The U.S. is back

Editor’s Note: A total of 184 countries on Wednesday voted in favor of a resolution to demand the end of the US economic blockade on Cuba, for the 29th year in a row, with the United States and Israel voting against.

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As has happened for the past 29 years, everyone expected the UN General Assembly to pass, almost unanimously, a resolution condemning the U.S. blockade against Cuba. What piqued everyone’s interest this time around were expectations on how the new Biden administration would vote in the face of what constitutes the only condemnation of U.S. policy by the foremost international body.

The interest was based on the precedent set by the Obama administration UN vote in 2016 (at a time when Joe Biden was vice president), when then-Ambassador Samantha Power, currently the USAID administrator, expressed great satisfaction when the U.S. abstained from voting and recognizing the failure of a policy that ended up isolating the United States from the rest of the world. It was a fleeting moment in US policy towards Cuba, which Donald Trump made sure to bury with a return to the most aggressive practices and rhetoric against Cuba.

The following year, with Trump’s representatives at the UN, there was no conflict in assuming the decades old attitude: they did not give a damn about the condemnation by the rest of the world and they made it known quite explicitly. As then-Ambassador Nikki Haley said: “The United States will not fear isolation in this hall or in any other area (…) this assembly does not have the power to end the embargo. The embargo is based on US law, which can only be changed by the US Congress. What the General Assembly is doing — and what it does every year — is political theater.”

Biden was supposed to represent a change in attitude. It seems to have been what the unhappy diplomat was thinking when he had to read the bland and worn-out explanation given for the US’ vote this year. Not even Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield appeared to want to be present, or at least was directed not to appear in the hall. 

Indeed, the United States is back, but on the subject of Cuba, it made its debut in the General Assembly with its most decadent face.