When Washington summoned 66 nations to hear the political left branded a terrorist threat, it was not Russia or China cast as the ideological arch-villain — it was Cuba, an embargoed island of 11 million. The Caribbean now sits inside the blast radius of an inquisition built for export.

The scene at the US State Department on July 16 would have been instantly recognisable to anyone who lived through the 1950s. Officials from 66 countries were summoned to Washington for a “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism” — and what they received was not a briefing on bombs or battlefield threats, but a declaration of ideological war against one half of the political spectrum.