Hemispheric gangsterism: the US embargo against Cuba turns 60

While falling short of admitting it had been a crude failure, the same study prosaically remarked that Castro's position remained unchanged. "Sanctions implied a grave external threat, which Castro exploited to carry out the radicalization of all Cuban political, economic, and social institutions."

In 2012, at the five-decade point of US-Cuba sanctions, the Obama administration made some modest concessions to allowing US businesses to establish themselves in Cuba. This policy shift had its own Trojan Horse element to it. "By further easing these sanctions," US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew reasoned at the time, "the United States is helping to support the Cuban people in their effort to achieve the political and economic freedom necessary to build a democratic, prosperous and stable Cuba."

On December 17, 2014, President Barack Obama announced that he would be "ending an outdated policy that had failed to advance US interests and support reform and a better life for the Cuban people on the island over several decades." The new normalisation policy would increase engagements between Washington and Havana in "areas of mutual interest, and increase travel to, commerce with, and the free flow of information to Cuba." Rabid opponents foamily insisted that no measure should aid this satanic communist State.

The Trump administration proceeded to reverse what adjustments had been made to the US-Cuban relationship. Individual travel by US citizens to Cuba for educational and cultural changes was prohibited. Most functions of the US embassy in Havana were suspended. Trump even went so far as to deem Cuba a state sponsor of international terrorism under the Export Administration Act of 1979.

President Biden has shown an almost soporific lack of interest in challenging the sanctions regime. When it has acted, it has kept the system in place, going so far as to impose specific sanctions on Cuban security and interior ministry officials. Responding to claims of Cuban government brutality in suppressing protests, Biden declared last July that the "United States will continue to sanction individuals responsible for oppression of the Cuban people."

Some members of that mendacious class known as Congress are urging a trimming of sanctions, though their views remain modest and calculating in the name of benevolent self-interest. In mid-December, 114 members or so sent a letter to the President calling for "humanitarian actions" to lift economic sanctions on food, medicine and other forms of humanitarian assistance. "Engagement is more likely to enable the political, economic and social openings that Cubans may desire, and to ease the hardships that Cubans face today."

Whichever group in Congress is consulted, from the vociferous Cuban American lobby in Florida to the claimed progressives in the metropolitan centres, all agree with one objective, however achieved: regime change. The hemispheric gangster is simply biding its time.