Kennedy ordered a naval "quarantine" to prevent missiles from reaching Cuba. By using the term "quarantine" rather than "blockade" (an act of war by legal definition), the United States was able to avoid the implications of a state of war.
After several days of tense negotiations, an agreement was reached between Kennedy and Khrushchev. Publicly, the Soviets would dismantle their offensive weapons in Cuba in exchange for a US public declaration and agreement to not invade Cuba again.
When it came to Russia and Ukraine, the US refused ultimatums to stay out of Ukraine, and Russia did invade Ukraine a second time.
In the real world, Russia never stopped the first invasion, it just consolidated, worked to advance, and then massively escalated.
Which is just a pretense. On different days, the "special military operation" has been to avoid NATO bordering Russia (which it already does in the Baltic), "remove Nazis", "fix Lenin's mistake of separating Ukraine from Russia", "free Donbass and Luhansk" and probably others that I forgot.
And anyway, US didn't do anything (this time). Ukraine has a right to join NATO if they want, without asking uncle Vladimir beforehand.
by this standard, Cuba has the right to have Russian nukes pointed at Washington DC. But we all know that the US would wipe Cuba off the face of the earth and kill every civilian there before that happened.
They are still under sanctions 70 years later for playing that game and assuming they have territorial autonomy.
The Baltic path to joining was also much faster, announced in 1999 and complete in 2004. The Ukrainian membership was announced in 2008 and had a many decade lead time because Ukraine was expected to tackle many internal issues of corruption and human rights first.
A separate factor is size, population, and location. Ukraine is larger and may have a more strategic position to take out planes and nukes heading to central Europe.
If the US simply sat around on its hands and sanctioned Cuba, and left things at that, nobody would be discussing this. It went way, way, way beyond sanctions.
I think this is the point everyone agrees on. You are right that "deserve's got nothing to with it"
IT is just obnoxious when most of rhetoric and discussion is about fairness, equality, and high minded ideals when directed outside the US.
Might makes right. Given that, coherent discussion on how and when to use that power is best served by dropping the rhetoric.
Once you accept the US can embargo Cuba to keep it impoverished for personal gain, Then, you can ask if the US should continue doing so.
You can disagree with any or all of this, but the underlying point is: we are within our rights to coordinate sanctions on any country for a diversity of reasons.
I really appreciate you staking concrete positions on the countries. I mostly agree, but am on the fence about north Korea.
>You can disagree with any or all of this, but the underlying point is: we are within our rights to coordinate sanctions on any country for a diversity of reasons.
I think this is where we differ. Modern sanctions means we take everything that the opposition cant militarily stop us from taking. We seize bank accounts, ships, planes, loaned assets, all without respect for ownership.
In the might makes right context, yeah, we are within our rights. But this is in the realpolitik sphere where I have the right to murder every person that cant stop me.
Sanctions always involve balancing interests, and it's worth calling out that they have costs even when we believe we're right. But the balance of interests for all of humanity strongly favors sanctioning the DPRK.
Yes. This is true. We live in a US hegemony, enhanced globally by the fall of the USSR. This situation may change in the future, it may not. When we initially sanctioned Cuba we were primarily able to do so because Cuba geographically exists within the US sphere of influence. Now the entire globe exists within the US sphere of influence.
I don't think my earlier reply to you qualifies as "rhetoric". I was replying to the implication that the US just unilaterally decided to sanction Cuba for no good reason. The US had a good reason, it is pretty obvious what that reason was, and it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that Cuba's actions resulted in sanctions (and could have resulted in much worse). It is also, frankly irrelevant, that it was precipitated by the US doing something stupid.
Personally, I think we should have dropped the embargo on Cuba a long time ago, probably in the 90s. But that's not the case right now. It certainly wasn't a mystery to anyone why it started though.
Sanctions on Russia and sanctions on North Korea are both not only "might makes right", but fully justified within multiple different deontological frameworks. It is absolutely true that there is realpolitik afoot here, but that does not also preclude the possibility that the outcome is justified and fair.
Honestly, I'd love to hear/read some thoughts as to why dropping sanctions on North Korea would be beneficial to /anyone/ in a real way.
The most obvious benefit would be to the 25 million North Korean people. Lifting of sanctions would allow economic activity alleviating poverty and malnutrition.
... After the United States invaded it!
It's weird that you forget to mention the Bay of Pigs in this history lesson. It's not like Cuba randomly and unilaterally decided to host ICBMs...