Anyway, the point about the "fraught relationship" depiction is that it's basically an elephant-in-the-room thing. Such language might work to describe the rel

Anyway, the point about the "fraught relationship" depiction is that it's basically an elephant-in-the-room thing. Such language might work to describe the relationship between the U.S. and Russia (or China), because those countries are essentially peers on the global stage. But to use it in the US/Cuba case pointedly ignores the fundamentally one-sided and, in the view of many inside (and essentially everyone outside) the U.S., petty-minded and abusive nature of that country's treatment of its much more vulnerable southern neighbor. There's also an unpleasant blame-the-victim tinge to it. The Post could have stated the obvious, of course, and acknowledged the elephant in the room. But it knows very well that in order to maintain its image as the (lessor of two) "papers of record" within the center of Federal power, that just would not do.