“The only thing standing in the way of a better future are those who control your country,” Rubio said, predicating $100 million in aid on regime change. Maybe the Cuban people know how well U.S. promises did for Puerto Rico. This is an extremely corrupt U.S. administration, and they care little to nothing about the Cuban people, merely how to line their wallets and boost their egos.
This is the second message of yours on Cuba that completely misses the story. COMPLETELY. You are acting like Cuba is just failing due to its economic policies, or that this is just business as usual and the US should come and bail them out. THE US IS THE CAUSE OF THIS. A complete energy blockade on a country will destroy that country, any country. You say the US doesn't want another quagmire. This is a quagmire, where people will starve and die due to the direct cruelty of the US government. This is another case of Americans sitting there thinking they are a force of good in the world and brushing over the horrific actions they are taking. I expect better from you, you are normally well aware of what is going on in the world. This US regime is cruel, criminal and a stain on an already brutal latin American US history.
The USA has engaged in over 60 years of spiteful relentless cruelty against Cuba ensuring its people suffered economically for generations. Good luck with us all forgetting that for $100 million cheap dollars.
The “maximum pressure” approach against Cuba has failed and it's completely independent of whether you support the regime or not. Forcing an entire population to live without basic needs like power, food, and water is not a geopolitical leverage anymore. It is a human tragedy. Real superpowers should project strength through magnanimity instead of suffocating millions of civilians.
And Britain just repaid her WWIII debt to America couple years ago if I recall. So it’s not really aid but loans with strings attached. Economically and militarily tied to United States… much like modern day vassals.
No, Scott, the U.S. is not "asphyxiating the Cuban people". Raul Castro is asphyxiating the Cuban people. He is an unelected, self enriching dictator who rules via imprisonment and execution. Send aid "to help the Cuban people" and guess who will intercept if for his own betterment.
For about eight decades we as a nation have been placidly ignoring the plight of Cubans. Tsk tsk, look at those poor people, yes I'll have another latte. We have been complicit in the suffering - because we have the ability to stop it. And yes, nearly always it requires force. There's bloodshed, dislocation, disorder; it's never smooth; it's always ugly.
Stop the boo-hooing folks (Scott seems to have become a magnet for the Blame America First crowd). For decades democrat and republican administrations have proven utterly incompetent at remedying the situation. Sometimes a nation needs to do a thing because it is morally right - if its people believe in the notion of morality. We have a president who has the backbone to make the hard call, and I sure hope he does.
Cuba wasn’t a functioning prosperous nation suddenly interrupted by sanctions. Cuba has operated under centralized authoritarian control for over 70+ years. The government controls industry, agriculture, wages, property, media, and political opposition. The result? Chronic shortages, collapsing infrastructure, ration books, blackouts, food scarcity, and mass migration. That is not an embargo problem alone. That is systemic economic failure.
Scott Galloway romanticizes “soft power” while ignoring the hard reality that Cuba’s political and economic model itself is broken down to the bone. You cannot patch a collapsed communist system with care packages and emotional rhetoric. Sending unconditional aid without demanding structural reform simply props up the same ruling apparatus that created the disaster.
Cuba doesn’t need another lecture about American empathy. Cuba needs modernization, free enterprise, property rights, open markets, foreign investment, infrastructure rebuilding, independent institutions, energy reform, agricultural reform, banking reform, and political freedom. In other words: an actual 2026 economic framework instead of a Cold War relic pretending it’s still 1962.
The left often treats Cuba like a victim frozen in time, rather than a cautionary example of what happens when ideology crushes economic reality. Compassion matters but compassion without accountability becomes enabling.
The "ruthlessly effective" framing is the right one, and it's worth pushing past the morality into the math, because the two strategies carry very different payoff structures on the actual objective.
Strangulation is a high-variance bet aimed at collapse. But you flagged the thing that breaks it, there's no successor to deal with. So even the win condition, the regime falling, produces a vacuum ninety miles offshore with the refugee and failed-state bill attached. The best case still isn't the goal. That's a bet whose winning branch loses, a high price for a lottery ticket that doesn't pay even when it hits.
