The truth on the other hand, is the unshakable reality that has driven every sanction, every sabotage attempt, and every assassination plot since 1959: Cuba is a threat only to an idea. It is a threat to the imperial doctrine that a small, poor nation in America’s ‘backyard’ must not be allowed to choose socialism, to provide free healthcare and education, and homes to live without the permission of Washington.
For this sin of self-determination, the crime of building a society where capital is not god, Cuba has been punished with the most enduring economic siege in modern history. This is not an ‘embargo’, which I consider to be a sterile, political term. It is a total blockade, designed to constrict and cripple. It is enforced by a plethora of laws with names like the Helms-Burton Act, which terrorises foreign companies from trading with the Island and allows the US to seize ships in international waters. Its goal, as US politician Robert Torricelli once admitted, was to…
‘Wreak havoc’.
Not potential, measurable and factual, sustained 15% growth in industrial output yearly, with it being the only defense possible against the upcoming imperialist invasion.
How many Ukrainians would have been exterminated without the Soviet Union having the capability to manufacture 30.000 T-34 tanks against the Nazi war machine? Answer: all of them.
Yes, there is absolutely no doubt about this and it’s consensus among economists. A feudal country cannot defeat an industrialized nation bordering its lands if the latter invades it. It was not “winter” winning the war, that’s Napoleon, it was the battle of Stalingrad that resulted in a turning point in the war. The Soviets were THIS close to losing the war, and even in victory, 27 million Soviet citizens died as a consequence of the war.
Your speculation is nonsense. The USA did in fact send more equipment to England than to the USSR, and it is the latter that defeated the Nazis (80% of dead Nazi soldiers were killed in the Eastern Front). There is absolutely no doubt possible that the USSR would have been crushed with Blitzkrieg as were Poland and France had it not been for their industrialization efforts in the previous decade, this is the historical consensus. Stop trying to bend reality in a topic in which you’re clearly not well educated.