The Cuban government has refused a request by the U.S. Embassy in Havana to allow it to import diesel for its generators while the Trump administration continues to impose a fuel blockade on the island, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
China doesn’t necessarily ask for payment - they also support infrastructure development via the Belt and Road Initiative in which they own the infrastructure built.
It’s as much a power play as the US trying to take over, but it does help small nations with projects they cannot afford otherwise. I have family in another Caribbean island and if there is storm damage that destroys a bridge or road, China and recently India are generally open to helping via foreign investment.
It does beg the question of whether small nations are truly sovereign, or if this is just the modern day colonialism without calling it that. However, I’ll say that my family vastly prefers the power grab from India or China that leaves them with something they need compared to the power grabs from the US which basically just bill them for being poor.
Colonialism was a whole other thing, though, it wasn’t just a lack of sovereignty. There was forceful extraction of wealth going on, which is why India went from one of the richest places on Earth to a very poor nation over the period of British rule. There’s “neocolonialism” where rich nations get an unfair deal in more indirect ways, but the scale is just dramatically smaller, and at the Western end amounts to shaving off cents.
The thing with Chinese investments is they are happy to front the money sometimes, but eventually they call in their debt. Places in Africa are finding out about this the hard way right now. I also question if powering all of Cuba is really something even they could do in a span of weeks.
For the most part what’s happened is that China is not longer funding new and more Africa infrastructure. A lot of this is due to the infrastructure having now been built, and the economic benefits from said infrastructure being used to pay the loans back. As intended.
They utilize I think 20% solar currently, but the problem is also storage for nighttime power consumption. Even if they could generate 100% during the day they also need the infrastructure to store or generate for nighttime.
Small nations are going to need help from larger, friendly nations, that’s just reality. It doesn’t make them Colonies until they lose their ability to make their own choices.
But this begs the question of what exactly makes an independent nation. Can you truly make your own choices when everything you do will be scrutinized by the hegemons who dictate how much aid you deserve to receive? Can you ever prosper when international currency favours specific countries and tiny nations can’t trade on the world stage without the big countries taking their cut?
Today, large powers don’t conquer countries in name. Rather, they conquer them via economic force and allow them to stay “independent” in name only.
Even a massive nation like America needs allies, so a small one is going to need them even more.
Sure, there is always the chance that someone bigger will take over in some way, but what else is a small country going to do? That’s just life. They can’t get along alone, so they have to seek out alliances of many kinds - political, military, trade, educational, etc. You just have to choose your partners carefully, and hope they don’t undergo a major political shift, and suddenly become predatory.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what’s happened with America.