Magnanimity is the opposite structure: a small, bounded outlay whose payoff compounds slowly into a generation that ties the US to its own prosperity rather than to a blackout. Low variance, positive carry.
Which is why it wins on the math, not only the morality. The coercion bet is engineered to lose even when it succeeds, so once you price the two by expected outcome rather than by which one looks tougher, it stops being close.
Its true America can be magnanimous at times, but mostly is self-justification for her missionary approach - intolerance to others would are different and to "save them" by making them like us.
On Cuba is like starving this Cuban child, isolate from her friends, and then offer so-called helping hand, if not accepted, will come the whip! That's what Cuba-America situation looks like from rest of the world, very missionary, colonial mindset.
How would Asia, say Japan, China, India, Indonesia had deal with their own "Cuba or child" in their sphere of control? They would let it continue to fail - starve by their own leaders however ensuring it does not impact others, like go into war or disaster where millions die. Then most importantly, lead by example, showing what good looks like... and when opportunity arises, offer helping hand ONLY when asked. That way, will ensure compliance, acceptance of the help. Help her to help herself.
What America is doing will lead to huge Cuban immigration, when allowed. And probably create internal discomfort and possible rebels that may turn into terrorists. Creating own "Gaza" at doorstep of America.
Everything the Prof said about US magnanimity is true, but another motivation for the Marshall Plan was to prevent the Soviets absorbing W. Europe without moving even one T 34, just by supporting Communist Parties and front organizations to exploit peoples' hunger and lack of hope. Communists win the rist election and see no need for any others. When the Italian Communist Party looked like it would win the post war elections, CIA and MI 6 pulled every dirty trick to insure that centrists won.
Our Cuba policy is cruel, but is unlikely that trump and lil marco will relent (cruelty comes naturally to bullies). It is equally unlikely that the Cuban people will find the guns to eliminate their oppressors. Our Hard Cuba policy has failed for 66 years. The brief Obama soft didnt have a chance to prove its efficacy but how could it have softened Havanna's Hard Men? There is no good policy. The only option is to tell the Hard Men that as long as they dont try to spread their regime in this hemisphere, we will not declare the entire Cuban nation Personna Non gratta, and they can evolve their country as they see fit without US malevolence, or even US aid if that continues to be politically impossible. R 11
Hi Prof G. I’m a journalist working on a piece for the New Statesman on American investment in British football. Would love to chat. mailto:laurensneade@gmail.com
Machiavelli may be fun to quote from, but a better quote re Trump's attitude toward the rest of us may be from one that is attributed to Caligula, but is actually allegedly his favorite line from a Roman play at the time, "Atreus":
"Oderint dum metuant" - Let them hate, provided they fear.
the U.S. is asphyxiating the Cuban people. As Cuban American historian Ada Ferrer told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, “Survival is an open question.” But to paraphrase Cuban interventionist President John F. Kennedy, we shouldn’t be asking what additional pressure we can apply to Cuba, but what help we can provide its people?
Perhaps I am splitting hairs, but by using the term “J6,” you are embracing the propaganda/marketing lingo of the regime, which you might choose to avoid in future, despite the advantage its brevity provides…
That visual capitalist soft power index is hokum. They do these visuals with terrible data. How can a country be second to the US that has almost no foreign immigration nor pulls on peoples aspirations? I know no person in either Europe or the US seeking residency or retirement let alone vacations in China. If this is the case how can its soft power index be anywhere but the bottom?
I normally agree with you and magnanimity has been key to our foreign policy successes. But Scott, I am surprised that you have completely ignored GAESA, (started by Raul Castro) an organization contolled by the military and which holds the major cash producing assets of Cuba and from which the actual Cuban government sees nothing. Unless GAESA is somehow dissolved, no real negotiations can occur. Please deal with this, because GAESA would prevent any form of magnanimity on America's part.
“The only thing standing in the way of a better future are those who control your country,” Rubio said, predicating $100 million in aid on regime change. Maybe the Cuban people know how well U.S. promises did for Puerto Rico. This is an extremely corrupt U.S. administration, and they care little to nothing about the Cuban people, merely how to line their wallets and boost their egos.
