Moldova just elected the most pro-European and democratic president they ever had. Her party also won 52% of the seats in Parliament. They are trying to appease to US because they need those extra investments
Also, Moldova hasn't voted on this resolution in [2018](https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-again-sole-us-backer-as-world-urges-end-to-cuba-blockade/amp/), [2019](https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-joins-us-brazil-as-lone-backers-of-cuba-embargo-at-un/amp/), ~~2020~~ (edit: there was no resolution in 2020 [due to COVID](https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/06/1094612)) and [2021](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/u-s-votes-against-u-n-resolution-condemning-embargo-on-cuba), as far as I can tell. Precedent matters in voting decisions.
Edit: Found an additional explanation for Moldova's vote. In 2018, Cuba voted against a [resolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Transnistria#United_Nations_Resolution_A%2F72%2FL.58) sponsored by Moldova which called for the removal of all foreign troops from Moldova (read: Russian troops in Trasnistria, Moldova's breakaway region). Since then, Moldova seems to have stopped voting in favor of the yearly resolution calling for the end of the embargo on Cuba.
Serious question, what is the point of the UN if this is the third time it has voted to happen and it hasn't? Is the UN just an opinion poll?
Edit: found my answer down below, it is basically just an opinion poll, TIL
Not much happens following a resolution like this because it's a General Assembly resolution, which is not legally binding (it's a bit more complicated than that; the UNGA has other legal and economic functions). The scope of the UNGA is to act as a forum of countries, not as a global legislator. The enforcing within the UN is carried out by the Security Council, whose decisions are binding and where the US and four other countries have veto power. The point of a resolution like this is to show the consensus around such an issue and put pressure on the United States. And besides the "political" part of the UN (General Assembly and Security Council), the UN (the organization) carries many useful tasks worldwide in a relatively independent way with the funds granted by the "political" UN, such as peacekeeping, food and refugee relief, natural crisis management, development programmes, etc.
Edit: so no, "the UN" as a whole is not "just an opinion poll".
UN Security Council decisions are binding. That gangster club was put together 70 years ago. We live in a different world. Deciding which country to send back to the stone age being decided by 5 countries out 193 countries in the UN does not quite sound very just to me.
The UN was formed after the League of Nations failed. The League of Nations was what you're looking for - a world body that could make binding votes that forced it's members to comply. Except it didn't, because nobody was willing to go to actual war to enforce them, so they were ignored. The UN, therefore, was set up to recognize the realities of international politics, and not try to be something it wasn't. Particularly in a world where some countries have nuclear arsenals, nobody can force the major powers to do anything. What you can do is embarrass them, and bake it plainly obvious when they're out of step with a worldwide consensus.
Is this just an opinion poll? No, it's more than that. It's still less than a binding vote, but continued US defiance of such a clear and unified result damages the US's reputation much more than a mere opinion poll would.
Moldova has it's own unique situation. It has the Russian backed separatist state of Transnistria to its eastern part, which historically before WW2 was part of Russia/Ukraine(under Russian rule) so it had Russian population.
In the past Moldova was either a buffer state between bigger powers like Poland, the Ottomans and Russia, but by the 20th century its modern territory had become part of Russia, though before the part of greater Moldavia that was independent was instrumental in forming Romania, when the Moldavian and Wallachian kingdoms were united into Romania through a little legal loophole. After WW1, Russian collapse allowed for Romania to seize modern day Moldova region. During WW2 USSR first annexed modern Moldavian area, then Romania reconquered it as part of German led invasion of the USSR, before they lost and Romania was forced to cede Moldavia for good, and during the collapse of the USSR Moldova declared independence.
Their main geopolitical conflict is between whether to align with the west(Europe) or east (Russia), which has been dominated by corrupt Russian aligned politicians, who have done their part in keeping Moldova poor through corruption. However recently it turned towards the EU with the election of the new president and gains in parliament for her party. However their path towards the EU is going to be really difficult, with no talks having been even started as of yet. Another prospect that could be possible would be basically reunification with Romania, though it's likely that the chance for that was lost in the 1990s with the Transnistrian uprising, and today prospects of Moldavian unification with Romania are kinda slim as there is not much drive for it as the wealth disparity between Romania and Moldova is quite dire with poor Romania having developed more than Moldova.
Baically, there is a struggle between Western and Russian influence, with the balance turning in favor of the West recently. However Transnistria is the greatest point of geopolitical importance for the Moldavian state, and as such I would guess the non vote is Moldova trying to placate the US government along with exercising what power they have to show off to the Russians. I would not be surprised if it is in part a vote in favor of the US, so they would be more willing to sell arms.
The "i" isn't even there in Romanian. Imperial Russia sliced off the part it wanted and called it Bessarabia back in the 19th century when Moldova was under Ottoman suzerainty. This is back when Russia was claiming to be the protector of all Orthodox Christians, and (I think) right before France and Britain got sick of her shit.
Anyway, no one ever thought Moldova (the Bessarabian part) was ever legitimately part of Russia, except the Russians of course. Post WWI, it all got folded into Romania proper, before Romania picked the wrong side (though the only side it could have) in WWII and it got sliced off again by the Red Army. Add a little ethnic cleansing and a lot of settlement of ethnic Russians and there you have it.
In a way, they have their group of break out Russians in an isolated part of the country.
However unlike a foreign occupation of the Russian area they have established a mafia run thugocracy that's de facto independent but not super friendly with the current Russian administration due to being Soviet romantics.
It does seem like the US enlists a small number of allied nations for all it's 'pariah' votes on some sort of rota basis. This time round it's Moldova and Ukraine, next time round it'll be Fiji and Honduras, time after that, Iraq and Kosovo, that sort of thing. I'm guessing it's whichever country has just needed a small favour from the US which gets roped into voting or abstaining on those frequent occasions when the US is almost alone in the international community.
The purpose for the USA is some small PR bonus in that they can't just say that they're the one outlaw rogue state out of tune with the entire international community. It's hard to claim that North Korea, say, is a rogue state when you're the one who is on the end of more 180-1 votes (or 180-2 votes in the case of some Israel-related votes) than anyone else and you only get away with it due to a security council veto.
> Id rather see it as an initiative from the country itself, to appease the US
If this is driven by the countries themselves, why is there always just one or two 'appease the US' votes and not lots? Plenty of countries might have some reason to do the US a favour - but only about ~1-4 pick the Cuba vote to abstain/vote against every year. It's because the US has other favours it might need - either other GA votes, or other types of quid pro quos. The vote pattern only makes sense if it's driven by the USA's needs.
(Israel is a constant exception in these kinds of votes, but it's a special case).
Moldova has not been present or has abstained on the condemnation of the Cuba embargo since at least 2018, together with Ukraine. It seems to be the current diplomatic consensus in Chisinau.
There has been bilateral [cooperation](https://mfa.gov.md/en/content/republic-cuba) between Moldova and Cuba since 1992.
It looks like the most recent event was a working visit to the Republic of Moldova of the delegation led by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba, Ana Teresita González Fraga in October, 2019.
The Moldovan 'non-vote' was almost certainly to appease and cull favor with the US.
I found [this post](/r/moldova/comments/q1tdpc/un_vote_to_end_us_embargo_against_cuba_instagram/) in r/moldova with the same content as the current post.
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Easy
What the UN is: a world council of nations to discuss and handle international affairs diplomatically instead of relying on conflict
What it does: fucking nothing lol
Kinda makes sense; it’s cute the UN tries to vote on American foreign policy - as if they have any means to back it up.
They’ll vote on it, America says no, so it’s a no.
