[Manuel_D]

It's not a blockade. Any country around the world is free to sail their cargo ships to Cuba and trade with Cubans. This will in turn, trigger tariffs against them in the US, but if countries really want to trade with Cuba they can.

A blockade is carried out through military force. Under a blockade ships are physically prevented from docking with the blockaded country, even if they're legally registered.

If you want to decry what the US is doing to Cuba, go ahead. But it is an embargo not a blockade.

[j_maffe]

It is effectively an oil blockade, and it's illegal under international law. Being this pedantic about how the US justifies its actions shows zero understanding for how these things tend to be done. The purpose of a system is what it does.

[Manuel_D]

No, it's not effectively an oil blockade. Countries have the option to trade with Cuba and risk whatever retaliatory tariffs the US promises to put on countries that ship oil to Cuba. These counties choose to refrain from trade with Cuba because the value they get out of exporting goods to the US exceeds the value of trade with Cuba. But if they decided otherwise, that option is available to them.

A blockade is an act of war where a country physically stops vessels from entering port in the target of the blockade. There is no choice in a blockade, the country enforcing the blockade is acting unilaterally

If you really think this is a distinction without a difference, then you could've just used the word "embargo" and avoided this exchange. But you didn't, you chose to call it a blockade, which is incorrect.

[MattPalmer1086]

And if pretty much any other country in the world threatened tariffs if they traded, most countries would be "meh". The US is the global superpower and a vast player economically.

Pretending that what the US does here is the same as if any other country did it is disengenuous.

It's an effective blockade.

[Manuel_D]

No doubt that America's embargo is more powerful because it's one of the largest import markets in the world. I'm not pretending that an American embargo is no more impactful than a smaller country carrying out an embargo. But it's unambiguously an embargo, not a blockade. These terms have long established definitions. A blockade is an act of war, carried out with military force. An embargo does not become a blockade by virtue of the fact that the country doing the embargo had a big economy.

If you think the embargo is bad, that's fine. What I'm objecting to is people calling it a blockade.

[MattPalmer1086]

Ok, a fair point, but ultimately in the context of what is happening to Cuba, a semantic one.

[dpark]

Literally they are blocking tankers from other countries.

[Manuel_D]

No, they are not blocking legally registered tankers from other countries. The handful of boarded ships were boarded because they were flying false flags, which is illegal and opens them up to being seized regardless of the embargo.

[dpark]

So if Russia puts a Russian flag on a tanker and sails it to Cuba, do you suppose that the USGC will allow it to land?

Oh, wait. Those ships are all sanctioned so would be seized. Interesting conundrum.

[Sabinus]

The Anatoly Kolodkin did exactly that. Russian oil. Russian ship. Russian flag. Docked in Cuba and unloaded it's oil. It was the first oil Cuba had been delivered in 3 months.

[dpark]

Only because Trump waived sanctions and allowed them to dock.

Responding to reporters' questions on March 29 about whether the ship would be allowed to dock, Trump said, "We don't mind somebody getting a boatload...because they have to survive."

[Manuel_D]

The ship would be allowed to dock regardless of what Trump decided. Just Because Trump gives permission doesn't mean Russia needs permission from the US. If the US boarded the Anatolky Kolodkin, that would be an act of war against Russia. That exactly why the Cuban Missile Crisis was so tense: if the US did stop Soviet ships bound for Cuba then that would be an act of war against the USSR.

[Manuel_D]

Yes, a Russian flagged tanker can sail and land in Cuba. The Russian oil tanker Anatolky Kolodkin did, in fact, dock in Cuba and offload oil in March 2026.