When President Donald Trump went to war with Iran in late February, he expected an easy win and a humiliating capitulation from Iran. Instead, both the United States and Iran have suffered military costs, as well as substantial economic damage and loss of life.

The result is far from what Trump anticipated in trying to surpass the nuclear materials agreement forged by the Obama administration. The military strikes continue.

In the case of Cuba, the Trump administration is likewise making a terrible situation worse. As humanitarian needs of Cubans grow more dire each day, Washington seems engaged in a perverse experiment: How much misery, destruction and degradation in the service of strangulation diplomacy is needed to achieve complete capitulation to U.S. demands – demands that change from day to day?

The U.S. unilateral economic sanctions were first imposed on Cuba more than 60 years ago, as detailed in the infamous Mallory memo of 1960, with the explicit aim of “denying money and supplies to Cuba … to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

Instead, Cuba turned to the Soviet Union and established trade with the Eastern Bloc. In this period, it built a renowned health care system, achieved infant and child mortality rates on a par with the most developed Western nations, provided subsidized basic foods to every household, nearly........

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