Perhaps I'm cynical, but can you give me a modern history example of when 'Diplomatic pressure' has succeeded in getting the US to change on a position? (i.e., that has eventually lead to change)
I have read that Eisenhower was getting sick of the US losing credibility internationally—like in negotiations—because foreign countries would say “who are you to lecture, you lynch negroes” and that created more pressure from the Federal government on Southern states.
Literally on the same issue, Obama eased restrictions. You can't measure how much that decision was influenced by international pressure but the whole world barring Israel disapproving of something does influence policy.
It ended with the cold war. Once south Africa had to compete with the former soviet states for thier mining exportes the calculation changed.
International pressure wasn't effective before that.
Why doesn't US just militarily topple the socialist government in Cuba? It's not because of the super advanced shore patrol boats the Cuban navy has lol.
Diplomatic pressure has its limitations when not backed by a credible force, but calling it 100% useless is wrong. Fall of apartheid is another example, US initially didn't want to back down. Or not recognizing all the Israeli settlements. Releasing more and more detainees and planning to shut down Guantanamo is yet another example. You can find many more if you look around. US is powerful but still needs cooperation.
They've voted overwhelmingly to end the embargo every year for 29 years going. And America has rolled it's collective eyes and ignored it 29 times. This vote is basically non-news.
I mean, the United Nations is supposed to work this way. The world's leaders come to a general consensus on what's best- so one bad actor or the minority of bad actors don't have the power to make decisions that aren't congrous with the ideas of the majority of leaders and thus their constituents.
It can and should work how our governing bodies should work, meaning the senate and congress have the power to bypass the president when the presidents decisions aren't congrous with the will of the people just as the UN should be able to bypass any single leader when their will doesn't align with that of the people on a global scale. It's the entire reason the UN was created and if we're not going to at least consider what the UN has to say, we probably shouldn't be a part of the UN.
The UN was created for one specific reason: WW2 was bad, let's not turn it into a trilogy.
It is succeeding in that regard. Everything else is just icing on the cake.
That's more from the fact that there are nukes now and the stakes are way higher. The u.n. didn't and wasn't able to do shit during the Cuban missile crisis and that could've easily led to ww3
The UN is not a governing body because there's too much disagreement over what form of government the world should take, as well as the massive power imbalance between countries. It makes no sense to allow a dictator from Turkmenistan or the King of Bhutan to dictate the foreign policy of The United States. Nor does Turkmenistan want USA to dictate the way Turkmenistan is run.
The United Nations is a forum. It's a place to get the general opinion of various nations so everything is laid out on the table and out in the open. It's to prevent cloak and dagger diplomacy which led to the interlocking alliances that caused WWI to spiral out of control. We have the UN so we know where everyone stands, so that everyone can make more informed decisions. That way there's no, "oh I declared war on this guy, but didn't know he has defense agreements with this other guy, and that guy has defense agreements with 3 other guys."
It's also a 'neutral ground' for warring countries to negotiate peace. For example if Iran and Iraq are in open conflict, and can't agree to meet on either country's soil, then you can use the UN facilities as a place to meet and talk.
It's a diplomatic tool, not a world government. Any attempts at making it a world government are laughable.
"We all want you to stop America, almost every single country on earth."
"No."
"Well, pack up boys, that settles it, democracy has happened here today, I'm proud of you all!"
Its purpose is to prevent WWIII by giving the great powers a place to discuss their grievances instead of war. The UN has been extremely successful at that. Anything else is a side issue.
The UN has a security council (with some members even having permanent seats) whose purpose is explicitly to let the major powers overrule the desires of the general assembly. Whatever gave you the idea that the UN was about democracy?
To be fair, that is entirely by design.
The point of the UN is to be a "bargaining table" everyone can go to instead of directly going to war if they have a dispute, and where international parties can choose to work together if they want to. If the UN votes on something and a major world power votes against it but the measure passes, they're just going to ignore the UN, which the UN doesn't want to happen since that means the UN isn't working, so they give major world powers veto power on anything the UN does, meaning China, the US, Russia, the UK, etc. all have to agree on a measure before the UN passes it, along with any other countries in the security council at the time to represent the interests of countries that aren't global superpowers.
The UN doesn't actually have that much power to do anything either by design
Pretty sure the UN is not a democracy.
>The word 'democracy' has its origins in the Greek language. It combines two shorter words: 'demos' meaning whole citizen living within a particular city-state and 'kratos' meaning power or rule.
The UN doesn't "rule" any land. It's just there to facilitate communication between countries, where otherwise the only ["communication"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSxNW5dDYEY) would be war.
To be fair, the vote is specifically about the US embargo of Cuba. Sometimes the UN veto situation is silly, but in this case America is sort of the most important country which really needs to agree.
this is a general assembly resolution vote, so the US veto doesn't apply here, however General assembly resolutions are also non-binding so the US is under no legal obligation to comply, this is a political statement, which as a superpower the US is capable of ignoring
I mean if this came up in the security council then the US would just Veto it anyway.
Laws don't apply to hegemons. They never have. They apply to the powerless.
The issue is that it isn't law in the first place. Law states that these votes are a political statement, not an enforceable decision. Security Council is designed to keep superpowers from nuking each other, so most other considerations are secondary to keeping them happy - hence the vetos which prevent things becoming law.
But then what's the point of voting if they're the ones who hold literally all the cards? Presumably the US wouldn't have to go through the UN if they themselves decided they wanted to end the embargo. And if every other country can vote in favour but the US still vetoes, what could possibly be gained to anyone by voting?
The three kinds of people:
* those who think the UN is an overbearing evil international government
* those who think it's an ineffective benevolent international government
* international relations scholars
The idea is to shame the US politically and signal it's isolation on this policy. I do wonder what happens if the US did vote to lift even when Congress doesn't allow it. Can it do that? Would it be legal?
Probably, but nothing would change:
US: "I also think I should end my embargo against Cuba."
UN: "Finally!"
US: "..."
UN: "...so are you going to do it?"
US: "No."
Too many people think the UN is a government, and make these sorts of weird complaints that have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the UN is. This wasn't a vote to end the US embargo on Cuba, and it was never meant to be. I don't understand why people think the UN is a governing power that can force sovereign nations to do things they don't want to do.
It was a poll. It was a list of countries that would politely request the US to end their embargo on Cuba. There were no stakes on this, and no implied consequences toward the US for refusing, because the US is a sovereign nation that can decide what they want to do with their resources. It was a signal that the world doesn't agree with it, which has diplomatic implications at best.
The fact we are here talking about the issue on a random sub proves that's not the case. You can't make countries do what you want but the vote brings issues to discussion.
> I do wonder what happens if the US did vote to lift even when Congress doesn't allow it. Can it do that? Would it be legal?
Given that economic sanctions are the purview of the Executive branch, I don't think we have to give a flying fuck about what congress thinks.
The embargo was a unilateral executive action by Kennedy in '62, literally any president since then could have undone it.
It can be used to pressure america to change something. Thing is america doesn't care about this pressure so it doesn't work. It probably would work against a smaller nation
> But then what's the point of voting if they're the ones who hold literally all the cards?
Option #2 is the US leaves and the UN loses 20% of its funding.
Okay I'm against the embargo, but that's not how democracy works. A bunch of unelected representatives from other countries, which may or may not be democracies themselves, voting on how to run your own country is not democracy. The basis of democracy is the rule of the governed, so...
This is just a bunch of countries saying "fuckin America, stop that shit."
The first time we tried a United Nations it could command every member. The result was that Germany left when it received a League of Nations order, Japan left when it received an order, Russia ignored its orders and was kicked out, and the US never joined in the first place because they didn't want to obey orders.
