Remember Girón: Cuba and Ukraine in parallel

Without much fuss another passed anniversary of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, but certain keys to that historical situation are becoming current, such as the so-called intelligence reports with which President John F. Kennedy was cajoled into giving the green light to the operation.

In March 1961, the CIA had estimated that "less than 20 percent of the population" supported Fidel Castro and that "75 to 80 percent of the militiamen would desert." In early April it reported that "the morale of the militias was declining” and the army itself “had been successfully penetrated by opposition groups and would not fight.”

Similarly, the Russian intelligence services deceived Vladimir Putin with which the invasion of Ukraine would be a blitzkrieg, the Russian troops were going to be received as liberators and Volodymyr Zelensky would collapse due to simple military pressure on kyiv. In turn, NATO intelligence services deceived the entire West that Russia would collapse under economic sanctions and Putin would be overthrown.

tabloid press

The journalistic coverage of the Russian-NATO-Ukrainian war has another strong parallel with the history of Cuba. Russia already managed to establish itself behind the southern bank of the Dnieper River to link Crimea and Donbas by land, in addition to gradually occupying the provinces of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia. However, Ukraine is winning the war on the Internet, television, radio and newspapers. The same thing happened with the Girón episode.

On April 18, 1961, the Assault Brigade 2506 was winning in the newspapers and wires. According to The Miami Herald, had “penetrated into the interior of Cuba” and was heading towards the central highway to “cut the island in two.” The agency UPI reported that he had dealt “a severe blow to Castro's forces in the initial assault” after landing “on beaches in four of Cuba's six provinces.” By that media line, that same day an air attack caused 1,800 casualties to Castro.

The CIA conceived the invasion of Cuba as a covert operation, even though it could not be covered up in any way. The Pentagon conceived the war in Ukraine against Russia in an equally counterintuitive manner. If NATO escalation eventually results in Russia being lost, then Moscow will resort to tactical nuclear weapons to wipe kyiv off the face of the Earth. And if NATO responded in kind, Russia would then resort to strategic nuclear weapons.

Such as Fidel Castro urged Nikita Khrushchev in 1962 to end the world rather than give in one bit in the Missile Crisis, Zelensky did not hesitate to urge NATO to declare direct war on Russia, transforming the impact of a missile into Moscow's aggression. Ukrainian strayed against a farm in Poland.

No matter how hateful it is, Donald Trump stated the best theorem of war as a continuation of United States foreign policy: a war that never ends is bad business. Washington expresses its irrationality by not revealing that it is also bad business to engage in a war that cannot be won.

And just as it definitively pushed Cuba towards the Soviet orbit, the United States policy with Ukraine already has the counterproductive result of the alliance between China and Russia, which through territory, population, economy and military power changes the global correlation of geopolitical forces against of the USA and its NATO.

Minimal history

Since Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago, almost the entire mainstream press has been announcing wonderful weapons that would seal the defeat of Russia: anti-tank javelins, Howitzer, HIMARS, tanks I don't know what and airplanes I don't know how. Meanwhile, kyiv does not publish its casualties, but the Russian ones. And it does so at the inflationary pace of the death count from the aforementioned air attack in Girón, but it has just been denied with the Pentagon papers that, by the work and (mis) grace of the cyber specialist of the National Guard in Massachusetts Jack Teixeira, circulated on networks social.

Although General Mark Milley, head of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, publicly stated that the number of Russian invaders killed in action exceeded 100,000, the hitherto secret report estimates between 16,000 and 17,500 on Putin's side and 61,000 on the other. 71,500 in Zelensky's camp at the end of March this year. Thus, Teixeira will also go to jail because he showed that both the Pentagon and the White House and the Democratic and Republican leaders of Congress were lying.

Ultimately, history after World War II reveals that the United States has entered wars and more wars without achieving its intended political objectives. Not in Korea (1950-53) nor in Vietnam (1964-75) nor in Iraq (2003-11) nor in Afghanistan (2001-21). Washington has not been able to overthrow dictator Hafez al-Assad in Syria since 2011 and is still considering overthrowing Putin, in parallel with that huddle in 1960 prior to the Bay of Pigs invasion: Castro has six months left.