We don’t like the company Cuba keeps, so it should definitely stay on U.S. terrorism list | Opinion

For years, Cuba’s presence on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terror has churned debate. Cuba has fought, unsuccessfully, to get its name removed from the list of four rogue nations, which also includes North Korea, Iran and Syria.

For the Editorial Board, there’s no question, no debate: Cuba absolutely belongs on this list, especially with growing indications that Cuba and Russia are getting cozy again. The two longtime friends who once upon a time helped spark the Cold War and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.

For decades after, Russia helped maintain Cuba’s sputtering economy, but the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended that arrangement, plunging Cuba into the economic strictures of the “Special Period” For Cubans, there was nothing special about it in light of the severe shortages of food and gasoline. And their troubles deepened as the country had to survive under the U.S. embargo.

Now Cuba and Russia appear to be renewed their close friendship, with Russia again helping Cuba with its food shortages and heaven-knows-what else.

It started in earnest in January when Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Cuban counterpart Miguel Díaz-Canel announced the two were “strengthening their political and commercial relations” through 2030. Interesting.

“Cuba is Russia’s main operator in the Americas,” Carlos Sánchez Berzaín, director of the Miami think tank Inter-American Institute for Democracy, told Colombian daily El Tiempo. “It represents its main platform in terms of propaganda, disinformation, intelligence and in its open support both in regional meetings and in the United Nations.”

This week, Putin’s top security adviser and close ally, Nikolai Patrushev, traveled to Havana and met “former” leader Raúl Castro in what Cuban media described as a “working visit,” the Miami Herald reported.

Last week, Russian oil firm Rosneft’s CEO Igor Sechin met with Díaz-Canel amid an acute fuel shortage that has left service stations on the island shuttered.

Sechin told Díaz-Canel late on Saturday that, when it comes to Cuba, “Putin supervises them directly and personally,” the Cuban president’s office said in a tweet, Reuters reported.

Of course, this is concerning news for South Florida, the nearby target, politically and geographically. And there obviously is some jostling going on here between Russia and the United States.

What sparked this Russia-Cuba reunion now? Think of the ancient proverb: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

The spark this time is the war in Ukraine. Putin, needing both a distraction from his embarrassing setbacks in his was on Ukraine and a friend, has anointed Cuba become its public ally. Putin needs friends on the world stage after being battered by U.S. sanctions and Ukraine’s unexpectedly forceful military defiance. Plus, Cuba likely will bring with it other Latin countries that have aligned with the island, including Venezuela and Mexico.

More than 140 out of the 193 U.N. member countries have condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and 30 countries announced they want to bring war-crimes charges against Russia this week. Cuba is not on that anti-Russia list.

In exchange, Cuba gets economic help. Last month, Russia donated 25,000 tons of wheat to Cuba to help it overcome shortages. The generous gift is to be used to make Cuban bread, a government-subsidized staple.

So suddenly Cuba and its presence on the list of terrorist-friendly countries is significant to the U.S. and Florida and rightly so.

In a letter to President Biden, also signed by Republican U.S. Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar and Carlos Gimenez of Miami, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio wrote, “Not only is Cuba still a U.S.-designated State Sponsor of Terrorism, along with North Korea, Iran, and Syria, but Cuba remains a chief counterintelligence threat.”

In a sharply worded “what were you thinking?!” letter, Rubio castigated the Biden administration’s invitation to a Cuban delegation to a tour a Coast Guard station in Washington, D.C. That part of the visit was canceled, as it should have been. Cuba spies on us. Why risk giving it the information it wants with a welcoming smile and a handshake?

And there are more possible complications for the U.S. foreign policy.. The Russia-Cuba relationship also helps Cuba’s Venezuelan friend, Nicolás Maduro, whom Russia has already equipped with airplanes, artillery equipment and assault weapons. This is a troubling triad.

And let’s remember that Russia’s friend, Iran, also on the list of the nefarious, could also enter the picture in Latin America as a Russian ally.

With friends like this, Cuba belongs on the list of U.S. designated State Sponsor of Terrorism list — very definitely so.