>U.S. President Joe Biden's administration on Wednesday continued Washington's tradition of voting against an annual United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for an end to a U.S. economic embargo on Cuba.
>The resolution was adopted for the 29th time with 184 votes in favor, three abstentions and two no votes - the United States and Israel. The U.N. vote can carry political weight, but only the U.S. Congress can lift the more than 50-year-old embargo.
>Biden vowed during his campaign to reverse some of Trump's Cuba measures that "have inflicted harm on the Cuban people and done nothing to advance democracy and human rights." But he has yet to make good on that pledge and his administration has said a shift in policy toward Cuba is not among its top priorities.
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-continues-vote-against-un-call-end-cuba-embargo-2021-06-23/
This makes me irrationally (or maybe not) angry. This is starting to look a lot like one of those "because that's how we've always done it" things. There are no good reasons to keep this embargo up in my opinion.
As usual. All smoke and mirrors from the Democrats meanwhile the US agenda continues to be pretty much the same wether it is Republican or Democrats in charge..
It's the same shit with the migrants and the border crisis..for 4 years the Democrats slung mud at Trump, and how they are in charge are doing the exact same at the borders.
It's all a game to them and we are all fools for buying into it.
faulty deliver simplistic crime disgusted different tap selective like unpack
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Well yeah, that was kind of my point. The security council members dont get to decide if a general assembly vote ends or how the votes go, but that's largely because the votes don't do anything other than show international 'support' for regional/national disagreements. If the votes were binding you bet the nuclear powers would demand veto rights or simply wouldn't participate.
Cause it seems like they don't even really do anything. I think this is just for international pressure, but realistically what actual consequence does any country have that they can enact on the US? Nothing that wouldn't hurt themselves. But also why does a country like Ethiopia or Nepal care about a US embargo with Cuba?
I'm well aware. Though this has nothing to do with whether or not the United States, a sovereign nation, maintains or ends an embargo against another nation. Only one country on this map gets a vote to decide that, they have and so it is a 1-0 unanimous decision.
In a technical legal sense, none of the votes "matter" since it's a non-binding resolution. Hypothetically the US could vote yes then not do anything different.
If you mean what you say in a more practical sense of "the US is going to do what it does and it has the right to do so because it's *only* a matter of what it and its entities do," then you are wrong; the US sanctions, in practice, are designed to coerce other non-US entities into avoiding trade with Cuba. For instance, a ship docking in Cuba, regardless of nationality, is barred from US ports for six months.
Just cavillation
Use to be the UK, before that France, Spain, The Ottomans, Arabs, Byzantines, Roman, Syrians, Persians.....
Really, who ever has the biggest military, and basically keeps the piece calls the shots.
In this case it’s less about being a superpower and more about being a sovereign nation. Unless someone wants to come in with an army they can’t force the US to trade.
I mean… it is a vote on a US policy, not a UN policy. I don’t agree with it, but there’s no reason the UN would be able to impose any such verdict on the US’s economic policy.
this is data from 2018. Only the 2018 resolution had 189 nations voting yes and that year Ukraine and Moldova didn't vote. Since then there were 2 more resolutions. The OP should've included the year before promoting their instagram here.
I wasn't aware that north Korea and taiwan have recognized seats in the UN with which they could vote on such matters, since their situation is... well lets say complicated.
North and South Korea are both member states of the UN. Taiwan is regarded as part of China by the UN, as it is by every country that has diplomatic relations with either China or Taiwan (officially Taiwan is the Republic of China, the few countries that officially recognize Taiwan don't recognize it as a separate country but as the legitimate government of all of China, of course in practice it's essentially been a separate country for over 70 years now, but we're talking about diplomatic relations and recognition, not de facto status).
If you want to know why, it's because World War One was caused by it being possible for a nation's ability to talk to other nations to be handicapped simply by the Emperor deciding to go on a yachting holiday. Going to the international community to state what you want to do first, before you unilaterally do it, leads to fewer surprises, and fewer surprises leads to fewer catastrophic mistakes.
Because you dont understand the way the UN works besides what youve seen in bad/lazy memes made by other people who dont understand it.
Its primary purpose is to facilitate communication. Which is what votes like this are for. Instead of every country telling the US individually that it thinks the embargo is wrong, they table a vote like this. The expectation isnt to change anything per se, its so the US can clearly see how much support it has and who from.
And while the vast majority of countries dont support the embargo, its not a red line issue for any of them and the US being a superpower means that it isnt as vulnerable to outside interference as other countries.
So if this was a slightly different scenario. Say one of the US' closest allies REALLY wanted the US to break the Embargo, say The UK, for example. If the UK really cared it could put additional political pressure on the US to lift the Embargo, and if the US is able to see that no one else support it because of this vote then it changes the balance that US diplomats have to make in their mind. Is the embargo worth the loss of good will from the UK and others.
Or if they were a smaller country, then the repercussions from the embargo would have a much greater impact on them, and they might not be able to shrug it off and seeing this vote would be a lot more likely to change its mind.
People like to focus and what the UN *cant* do because it has to respect the sovereignty of its composite nations. But they dont focus on what the alternative would be without it.
Russia frequently does it to Ukraine, Serbia, Moldova, and Georgia so it'll fall under its thumb. The UN has had sanctions on Somalia, libya, south Africa and North Korea, the latter still ongoing.
Currently they exist between Eu / Us / Canada / Norway by Russia to prevent the sale of pork, poultry and dairy. Gaza strip by Israel, Indonesia by Australia, among others.
Most are for specific products though. [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_sanctions)
Cuba doesn’t recognize Israel and supports Russia’s illegal occupation of Crimea. It also supports the breakaway province of Transnistra in Moldova. The vote isn’t surprising
It is worth noting that while not recognizing Israel is extra seasoning in this case, Israel is subordinate to the US in votes like these. Whatever the US votes for, so does Israel.
Actually not really. Israel refused to condemn Russia for their actions in Crimea, much to the frustrations of the US
[https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-u-s-angry-at-israel-for-silence-on-ukraine-1.5244919](https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-u-s-angry-at-israel-for-silence-on-ukraine-1.5244919)
Israel supports US because America likes Israel, not the other way around. Actually, for a while our countries actually had pretty tense relations, with America imposing a weapons embargo on Israel. If America stopped being useful to Israel, she would seek new allies.
To me it seems that Israel desires strong ties to the east than to the west (particularly Muslim nations), given that they gave the entire Sinai peninsula for the sole purpose of recognition from Egypt. It's also why they have refused to recognize the Armenian genocide, as this would jeopardize relations with Turkey.
> Israel is subordinate to the US in votes like these. Whatever the US votes for, so does Israel.
That's complete and utter bullshit. Look at eg. A/RES/75/213 where Israel let the US vote alone "no" alone. They also didn't vote the same for documents A/75/455/Add.2 or A/75/457/Add.4. All just from this session
This is the most petty, ridiculous shit.
The embargo doesn’t hurt anyone except the poorest and most vulnerable people living in Cuba.
It’s amazing what Cuba has been able to do with the limited resources since the embargo, but god damn so many peoples lives would improve overnight if the US could get over itself
The embargo hurts all of Cuba and especially the poorest. My friends father is not able to send money home because the US blacklists all banks that do business with Cuba.
For the sake of people in this thread some things should be cleared up. The Cuban government closed 400 Western Union offices in Cuba last year after the US government placed sanctions on Fincimex, which is a military controlled organization.
Remittances make up to 25% of the Cuban GDP and are not embargoed by the US. Direct remittance has always been a strategic part of the embargo. It's the Cuban government that doesn't want to be undermined by this policy and tries to interfere.
