•5 min. ago
Atoraxic
Diagnosing American Decline: The Geopolitics of Havana Syndrome Jamey Essex (21 Feb 2025)
"ABSTRACT
Beginning in 2016, American diplomats and family members
posted to Havana, Cuba reported debilitating medical symp-
toms with no known physical cause. Many US officials labelled
these as evidence of a new malady called ‘Havana syndrome’,
caused by experimental weaponry deployed by hostile rival
states. Since then, American personnel in numerous other coun-
tries have self-reported hundreds more cases. Despite no med-
ical consensus on the cause or coherence of symptoms and no
proof that such weaponry exists, US officials have consistently
claimed that Havana syndrome is the result of directed attacks
by hostile powers. I examine how, amid questions of US vulner-
ability and potential shifts in the global balance of power,
Havana syndrome presents both a medical and a geopolitical
diagnosis. The contested diagnosis and scripting of Havana
syndrome reflects and propagates anxieties about American
power, rewriting and enacting US geopolitical codes through
sites and scales from the body to the globe.
Introduction
In July 2015, then-Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Havana to oversee
the US embassy’s re-opening in the Cuban capital, closed since the US severed
diplomatic relations in 1961. The embassy re-opening formed a cornerstone of
President Barack Obama’s attempts to thaw relations between the US and
Cuba, alongside easing of travel and financial restrictions, the re-opening of
Cuba’s own embassy in Washington and even talk of lifting the longstanding
embargo. Yet tensions remained between the US and Cuba and this opening in
US–Cuba relations snapped shut through 2017 as the incoming Trump
administration quickly began reversing Obama’s policies towards its
Caribbean neighbour. That summer, the US expelled two Cuban diplomats
from Washington after initial reports of ‘sonic attacks’ in Havana, and
President Donald Trump announced that he was ‘canceling the last adminis-
tration’s completely one-sided deal with Cuba’ (quoted in Phippen 2017; see
also Gramer 2017). The US pulled two-thirds of its staff from Havana, issued
a travel alert for the country and upgraded the Havana posting to the State
Department’s highest risk level (Essex and Bowman 2022). By this point, two
dozen Americans and several Canadians posted to Havana had reported
a range of debilitating health symptoms. Some US officials began labelling
these symptoms as evidence of ‘Havana syndrome’ and accusing Cuba of
allowing or facilitating attacks on US personnel by hostile powers, namely,
Russia and potentially China, using experimental weaponry. Though there is
no medical consensus on the cause or coherence of symptoms and no tangible
public proof that such weaponry was the cause of reported symptoms, many
US officials and pundits have consistently claimed that Havana syndrome is
the result of directed attacks, and the federal government has begun compen-
sating what they identify as victims of these ‘anomalous health incidents’ (AHIs).
Amid questions of potential shifts in the global order and US vulnerability,
Havana syndrome presents both a medical and a geopolitical diagnosis, high-
lighting anxieties about American strength and great power rivalry in the
twenty-first century. This paper explores this double diagnosis by examining
how US geopolitical imagination and geopolitical codes are changing in
relation to Havana syndrome, as it cannot be understood in its particulars or
its import through medical diagnosis alone. Official and media framings and
responses in the US are coalescing around an emergent geopolitical consensus
about Havana syndrome not despite but because of the medical dissensus
around the condition’s symptoms, causes and coherence. Confusion and
disagreement about the aetiology of Havana syndrome among pundits, offi-
cials, lawmakers and bureaucrats is a marker of the kind of threat it presents,
a fog of engagement rooted in new forms of hybrid warfare, challenges to US
hegemony and the weakness of American response. In what follows, I look
first at the medical debate around Havana syndrome and its coherence as
a clear and diagnosable condition with an identifiable cause. I then examine
how Havana syndrome presents a vital element in the potential reworking of
US geopolitical codes and the spatialisation of threats as the US contends with
the possibility of renewed great power rivalry alongside the emergence of
strategies, tactics and technologies associated with hybrid warfare. In this,
the bodies and infrastructures that form US diplomatic and intelligence net-
works become key sites where state actors articulate these processes, rework
geopolitical codes and forge new strategic paths and narrative frames
The Medical Diagnosis
There is currently no medical consensus that a condition that can be
uniformly and consistently diagnosed as Havana syndrome exists, nor
that the symptoms reported by those suffering them are primarily the
result of the physiological impacts of exposure to directed sonic or
microwave energy. These symptoms include a range of neurological and
physical symptoms often associated with concussion, though in these
cases without any evidence of concussion: tinnitus and inner ear pain;
lingering issues with sleep, balance, vision and memory; persistent and
often debilitating headaches; and depression and anxiety. Despite the lack
of medical agreement of causes, many US officials and media outlets have
cited diagnoses of the initial few dozen personnel who complained of
symptoms in Havana as evidence of a singular condition with an identifi-
able cause, namely, that hostile foreign actors targeted them with pre-
viously unknown sonic or microwave weapons. A range of medical and
other scholars have strongly questioned the validity of these diagnoses
and a vigorous debate about medical techniques, clinical care, access to
patient data, the role of pre-existing conditions and the physiological and
mental health effects of life abroad in the diplomatic and intelligence
services has followed.
The contours of this debate, in which US government officials, policy-
makers and media outlets have persisted in discussing Havana syndrome as
an identifiable and diagnosable condition produced through attacks by hostile
powers, suggest that the medical diagnosis of Havana syndrome cannot be
understood outside of its geopolitical context. Most important in this respect is
the syndrome’s purported novelty as a particular set of symptoms without
clear evidence for their usual physical causes. This has allowed for a strong
geopolitical framing of the syndrome’s aetiology that has taken on
a momentum and legitimacy within official circles amid ongoing medical
debate about the coherence of the syndrome as a singular condition and the
causes of the reported symptoms. I do not argue that the symptoms experi-
enced are not real and debilitating for those suffering them, but instead that
the resulting gap between medical dissensus and an emerging geopolitical
consensus allows US strategists, media and lawmakers to propagate
a framing of American bodies and spaces, especially those tied to the diplo-
matic and intelligence communities posted abroad, as vulnerable and under
attack. This in turn informs and shapes the rewriting of US geopolitical codes
in line with now seemingly tangible evidence of the intents and capabilities of
hostile autocratic powers.
One of the primary factors in the gap between clinical descriptions of self-
reported symptoms in affected individuals and the interpretation of these as
evidence of a more coherent and diagnosable singular condition caused by
directed attacks is the oft-stated finding that those suffering symptoms had no
obvious evidence of the physical and especially neurological trauma, such as
concussion, that would normally produce them. A March 2018 article in the
Journal of the American Medical Association based on the examination of 21
individuals self-reporting symptoms noted that most reported hearing a loud
piercing directional noise immediately before the onset of symptoms
(Swanson Ii et al. 2018). This crucial early piece of medical literature on
Havana syndrome identifies ‘additional notable differences between the man-
ifestations observed in the Havana cohort and characteristic acute
and persistent symptoms of concussion’, including some symptoms lasting
for several months (Swanson Ii et al. 2018, 1131). Without completely ruling
out other possible causes, including viral, chemical or social and psychogenic
origins, discussed below, this influential initial report in a leading medical
journal opened the door for a reading of these symptoms as a coherent whole
with an unknown but potentially singular cause."
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14650045.2025.2468770?src=exp-la
This paper is paywalled but I'm going to quote some of its content and demystify some of everyone's questions.
under construction so stop back to read the full post
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
www.nitafarahany.com
kffhealthnews.org
