By Joshua Arnold

When Hurricane Oscar made landfall on eastern Cuba Sunday afternoon, the lights were already out. The last of the island’s eight power plants went offline on Friday, causing a nationwide blackout that lasted for two whole days. The electrical grid has been partially restored but has also collapsed at least three more times. Meanwhile, Hurricane Oscar killed six people, damaged more than 1,000 homes, and downed trees and power lines in the eastern part of the island.

“It would be hard for Americans looking at this to not draw a contrast between our own recent experience with hurricanes,” reflected A.J. Nolte, chair of the government graduate program at Regent University, on “Washington Watch” Thursday. “There’s a very real contrast between the systems that exist.”

“If you look at the response … in western North Carolina, areas that were without power, that were basically inaccessible, are getting power back relatively quickly. … We could contrast also, Milton where Governor [Ron] DeSantis (R), I think, wisely pre-positioned some linesmen to clean things up right after Milton,” Nolte described. “Whereas, in Cuba, you’re seeing signs of people just trying to get to government markets — almost a scarcity of food.”

To further stress the difference, Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida as a Category Four, and Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida as a Category Three. But Hurricane Oscar made landfall in Cuba as a Category One.

The “energy crisis highlights what the communist Cuban regime has gone to great pains to hide. That is, the government-controlled economy and infrastructure are crumbling,” declared Family Research Council President Tony Perkins.

The Cuban regime blames its failures on American sanctions and embargoes. Yet even the far-left Vox Media admitted that “blackouts aren’t unusual in Cuba,” and that “the Cuban government’s inability or unwillingness to maintain the country’s electrical plants is the direct cause.” Most of the nation’s power plants were built in the Soviet era and rely on older, less efficient technologies.

“It turns out that the ‘prosperity’ that our friends on the Left talk about with Cuba really only existed because of massive subsidies coming into Cuba from the Soviet Union during the Cold War,” Nolte pointed out. “Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba essentially bartered its sugar for oil from the USSR,” recounted Vox. After the USSR’s collapse, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez “began offering Cuba below-market-rate oil in exchange for Cuban medical services.” Oil products account for 80% of Cuba’s un-diversified power generation.

But Venezuela has cut oil imports this year as Cuba’s ideological brother to the south reels from its own internal turmoil. Cuba’s socialist regime is so bankrupt that they cannot afford to pay full market price for oil.

“We see, I think, a very vivid demonstration of the difference between those two economic systems,” Nolte proposed. “Cuba has been a Marxist-Leninist country since the 1960s. The United States [has had] free market capitalism.”

Of course, “it takes any government, even a government like ours that’s more free market-oriented, a little bit longer to get in” to disaster zones than non-government aid organizations (NGOs), Nolte acknowledged. In the United States, “We are so used to Samaritan’s Purse, Operation Blessing, Convoy of Hope, Catholic Charities, and others going in immediately after disasters. … That’s not happening in Cuba.” One reason for the lack of NGOs in Cuba is “because they’ve pretty much suppressed the church there,” added Perkins. “So, you don’t have groups like Samaritan’s Purse and others domestically working to help get families back online and supplied.”

With an incompetent government and a civil society impoverished of intermediate institutions by decades of Marxist rule, where can the Cuban regime turn for assistance? Perkins expressed concern that we could see a repeat of the 1960s, where Cuba turns to other anti-American regimes, such as Russia and China, who would be more than happy to “move in right there, 90 miles from our coast.”

“It is very possible that we could see China and Russia reaching out to try to prop up their allies in Cuba and also make infrastructure investments,” Nolte agreed. “China is very, very interested in increasing their influence in Latin America. Russia is interested in projecting power where it can.”

“We know that Russia, China, and Iran have all been heavily invested in Venezuela,” Nolte continued. “We know that Russian troops — and I believe forces also from Cuba and potentially China — were supporting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro against the democratically elected Juan Guaidó … keeping the Maduro regime, which is descended from Chavez, in power.”

In addition, “We saw just months ago where Russian, nuclear-capable subs were coming into Cuba,” Perkins added. “So, this is not far-fetched to think that they could make this as an outpost.”

“China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba may have ideological differences, but they are all committed to the decrease of American power and destroying American hegemony,” reasoned Nolte, “which is why Russia is buying weapons now from Iran, China is heavily invested economically in Iran, and all of these countries have invested in Venezuela. … They all agree that America is bad, America is the enemy, and free market, capitalist democracy needs to be taken down a peg.”

In other words, various geopolitical adversaries of the U.S. have calculated that, at least while America remains the international powerhouse, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” This is why America needs to maintain international alliances such as NATO, and why it is useful for the U.S. to support other nations such as Ukraine, who can help weaken the combined strength of America’s enemies.

Returning to our own backyard, the strategic value of Cuba to America’s opponents is that it is “very close to America’s shore,” Nolte explained. “There’s a reason why the Cuban Missile Crisis happened … and a lot of that was geography.”

Therefore, “the U.S. needs to be aggressively countering the Russia-China-Iran alliance anywhere that is active. And that means Venezuela, and that means Cuba,” he proposed. “It’s time to reconsider whether we are okay with a permanent, failed, socialist state 90 miles off of our shore that’s going to continually be a place that people who don’t like America are going to go to as a safe harbor.”

Even without a major shift in foreign policy, Americans should “take seriously the people that have told us for decades that they see Cuba as a potentialmodel,” said Nolte. “Highlighting the differences between the two ideologies should affect our vote come November the 5th here in this country,” Perkins agreed, “because we’re beginning to see the elements of that Marxist ideology emerge in our political system.”

“When they talk about the Cuban health care system, keep in mind the fact that they can’t even get the power back on,” Nolte declared. “If that’s what they want to bring here, take them seriously.”

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.