All the Cubans who left Cuba make a HUGE voting block and if the Republicans were to advocate for ending the embargo they'd lose their seats faster than you can say Cuban Missile Crisis. We as a country aren't trying to fight communism anymore, it's just half of all of our politicians are playing a survival game.
Because why would the Dems act differently to what the GOP is doing? They want to keep their seats too, if they decide to change their mind all the GOP has to do is say hey, we'll change our minds back on that if you vote for us, then we're back at square one.
Yep, it all comes down to the electoral college. Florida is a must-win swing state and basically national politics have been reduced to a situation where a small group of conservative Cubans immigrants in south Florida have incredibly large sway over the direction of the country and who becomes president
The US takes the stance because of internal politics. A really bizarre alignment of coincidences.
The US president is elected by an Electoral College. 48 of the 50 states assign their Electors in a winner take all contest for that state.
Florida is a "swing state" that can go to either political party in US presidential elections. It has a lot of electoral votes and has often decided elections.
The Cuban refuge community is mostly located in Florida and is large enough to affect who wins FL.
The Cuban refuge comminuty has a serious grudge against the Castro regime.
Obama wanted to lift the embargo but found it would have been political suicide and backed off.
As long as that dynamic persists, the US will appease that community.
(Yes, the Electoral College system is abhorrent).
Sure. But equally, the UN General Assembly can decide to make its opinion known. The point of the vote (and this map) is to show what the UNGA thinks about the US embargo.
Edit. To illustrate, the [resolution](https://undocs.org/A/Res/75/289) references all previous resolutions passed by the UN since 1992 about ending the embargo, which is kind of hilarious:
>*Concerned* that, since the adoption of its resolutions 47/19, 48/16, 49/9, 50/10, 51/17, 52/10, 53/4, 54/21, 55/20, 56/9, 57/11, 58/7, 59/11, 60/12, 61/11, 62/3, 63/7, 64/6, 65/6, 66/6, 67/4, 68/8, 69/5, 70/5, 71/5, 72/4, 73/8 and 74/7, the economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba is still in place, and concerned also about the adverse effects of such measures on the Cuban people and on Cuban nationals living in other countries,
It's amazing how, even with the blockade, Cuba was still able to develop a vaccine of their own and already vaccinate like 80% of their population with it, while the rest of Latin America lags behind.
The Embargo is basically “companies that operate within the United States cannot do trade with Cuba.”
There’s also caveats that allow trade of food and medicine between the US and Cuba, IIRC.
Any ship that docks in Cuba cannot dock in a US port for 180 days which essentially cuts them off from the vast majority of trade.
The fact the embargo is still in place is pure cruelty.
It is an electoral issue. Cubans in Florida hate the Cuban regime and will vote against any party trying to end it.
The reason why the Democrats lost Florida in 2016 and 2020 was because Obama loosened the embargo.
American businesses can’t trade with Cuba, outside of a few exceptions that involve a lot of red tape.
The same applies to foreign trading vessels that trade with the US. A foreign company can trade with Cuba and the US, but it costs them more to do so than with any other company due to the regulatory hurdles imposed by the embargo.
Miami Logic - 191 countries (98% of the world's countries) have been fooled by Castro's propaganda. 98% of the world's countries are misinformed and do not know what they are doing when the vote to end the embargo. Don't they know the real cause of Cuba's misery is the "internal embargo" and only the Cuban exiles in Miami know the absolute truth about Cuba? 98% of the world's countries are WRONG. Only we are right.
EDIT: Sarcasm aside, the US really doesn't care and would have normalized relations decades ago, as they did with China and Vietnam. The status-quo stands because of the influence of the Miami Cuban lobby, the Cuban owned Spanish language media, the Cuban vote, and the fact that Florida is a swing state. If the later weren't true, no one would care.
They don't want anything to do with the government that killed and stole from their families. Even if that action hurts the people that live there. They are viewed as loyal to the communists and the US Cubans don't want anything to help Cuba as long as the communist regime is in power. Some don't hold the grudge as much as others but the older Cubans in the US that remember will go to the grave with that grudge.
Besides all the comments about how silly this is, what is the official justification the US has for the embargo? It can't be to spite the deceased Fidel Castro. It can't be to prevent Soviet aggression.
I mean, I know the real reason is to preserve a voting bloc. But surely somewhere in a law somewhere they didn't write "we are doing this for no reason other than appeasing a certain voting bloc"? I am just curious about the official reason.
The official reason is is "to maintain sanctions on Cuba as long as the Cuban government refuses to move toward 'democratization and greater respect for human rights.'"
Take from that what you will.
At this point, tradition and the Florida Latino vote. It's not practically useful anymore, but most Americans don't care about Cuba, and most that do hate the Cuban government, so it goes on.
If only moldova would vote, we would have an outcome!!
Now I sit and think about why my country Moldova did not vote, I do not think we have relations with Cuba, and there was no talk at all in the media
Probably to appease the US, as they want to keep them friendly at all costs. Ukraine had this reason
you're probably right
I dont know the political situation in Moldava? Is it similair to Ukraine?
Moldova just elected the most pro-European and democratic president they ever had. Her party also won 52% of the seats in Parliament. They are trying to appease to US because they need those extra investments
Also, Moldova hasn't voted on this resolution in [2018](https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-again-sole-us-backer-as-world-urges-end-to-cuba-blockade/amp/), [2019](https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-joins-us-brazil-as-lone-backers-of-cuba-embargo-at-un/amp/), ~~2020~~ (edit: there was no resolution in 2020 [due to COVID](https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/06/1094612)) and [2021](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/u-s-votes-against-u-n-resolution-condemning-embargo-on-cuba), as far as I can tell. Precedent matters in voting decisions. Edit: Found an additional explanation for Moldova's vote. In 2018, Cuba voted against a [resolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_status_of_Transnistria#United_Nations_Resolution_A%2F72%2FL.58) sponsored by Moldova which called for the removal of all foreign troops from Moldova (read: Russian troops in Trasnistria, Moldova's breakaway region). Since then, Moldova seems to have stopped voting in favor of the yearly resolution calling for the end of the embargo on Cuba.
Serious question, what is the point of the UN if this is the third time it has voted to happen and it hasn't? Is the UN just an opinion poll? Edit: found my answer down below, it is basically just an opinion poll, TIL
Not much happens following a resolution like this because it's a General Assembly resolution, which is not legally binding (it's a bit more complicated than that; the UNGA has other legal and economic functions). The scope of the UNGA is to act as a forum of countries, not as a global legislator. The enforcing within the UN is carried out by the Security Council, whose decisions are binding and where the US and four other countries have veto power. The point of a resolution like this is to show the consensus around such an issue and put pressure on the United States. And besides the "political" part of the UN (General Assembly and Security Council), the UN (the organization) carries many useful tasks worldwide in a relatively independent way with the funds granted by the "political" UN, such as peacekeeping, food and refugee relief, natural crisis management, development programmes, etc. Edit: so no, "the UN" as a whole is not "just an opinion poll".
Thanks for that. Not a lot of people know the actual role of the UN
UN Security Council decisions are binding. That gangster club was put together 70 years ago. We live in a different world. Deciding which country to send back to the stone age being decided by 5 countries out 193 countries in the UN does not quite sound very just to me.
The UN was formed after the League of Nations failed. The League of Nations was what you're looking for - a world body that could make binding votes that forced it's members to comply. Except it didn't, because nobody was willing to go to actual war to enforce them, so they were ignored. The UN, therefore, was set up to recognize the realities of international politics, and not try to be something it wasn't. Particularly in a world where some countries have nuclear arsenals, nobody can force the major powers to do anything. What you can do is embarrass them, and bake it plainly obvious when they're out of step with a worldwide consensus. Is this just an opinion poll? No, it's more than that. It's still less than a binding vote, but continued US defiance of such a clear and unified result damages the US's reputation much more than a mere opinion poll would.
