June 29, 2023
China Spy Station Revelation Is a Wake-Up Call to Rethink US Embargo on Cuba
In early June, the Biden administration revealed that China has operated an electronic eavesdropping station in Cuba since 2019 and has spent several billion dollars to upgrade it. The revelation sparked a bipartisan uproar, as a Chinese intelligence facility only 90 miles from the Florida coast could intercept commercial and military communications from several southeastern U.S. states.
Cuban neutrality is a diplomatic loss for China.
The incident evoked memories of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, but China poses a different challenge than the Soviet Union did – one predicated on increasing its economic clout in the Western hemisphere. Washington’s policy of economically isolating Cuba, unchanged since the 1960s, has left a vacuum that China emphatically filled in exchange for diplomatic and potential military support.
Read the full article in The Diplomat.
More from CNAS
-
How a Tsunami Created the Quad
Video
A disaster in the Indian Ocean in 2004 brought together a powerful grouping of nations—Australia, India, Japan and the United States—that developed a diplomatic partnership ba...
By Lisa Curtis
-
The Superpower Has Left the Building: Munich 2025
Commentary
Behind the frustration and fears of abandonment lies a major question: What will — what can — Europe do about it?...
By Richard Fontaine
-
Top American Experts Ashley J Tellis And Lisa Curtis Decode Modi-Trump Bilateral On India Today
Video
Prime Minister Modi's visit to Washington DC aimed to establish India as a key partner for the United States. The leaders discussed defence cooperation, including potential F-...
By Lisa Curtis
-
Averting AI Armageddon with Colin Kahl and Jacob Stokes
Podcast
In recent years, the previous bipolar nuclear order led by the United States and Russia has given way to a more volatile, tripolar one, as China has quantitatively and qualita...
By Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Jim Townsend, Colin H. Kahl & Jacob Stokes
