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... It's a preposterously easy to find bit of information.
Us fought a war with Spain. Spain lost and got booted from the Americas, Asia and Pacific, with the US taking Guam, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.
A few years later we stipulated that Cuba's independence was conditional on allowing a navel base to remain under US control, Cuba reluctantly agreed, and a lease was signed with no end date with the US paying rent for the land.
When nations change governments, there is always a period of figuring out how treaties and debts are assumed. Usually the successor government assumes at least a portion of "fair" debt inherited from the previous government. (No, we're not paying for the ammunition the previous government shot at us, yes we're going to pay the interest on the loan for agricultural supplies). Same goes for treaties.
Post revolution Cuba did the usual and continued international relations as "Cuba", and not a brand new entity. Hence their argument being that the lease treaty is and was illegitimate, not just "not recognized", inapplicable or rejected. The US holds it's a perfectly legitimate agreement and keeps sending payment on time. Everyone agrees there's an agreement between the US and Cuba around the base, with the contention being about the legitimacy of the 1903 treaty, not it's applicability.
Yes, Cuba has no leverage to pressure negotiations in their favor. This was true before the embargo as well as after. No, they did not really have a viable alternative to agreeing to the lease. The best option sucking is usually not considered to make a treaty invalid.
Fair or not, the treaty is generally regarded as legitimate, which limits Cuba's options to use the law to compel the US to leave.
With no interest in negotiation, nothing to offer, no military force, and US complacency with the status quo, the odds of both parties agreeing to end the lease is pretty low.
☝️ an excellent breakdown of the actual situation.
As I said, the technicalities of why the US claims that their presence on Guantanamo Bay is rightful is irrelevant, the reason they still hold it is 100% their militarily and economically domination over Cuba (which the US keeps in place with their illegal blokkades), making it impossible for Cuba to have any negotiation power.
When the contract was made Cuba could not refuse it because the US had already occupied Cuba. A contract that is made with an army standing at your door to invade if you don’t sign it is not a legitimate contract. The US is a coloniser and Cuba is just one of the examples. Cuba got lucky though because they at least got some independence (albeit with constant interference of the US trying to spark a civil war).
Unfortunately, there are no agreements between nations that don't involve the presence of armies. One of the byproducts of the US fighting Spain to kick them out of Cuba is that the US army is necessarily involved. The alternative was continued Spanish colonialism, not an independent Cuba.
Do you find the German or Japanese surrender treaties to be illegitimate because they were made at gunpoint?
The US could have left Cuba after the war was won, and they can even leave today. Implying that that’s not an option is crazy. Guantanamo Bay is currently used to undermine Cuban independence and enforce an illegal blockade that heavily impacts the lives of all Cuba’s citizens. Implying that that’s not a bad thing or that the US should not stop doing active harm to Cuba’s citizens in this way is pretty disgusting imo.
Starving a whole country because you don’t agree with its politics is monstrous behaviour.
I don't think I implied that we couldn't leave, or even that we shouldn't. I said that Cuba's not going to get us to leave by asserting that the agreement was never valid, because that's just going to get the response of "yes it is". For better or worse nations negotiate backed with weapons, and a power imbalance is inevitable.
It's not even a matter of right or wrong, just reality. Few would argue that the Japanese constitution is illegitimate and that power should rightly devolve back to the Empire of Japan.
You have some misapprehensions about the embargo of Cuba. It's sometimes called a blockade for rhetorical effect, but it's not actually a blockade.
It's not "enforced" from Guantanamo bay, it's enforced by civil penalties levied by the Treasury department on US entities and their subsidiaries, and to a limited extent by the department of state through threats of potential trade or diplomatic consequences.
Cuba can and does trade with other nations, including US allies, and even the US. The harm the embargo does is via sharply limiting the availability of the lines of credit smaller nations rely on for continuing development of their infrastructure, not by literally preventing boats full of food from landing. Additional harm is done by denying them access to the largest convenient trading partner in the region for non-food, non-medical (embargo terms have excluded those items for decades) trades which further harms their economy by denying them a reliable cash influx their neighbors rely on, as well as making imports more expensive through sheer transport distance.
Justified or not, and regardless of poor negotiating position, refusal to engage in a dialogue is not helping Cuba's position.
They have their own ideological motivations for refusing to engage. Even a tacit acknowledgement that maybe they shouldn't have nationalized the assets of US companies without compensation would get them a lot of negotiation credit, and it costs them nothing, except for the ideological factors. The US doesn't get much out of it, and $6 billion 1959 can be written off fairly easily for the PR win.
One side doesn't need to budge, and the other one refuses, and they both have their reasons. I believe that was the point OP was going for.