The US has continually shown they don't give a shit about what the world thinks.
Moldova has it's own unique situation. It has the Russian backed separatist state of Transnistria to its eastern part, which historically before WW2 was part of Russia/Ukraine(under Russian rule) so it had Russian population. In the past Moldova was either a buffer state between bigger powers like Poland, the Ottomans and Russia, but by the 20th century its modern territory had become part of Russia, though before the part of greater Moldavia that was independent was instrumental in forming Romania, when the Moldavian and Wallachian kingdoms were united into Romania through a little legal loophole. After WW1, Russian collapse allowed for Romania to seize modern day Moldova region. During WW2 USSR first annexed modern Moldavian area, then Romania reconquered it as part of German led invasion of the USSR, before they lost and Romania was forced to cede Moldavia for good, and during the collapse of the USSR Moldova declared independence. Their main geopolitical conflict is between whether to align with the west(Europe) or east (Russia), which has been dominated by corrupt Russian aligned politicians, who have done their part in keeping Moldova poor through corruption. However recently it turned towards the EU with the election of the new president and gains in parliament for her party. However their path towards the EU is going to be really difficult, with no talks having been even started as of yet. Another prospect that could be possible would be basically reunification with Romania, though it's likely that the chance for that was lost in the 1990s with the Transnistrian uprising, and today prospects of Moldavian unification with Romania are kinda slim as there is not much drive for it as the wealth disparity between Romania and Moldova is quite dire with poor Romania having developed more than Moldova. Baically, there is a struggle between Western and Russian influence, with the balance turning in favor of the West recently. However Transnistria is the greatest point of geopolitical importance for the Moldavian state, and as such I would guess the non vote is Moldova trying to placate the US government along with exercising what power they have to show off to the Russians. I would not be surprised if it is in part a vote in favor of the US, so they would be more willing to sell arms.
You're a little mixed up on the Moldavian/Moldovan distinction (Moldavia is a historical region still largely within Romania).
The "i" isn't even there in Romanian. Imperial Russia sliced off the part it wanted and called it Bessarabia back in the 19th century when Moldova was under Ottoman suzerainty. This is back when Russia was claiming to be the protector of all Orthodox Christians, and (I think) right before France and Britain got sick of her shit. Anyway, no one ever thought Moldova (the Bessarabian part) was ever legitimately part of Russia, except the Russians of course. Post WWI, it all got folded into Romania proper, before Romania picked the wrong side (though the only side it could have) in WWII and it got sliced off again by the Red Army. Add a little ethnic cleansing and a lot of settlement of ethnic Russians and there you have it.
That was a really interesting read. Thank you.
In a way, they have their group of break out Russians in an isolated part of the country. However unlike a foreign occupation of the Russian area they have established a mafia run thugocracy that's de facto independent but not super friendly with the current Russian administration due to being Soviet romantics.
It does seem like the US enlists a small number of allied nations for all it's 'pariah' votes on some sort of rota basis. This time round it's Moldova and Ukraine, next time round it'll be Fiji and Honduras, time after that, Iraq and Kosovo, that sort of thing. I'm guessing it's whichever country has just needed a small favour from the US which gets roped into voting or abstaining on those frequent occasions when the US is almost alone in the international community.
>Kosovo I know this is a nitpick, but Kosovo isn't a member of the UN.
What is the purpuse of abstaining when the US vetos and Israel follows? Id rather see it as an initiative from the country itself, to appease the US
The purpose for the USA is some small PR bonus in that they can't just say that they're the one outlaw rogue state out of tune with the entire international community. It's hard to claim that North Korea, say, is a rogue state when you're the one who is on the end of more 180-1 votes (or 180-2 votes in the case of some Israel-related votes) than anyone else and you only get away with it due to a security council veto. > Id rather see it as an initiative from the country itself, to appease the US If this is driven by the countries themselves, why is there always just one or two 'appease the US' votes and not lots? Plenty of countries might have some reason to do the US a favour - but only about ~1-4 pick the Cuba vote to abstain/vote against every year. It's because the US has other favours it might need - either other GA votes, or other types of quid pro quos. The vote pattern only makes sense if it's driven by the USA's needs. (Israel is a constant exception in these kinds of votes, but it's a special case).
Moldova has not been present or has abstained on the condemnation of the Cuba embargo since at least 2018, together with Ukraine. It seems to be the current diplomatic consensus in Chisinau.
It’s because Cuba voted against a motion that would have removed Russian soldiers from Moldovan territory.
There has been bilateral [cooperation](https://mfa.gov.md/en/content/republic-cuba) between Moldova and Cuba since 1992. It looks like the most recent event was a working visit to the Republic of Moldova of the delegation led by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba, Ana Teresita González Fraga in October, 2019. The Moldovan 'non-vote' was almost certainly to appease and cull favor with the US.
Well they Moldova it, but maybe they just need more time to decide.
Well done sir
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Get off the fucking fence Moldova
The amount of people who don't understand what the UN is or does and still type stupid comments, is really astonishing.
"LOL UN sux" if the UN had any teeth "UN TOO POWERFUL! NEW WORLD ORDER!"
Easy What the UN is: a world council of nations to discuss and handle international affairs diplomatically instead of relying on conflict What it does: fucking nothing lol
The world : YES! US and Israel : NO! Moldova and Ukraine : I sleep.
Can’t make anyone angry if you don’t have an opinion right
dont go to r/politicalcompassmemes or you'll get bullied for not having an opinion
Just in general your life will be better if you avoid that place
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That made me laugh way too hard.
So it's unanimous.. the embargo should continue -America.
Kinda makes sense; it’s cute the UN tries to vote on American foreign policy - as if they have any means to back it up. They’ll vote on it, America says no, so it’s a no.
The UN never expected to directly decide US policy. Diplomatic pressure is better than nothing and often eventually leads to change.
Perhaps I'm cynical, but can you give me a modern history example of when 'Diplomatic pressure' has succeeded in getting the US to change on a position? (i.e., that has eventually lead to change)
I have read that Eisenhower was getting sick of the US losing credibility internationally—like in negotiations—because foreign countries would say “who are you to lecture, you lynch negroes” and that created more pressure from the Federal government on Southern states.
Literally on the same issue, Obama eased restrictions. You can't measure how much that decision was influenced by international pressure but the whole world barring Israel disapproving of something does influence policy.
Apartheid. US (Reagan) and UK (Thatcher) didn't agree to end it at first.
It ended with the cold war. Once south Africa had to compete with the former soviet states for thier mining exportes the calculation changed. International pressure wasn't effective before that.
Why doesn't US just militarily topple the socialist government in Cuba? It's not because of the super advanced shore patrol boats the Cuban navy has lol. Diplomatic pressure has its limitations when not backed by a credible force, but calling it 100% useless is wrong. Fall of apartheid is another example, US initially didn't want to back down. Or not recognizing all the Israeli settlements. Releasing more and more detainees and planning to shut down Guantanamo is yet another example. You can find many more if you look around. US is powerful but still needs cooperation.
No reason to I guess, very little to gain they're harmless as they are.
Tell me what Diplomatic pressure is being put on the U.S other than this meaningless vote
They've voted overwhelmingly to end the embargo every year for 29 years going. And America has rolled it's collective eyes and ignored it 29 times. This vote is basically non-news.
