servile to Washington, Milei’s Argentina has a funny way of showing it.

A Fitting Replacement

Perhaps to make amends, Milei appointed as Argentina’s new foreign minister, Gerardo Werthein, a member of Argentina’s plutocracy who until yesterday was Argentina’s ambassador to the US.

Werthein is a leading Jewish businessman who belongs to one of the richest families in Argentina. The family business, Grupo Werthein, began life almost 100 years ago in the retail sector with sales of cattle, fruit, seeds, agrochemicals and fuels. Since then it has diversified to other sectors such as media, energy, real estate, healthcare and telecommunications. Grupo Werthein is today one of the largest holding groups in Latin America, with branches throughout the region as well as in the United Kingdom and the United States.

Gerard Werthein left the family business in 2019. For 12 years (2009-2021) he headed the Argentine Olympic Committee. Before being appointed as ambassador to the US late last year, it was revealed that Werthein had moved his tax residency outside of Argentina during the COVID-19 pandemic, a situation he quickly rectified in order to qualify for Argentina’s diplomatic corps.

Werthein was not only part of the entourage that accompanied then-president elect Milei to New York and Washington in December; he reportedly paid for the chartered jet that carried them all there. During that trip, Werthein, at that point with no official government position, was present during Milei’s lunch meeting with Bill Clinton and Joe Biden’s representative for Latin America, Chris Dodd, as well as a meeting with Jake Sullivan and White House Special Advisor for Latin American Affairs, Juan González.

As Página 12 reports, Werthein also accompanied Milei on his visit to the Montefiore cemetery, where they paid their respects at the tomb of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, also known as “the Lubavitcher Rebbe”, the former leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch, a branch of Orthodox Judaism and one of the largest Hasidic dynasties.

62 Years of “Weaken[ing] the Economic Life of Cuba”

In 1960, a US government memorandum spelled out the goal of US policy regarding Cuba: “to weaken the economic life of Cuba . . . [to deny] money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

It has worked like a nightmarish dream. According to one estimate, the embargo has generated $125 billion of economic damage to the island. It has negatively impacted the procurement of food, medicine, fuel, electricity generation, transportation, and other basic services for decades. It has also frozen Cuba out of systems of global commerce and trade via Washington’s influence and control over international banking and financial networks.

As Ben Norton explains, it’s not just that the US cannot trade with the US, it’s that the US has cut Cuba out of the US-dominated international financial system, disconnecting Cuban banks from the international financial messaging network, preventing Cuba from getting access to foreign currency that it needs to pay for imports of things like energy and food, and the US also threatens secondary sanctions on foreign governments and foreign companies that do business with Cuba.”

In 2019, the blockade was further intensified by Trump’s designation of Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism” and the imposition of 243 fresh sanctions on the island. Since then, Cuba has suffered huge problems maintaining its creaking infrastructure, including its energy grid. To what extent this is owed to the US blockade or the government’s own failed policies depends entirely on whom you ask. Even the FT recently admitted that US sanctions have “severely aggravated Havana’s chronic late-payment problems and dried-up credit lines.”

The pandemic also hit Cuba particularly badly. While official homegrown statistics are hard to come by, the World Bank estimates that GDP fell by more than 10% in 2020 and has recovered slowly since then, without reaching pre-covid levels. The pandemic decimated the country’s income from tourism while a sharp reduction in shipments of oil from both Venezuela, in part due to the US sanctions imposed on both countries, and Russia has exacerbated Cuba’s energy crisis. The country is also suffering from runaway inflation.

One thing is clear: maintaining the blockade at a time when Cuba is suffering a crippling economic crisis, the recent impact of hurricane Oscar and days-long energy blackouts is unlike to improve the US’ image on the global stage. Ongoing sanctions are only going to further immiserate the Cuban people while causing little, if any, pain to the country’s political class. In his speech to the UNGA, Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, Cuba’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, explained how between October 18-23 Cuban families had no electricity, except for maybe a few hours.

“Many Cuban families lacked running water; hospitals worked under emergency conditions, schools and universities suspended their classes; [and] businesses interrupted their activity.”

BRICS, Russia, China and Mexico

But Cuba is not alone. Last week, it was among 13 nations invited to join the BRICS as partner countries. While not granting full membership, the partnership status offers a potential pathway toward full membership. In June, Russia pledged to help Cuba restore its energy system. According to the Russian Ministry of Energy, representatives of the two countries “discussed the prospects for cooperation” in the fuel and energy complex of the largest of the Antilles as well as cooperation in the construction of energy facilities.

Russian trade with Cuba has increased in recent years, helped along by US sanctions on both countries as well as the war in Ukraine. Russian naval flotillas have docked in Havana twice so fare this year as a show of military strength. But deliveries of Russian oil, like deliveries of Venezuelan oil, have largely petered out.

China has also said it will continue to support the Cuban people in standing against foreign interference and the blockade. That said, trade between the two countries has slumped in recent years, even as trade between China and Latin America has surged. As the FT notes, “Cuba today does not even feature among China’s top-tier allies in Latin America. Beijing has what it calls ‘comprehensive strategic partnerships’ with Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela, all major commodity exporters, but not with Cuba.”

One country that is significantly upping its support of Cuba is Mexico, which has gradually strengthened its ties with Havana since Andrés Manuel López Obrador became president in 2018. His government has signed numerous agreements with the government in Havana to receive hundreds of doctors from the Caribbean nation. Yesterday (Oct 31), López Obrador’s sucessor as head of state, Claudia Sheinbaum, confirmed that her government will also support Cuba for humanitarian reasons:

“Even if there is criticism, we are going to be in solidarity.”

Mexico’s state-owned oil company, Petroleos de México (aka Pemex), has already dispatched 400,000 barrels of oil and finished gasoline and diesel to the island nation in just a few days. Asked about the shipment, Sheinbaum said that “Mexico produces 1.6 to 1.8 million barrels a day (…), so 400,000 barrels is not even one day’s production.”

Mexico, like Russia and Venezuela before it, is becoming Cuba’s energy lifeline. But while Russia and Venezuela are both, like Cuba itself, heavily sanctioned by Washington and depend on schemes to circumvent sanctions, Mexico is currently the US’ largest trading partner. It remains to be seen how Washington will respond to Mexico’s growing support of Cuba. As we’ve reported in recent months, relations between the two North American neighbours are already strained following relentless US meddling in Mexico’s affairs.