What Do Beijing, Hanoi, Minsk, Moscow Have In Common? Collective Private Disdain With Increasing Public Seepage Toward Havana.
What Do Beijing, Hanoi, Minsk, Moscow Have In Common? Collective Private Disdain With Increasing Public Seepage Toward Havana.
A visit to four capitals during the last two months reveals an unescapably and more so tragic consistency- political leadership, both appointed and elected, and company leadership, privately-owned, publicly-owned, and government-operated, view the commercial, economic, financial, political, and societal leadership of the government of the Republic of Cuba with derision, disappointment, disgust, and disdain.
Individual comments (abbreviated) from Beijing (People’s Republic of China), Hanoi (Socialist Republic of Vietnam), Minsk (Republic of Belarus), and Moscow (Russian Federation): “Sick of them… They do nothing to help themselves… Only complain and beg for assistance… Of utmost concern, some of them genuinely believe that we like them… We can barely tolerate them… Whenever a pending delegation from Havana, it’s a collective eyeroll throughout the building… They have no dignity… Seeking 180-day and 360-day payment terms is not a confidence builder… Always some convoluted payment scheme… Blaming United States for everything gets old quickly- like a baby’s diaper… A business transaction means we sell, and they buy, or we buy, and they sell; problem is they never provide a simple transaction. It’s always convoluted- and means we will likely never get paid- unless our government bails them out. They think Fidel still lives and that we care.”
One country official with considerable postings in the United States, offered a theatre-goer observation: “The Cubans are like Willy Loman in [the play] Death of a Salesman and any of the real estate salesmen characters in [the play] Glengarry Glen Ross. They are always waiting for the next moment, the next deal; when they will be solvent. Just give them another year to pay, another US$100 million and they can turn everything around. We know how both plays ended.”
With the announcement of a delegation arriving from the Republic of Cuba there is the same anticipatory perspectives commonplace throughout offices in Beijing, Hanoi, Minsk, and Moscow.
The almost identical responses could come from a cellular device’s predictive typing feature. Protocol officials could also reach out to ChatGPT and its use artificial intelligence to find the same result. Another begging tour is about to begin where the beggar will not offer anything to help it transition from begging to giving, a strategy to transition from survival to prosperity. And, the host country will probably have to pay for the expenses and the jet fuel of the Venezuela-registered aircraft transporting the delegation.
There are two faces- the one on display when heads of state meet, ministers of foreign affairs meet, when delegations meet. These smiling faces thinly project like an inexpensive veneer, profiles of comradery, cooperation, defense, forgiveness, friendship, opportunity, partnership, solidarity, and support.
The other face manifests itself when doors are closed and the subject becomes repayment of debts, refusal by the Diaz-Canel-Valdes Mesa Administration (2018- ) to implement- and then retain changes to policies, regulations, and statutes impacting direct foreign investment (DFI), banking, and the re-emerging private sector. This not-so-smiling face is represented by the words bewilderment, deadbeat, disgust, frustration, embarrassment, and lack of self-respect.
The most dramatic recent moment of seepage of the private into public was during the 18 June 2025 to 21 June 2025 annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). Public statements from officials of the government of the Russian Federation:
“First challenge is the 20% interest rate [for loans] in Russia, so [Russian Federation-based] investors have an issue… In Cuba, the United States Dollar exchange rate has an official rate of 25 Pesos and a real [market] rate of 125 Pesos [18 June 2025 actual unofficial rate 378 Pesos]. We advise clients to use market rates. No ownership rights is another put off for investors. Investors are afraid because they don't know if they will be able to repatriate their money.”
“We love each other, we praise each other. We need to be realistic. Rather than saying something, need to do something.”
“… need to focus on entrepreneurs and developing entrepreneurs with Russia.”
During [Fidel] Castro-[Raul] Castro Administration (1976-2008), there was a belief that the worst punishment to be inflicted upon the Republic of Cuba was to ignore it. Being irrelevant for President Castro was a sentence, brief or enduring, that he could not accept. When he believed irrelevance was creeping too near to Havana’s waterfront, he would unleash oratory and implement decisions returning both him and the archipelago to the front pages of newspapers throughout the world. He is dead now. He took his skill set with him. If he left instructions, his successors have not found them and if they have them have been incapable of following them.
