is Cuba a failed state?

Cuba was the playground of the United States in the 1950's who recognized the dictator there (Batista) who didn't really care for the freedom of Cubans but instead on making business and turning Havana into the Las Vegas of Latin America.

That was until 1959 when Fidel Castro and his other revolutionaries led a revolution that overthrow Batista and made Cuba a Marxist state.

That was 50 years ago this year!

Cuba has been under direct economic embargo since 1960 by the United States having to pretty much survive on it's own after riding itself of all aspects of American imperialism that infected their country.

But even today it's a better country!



It has one of the best health care and education systems on the planet. The Literacy Campaign of 1960 reduced illiteracy to virtually zero in little over a year.

In just a year after overthrowing an American backed dictator the government begun focusing directly on it's people (now that's a government for the people), and since then Cuba has retained much better services for the people, high education and health care standards to this day prove just that.

The country still has several examples of old automobiles from the pre-revolutionary days of the 1950's that with a bit of care work fine after over fifty years, and they don't even bother importing any other or newer cars to this day, (except some Soviet made Ladas, Moskvitchs and Volgas which were for state use).

There is some optimism that things will change with Cuba with Obama's openness to continue strained relations, however using the Clinton Administration who in the 1990's only made some small concessions on food and medicines but then nevertheless reinforced the economic embargo as an example I wouldn't hold my breath!

Communism vs Capitalism

After World War II fascism had died, it now seemed that the battle between the ideologies of capitalism and communism was now to start, except that it ended in more of an arms race that ran the Soviet Union into the ground in 1991 and leaving the capitalist power the United States to thrive in a unipolar world.

But I'm going to exam the history of the mid to late 20th century on this one, for instance the socialists in Latin America that were aided in part by the Soviet Union and resulted in the Cuban Missile Crisis which showed the gap between the two powers.


Totally anti establishment

Socialist rebels like Che Guevara in Latin America attempting to fight for a world wide communist revolution, after the revolution in Cuba in 1959 he even helped Castro acquire nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union, Castro whom in 1994 confirmed to former defence sectary at the time Robert McNamara that their intent was to launch as many nuclear missiles at the US and be killed themselves in the process, that's how serious the battle for ideologies had become!

However you'd be a hypocrite and a fool to just criticize the Soviet Union for what they did in the 1960's, the United States exercised its power over the world holding it hostage to it's nuclear weapons and exercising its power and force far beyond its borders.

Apart from being a democracy it took quite a time to give rights to black citizens, a likely World War III had been averted by John F. Kennedy whose logical thinking averted the death of millions and the eventual confrontation between capitalists and communists, he was accused of appeasing communism and often criticized for that;

Many in the US preached that communism wasn't a political ideology, but a way of life, an evil and malignant way of life which spreads like an epidemic and as such should be quarantined, when John F. Kennedy was shot and Vice President Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as president he changed Kennedy's policy with Vietnam just four days later!

Not wanting the south to fall to communism he had the north bombed for weeks on end, more bombs were dropped on North Vietnam than of Western Europe in all of World War II!



So the containing of communism, but the Vietnam War was a lot more complex than that, the fact that the Americans didn't help the Vietnamese in the French Indo China war in their struggle to gain independence from a colonial power shows that the Americans really wanted a war, what resulted was over 50,000 US soldiers killed and over 3,000,000 Vietnamese!



Ronald Reagan the B-actor who became president and remained president of the US in the 1980's showed his worth by invading the island midget state of Grenada and making jokes about communism, when relations between the US and the USSR finally opened in the late 1980's the Soviet Union finally collapsed in 1991.

The new Russia was going to be a capitalistic one!



The Cold War was over and for the next ten years the biggest concern to the free world was Monica Lewinsky!

Today communism around the world wasn't thriving against capitalism like in the 1960's, except in the Peoples Republic of China where all our iPod's and Big Macs come from.

But these days we're face down in a worldwide recession, Wall Street brought the American economy to its knees less then 20 years after the Soviet Union collapsed from economic pressure the west is crippled while China is basically the same as ever.

So at the end of the day pretty much none of the biggest three ideologies that fought it out in the 20th century, communism, capitalism and fascism none are proved to be prefect and all had serious strains pulled on them, but at least in the capitalistic system we're not required to share our possessions.