This is the second message of yours on Cuba that completely misses the story. COMPLETELY. You are acting like Cuba is just failing due to its economic policies, or that this is just business as usual and the US should come and bail them out. THE US IS THE CAUSE OF THIS. A complete energy blockade on a country will destroy that country, any country. You say the US doesn't want another quagmire. This is a quagmire, where people will starve and die due to the direct cruelty of the US government. This is another case of Americans sitting there thinking they are a force of good in the world and brushing over the horrific actions they are taking. I expect better from you, you are normally well aware of what is going on in the world. This US regime is cruel, criminal and a stain on an already brutal latin American US history.
The USA has engaged in over 60 years of spiteful relentless cruelty against Cuba ensuring its people suffered economically for generations. Good luck with us all forgetting that for $100 million cheap dollars.
The “maximum pressure” approach against Cuba has failed and it's completely independent of whether you support the regime or not. Forcing an entire population to live without basic needs like power, food, and water is not a geopolitical leverage anymore. It is a human tragedy. Real superpowers should project strength through magnanimity instead of suffocating millions of civilians.
The US did demand European countries pay their debts to the US after WWI, so not as magnanimous as Scott suggests. Plus that lead to WWII.
And Britain just repaid her WWIII debt to America couple years ago if I recall. So it’s not really aid but loans with strings attached. Economically and militarily tied to United States… much like modern day vassals.
No, Scott, the U.S. is not "asphyxiating the Cuban people". Raul Castro is asphyxiating the Cuban people. He is an unelected, self enriching dictator who rules via imprisonment and execution. Send aid "to help the Cuban people" and guess who will intercept if for his own betterment.
For about eight decades we as a nation have been placidly ignoring the plight of Cubans. Tsk tsk, look at those poor people, yes I'll have another latte. We have been complicit in the suffering - because we have the ability to stop it. And yes, nearly always it requires force. There's bloodshed, dislocation, disorder; it's never smooth; it's always ugly.
Stop the boo-hooing folks (Scott seems to have become a magnet for the Blame America First crowd). For decades democrat and republican administrations have proven utterly incompetent at remedying the situation. Sometimes a nation needs to do a thing because it is morally right - if its people believe in the notion of morality. We have a president who has the backbone to make the hard call, and I sure hope he does.
Cuba wasn’t a functioning prosperous nation suddenly interrupted by sanctions. Cuba has operated under centralized authoritarian control for over 70+ years. The government controls industry, agriculture, wages, property, media, and political opposition. The result? Chronic shortages, collapsing infrastructure, ration books, blackouts, food scarcity, and mass migration. That is not an embargo problem alone. That is systemic economic failure.
Scott Galloway romanticizes “soft power” while ignoring the hard reality that Cuba’s political and economic model itself is broken down to the bone. You cannot patch a collapsed communist system with care packages and emotional rhetoric. Sending unconditional aid without demanding structural reform simply props up the same ruling apparatus that created the disaster.
Cuba doesn’t need another lecture about American empathy. Cuba needs modernization, free enterprise, property rights, open markets, foreign investment, infrastructure rebuilding, independent institutions, energy reform, agricultural reform, banking reform, and political freedom. In other words: an actual 2026 economic framework instead of a Cold War relic pretending it’s still 1962.
The left often treats Cuba like a victim frozen in time, rather than a cautionary example of what happens when ideology crushes economic reality. Compassion matters but compassion without accountability becomes enabling.
The "ruthlessly effective" framing is the right one, and it's worth pushing past the morality into the math, because the two strategies carry very different payoff structures on the actual objective.
Strangulation is a high-variance bet aimed at collapse. But you flagged the thing that breaks it, there's no successor to deal with. So even the win condition, the regime falling, produces a vacuum ninety miles offshore with the refugee and failed-state bill attached. The best case still isn't the goal. That's a bet whose winning branch loses, a high price for a lottery ticket that doesn't pay even when it hits.