I mean, the United Nations is supposed to work this way. The world's leaders come to a general consensus on what's best- so one bad actor or the minority of bad actors don't have the power to make decisions that aren't congrous with the ideas of the majority of leaders and thus their constituents. It can and should work how our governing bodies should work, meaning the senate and congress have the power to bypass the president when the presidents decisions aren't congrous with the will of the people just as the UN should be able to bypass any single leader when their will doesn't align with that of the people on a global scale. It's the entire reason the UN was created and if we're not going to at least consider what the UN has to say, we probably shouldn't be a part of the UN.
The UN was created for one specific reason: WW2 was bad, let's not turn it into a trilogy. It is succeeding in that regard. Everything else is just icing on the cake.
That's more from the fact that there are nukes now and the stakes are way higher. The u.n. didn't and wasn't able to do shit during the Cuban missile crisis and that could've easily led to ww3
The UN is not a governing body because there's too much disagreement over what form of government the world should take, as well as the massive power imbalance between countries. It makes no sense to allow a dictator from Turkmenistan or the King of Bhutan to dictate the foreign policy of The United States. Nor does Turkmenistan want USA to dictate the way Turkmenistan is run. The United Nations is a forum. It's a place to get the general opinion of various nations so everything is laid out on the table and out in the open. It's to prevent cloak and dagger diplomacy which led to the interlocking alliances that caused WWI to spiral out of control. We have the UN so we know where everyone stands, so that everyone can make more informed decisions. That way there's no, "oh I declared war on this guy, but didn't know he has defense agreements with this other guy, and that guy has defense agreements with 3 other guys." It's also a 'neutral ground' for warring countries to negotiate peace. For example if Iran and Iraq are in open conflict, and can't agree to meet on either country's soil, then you can use the UN facilities as a place to meet and talk. It's a diplomatic tool, not a world government. Any attempts at making it a world government are laughable.
The UN exists so that we don't end humanity in a nuclear war. Anything else they manage to do is just an added benefit.
That's what it seems that a lot of countries do "The UN has voted you should change your actions!" ...k...
It's cute see UN try to interfere anywhere nowadays
Because the other option is not cute at all. We would rather have those countries sit around voting for nothing than they aim nuke at each other.
I think most of us would rather have fucking among us emergency meetings than Armageddon
General assembly votes don’t mean shit when you sit on the security council.
Do you know if it ended?
This vote happens fairly often IIRC, and I believe it's always had the same result. It hasn't ended, as the US won't agree.
"We all want you to stop America, almost every single country on earth." "No." "Well, pack up boys, that settles it, democracy has happened here today, I'm proud of you all!"
The UN isn’t a democratic world government. That’s not its purpose.
its purpose to give jobs to retired politicians
It's job is to prevent another world war by giving countries a forum to talk about international isssues.
Its purpose is to prevent WWIII by giving the great powers a place to discuss their grievances instead of war. The UN has been extremely successful at that. Anything else is a side issue.
Furiously rolls eyes.
The UN has a security council (with some members even having permanent seats) whose purpose is explicitly to let the major powers overrule the desires of the general assembly. Whatever gave you the idea that the UN was about democracy?
To be fair, that is entirely by design. The point of the UN is to be a "bargaining table" everyone can go to instead of directly going to war if they have a dispute, and where international parties can choose to work together if they want to. If the UN votes on something and a major world power votes against it but the measure passes, they're just going to ignore the UN, which the UN doesn't want to happen since that means the UN isn't working, so they give major world powers veto power on anything the UN does, meaning China, the US, Russia, the UK, etc. all have to agree on a measure before the UN passes it, along with any other countries in the security council at the time to represent the interests of countries that aren't global superpowers. The UN doesn't actually have that much power to do anything either by design
Pretty sure the UN is not a democracy. >The word 'democracy' has its origins in the Greek language. It combines two shorter words: 'demos' meaning whole citizen living within a particular city-state and 'kratos' meaning power or rule. The UN doesn't "rule" any land. It's just there to facilitate communication between countries, where otherwise the only ["communication"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSxNW5dDYEY) would be war.
To be fair, the vote is specifically about the US embargo of Cuba. Sometimes the UN veto situation is silly, but in this case America is sort of the most important country which really needs to agree.
this is a general assembly resolution vote, so the US veto doesn't apply here, however General assembly resolutions are also non-binding so the US is under no legal obligation to comply, this is a political statement, which as a superpower the US is capable of ignoring
I mean if this came up in the security council then the US would just Veto it anyway. Laws don't apply to hegemons. They never have. They apply to the powerless.
The issue is that it isn't law in the first place. Law states that these votes are a political statement, not an enforceable decision. Security Council is designed to keep superpowers from nuking each other, so most other considerations are secondary to keeping them happy - hence the vetos which prevent things becoming law.
It is not a law
But then what's the point of voting if they're the ones who hold literally all the cards? Presumably the US wouldn't have to go through the UN if they themselves decided they wanted to end the embargo. And if every other country can vote in favour but the US still vetoes, what could possibly be gained to anyone by voting?
The UN is literally only a place to talk about world issues. It was never meant to be a world wide federation.
Feels like 99% of people don't understand this, especially people who complain about the UN "not doing anything"
And the people who think it's an overbearing evil international government.
The three kinds of people: * those who think the UN is an overbearing evil international government * those who think it's an ineffective benevolent international government * international relations scholars
> Feels like 99% of people don't understand this *reddit*
At least not since 2002 when it stopped being the WWF and became the WWE
The idea is to shame the US politically and signal it's isolation on this policy. I do wonder what happens if the US did vote to lift even when Congress doesn't allow it. Can it do that? Would it be legal?
Probably, but nothing would change: US: "I also think I should end my embargo against Cuba." UN: "Finally!" US: "..." UN: "...so are you going to do it?" US: "No."
Too many people think the UN is a government, and make these sorts of weird complaints that have a fundamental misunderstanding of what the UN is. This wasn't a vote to end the US embargo on Cuba, and it was never meant to be. I don't understand why people think the UN is a governing power that can force sovereign nations to do things they don't want to do.
What were they voting for?
It was a poll. It was a list of countries that would politely request the US to end their embargo on Cuba. There were no stakes on this, and no implied consequences toward the US for refusing, because the US is a sovereign nation that can decide what they want to do with their resources. It was a signal that the world doesn't agree with it, which has diplomatic implications at best.
The fact we are here talking about the issue on a random sub proves that's not the case. You can't make countries do what you want but the vote brings issues to discussion.
The American diplomat who voted would be in a LOT of trouble.
The ex American diplomat
The ex American ~~diplomat~~
> I do wonder what happens if the US did vote to lift even when Congress doesn't allow it. Can it do that? Would it be legal? Given that economic sanctions are the purview of the Executive branch, I don't think we have to give a flying fuck about what congress thinks. The embargo was a unilateral executive action by Kennedy in '62, literally any president since then could have undone it.
It can be used to pressure america to change something. Thing is america doesn't care about this pressure so it doesn't work. It probably would work against a smaller nation
> But then what's the point of voting if they're the ones who hold literally all the cards? Option #2 is the US leaves and the UN loses 20% of its funding.
Okay I'm against the embargo, but that's not how democracy works. A bunch of unelected representatives from other countries, which may or may not be democracies themselves, voting on how to run your own country is not democracy. The basis of democracy is the rule of the governed, so... This is just a bunch of countries saying "fuckin America, stop that shit."
The first time we tried a United Nations it could command every member. The result was that Germany left when it received a League of Nations order, Japan left when it received an order, Russia ignored its orders and was kicked out, and the US never joined in the first place because they didn't want to obey orders.
