← History Uncensored
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- [00:01]
A
Wanna be a star? No problem. Anyone can shine on TikTok. Post your first video today. Real life, real story. Real you. Download TikTok and get started.
- [00:15]
B
There's a heat wave in the UK, hence okay. A small island less than 200km from a restless superpower, an ideological rival, a tense military flashpoint, a symbol of freedom to one side and intolerable provocation to the other. Am I talking about Taiwan or Cuba? The fact that the same description fits both of them is not a coincidence. It actually reveals one of the oldest rules of power politics. Great powers do not like independent, hostile or rival systems sitting just offshore. I've been working on deep dives on both Cuba and Taiwan lately, and the similarities hit me like a ton of geopolitical bricks. Because Cuba has spent its modern history in America's shadow, shaped, constrained and occupied by the great power 90 miles to the north. Taiwan has spent its modern history in China's claimed encircled and increasingly pressured by the giant just across the strait. Both Taiwan and Cuba are small compared to the powers that obsess over them. Both are close. Both are, to their Goliath of a neighbour, unfinished business. This is not just a story about two islands. It's a warning about the world we're entering, the world we're in again. Because for years after the Cold War, it seemed, at least temporarily, like spheres of influence were receding into the past. But look around now. Russia claims Ukraine belongs in its historical sphere. China wants Taiwan under Beijing, and the United States under Trump has openly revived the Monroe Doctrine, the 1823 declaration that the Western hemisphere is America's domain. The Trump administration pledging in its 2025 National Security Strategy to restore American preeminence and deny outside powers the ability to position forces or strategic assets there. Spheres of influence, whether they receded or not. Debate in the comments are present in sharp relief. Back to the parallel. Taiwan is 36,000 square kilometers, a democracy separated from mainland China by a strait that at its narrowest is about 126km wide. Taiwan is claimed by China, a one party communist state that has never governed Taiwan but insists that it will by force if necessary. Cuba is 110,000 square kilometers, a one party communist state sitting about 145 kilometers from Florida. And for decades it was the site of a tug of war between a superpower that treated it as its backyard and the ideological enemies that used it as a forward base. Cuba's deeply indented coastline, natural harbours and position at the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico. America. You do you made it a linchpin of Spain's Atlantic Empire and a target for Britain, which actually captured Havana in 1762 and held it for just under a year before trading it back to Spain in exchange for Florida. And Cuba was, of course, an obsession of Washington ever since. And each power that passed through the Caribbean understood the same. Control Cuba and you can influence the sea lanes that link the Gulf, the Caribbean and the Atlantic. Taiwan's geography is no less loaded, of course. It anchors the first island chain, the arc running from Japan through Taiwan and the Philippines to the United States and its allies. That chain helps contain Chinese naval expansion. To Beijing, it looks and feels like a fence keeping them in. So control Taiwan and China doesn't just gain territory, it gains a clearer route into the wider Pacific. Both Taiwan and Cuba have been colonized, occupied, pressured and used by powers far larger than themselves. And they both carry similar scars like indigenous catastrophe, colonial suppression, foreign domination, dictatorship and renewed great power attention that neither really wanted. And Taiwan has another strategic asset which makes it highly desirable to the world's AI superpowers. You know what it is, I'm sure? Chips. Because Taiwan produces more than 90% of the world's most advanced semiconductors. Those tiny components inside phones, cars, satellites, AI systems and fighter jets. This has been called the silicon shield. The idea that Taiwan might be too valuable for the world to let it fall. But a shield can also become a magnet. Electromagnetism joke there. If China. God, I worry about myself. If China controlled Taiwan, it would not just redraw the military map of Asia, it would shock every economy on earth. So in both cases, the island becomes more than territory, it becomes a platform. For Taiwan, the platform is military, technological and economic. Control the island and you alter Asia's balance of power and the global chip supply. For Cuba, the platform was military and ideological. Control the island, influence the Caribbean, pressure America's coastline, and back in 1962, placed nuclear weapons almost on Washington's doorstep. And that is why Cuba became terrifying to Washington. Not simply because it was communist, but because it was communist so close to Florida, in America's maritime front yard backyard. After Castro's revolution, Cuba gave the Soviet Union a forward position close enough to turn ideology into an existential threat. For Beijing, Taiwan is not simply a democratic island. It's a democratic Chinese speaking society just off China's coast, protected by the United States, technologically indispensable and not yet absorbed. Its mere existence is a provocation because it shows that a Chinese speaking society can be prosperous, democratic, pluralist and outside Communist Party control. Washington is increasingly anxious about China's growing role in Cuba. China's become Cuba's primary economic benefactor and the center for Strategic and International Studies has used satellite