Date: 5 February 2026
Following the illegal abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores, alongside a military assault that claimed at least 100 lives (32 of them Cuban nationals), the United States (US) has proceeded to intensify its campaign of economic warfare against Cuba. Trump’s latest executive order imposes a fuel embargo on Cuba and threatens tariffs against any country that sells oil to the island.
This is not a sober policy aimed at addressing “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to US national security; rather, this is the deliberate architecture of suffering, designed to strangle the living conditions of the people of Cuba and to signal to the Global South that sovereignty will not be tolerated in Washington’s hemisphere.
What Washington is doing to Cuba is a naked assertion of power that tramples on national sovereignty and violates multiple instruments of international law. It’s a clear indication that this US administration does not recognize the right of small nations to chart their own course, to build their own futures outside the logic of US security and economic interest.
The US embargo against Cuba, imposed in 1960, has been illegal under international law from the start. Most recently, in October 2025, 187 nations voted for a UN resolution titled “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba,” which explicitly states that the embargo violates the UN Charter. A year earlier, a similar measure was passed by 187 votes with two against (the US and Israel).
Even the threat of tariffs is illegal under both WTO rules and US domestic law. It violates the principles of tariff binding and most-favored-nation (MFN) treatment established in the 1994 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), whereas the ‘reciprocal tariff’ Trump announced in April 2024 is currently under review by the Supreme Court and may be ruled unconstitutional.
The brutality of these measures is consistent with Washington’s new foreign policy doctrine aimed at reconsolidating its hegemony over the “Western Hemisphere.” The National Security Strategy, released in December 2025, revived the Monroe Doctrine and spelled out its approach clearly: the United States reserves the right to deploy military force—unilaterally, without consultation, without constraint—to prevent any other power from accessing resources on the American continent that Washington deems vital to its interests.
What is happening to Cuba today is the latest iteration of this imperial calculus. It is worth noting that Cuba has been a longtime supporter of the Palestinian struggle against settler colonialism and the genocide orchestrated by Israel and the US. Cuba’s solidarity with Palestine began dramatically in 1947, when it became one of only two non-Muslim countries to vote against the UN partition plan for Palestine. In fact, Fidel Castro was one of the first world leaders to speak of ‘genocide’ against the Palestinian people in his speech at the UN General Assembly on October 12, 1979, condemning Israel’s territorial expansion.
Cuba’s solidarity with Palestine is not rhetorical. It is rooted in a shared historical consciousness that emerges from having lived through colonialism and fought for liberation. There is a geography of solidarity here that clearly irked the Washington establishment.
Therefore, it is of utmost importance for us, especially those in the Global South, to outwardly reject and condemn the transgression taking place against Cuba today. There is no space here for neutrality or diplomatic silence. What is happening to Cuba is a blueprint for what awaits any nation that dares to assert its sovereignty against the diktats of Washington. The blockade, the threats, the fuel embargo—these are not anomalies but normalized weapons to punish defiance against the global hegemon.
The world is now confronted with a critical juncture, and we must reiterate and reaffirm our commitment to international law, inclusive multilateralism, and sovereignty amongst nations. There can be no hegemony in a just world. There can be no peace while one power claims the right to strangle another for the crime of independence.
