Cuba braces for US 'warmongers' Bolton and Pompeo

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‍In a report from Washington on Monday, Granma – the official daily of the Communist Party of Cuba – reported that the latest spending bill signed by President Donald Trump includes a provision of 20 million US dollars for "subversion" against the island.

The report said that the expenditure is camouflaged under the euphemistic term "democracy programs" but it is really intended to promote regime change in Cuba.

The bill, which keeps the federal government running through September, was approved in the same week that Trump named ultraconservative John Bolton as his new National Security Adviser.

Bolton is a severe critic of Cuba as is Mike Pompeo who was earlier nominated to be the next Secretary of State. So the two top foreign policy advisory positions are filled by people who have made no secret of their desire to see Cuba's system of government overthrown.

These developments all add to a potentially unsettling period for Cuba, which is bracing for Raul Castro's historic handover of the presidency next month.

Relations between the US and Cuba have deteriorated under President Trump. /VCG Photo

Trump has already been rolling back some of the conciliatory moves towards Havana that were initiated by his predecessor Barack Obama.

Cuba would be forgiven for thinking that the inclusion of hawks Bolton, a former US ambassador to the United Nations, and Pompeo, current CIA director and an ex-congressman, would deepen that process and herald a new era of cold war rhetoric.

Their own comments in the past have marked them out.

In a May 2002 speech during President George W. Bush’s first term in office, Bolton, who was then the State Department’s top official on weapons proliferation, declared that Cuba had “at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort,” and was sharing the technology with other countries. He produced no evidence to back up the claim and intelligence officers contradicted him.

John Bolton's appointment has been called Trump's worst mistake by ex-president Jimmy Carter. /VCG Photo

According to the Los Angeles Times, Bolton, an advocate of preemptive war, used the alleged link to weapons of mass destruction to justify the addition of Cuba to the administration's list of "axis of evil" nations, a term coined in 2002 by Bush to refer to nations like Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea that he alleged were sponsors of terrorism.

An article in Cuba's state-run Cubadebate newspaper at the weekend cited Bolton's speech and wondered where the biological weapons that he "dreamed of" were now.

As for Pompeo, when he was a Republican Congressman, he expressed his opposition to Obama's visit to Cuba in 2016.

He said there was a reason no sitting American president had been to Cuba for almost 90 years and called the trip a concession to a dictator.

"By visiting Havana, President Obama is giving Fidel Castro (Raul's brother and revolutionary leader who has since died) a huge public relations coup," Pompeo wrote in the Independent Journal Review.

Most Cubans have known no other leader than a Castro - Fidel and his brother Raul. /VCG Photo

Bolton held the same view. He said in a broadcast interview at the time, "The president, by his action, has given political legitimacy to this dictatorship and he has extended an economic lifeline to the regime precisely at the time when we should be increasing pressure."

The Cubadebate newspaper said the twin Trump appointments clearly reflect the "warmongering accent of his administration."

But it didn't stop there, suggesting that "the Bolton-Pompeo duo will be well assisted in the aggressive projection towards the rest of the world" by the permanent US representative to the United Nations Nikki Haley, "a despot with a diplomatic position."

Cuba-US tourism down

Granma's account said the increase in the budget for Cuba democracy programs contrasts with the massive cuts to the State Department and foreign aid to developing countries.

"Mercenary groups, scholarships to promote false leadership among young Cubans and the dirty war on the Internet are financed with part of the money from Congress, which also benefits Florida-based groups that profit from the attacks on Cuba," the story said.

The deterioration in relations between Washington and Havana under Trump has begun to have an economic impact, with tourist numbers and spending from the US now reported to be falling on the island.

The situation has been exacerbated by unresolved health problems experienced by American diplomats in Cuba that have led to a drastic slimming down of the US embassy in Havana.

It is, therefore, a sensitive time for the transition to a new president, even though Raul Castro is expected to remain head of the communist party and the armed forces when he steps down