I think a big part of how Cuba has survived is how well it has penetrated the US intelligence apparatus with double agents
The CIA is the most dangerous entity in the room, but because of that they think anything they do will work out because who the fuck is gonna stop them
You’ve got a bunch of guys who think they’re civilized geniuses fighting against brainless barbarians, tricking them wouldn’t be hard with enough study
It seems too dumb for reality, but the fact of the matter is that the best and brightest of the imperial core got outplayed by the Viet Cong, said “never again,” then got outplayed by the Taliban the same way, and all they can do is blame the Afghan people for not worshiping America enough
If you can get away with declaring war over fake WMDs, at that point, you’ve deluded yourself into believing you control reality. You control American reality, but the rest of the world will push back; you see this with China already
You’ve got a bunch of guys who think they’re civilized geniuses fighting against brainless barbarians, tricking them wouldn’t be hard with enough study
This sums up the American foreign policy project in general. People assume it’s because of the Conservatives/modern GOP but it’s actually deeply part of the “Progressive” movement. “Woke imperialism” has been then game of the game for 400 years because we Americans are morally righteous, a shining beacon of hope for all mankind, and we’re gonna come save you and make sure you live a moral life too.
Basically. The Soviets got a lot of double agents and moles through both ideological sympathizers and cynical opportunists they paid off to pass info to them, while the CIA pretty much just got the odd defector out for a payday (and the CIA usually set them up for life and shielded them from consequences for it) and had a functionally limitless budget to throw at high-tech engineering projects for surveillance. Apart from that, the CIA’s foreign policy strategy of “find the absolute worst people in a country and throw truckloads of cash and guns at them in the hopes that it would turn the country into an exploitable or ignorable bloodbath” was fairly successful.
The CIA is the most dangerous entity in the room, but because of that they think anything they do will work out because who the fuck is gonna stop them
You’ve got a bunch of guys who think they’re civilized geniuses fighting against brainless barbarians, tricking them wouldn’t be hard with enough study
It seems too dumb for reality, but the fact of the matter is that the best and brightest of the imperial core got outplayed by the Viet Cong, said “never again,” then got outplayed by the Taliban the same way, and all they can do is blame the Afghan people for not worshiping America enough
If you can get away with declaring war over fake WMDs, at that point, you’ve deluded yourself into believing you control reality. You control American reality, but the rest of the world will push back; you see this with China already
This sums up the American foreign policy project in general. People assume it’s because of the Conservatives/modern GOP but it’s actually deeply part of the “Progressive” movement. “Woke imperialism” has been then game of the game for 400 years because we Americans are morally righteous, a shining beacon of hope for all mankind, and we’re gonna come save you and make sure you live a moral life too.
Didn’t the Soviets also run fucking circles around the CIA or is that a leftist feel good factoid
Basically. The Soviets got a lot of double agents and moles through both ideological sympathizers and cynical opportunists they paid off to pass info to them, while the CIA pretty much just got the odd defector out for a payday (and the CIA usually set them up for life and shielded them from consequences for it) and had a functionally limitless budget to throw at high-tech engineering projects for surveillance. Apart from that, the CIA’s foreign policy strategy of “find the absolute worst people in a country and throw truckloads of cash and guns at them in the hopes that it would turn the country into an exploitable or ignorable bloodbath” was fairly successful.