imagery and open source analysis to identify what it describes as China linked facilities in Cuba, with features consistent with signal's intelligence collection. In plain English, sign sites that could intercept communications in the us. So some of these sites are assessed to be part of a broader Chinese intelligence effort on the island, close enough to monitor parts of the United States. Now, Cuba and China reject those characterisations, but the anxiety is real and it's there. America is becoming more vocal about worrying about this Chinese intelligence footprint on the island. If Beijing has strategic eyes and ears in Cuba, then China has an intelligence foothold near the southeastern United States. States not acceptable to Washington. Now flip the map. In East Asia, Beijing sees U.S. arms sales, U.S. warships, U.S. alliances and military support for Taiwan as encirclement. In December 2025, Washington approved an $11 billion arms package for Taiwan, the largest ever for the island. Naturally, Beijing condemned it because, in China's view, America is arming a territory that China claims as its own. Each side tells the same story in reverse. America says we cannot allow China to build strategic footholds in our hemisphere. China says we can't allow America to dominate the waters off our coast. Cuba and Taiwan expose the same structure of fear, half a world apart. And in whom does the fear take root? Because here is another similarity the ambitions of the men in power. Xi Jinping is the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao, determined to reverse what Beijing calls the century of humiliation. He's said that Taiwan's return can't be passed from generation to generation, attaching urgency to the Taiwan question that previous leaders left deliberately vague. Donald Trump is committed to. I feel like I can hear you saying it. Make America great again. He's transactional about alliances, openly preoccupied with strategic geography. Greenland, the Panama Canal, Canada, the Western Hemisphere. Different vocabularies and styles, but one pattern. Russia calls it the near abroad. Xi calls it national rejuvenation. Trump calls it MAGA and restoring American preeminence. Every great power says it's defending the rightful order of things when it wants more room around itself. Of course, this parallel has limits, and I like my nuance. Because Cuba is an internationally recognised sovereign state with a seat at the United nations, formal diplomatic relations and a government that, whatever its failures, is treated as the government of Cuba under international law. Taiwan is different. It's recognised by only a handful of countries now. Most Governments maintain formal relations with Beijing, which insists that Taiwan is Chinese territory. Taiwan can't join the un. It competes in the Olympics as Chinese Taipei. Its political existence is officially a legal contradiction. And yet it functions every day as a democracy with its own military, judiciary, currency, foreign policy. Cuba's relationship with the United States is hostile coexistence between two recognized states. American politicians may lambast and threaten the Cuban government, but the US accepts that Cuba exists. China does not accept Taiwan as a separate state at all. But actually, the differences between the two situations may prove the point because the same superpower anxiety remains amplified by ideology. Of course, Cuba is the communist state in a capitalist led hemisphere. America's old fear was a rival system embedded so close to home. Taiwan is a democracy facing an authoritarian superpower. Beijing's fear is a liberal alternative thriving just across the strait. They are the same structural problem running in opposite political small island, giant neighbor, rival system, strategic geography. That's why I think the Cuba Taiwan parallel is worth paying real attention to, because it reminds us of something uncomfortable that great powers can speak the language of sovereignty when it restrains their enemies, then speak the language of their need for security when the idea of someone else's sovereignty restrains them. And small islands near large powers become the places where that contradiction is often hardest to hide. Those are my thoughts anyway. Let me know yours in the comments. And I think my hair has expanded to twice the size and now I need to have an ice bath because it is far too hot for this country. So on that note, I will see you next time. Thanks for watching History Uncensored.
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Are you really buying a car online on Autotrader right now?
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Really?
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C
At a playground?
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Yeah, really. Look at these listings from dealers.
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C
Wow, your search can really get that specific.
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Really?
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And you just put in your info and boom. Car's in your budget.
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A
Mom needs a second.
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C
Honey, you can really have it delivered?
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Really? Or I can pick it up at the dealership. One sec, sweetie. Mommy's buying a car.
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Mommy, I think your kid is walking up the slide.
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Kyle.
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Again?
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Really?
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Auto trader buy her car online? Really?