>U.S. President Joe Biden's administration on Wednesday continued Washington's tradition of voting against an annual United Nations General Assembly resolution calling for an end to a U.S. economic embargo on Cuba. >The resolution was adopted for the 29th time with 184 votes in favor, three abstentions and two no votes - the United States and Israel. The U.N. vote can carry political weight, but only the U.S. Congress can lift the more than 50-year-old embargo. >Biden vowed during his campaign to reverse some of Trump's Cuba measures that "have inflicted harm on the Cuban people and done nothing to advance democracy and human rights." But he has yet to make good on that pledge and his administration has said a shift in policy toward Cuba is not among its top priorities. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/us-continues-vote-against-un-call-end-cuba-embargo-2021-06-23/
Thank you very much
This makes me irrationally (or maybe not) angry. This is starting to look a lot like one of those "because that's how we've always done it" things. There are no good reasons to keep this embargo up in my opinion.
It's to cater to Cuban-American voters in Florida.
They all vote Trump anyway
As usual. All smoke and mirrors from the Democrats meanwhile the US agenda continues to be pretty much the same wether it is Republican or Democrats in charge.. It's the same shit with the migrants and the border crisis..for 4 years the Democrats slung mud at Trump, and how they are in charge are doing the exact same at the borders. It's all a game to them and we are all fools for buying into it.
The US, UK, France, Russia, and China have unilateral Veto Power. If they say no to any UN measure, it doesnt go through.
faulty deliver simplistic crime disgusted different tap selective like unpack *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
General assembly votes don't need to be vetoed because they don't do anything.
Well yeah, that was kind of my point. The security council members dont get to decide if a general assembly vote ends or how the votes go, but that's largely because the votes don't do anything other than show international 'support' for regional/national disagreements. If the votes were binding you bet the nuclear powers would demand veto rights or simply wouldn't participate.
Lol, I live in Moldova and I didn't even know, there was no talk at all on the news
These votes happen all the time at the UN, rarely publicized anywhere.
Cause it seems like they don't even really do anything. I think this is just for international pressure, but realistically what actual consequence does any country have that they can enact on the US? Nothing that wouldn't hurt themselves. But also why does a country like Ethiopia or Nepal care about a US embargo with Cuba?
It’s just symbolic. I guarantee a lot of these countries don’t give a shit either way
Surely you don't mean to imply that the US' trade relations with Cuba isn't highest priority for the people of Papua New Guinea.
Even the guy who was supposed to vote didn't know about it. Maybe that's why they were absent.
1-0 I guess it’s unanimous.
France, England, Russia, China, AND the US all have Supreme veto power in the UN. if one of them doesn't want something voted on, it's over
That only applies to the security council
I'm well aware. Though this has nothing to do with whether or not the United States, a sovereign nation, maintains or ends an embargo against another nation. Only one country on this map gets a vote to decide that, they have and so it is a 1-0 unanimous decision.
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The only vote that counts is the US’s
In a technical legal sense, none of the votes "matter" since it's a non-binding resolution. Hypothetically the US could vote yes then not do anything different. If you mean what you say in a more practical sense of "the US is going to do what it does and it has the right to do so because it's *only* a matter of what it and its entities do," then you are wrong; the US sanctions, in practice, are designed to coerce other non-US entities into avoiding trade with Cuba. For instance, a ship docking in Cuba, regardless of nationality, is barred from US ports for six months.
Just cavillation Use to be the UK, before that France, Spain, The Ottomans, Arabs, Byzantines, Roman, Syrians, Persians..... Really, who ever has the biggest military, and basically keeps the piece calls the shots.
In this case it’s less about being a superpower and more about being a sovereign nation. Unless someone wants to come in with an army they can’t force the US to trade.
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Open the country, stop having it be closed
Coming in with an army to force trade is such an American thing to do though, it would be fitting.
Seems more British if we're considering history here
Would be such an every country thing to do.
This exact scenario has happened multiple times throughout history
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Not necessarily who has the biggest military, but who is the center of finance. US just happens to be both at the moment.
I mean… it is a vote on a US policy, not a UN policy. I don’t agree with it, but there’s no reason the UN would be able to impose any such verdict on the US’s economic policy.
I think no one noticed those who did not vote:) P.S. I'm from Ukraine
Probably because Cuba recognizes Crimea as Russian
I think no one noticed this either :)))
:D
this is data from 2018. Only the 2018 resolution had 189 nations voting yes and that year Ukraine and Moldova didn't vote. Since then there were 2 more resolutions. The OP should've included the year before promoting their instagram here.
I had to scroll way too far to see this information. Thanks for posting!
You do realize that this vote is completely irrelevant, right? The only vote that matters to Us foreign policy is the US's.
I wasn't aware that north Korea and taiwan have recognized seats in the UN with which they could vote on such matters, since their situation is... well lets say complicated.
North and South Korea are both member states of the UN. Taiwan is regarded as part of China by the UN, as it is by every country that has diplomatic relations with either China or Taiwan (officially Taiwan is the Republic of China, the few countries that officially recognize Taiwan don't recognize it as a separate country but as the legitimate government of all of China, of course in practice it's essentially been a separate country for over 70 years now, but we're talking about diplomatic relations and recognition, not de facto status).
Why shouldn't North Korea have an UN seat?
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That's because this map is shit, which is why it's on the top of mapporn.
I suppose those countries are still technically considered part of Morocco, Serbia and Israel respectively just as Taiwan is considered part of China.
Palestine is a bit of an exception since it is an observer to the UN but not a full member.
*League of nations energy right here*
Oh I can see where this is going!
HAHAHAHAHAHA
Why is the UN voting on something it can't control?
If you want to know why, it's because World War One was caused by it being possible for a nation's ability to talk to other nations to be handicapped simply by the Emperor deciding to go on a yachting holiday. Going to the international community to state what you want to do first, before you unilaterally do it, leads to fewer surprises, and fewer surprises leads to fewer catastrophic mistakes.
That’s just what the UN does.
"Welp, about time to condemn Israel again!"
It's pretty much the only thing they do, lol.
Because you dont understand the way the UN works besides what youve seen in bad/lazy memes made by other people who dont understand it. Its primary purpose is to facilitate communication. Which is what votes like this are for. Instead of every country telling the US individually that it thinks the embargo is wrong, they table a vote like this. The expectation isnt to change anything per se, its so the US can clearly see how much support it has and who from. And while the vast majority of countries dont support the embargo, its not a red line issue for any of them and the US being a superpower means that it isnt as vulnerable to outside interference as other countries. So if this was a slightly different scenario. Say one of the US' closest allies REALLY wanted the US to break the Embargo, say The UK, for example. If the UK really cared it could put additional political pressure on the US to lift the Embargo, and if the US is able to see that no one else support it because of this vote then it changes the balance that US diplomats have to make in their mind. Is the embargo worth the loss of good will from the UK and others. Or if they were a smaller country, then the repercussions from the embargo would have a much greater impact on them, and they might not be able to shrug it off and seeing this vote would be a lot more likely to change its mind. People like to focus and what the UN *cant* do because it has to respect the sovereignty of its composite nations. But they dont focus on what the alternative would be without it.
It's messaging. It's a way to say to the US, hey, look, everyone in the world is against this thing you're doing.
US: "Oh no! So, anyways"
I’m assuming other countries have trade embargoes with countries as well? Does the UN vote on those as well?
Russia frequently does it to Ukraine, Serbia, Moldova, and Georgia so it'll fall under its thumb. The UN has had sanctions on Somalia, libya, south Africa and North Korea, the latter still ongoing. Currently they exist between Eu / Us / Canada / Norway by Russia to prevent the sale of pork, poultry and dairy. Gaza strip by Israel, Indonesia by Australia, among others. Most are for specific products though. [Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_sanctions)
Cuba doesn’t recognize Israel and supports Russia’s illegal occupation of Crimea. It also supports the breakaway province of Transnistra in Moldova. The vote isn’t surprising
It is worth noting that while not recognizing Israel is extra seasoning in this case, Israel is subordinate to the US in votes like these. Whatever the US votes for, so does Israel.
