Support at the UN for ending the Cuba embargo falls to 130 votes, the weakest backing in two decades, after an American lobbying push

The resolution passed, as it has passed every year since 1992, and the number next to it fell further than it has fallen in twenty years.

The General Assembly voted 130 in favor, 17 against and 25 abstaining on Wednesday on Cuba annual call to end the American embargo. A year ago the same text drew 165 votes in favor, 7 against and 12 abstentions. Support peaked at 191 votes in 2015 and 2017, during the thaw under President Barack Obama. This year several Western countries moved for the first time in many years. Germany, Italy and Latvia abstained. Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Morocco, Slovenia and Bosnia voted against, some of them for the first time. Another 21 member states did not take part at all.

Washington worked for that result openly. The administration has spent the year pressing governments to vote no or stay away, as part of a wider campaign against the Cuban government that includes tariffs on countries supplying oil to the island and public talk of military pressure. Waltz claimed the outcome as a win. “I am satisfied that so many countries now, including major economies like Korea, like Germany, and others have shifted their position,” he told reporters after the vote. “Diplomacy takes time, but now that we have had a tripling of countries that have shifted, we expect that to only continue to grow.” American officials describe the sanctions as necessary against a government they call a corrupt dictatorship. Cuba denies the charge. UN experts have repeatedly called the fuel blockade and the sanctions a violation of international law and of the rights of ordinary Cubans, who are living through a severe energy and economic crisis.

The vote closed a week in which the argument stopped being diplomatic in any normal sense. On Tuesday, Waltz and Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez shouted at each other on the assembly floor, the session was suspended, and a Cuban diplomat was accused of shoving an American diplomat who was filming the exchange. On Wednesday Waltz confirmed the expulsion. “That Cuban first secretary will be on a plane out of the country back to Havana today,” he said, naming Richard Tur de la Concepcion of Cuba UN mission. Cuba mission did not immediately answer questions about the expulsion.

None of it changes the embargo itself. The resolutions are not binding, the assembly has adopted this one for more than three decades to little practical effect, and the embargo is American law, which only Congress can repeal. What moved on Wednesday was the count, and the count is the part both governments will use. Havana lost a third of its majority in a year. Washington gained a number it can point to and a trend it says is still running.