Cuba-India relations are set to grow in the next decade as the global transition to multipolarity accelerates which is evident as these countries of the South strengthen their bilateral relations. On June 27, a meeting took place between Ricardo Cabrisas Ruiz, Vice Prime Minister of Cuba, and Saurabh Kumar, Vice External Affairs Minister of India, as part of the India-Cuba Foreign Office Consultations in Havana, Cuba. There, an agreement for a line of credit worth 100 million euros was finalized to expand economic relations between Cuba and India. Cabrisas Ruiz highlighted the role that India can play in the development of priority sectors of Cuba’s National Economic and Social Development Plan until 2030. The relations between these nations are historically rooted in shared struggle, mutually beneficial and constitute the basis for South-South cooperation.

Cuba has been a traditional ally of Russia but that does not mean that other nations are not welcomed to do business with Cuba. Of course if they do, they risk attracting the wrath of the US by doing business or establishing bilateral relations with the island. India nonetheless has established, along with the Cuban government, alternatives for the purchase and sale of goods, which due to the current tense global environment and disruptions in supply chains, worsen the island’s already vulnerable economic and trade situation. So the Asian giant has opted to extend this line of credit of 100 million euros to Cuba whose main objective is to help Cuba avoid food shortages in the short term, allowing India to export cereals and other foodstuffs to Cuba.

The link between Cuba and India has developed in sectors of great importance for the Caribbean country such as renewable energy, medicine and biotechnology, natural medicine, sports and the food industry. Since 2015 Cuba has been a member of the International Solar Alliance, an intergovernmental organization composed of more than 120 countries, driven by India. Within the ISA framework, in early 2020 India extended a $75 million credit line to the government of the island to finance the construction of solar parks in Cuba. State-owned NTPC Ltd, India’s largest integrated power producer, was chosen as a preferred partner to help implement the Cuban solar project in 2021. The former National Thermal Power Company of India and Cuba’s state-owned Unión Eléctrica de Cuba will work together to realize the Cuban solar capacity. The joint projects in Cuba’s Mariel Special Economic Development Zone will serve India as a gateway not only to Latin America but also to the Caribbean. This is the kind of trade within the Global South that can be embraced and shaped to be mutually beneficial. Cuba benefits from having more Indian investments in the food processing industry, the energy sector among others, and on its part India benefits from establishing itself as a central pillar in Cuba’s industrialization and development, which puts it in a special position to receive more contracts and also serve as a gateway into the Caribbean region, Central America or South America as such.

India was among the first nations to recognize the Cuban communist government in 1959 but despite all this historical legacy, bilateral relations at the level of trade have been constrained by the US embargo against Cuba. The genocidal US embargo not only manifests itself in the form of US sanctions against a country, but the United States also prohibits or at least attempts to stop the economic engagement of its current and potential partners and allies with Cuba. However, as the global transition to multipolarity accelerates, these US-imposed trade limitations will be a thing of the past, as in the last 10 years Cuba-India relations have advanced at an accelerated pace, shaping the mutual interest to further expand trade and commerce for the next 10 years.

At present, Cuba has relations with the three most famous and internationally recognized nations as part of the BRICS among multipolar projects: Russia, China and India. Therein lies part of the motivation for Cuba and India’s joint efforts to continue to expand their bilateral relations by building on the legacy and the future of a new Non-Aligned Movement in order to maximize their strategic autonomy by not being overly dependent on one particular partner. As Andrew Korybko noted in his article titled “Valuing the Importance of Neutrality in the New Cold War“: “India saw an opportunity to jointly assemble a new Non-Aligned Movement (“Neo-NAM“) with Russia for creating a third pole of influence in the increasingly bipolar world order, shaped largely by global competition between the American and Chinese superpowers…”

Indian scholar Sanjaya Baru, believes that the global systemic transition to multipolarity is currently unfolding as an intermediate bimultipolar phase. His concept of Bimultipolarity refers to the observation that the US and China are the superpowers that exert the most influence over the international system, followed by the rest of the countries of the great eight, the great powers of the Global South, such as Russia and India, among others. This in turn creates a kind of healthy competitive market in Cuba for the nations of the Global South and their Big Eight, which effectively circumvents the Monroe Doctrine and the embargo that Cuba has been suffering from since 1960 and which was tightened even further in 1992.

Cuba and India have never been in such a comfortable position to trade with each other as they are now, making it easier to consider India as a counterweight to prevent a scenario of a possible disproportionate dependence on either China or Russia. This competition is healthy since it guarantees that the multipolar powers optimize their offers by presenting good deals to Cuba, thus having a better chance of being selected by the Cuban government for a partnership that leads to transactions or exchanges of goods or services in the island nation. India thanks to its independent foreign policy, its principle of neutrality and its solidarity guarantees stability in trade for its partners, always giving top priority to its bilateral relations regardless of threats and punishments from the West led by the US.