It's pretty fucking dishonest to claim Cuba was only "minorly deterring" foreign agents with a 15-year sentence and then argue he has never implied "a 15-year sentence is not only typical, but minimal."
I apologize then. I did not claim that the sentence was "minor", just that the deterrent effect is minor. I was agreeing with you when I used the word "minor". I do not think that any jail sentence would be a deterrent remotely comparable with getting the US to the negotiation table. In fact, if you go back, you'll see I said exactly that, it is preferable to negotiate (again, agreeing with you), than to keep him jailed, but given that the US (and you) refuses to even acknowledge his crime, this deterrent, as minor as it is, is better than no deterrent at all. Again, I did not mention the sentence in any of my statements, on the contrary, since my first post, I expressed sadness. From other posts in this thread I've learned that Gross knew much more than I thought at first, but even then I'm saddened.
As I said, if you had any other explanation for thinking that I had said that, I was glad to hear it ("please share"). You did. I withdraw the accusation regarding the dishonesty, at least with regards to this point, but please re-read my statement(s) until you convince yourself that I never mentioned his sentence and that I just merely agreed with you regarding the non-optimality of the situation.
a) being an agent of a hostile power, b) having a goal of overthrowing the Cuban government, and c) smuggling communications equipment.
No, I did not accuse him of (a). He was accused and convicted (not by me) of being an agent of a hostile power in Cuban territory. I cannot fathom why you keep dropping that part of the accusation.
If Cuba could ban a), then the US could legally execute the entire Cuban bureaucracy because they are all agents of a power that is hostile to us.
To do that, they would need to enter Cuba and kidnap them/drone them. That is not comparable at all with what happened with Gross. Gross entered Cuba. He was arrested in Cuba. Again, I cannot imagine why you ignore that it happened in Cuba, not in the US. That said, the US has a history of doing exactly that (drone strikes, extradition, invasion, coups, assasination plots. Castro has been in the receiving end of many failed assasination plots by the CIA). While I would not dare to guess why they haven't launched a drone, it is ironic that you present US inability or unwillingness to take on these extraterritorial actions as proof of anything, given that the US is both able and willing to do so (at least in other cases). But again, this is offtopic, given that Gross was in Cuba.
then any Cuban charges based on Gross's being a CIA contractor are clearly ridiculous BS.
Did he stop being a contractor while he was in Cuba, doing what the CIA was paying him to do? That would be tough to prove. I wonder what makes you think that after all that planning, he resigned, but kept the money, then travelled to Cuba to act on those plans (even though he was supposedly no longer a CIA agent), then went back to the US, re-joined USAID, did more planning, resigned again, repeating until he was caught. Even if he had done that (which again, seems unlikely), it would be silly not to consider him a de-facto agent.
Ukraine clearly can't charge all the Russian soldiers invading it with crimes in Criminal Court,
Can't or won't? If Ukraine choses to not charge them/convicte them and gets some concession out of it (e.g., troop exchange), good for them. That option is, for now, closed to Cuba.
therefore Cuba does not have the right to charge US CIA contractors for plotting it's demise.
Cuba did not charge Gross for "plotting it's demise" while in the US. Cuba convicted Gross for acting on those plots while in Cuba. How is that hard to understand?
Words like "obligation" don't really mean much in relation to a) international law, or b) my argument. Under international law literally no country is ever obligated to do anything.
Finally. Then we agree. Cuba can charge him for violating Cuban laws and has no obligation to change its laws to satisfy you. The only concern for the Cubans is the balance between their self-interest and the humanitarian implications of their actions.
There is no Starfleet sitting in orbit waiting to zap people for non-compliance.
(+1 for the start trek reference)
The way you zap people for non-compliance is you get pissed at them and ratchet up tensions. Most of the time this fails to get them to change their ways, but it's all we can do until we actually have One World Government with a Starfleet.
Indeed. Therefore, as we agreed earlier, keeping Gross, while better than releasing him unconditionally, is a non-optimal solution, the optimal solution being getting the US to the negotiation table.
In this case, as I have proven, most of what Cuba charged Gross with are things it has no legal right to charge him with.
No, you haven't. You have purposedly ignored both the "in Cuba" part in all the charges, and that the US does not respect that rule either[1].
The remaining charge, smuggling computer equipment (the only thing he did on their soil)
Your entire point hinges on this (and that Cuba has no right to charge him for what he did outside of Cuba). I have expressed no opinion regarding the parenthesized part. But the first, no, that was not the only thing he did in Cuban soil. He was working as a USAID agent with the purpose of overthrowing the government in Cuban soil. Before proceeding, can we agree on this?
The US response to that has to be a cooling of relations, which (in Cuba's case) means and end to embargo-ending talk.
There was no embargo-ending talk. Instead, there were several ongoing attempts to overthrow the government (Gross, Piramideo). The US chose this, and you have provided no evidence whatsoever supporting that, had Gross not been caught, they would have started talking about ending the embargo (instead of the more likely scenario, keeping with the provocations until some other schmuck got caught and then using him as a excuse).
Which means either Cuba is full of people who are dumber then me, or they wanted to eliminate all talk of ending the embargo.
Or, more likely, they did not see any unexistent talk about ending the embargo or any other meaningful topic and took the only action available to them to (slightly) deter further agression, but haven't given up on negotiations. I have to ask: what are you proposing they do? You said earlier that it was not to release him unconditionally. But the Cubans have no power to force the US to negotiate, and you disagree with keeping him jailed. What action could the Cubans do to disprove, in your eyes, that they don't want to end the embargo?
[1] Here is an example of a foreigner arrested (fortunately not convicted) during a visit to the US for actions comitted entirely in his country. Added as a footnote because it is offtopic.