A2 · Elementary
8 min
geopoliticsus domestic politicsconstitutional lawlatin american history
War and the Senate: Cuba and Presidential Power
La Guerra y el Senado: Cuba y el Poder Presidencial
The U.S. Senate blocks a Democratic resolution that would force a vote limiting President Trump's power to launch military action against Cuba. Fletcher and Octavio dig into the long history between the two countries, the 1973 War Powers Resolution, and the deeper question: who decides when a country goes to war?
El Senado de los Estados Unidos bloquea una resolución demócrata que busca limitar el poder del presidente Trump para lanzar una acción militar contra Cuba. Fletcher y Octavio exploran la historia de las relaciones entre los dos países, la Resolución de Poderes de Guerra de 1973, y la pregunta de fondo: ¿quién decide cuándo un país va a la guerra?
8 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| el poder | power, authority | El presidente tiene mucho poder. |
| poder | to be able to, can | Yo puedo hablar español un poco. |
| bloquear | to block | El Senado bloquea la resolución. |
| cerca | near, close | Cuba está muy cerca de los Estados Unidos. |
| peligroso | dangerous | Una guerra es una idea muy peligrosa. |
| el debate | debate, discussion | Los senadores no quieren este debate. |
| la guerra | war | La guerra es muy mala para la gente. |
| votar | to vote | Los senadores votan hoy. |
Before we get into the news this week, I want to ask you something personal.
Growing up in Madrid in the seventies and eighties, what did you actually know about Cuba?
Cuba es una isla pequeña.
Cuba is a small island.
Está cerca de los Estados Unidos.
It's near the United States.
Admirably compact.
For a lot of Europeans I think Cuba means Hemingway, old cars, maybe Castro and a cigar.
For Americans it's something far more loaded, almost cellular, and this week that tension showed up in the U.S.
Senate in a very specific way.
¿Qué pasa en el Senado esta semana?
What happens in the Senate this week?
The Senate blocked a Democratic resolution that would have forced a vote on limiting Trump's power to launch military action against Cuba.
The resolution didn't even make it to the floor.
Republicans shut it down before there could be any debate.
Los republicanos no quieren este debate.
Republicans don't want this debate.
Es claro.
That's clear.
Very clear.
And I want to get into why in a minute.
But first, the historical backdrop, because you genuinely cannot understand what happened this week without knowing something about the last sixty-five years of U.S.-Cuba relations.
Cuba y los Estados Unidos tienen problemas muy viejos.
Cuba and the United States have very old problems.
Ancient problems.
Fidel Castro came to power in 1959.
The U.S.
imposed a trade embargo in 1962, the same year as the Missile Crisis.
And the two countries have been locked in this strange, almost frozen standoff ever since.
Sí, la Crisis de los Misiles es muy famosa.
Yes, the Missile Crisis is very famous.
Es muy peligrosa.
It's very dangerous.
Thirteen days in October 1962.
Soviet nuclear missiles installed on Cuban soil, ninety miles from Florida.
Kennedy and Khrushchev playing a game of geopolitical chicken with the future of the planet.
It is still, to me, the closest the world has come to nuclear war.
Noventa millas.
Ninety miles.
Es muy, muy cerca.
It's very, very close.
That proximity is everything.
It's why Cuba is not, for the United States, just another foreign policy question.
It's a neighbor.
And neighbors, especially ones with complicated histories, have a way of getting under your skin.
Obama abre las puertas con Cuba.
Obama opens the doors with Cuba.
Trump las cierra.
Trump closes them.
That is honestly a more efficient summary of fifteen years of U.S.-Cuba policy than anything I could produce in four hundred words.
Obama's diplomatic thaw starting in 2014, embassies reopening, American tourists showing up in Havana, and then a full reversal.
But right now there's something new on the table, actual military threat, which brings us to this week's Senate fight.
¿Una guerra con Cuba?
A war with Cuba?
Es una idea muy peligrosa.
It's a very dangerous idea.
That's exactly what the Democrats were arguing.
And the mechanism they used is something called the War Powers Resolution, which is a law passed in 1973, in the wake of Vietnam.
The idea was to prevent presidents from fighting wars that Congress never authorized.
El Congreso tiene poder también.
Congress has power too.
No solo el presidente.
Not only the president.