Magnanimity is the opposite structure: a small, bounded outlay whose payoff compounds slowly into a generation that ties the US to its own prosperity rather than to a blackout. Low variance, positive carry.
Which is why it wins on the math, not only the morality. The coercion bet is engineered to lose even when it succeeds, so once you price the two by expected outcome rather than by which one looks tougher, it stops being close.
Its true America can be magnanimous at times, but mostly is self-justification for her missionary approach - intolerance to others would are different and to "save them" by making them like us.
On Cuba is like starving this Cuban child, isolate from her friends, and then offer so-called helping hand, if not accepted, will come the whip! That's what Cuba-America situation looks like from rest of the world, very missionary, colonial mindset.
How would Asia, say Japan, China, India, Indonesia had deal with their own "Cuba or child" in their sphere of control? They would let it continue to fail - starve by their own leaders however ensuring it does not impact others, like go into war or disaster where millions die. Then most importantly, lead by example, showing what good looks like... and when opportunity arises, offer helping hand ONLY when asked. That way, will ensure compliance, acceptance of the help. Help her to help herself.
What America is doing will lead to huge Cuban immigration, when allowed. And probably create internal discomfort and possible rebels that may turn into terrorists. Creating own "Gaza" at doorstep of America.
Everything the Prof said about US magnanimity is true, but another motivation for the Marshall Plan was to prevent the Soviets absorbing W. Europe without moving even one T 34, just by supporting Communist Parties and front organizations to exploit peoples' hunger and lack of hope. Communists win the rist election and see no need for any others. When the Italian Communist Party looked like it would win the post war elections, CIA and MI 6 pulled every dirty trick to insure that centrists won.
Our Cuba policy is cruel, but is unlikely that trump and lil marco will relent (cruelty comes naturally to bullies). It is equally unlikely that the Cuban people will find the guns to eliminate their oppressors. Our Hard Cuba policy has failed for 66 years. The brief Obama soft didnt have a chance to prove its efficacy but how could it have softened Havanna's Hard Men? There is no good policy. The only option is to tell the Hard Men that as long as they dont try to spread their regime in this hemisphere, we will not declare the entire Cuban nation Personna Non gratta, and they can evolve their country as they see fit without US malevolence, or even US aid if that continues to be politically impossible. R 11
Hi Prof G. I’m a journalist working on a piece for the New Statesman on American investment in British football. Would love to chat. mailto:laurensneade@gmail.com
Apparently America’s most underrated weapons system was Hollywood, rock & roll, Levi’s, and a functioning middle class.
Machiavelli asked whether it was better to be loved or feared, never realizing the correct answer was: “Depends how good you look in 501s.”
Life is so EXPENSIVE.
Machiavelli may be fun to quote from, but a better quote re Trump's attitude toward the rest of us may be from one that is attributed to Caligula, but is actually allegedly his favorite line from a Roman play at the time, "Atreus":
"Oderint dum metuant" - Let them hate, provided they fear.
the U.S. is asphyxiating the Cuban people. As Cuban American historian Ada Ferrer told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, “Survival is an open question.” But to paraphrase Cuban interventionist President John F. Kennedy, we shouldn’t be asking what additional pressure we can apply to Cuba, but what help we can provide its people?
Perhaps I am splitting hairs, but by using the term “J6,” you are embracing the propaganda/marketing lingo of the regime, which you might choose to avoid in future, despite the advantage its brevity provides…
That visual capitalist soft power index is hokum. They do these visuals with terrible data. How can a country be second to the US that has almost no foreign immigration nor pulls on peoples aspirations? I know no person in either Europe or the US seeking residency or retirement let alone vacations in China. If this is the case how can its soft power index be anywhere but the bottom?
I normally agree with you and magnanimity has been key to our foreign policy successes. But Scott, I am surprised that you have completely ignored GAESA, (started by Raul Castro) an organization contolled by the military and which holds the major cash producing assets of Cuba and from which the actual Cuban government sees nothing. Unless GAESA is somehow dissolved, no real negotiations can occur. Please deal with this, because GAESA would prevent any form of magnanimity on America's part.