Weekend Economists American Bad Boys Part 1 July 12-13, 2014

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31. Putin eyes Cuba as springboard for economic expansion into Latin America

http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/07/11/inenglish/1405088007_807157.html

Vladimir Putin’s official trip to Cuba – the first leg of a tour that will also take him to Argentina and Brazil – underscores the growing rapprochement between Moscow and Havana and the island’s renewed role as a springboard into Latin America.

The Russian president is aware that ever since the creation of the São Paulo Forum in 1990, Cuba has developed closer ties with a political left that now rules over countries with which the Kremlin is keen to establish more commercial links.

Meanwhile, the United States is keeping a close – and concerned – watch on Russia’s new geopolitical moves.

Putin is scheduled to meet with Raúl Castro and his brother Fidel, two historical figures from the Cold War, when the communist island was a key piece in the chess game between the US and the Soviet Union. In October 1962, the discovery of a Cuban base holding Soviet nuclear missiles brought the world to the brink of another global conflict. Fidel Castro never forgave the agreement that US President John F. Kennedy and Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev reached behind his back: to remove the missiles in exchange for an American pledge not to invade the island and to pull its own missiles out of Turkey.