The 2021 Cuba protests
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The 2021 Cuba protests are the July demonstrations that dominated American television for several days, and which John Kiriakou declined to treat as the start of anything.

Not a revolution

Asked directly, his answer was unqualified: "I agree completely. This is not a revolution. I think it's a test run as well." What was being tested, on his reading, was the government's response, "they're going to gauge the government's reaction. The government, if they're smart, they're going to try to institute some reforms, and then we see what happens six months from now."

Against 'treading lightly'

A New York Times piece had argued that Joe Biden and the Democrats would have to tread lightly in Florida because of the Cuban-American vote. Kiriakou's objection was that the advice was empty: "that was part of the problem that I had with this piece, they didn't say what that's supposed to mean. You can't just throw this idea into the middle of the room and have everybody just nod their heads."

His alternative was simple and did not depend on the answer: "if this is a legitimate uprising, if this is the beginning of a legitimate revolution in Cuba, well then that's good for everybody except maybe the Communist Party's leadership. But treading lightly? No, what you do is you make an announcement that you want the best for the Cuban people."

The underlying difficulty he names is domestic: "everything surrounding Cuba is just so politically loaded in the United States."

An aside on the coverage

Discussing how American media had handled the summit between Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden a few weeks earlier, Kiriakou agreed that the press had been "so much more rabid" about opposing Putin than the president himself was, the same asymmetry he saw applied to Cuba.

See also

- Kiriakou's Cuba trip
- Daniel Ortega
- Haiti
- Sanctions Effectiveness