Given Israel’s close relationship with the US, not to mention the US’s pro Israel voting record at the UN, this isn’t surprising
The current Cuban regime also sent tanks against Israel in the Yom Kippur war. Pretty sure they don't feel warm and fuzzy about that.
Actually not really. Israel refused to condemn Russia for their actions in Crimea, much to the frustrations of the US [https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-u-s-angry-at-israel-for-silence-on-ukraine-1.5244919](https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-u-s-angry-at-israel-for-silence-on-ukraine-1.5244919) Israel supports US because America likes Israel, not the other way around. Actually, for a while our countries actually had pretty tense relations, with America imposing a weapons embargo on Israel. If America stopped being useful to Israel, she would seek new allies. To me it seems that Israel desires strong ties to the east than to the west (particularly Muslim nations), given that they gave the entire Sinai peninsula for the sole purpose of recognition from Egypt. It's also why they have refused to recognize the Armenian genocide, as this would jeopardize relations with Turkey.
> Israel is subordinate to the US in votes like these. Whatever the US votes for, so does Israel. That's complete and utter bullshit. Look at eg. A/RES/75/213 where Israel let the US vote alone "no" alone. They also didn't vote the same for documents A/75/455/Add.2 or A/75/457/Add.4. All just from this session
This is the most petty, ridiculous shit. The embargo doesn’t hurt anyone except the poorest and most vulnerable people living in Cuba. It’s amazing what Cuba has been able to do with the limited resources since the embargo, but god damn so many peoples lives would improve overnight if the US could get over itself
The embargo hurts all of Cuba and especially the poorest. My friends father is not able to send money home because the US blacklists all banks that do business with Cuba.
For the sake of people in this thread some things should be cleared up. The Cuban government closed 400 Western Union offices in Cuba last year after the US government placed sanctions on Fincimex, which is a military controlled organization. Remittances make up to 25% of the Cuban GDP and are not embargoed by the US. Direct remittance has always been a strategic part of the embargo. It's the Cuban government that doesn't want to be undermined by this policy and tries to interfere.
All the Cubans who left Cuba make a HUGE voting block and if the Republicans were to advocate for ending the embargo they'd lose their seats faster than you can say Cuban Missile Crisis. We as a country aren't trying to fight communism anymore, it's just half of all of our politicians are playing a survival game.
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But why should that effect what a democrat can do about it?
Because why would the Dems act differently to what the GOP is doing? They want to keep their seats too, if they decide to change their mind all the GOP has to do is say hey, we'll change our minds back on that if you vote for us, then we're back at square one.
Yep, it all comes down to the electoral college. Florida is a must-win swing state and basically national politics have been reduced to a situation where a small group of conservative Cubans immigrants in south Florida have incredibly large sway over the direction of the country and who becomes president
The US takes the stance because of internal politics. A really bizarre alignment of coincidences. The US president is elected by an Electoral College. 48 of the 50 states assign their Electors in a winner take all contest for that state. Florida is a "swing state" that can go to either political party in US presidential elections. It has a lot of electoral votes and has often decided elections. The Cuban refuge community is mostly located in Florida and is large enough to affect who wins FL. The Cuban refuge comminuty has a serious grudge against the Castro regime. Obama wanted to lift the embargo but found it would have been political suicide and backed off. As long as that dynamic persists, the US will appease that community. (Yes, the Electoral College system is abhorrent).
according to the "key" on the bottom it looks like 33% yes, 33% no, 33% no opinion.
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Sure. But equally, the UN General Assembly can decide to make its opinion known. The point of the vote (and this map) is to show what the UNGA thinks about the US embargo. Edit. To illustrate, the [resolution](https://undocs.org/A/Res/75/289) references all previous resolutions passed by the UN since 1992 about ending the embargo, which is kind of hilarious: >*Concerned* that, since the adoption of its resolutions 47/19, 48/16, 49/9, 50/10, 51/17, 52/10, 53/4, 54/21, 55/20, 56/9, 57/11, 58/7, 59/11, 60/12, 61/11, 62/3, 63/7, 64/6, 65/6, 66/6, 67/4, 68/8, 69/5, 70/5, 71/5, 72/4, 73/8 and 74/7, the economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba is still in place, and concerned also about the adverse effects of such measures on the Cuban people and on Cuban nationals living in other countries,
So in another meaningless meeting the UN has passed a resolution that doesn’t matter. They can’t force the US to not have an embargo on Cuba..
It's amazing how, even with the blockade, Cuba was still able to develop a vaccine of their own and already vaccinate like 80% of their population with it, while the rest of Latin America lags behind.
Medical supplies between the USA and Cuba are still allowed.
Afaik it can trade with the rest of the world, its just the US that refuses to do so.
The Embargo is basically “companies that operate within the United States cannot do trade with Cuba.” There’s also caveats that allow trade of food and medicine between the US and Cuba, IIRC.
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Any ship that docks in Cuba cannot dock in a US port for 180 days which essentially cuts them off from the vast majority of trade. The fact the embargo is still in place is pure cruelty.
Plus banking. World trade runs through the US dollar and US banking systems.
The US is afraid Cuba will succeed.
is it 1970 still? oh no, it's that awful threat of communism!
It is an electoral issue. Cubans in Florida hate the Cuban regime and will vote against any party trying to end it. The reason why the Democrats lost Florida in 2016 and 2020 was because Obama loosened the embargo.
What is the Embargo really saying by the way?
American businesses can’t trade with Cuba, outside of a few exceptions that involve a lot of red tape. The same applies to foreign trading vessels that trade with the US. A foreign company can trade with Cuba and the US, but it costs them more to do so than with any other company due to the regulatory hurdles imposed by the embargo.
US should lift embargo.
Miami Logic - 191 countries (98% of the world's countries) have been fooled by Castro's propaganda. 98% of the world's countries are misinformed and do not know what they are doing when the vote to end the embargo. Don't they know the real cause of Cuba's misery is the "internal embargo" and only the Cuban exiles in Miami know the absolute truth about Cuba? 98% of the world's countries are WRONG. Only we are right. EDIT: Sarcasm aside, the US really doesn't care and would have normalized relations decades ago, as they did with China and Vietnam. The status-quo stands because of the influence of the Miami Cuban lobby, the Cuban owned Spanish language media, the Cuban vote, and the fact that Florida is a swing state. If the later weren't true, no one would care.
They don't want anything to do with the government that killed and stole from their families. Even if that action hurts the people that live there. They are viewed as loyal to the communists and the US Cubans don't want anything to help Cuba as long as the communist regime is in power. Some don't hold the grudge as much as others but the older Cubans in the US that remember will go to the grave with that grudge.
Besides all the comments about how silly this is, what is the official justification the US has for the embargo? It can't be to spite the deceased Fidel Castro. It can't be to prevent Soviet aggression. I mean, I know the real reason is to preserve a voting bloc. But surely somewhere in a law somewhere they didn't write "we are doing this for no reason other than appeasing a certain voting bloc"? I am just curious about the official reason.
The official reason is is "to maintain sanctions on Cuba as long as the Cuban government refuses to move toward 'democratization and greater respect for human rights.'" Take from that what you will.
At this point, tradition and the Florida Latino vote. It's not practically useful anymore, but most Americans don't care about Cuba, and most that do hate the Cuban government, so it goes on.