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by j_maffe 34 days ago
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.
1 comments
Manuel_D 34 days ago
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.

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MattPalmer1086 34 days ago
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.

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Manuel_D 34 days ago
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.

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MattPalmer1086 34 days ago
Ok, a fair point, but ultimately in the context of what is happening to Cuba, a semantic one.
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