Darwin is laughing in hell. “We’re going to restrict access to a critical resource in order to starve out our bleeding edge high tech peer!”
“Oh no by creating a hostile environment our peer has been forced to aggressively evolve to thrive in the new environment and has developed more powerful and robust parity with us! We did not intend this!”
(Darwin is not in hell he’s a hoopy frood who knows where his towel is).
Same with Russia over the last two decades.
I think what we learned here is that the US didn’t sanction enough. They should sanction more. In fact the US should fully close its borders and restrict all trade with anyone and everyone else in the world.
Keep spreading the good word, Frank.
How come that hasn’t happened with other places suffering from sanctions, like North Korea or Cuba?
It is happening. It just takes longer for those countries because they started from a much less empowered position.
Because those countries were sanctioned from the very start and the US has no interest in “warming up.” The US warmed up to China because they were both anti-USSR, and eventually that culminated to Deng (and I think Jiang) opening China’s markets to foreign capital.
North Korea and Cuba make allies wherever they can, and those allies happen to all be ones the US hate. They don’t have any leverage compared to a giant country like China being against the US’ cold war rival. Cuba has recent liberalization policies, but it will never matter to the US because it broke the simple rule: Cuba overthrew the US’ order in its ‘backyard.’ They will never be forgiven for it.
Vietnam was basically persona non grata after winning the war despite most of the world supporting it because the US’ sanctions would affect everyone who dared to do business with them. As a result, they were forced to open up their markets as well which is why they were able to develop more compared to Cuba and North Korea. And now Vietnam is in a similar situation as the Sino-Soviet split because it’s a large socialist country that has tension with another larger socialist country, and the US wants to exploit that but Vietnam is taking s cautious approach compared to China who went all in on anti-sovietism
Despite all this, Cuba and NK have still made developments. Cuba with its advanced medical and scientific research and NK with its missiles. In fact Cuba has the same or even higher life expectancy compared to Americans.
you mean how cuba has developed multiple cancer treatments that are not available in the usa?
in fact, medical care in cuba in general is doing more with less. they’ve achieved efficacy and efficiency in ways we’d never imagine. there is a reason they have a higher life expectancy than us (and its years better when you isolate out the rich). they also were the first country to prevent transmission of hiv from mother to baby. things like that
also, cuba is one of the only countries that is considered environmentally sustainable longterm
That’s true. But I remember hearing how they’ve suffered a lot from lack of food and stuff, though.
yes, especially after the ussr collapse. it was called the “special period” because there was a lot of food that was imported. this forced cuba to focus for over 2 decades on food independence, community gardens, agriculture, and the like. times can still be lean there due to the embargoes but things are better than the 90s
First they came for the micro-controllers, and I did not speak out because I was not a micro-controller manufacturer…
