Diagnosing American decline: The geopolitics of Havana Syndrome

Abstract

Beginning in 2016, American and Canadian diplomats and family members posted to Havana, Cuba reported a range of debilitating medical symptoms with no known physical cause. US officials quickly labeled these as evidence of a new malady called “Havana Syndrome,” caused by experimental sonic or microwave weaponry deployed by Russia and China. In the years since, American personnel in China, Russia, Austria, Georgia, Poland, and many other countries have self-reported hundreds more cases. Despite no medical consensus on the cause or coherence of symptoms and no tangible proof that such weaponry exists, US officials have consistently claimed that Havana Syndrome is the result of directed attacks by hostile powers, and the US government has begun compensating what they identify as victims of these “anomalous health incidents.” To understand and explain this understanding of and response to Havana Syndrome, I examine the geopolitical imagination at work in official and media accounts from the US and argue that amid questions of US decline and potential shifts in the global balance of power, Havana Syndrome presents both a medical and a geopolitical diagnosis. Critical geopolitical analysis that attends to the contested materiality and scripting of Havana Syndrome can help account for how this case reflects anxieties about American power, how it revives and rescripts longstanding geopolitical codes in the US, and how these are enacted through sites and scales from the body and the embassy to the globe.