system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why does the United States have a naval base in Cuba, one of our ideological enemies?
gpt
The US had the base there before the Cuba revolution. There was no way the new Cuban government could get the US out of there without creating a cause for the US to invade cuba completely. 

After the Cuban Revolution, the US kept paying its monthly lease of the land, in accordance to the original treaty. Cuba refused to cash any of the checks, although in 1959, one of the checks was accidentally cashed by the Cuba government...but never since. To this day, the US claims when Cuba cashed that one check, it honored the original treaty. Cuba says that the check was cashed by a clerical error, and has not cashed any of the 600+ monthly checks since that time, and that the US has no right to use the base. However, Cuba has no way to get the US off that land.

p.s. if the lease was for $1M a month, that'd be $600M (from 1959 to present), and maybe Cuba would cash the checks. However, the lease is only for $4,085 a month, and not worth Cuba's while.