This year, like last year, only two countries voted against lifting the blockade: the US and Israel. But Argentina was meant to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them.
Once again, the United Nations General Assembly has overwhelmingly voted to condemn the US’ illegal economic blockade of Cuba, now in its 62nd year. In total, 187 countries voted in favour of lifting the blockage and just two against: the US and Israel. The only country that abstained was Moldova, which has a pro-Western government that is trying to join the EU.
Rest of World vs US + Israel (+ Argentina, kind of)
This map, courtesy of Ben Norton’s Geopolitical and Economy Report, offers an emphatic illustration of just how isolated the US is on this issue. It is, quite simply, the rest of the world, including long-standing US vassal states like the EU, the UK, Japan, South Korea, Australia and Canada, against Washington and Tel Aviv:
In a heated exchange with the State Department’s Matt Miller in yesterday’s press conference (see below), AP’s Matt Lee asked, “So at what point… are you guys going to realize that the entire world except you and Israel thinks that the embargo is a really bad idea and should be stopped” — to which Miller responded: “Look, I think we are quite clear on the opinion of other countries around the world. And it’s one with which we disagree…we make our own policy determinations.”
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Cuba has presented the non-binding resolution, “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba” every year (bar 2020) since 1992 — the year the US extended the blockade to third countries. Each year, the resolution passes almost unanimously. Last year, like this year, the only two countries that voted against were the US and Israel. The only notable difference is that it was Ukraine, not Moldova, that abstained. This year, Ukraine did not even vote.
One of the biggest surprises in this year’s non-binding resolution was the inclusion of Argentina among the 187 countries that voted in favour of lifting the blockade. Argentina’s faux libertarian President, Javier Milei, has done everything he can to align his government’s foreign policy with the US and Israel, even going so far as to apply to join NATO as well as offer to send military equipment to Ukraine and move Argentina’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Indeed, this was the first time since his arrival in office that Argentina has broken with that alignment.
Initially, some of Milei’s fiercest supporters in the media, such as La Derecha Diario, argued that by voting in favour of free trade and against commercial blockades, Milei was staying true to his libertarian principles, which couldn’t have been further from the truth. There is also the fact that Argentina has always voted against the US blockade of Cuba, even during the Mauricio Macri government, so this would have been a mere continuation of more than three decades of bipartisan policy. But that wasn’t true either.
Hours later, it emerged that Argentina’s Foreign Minister Diana Mondino had, intentionally or not, voted the wrong way, for which she was unceremoniously fired. As Ben Norton notes, “the vote was 187 vs 2… Milei wanted it to be 186 vs 3” — thereby rendering Argentina just as globally isolated as the US and Israel. Even the right-wing governments that Milei likes to associate himself with, such as Orban’s Hungary, Meloni’s Italy, Noboa’s Ecuador, and Bukele’s El Salvador, voted in favour of lifting the blockade.
To justify Mondino’s dismissal, President Milei’s office said Argentina was “categorically opposed to the Cuban dictatorship” — just as it was categorically opposed to China’s “murderous” dictatorship… until the government desperately needed Chinese money to keep Argentina’s economy semi-afloat. Now, all of a sudden, Communist China is, in Milei’s own words, “a very interesting trading partner”.
As we noted at the time Milei said that, the fact that even Argentina’s fanatically anti-Communist government is now seeking to forge closer economic ties with Beijing as investments begin to dry up will have no doubt riled a great many people in Washington. Mondino’s support for Cuba’s UNGA resolution will have made matters even worse. For a country that is supposed to be totally servile to Washington, Milei’s Argentina has a funny way of showing it…
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Nick Corbishley 