ABSTRACT
The Soviet Union and the United States supported communist and anti-communist forces, respectively, and the authoritarian public spheres of their client states both reflected and harnessed Cold War ideological divisions. Cuba's experience in the post-Cold War era displays some striking similarities to that of North Korea. Both were ruled by charismatic founding figures for several decades, had fraught relationships with the United States that continued long after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and assiduously cultivated ideological justifications for their rule. Blame has been a particularly noteworthy feature of Cuba's post-Cold War ideology and United States sanctions on the island present a particularly easy target. Anti-communism was "the first of national principles" or the "national essence" and helped frame North Korea as the national enemy and South Korea as unambiguously on the side of the United States in the Cold War.