Constitutionally, yes.
That's the whole design.
Congress declares war, the president commands the military.
But in practice, every president since Nixon has essentially ignored the War Powers Resolution.
Reagan in Grenada, Clinton in Kosovo, Obama in Libya.
The courts never forced the issue.
Entonces la ley existe, pero no funciona bien.
So the law exists, but it doesn't work well.
It functions more as a moral statement than an enforceable constraint.
Which is actually why the Democrats wanted to invoke it, not necessarily to stop Trump, but to put every Republican senator on record, to create a moment of accountability.
Los republicanos no quieren estar en ese registro.
Republicans don't want to be on that record.
Exactly right.
A vote like this is a trap in both directions.
Vote to limit the president's powers and you look weak on national security.
Vote against it and you're on record supporting executive war-making with no oversight.
Better just to kill the whole thing procedurally and move on.
La política no es solo ideas.
Politics is not just ideas.
Es también estrategia.
It's also strategy.
A lot of the time, politics is mostly strategy.
The ideas are the packaging.
But here's what I keep coming back to: Congress hasn't formally declared war since 1942.
Every military operation since World War Two has been done through authorizations, executive orders, or just unilateral presidential action.
That is a massive shift in democratic accountability.
El presidente tiene demasiado poder ahora.
The president has too much power now.
Creo que es un problema.
I think it's a problem.
A substantial number of constitutional scholars would be right there with you.
And Cuba is a particularly charged test case because the political emotions around it run so high in certain American communities, especially in Florida, that rational deliberation becomes almost impossible.
Muchos cubanos viven en Miami.
Many Cubans live in Miami.
Ellos votan en las elecciones.
They vote in elections.
An enormous diaspora, and politically decisive in a swing state.
The Cuban-American community in Florida leans heavily Republican and has historically wanted a tough line on Havana.
That's not a coincidence when you're trying to understand why this administration's posture on Cuba looks the way it does.
La política exterior y la política interna son la misma cosa.
Foreign policy and domestic politics are the same thing.
They almost always are, if you follow the thread far enough.
Now, the Cuban government today is significantly weaker than it was even a decade ago.
The economy is essentially in freefall.
There are rolling blackouts across the island.
Hundreds of thousands of Cubans have left in the last few years.
The government is not the same existential force it once was.
Cuba tiene muchos problemas ahora.
Cuba has many problems now.
La vida es difícil allí.
Life is difficult there.
Which raises a question I don't have a clean answer to: if the Cuban government is this weak, what exactly is the military threat that justifies this kind of executive posturing?
Or is the threat itself the point?
Is the menace the policy?
A veces el miedo es más importante que la realidad.
Sometimes fear is more important than reality.
That might be the sharpest thing either of us has said today.
And it applies so well to the full arc of U.S.-Cuba relations.
The embargo wasn't just about trade.
It was about performing a certain kind of resolve.
Keeping the fear alive, keeping the story alive.
Sí, y la historia es muy larga.
Yes, and the story is very long.
Sesenta y cinco años.
Sixty-five years.
And it may get longer still.
The Senate vote this week was a small moment in the immediate news cycle, but it points to something durable: the question of who in a democracy has the authority to commit the nation to war has not been resolved, and it is not being resolved.
Es una pregunta muy importante.
It's a very important question.
Para todos los países democráticos.
For all democratic countries.
For all of them, yes.
And it's worth sitting with that rather than rushing past it.
Actually, speaking of sitting with things, you used a word several times today that I want to ask about.
You said 'el presidente tiene mucho poder' and also earlier 'poder' as a verb.
Is that the same word doing two different jobs?
Sí.
Yes.
'El poder' es una cosa.
'El poder' is a thing.
Es la fuerza o la autoridad.
It's strength or authority.
Y 'poder' como verbo significa 'can'.
And 'poder' as a verb means 'can'.
Yo puedo hablar español.
I can speak Spanish.
So 'el poder' is the noun, power, as in political authority, and 'poder' is the verb, to be able to do something.
Which means 'the power to make war' is essentially the same word twice in Spanish.
'El poder de poder hacer la guerra.' That's almost poetic in how circular it is.
Sí.
Yes.
Y Fletcher, tú puedes aprender esto.
And Fletcher, you can learn this.
Puedes.
You can.