(01-08-2026, 09:26 AM)727Sky Wrote: One of the big reasons for the snatch and grab
There are other Chinese interests in the Caribbean/Central America that we ought not forget. Not just Cuba, but Panama and Nicaragua ought to be sweating bullets right about now. Panama because China is trying to seize complete control of their canal, which we can't allow, and Nicaragua because China was looking at Nicaragua as an alternative canal site. Their plan was to dredge a canal up the San Juan river and through Lake Managua, to the Pacific. I don't think we can allow that, either. So a little farther down the road, Daniel Ortega might need to sleep with his boots on.
I'd really like to see Ortega go toes-up before I bite the dust. That would be the other bookend on my life.
Cuba has a high probability of collapsing under it's own weight, since all the props are being knocked out from under it. We'll see how that goes. With Venezuela gone, and Russia so tied up that it doesn't have spare rubles to shovel at Cuba, China might have to take up that slack if Cuba is to remain standing, and we know that China is having some economic woes of it's own, what with seeing investments in Iran vanish with a popping noise and all.
So Cuba, as a communist dictatorship, might not be all that long for this world anyhow.
The rest of the Caribbean "partners" of China might want to start rethinking their own strategies as well, and maybe making some new friends and blowing off the old ones...
.
“Trouble rather the tiger in his lair than the sage among his books. For to you kingdoms and their armies are things mighty and enduring, but to him they are but toys of the moment, to be overturned with the flick of a finger.”
― Gordon R. Dickson, Tactics of Mistake
― Gordon R. Dickson, Tactics of Mistake