A proposed oil refinery, one of the largest in the world, may signal the renewal of Cold War tensions between Washington and Moscow over Cuba.
During a visit by Russian lawmakers to Cuba in recent days, the idea of a refinery construction was discussed, and Russia’s TASS news agency quoted deputy speaker Alexander Babakov as saying.
Cuba’s key crude oil supplier is nearby Venezuela. However, shipments have dropped in recent years, also due to Venezuela’s crumbling oil industry and the U.S. sanctions against Cuba’s staunch ally, Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro.
The crumbling Venezuelan oil industry means that less fuel oil from the country sitting on the world’s largest oil reserves is reaching Cuban shores to power the old power plants on the island.
Cuba’s power generation is heavily dependent on oil products, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Cuba’s energy supply mainly comes from oil products, which account for more than 80 percent of power generation. Mass protests erupted in Cuba in 2021, due to the crisis in Venezuela and its oil industry.
Early in 2024, Cuba, which has seen chronic shortages of gasoline and other fuels, said fuel prices would jump by 500% from February 1, 2024.
The United States, Cuba, and the Soviet Union
The troubled relationship between these three countries has its roots in the 1933 Sargeant’s Revolt. A group of disgruntled noncommissioned officers overthrew the provisional government and installed a military dictatorship. Col. Fulgencio Batista, one “head” of the five-member pentarchy, seized control of the army. After serving as president between 1940 and 1944, Basista retired to Florida. He came out of retirement in 1952, just as Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and their ilk were plotting a revolution.
The Cuba Batista returned to was much different from the one he left just eight years earlier. Facing certain electoral defeat, he led a military coup against President Carlos Prío Socarrás that preempted the election. He almost immediately suspended the 1940 constitution, which he himself had installed. With the support of the United States, he proceeded to most political liberties, significantly including the right to strike.
That revocation opened the door for foreigners, mostly large U.S. companies, to occupy about 70 percent of the arable land. When the people grumbled, Batista established tighter censorship of the media while also utilizing his Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities secret police to carry out wide-scale violence, torture, and public executions. Thousands of Cubans died.
Because of this anti-communist stance, the United States continued supporting Batista until his overthrow on New Year’s Day 1959.
Barely three years later, after a botched U.S.-backed invasion, the Soviet Union began building missile bases in Cuba. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara advised President Kennedy to consider a nuclear or conventional strike, and he also advised him to consider the consequences of such a strike.
McNamara did not know the full extent of these consequences until 1992, when he learned that the missiles in Cuba were ready to fire, and they would’ve devastated the United States in minutes. McNamara also learned that these missiles included ninety tactical warheads, which would’ve vaporized a U.S. invasion force.
Incidentally, McNamara also learned that Castro almost literally begged Soviet dictator Nikita Kruschev to launch a first strike, even though Casto knew the United States would retaliate and wipe Cuba off the map.
Contractors in Cuba
Then, as now, private military contractors support American interests, particularly at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.
A handful of facilities at this installation date back to the Cuban Missile Crisis days. Many date back to the 1980s, 1990s, and late Cold War period. These facilities must be updated for tangible and intangible reasons.
Modern drones, missiles, and other weapons systems require modern facilities. If you put new wine in old wineskins, the wineskins will burst. Modern weapons do not have their full potential unless they’re on modern platforms.
Intangibly, Cuba is a dangerous place that is far from home. Additionally, because of the current instability on this island, men and women who serve there are basically confined to barracks most of the time. Modern people, like modern weapons, need modern facilities to function properly. A rec room makeover might not seem like much, but to the men and women who use it, the makeover means everything.
Speaking of instability, security is also an issue at Guantanamo Bay, perhaps now more than at any other time since the 1960s. The Cuban government is quick to blame the United States for the country’s various ills, and it only takes one fanatic with one Molotov cocktail to cause a lot of damage.
Frequently, security contractors are the first line of defense against such random and unpredictable acts. Additionally, in many cases, they are the only line of defense.
Other contractors are longshoremen. On an island like Cuba, almost everything arrives and departs by sea. The people who handle this loading and unloading no longer rely exclusively on their backs, like those guys in On the Waterfront. They also use sophisticated machines that require sophisticated maintenance and housing, as discussed above.
Injury Compensation Available
Contractor duties in Cuba are varied, as are the injuries they sustain. However, the medical bill payment benefits available under the Defense Base Act are the same for everyone. All these claims also have similar issues, which a Defense Base Act lawyer deals with every day.
- Transportation: Most serious injury victims at Guantanamo Bay must be evacuated to hospitals in the United States. These flights cost tens of thousands of dollars. Doctors often err on the side of caution and order such emergency evacuation when it is not absolutely necessary. But these victims are in no position to second-guess the decisions of their doctors.
- Emergency Care: The need for long-range evacuation often delays effective treatment. Many medical facilities at Guantanamo Bay are little more than first-aid stations. As a result, when doctors treat these victims, they must use more aggressive and more expensive means. These more expensive means usually do not jive with the boilerplate tables most adjusters use.
- Physical Therapy: Some students require several lessons to master a concept, and others master that concept overnight. Similarly, some injury victims require multiple physical therapy sessions to regain lost function, while others may only need one or two visits. That’s especially true if the victim sustained a brain injury. PT progress is notoriously uneven in these situations.
Significantly, DBA victims normally get to choose their own doctors, and they may switch doctors at any time. This arrangement avoids the “company doctor” problem. These physicians serve two masters — the patients they treat and the entities that pay them.
For more information about the DBA claims process, contact Barnett, Lerner, Karsen, Frankel & Castro, P.A.