One critical element to the strategies of President Fidel Castro was in his engagement with the United States business community to view everything as a challenge.
If there was a proposal from the United States private sector and his team (or bureaucrats within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Foreign Trade) argued that it was a trojan horse for destabilization, or a sophisticated (or not) exercise crafted in offices at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley, Virginia, and/or the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Washington DC., President Castro would respond, to paraphrase- “OK, let’s say all of you are correct. Then take what they are hoping to achieve and turn it to our advantage.”
That’s precisely the reasoning President Castro approved the request for Westport, Connecticut-based PWN Exhibicon International LLC to organize (under a license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the United States Department of the Treasury) the U.S. Food & Agribusiness Exhibition held at the Palacio de Convenciones de la Habana (Pabexpo) in the city of Havana, Republic of Cuba, from 26 September 2002 through 30 September 2002. That gathering brought to Havana 923 representatives of United States-based companies. President Castro hosted them at a gala dinner.
Today in Havana, officials demonstrate a genetically incapacity of seeing anything crafted in Virginia or Washington or New York as a challenge to embrace. They search for a lantern, find one, rub it intensely, make a wish, and wait for an answer- which never arrives. Logic would suggest seeking a new lantern.
Today, the Republic of Cuba is irrelevant and there is no one in Havana who demonstrates a formidable desire to alter that trajectory.
Until the government of the Republic of Cuba institutionalizes and maintains commercial, economic, and financial policies, regulations, rules, and statutes, it will never capitalize from any of them.
The government reflects a man-child who stubbornly maintaining a position, invoking a tantrum at the thought of change, with a result where everyone believes it a chronically-underperforming deadbeat dad.
Success will not derive from admitting mistakes and then seeking only solutions which are designed to make what had not worked somehow work rather than seeking fresh solutions and changing what has only survived due to other people- taxpayers in other countries, paying for it.
Manuel Marrero Cruz, Prime Minister of the Republic of Cuba, acknowledged “internal difficulties, mistakes, and deficiencies… does not mean that we fold our arms or that we attribute all problems to the blockade [embargo].” This is not the first occasion for an official of the government of the Republic of Cuba to issue such a statement. History strongly suggests that the statement will be followed by another statement.
In May 2022, the Biden-Harris Administration (2021-2025) authorized the first direct investment and direct financing into a privately-owned company owned by a Republic of Cuba national and located in the Republic of Cuba. This decision was designed to shift the arrival of funds from unofficial channels to a formal and transparent process- and demonstrably increasing the engagement by the re-emerging private sector in the Republic of Cuba with sources of capital located in the United States.
The expectation was for the government of the Republic of Cuba to immediately, or at least soon thereafter, issue the regulations required so the funds would be delivered. Thus far, more than three years later, those regulations have yet to be published. Absent regulations, sources of capital in every country are subjected to the same foundational restriction- no legal framework to deliver direct investment and direct financing into a privately-owned company located in the Republic of Cuba. That restriction impacts Belarus, China, Russia, Spain, Vietnam, among other countries. So much for the government of the Republic of Cuba for embracing change- particularly change that would enable it to pay what it owes.
For the United States business community, the last years of sustained optimism reflected by senior-level executives traveling regularly to the Republic of Cuba, those same senior-level executives eager to be interviewed by media, using their general aviation aircraft when permitted, was the period 1994 through 2008 during the [Fidel] Castro-[Raul] Castro Administration (1976-2008).
The interest has continued to decline, albeit on a gradual downward trajectory, during the [Raul] Castro-Machado Ventura Administration (2006-2018), with an uptick from 2015 and 2016, and then accelerated its decline during the Diaz-Canel-Valdes Mesa Administration (2018- ) which coincided with the Trump-Pence Administration (2017-2021).
Neither the Castro-Machado Ventura Administration nor Diaz-Canel-Valdes Mesa Administration embraced fully commercial opportunities authorized during the Obama-Biden Administration (2009-2017) and during the Biden-Harris Administration. There were lasting and consequential consequences for that resistance.
Welcome to the Trump-Vance Administration (2025-2029).
Link: Cuba Reported In New Agreement With Paris Club "Group Of Creditors Of Cuba" To Restructure Defaulted Payment Terms. Previously Forgave 75% Of Debt. Officials Expect Further Defaults. October 21, 2021
