The decision adopted by the United States on January 29 to declare Cuba a threat to its national security and foreign policy, along with the imposition of a total oil embargo, constitutes a new and brutal attack against the island's sovereignty. This measure is part of a decades-long strategy, implemented through economic sanctions, political pressure, and the criminalization of the Cuban Revolution's political project of social justice and humanism.
The United States arrogates to its self the power to impose tariffs and sanctions on any country that sells or supplies oil to Cuba, directly or indirectly. This new onslaught against the largest of the Antilles, has an immediate impact on the daily lives of the Cuban people: it affects transportation, electricity supply, food production, and the provision of basic services. The intensification of the economic warfare acts as a deliberate tool of pressure and social strangulation, aimed at generating internal discontent and providing a pretext for what US leaders have euphemistically termed a “humanitarian intervention,” which, in the words of the US President himself, would mean “entering and destroying everything that exists”.
Cynically, the order claims that its purpose is to protect the interests of the Cuban people and their right to live in a free and democratic society. However, the measures adopted have deepened the deterioration of living conditions and exacerbate the social and economic suffering of the millions of Cubans living on the island. With this measure, the US government attempts to impose a vertical model of international relations, in which the pinnacle of power is concentrated in Washington, which assumes the authority to unilaterally decide what constitutes a threat and what punishments should be applied to those who dare to defy its orders and directives.
The updated Monroe Doctrine, renamed by Trump himself as the "Donroe Doctrine," is a philosophy based on collective punishment and unilateral imposition, blackmail, threats, and coercion. It violates all norms of international law and civilized coexistence among nations, while marginalizing multilateral institutions such as the UN, the International Criminal Court, and the International Court of Justice.
The intensification to extreme limits of the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed against Cuba is a systematic form of structural violence that meets the characteristics of a crime against humanity, as it deliberately, prolonged and consciously, attacks an entire civilian population with the explicit objective of causing suffering, shortages and social despair.
It is based on the attempt to punish an entire people by restricting access to medicine, food, technology, financing, and normal relations with the rest of the world, even in contexts of health emergencies and natural disasters. Its logic is not legal, but punitive; not diplomatic, but exemplary: it seeks to make an example of Cuba so that no one imitates or dares to repeat this experience of sovereignty. The US policy of economic strangulation against Cuba attempts to legalize suffering as a political tool and to make cruelty the norm, violating fundamental principles of international law and human coexistence.
Cuba's response has been neither hatred nor surrender, but resistance and the deepening of its own project of social justice. The historic capacity of a people to uphold its dignity and sovereignty for more than 66 years in the face of all types of aggression, questions the achievements of a policy based on economic punishment and aggression of every kind. It confirms that coercion cannot break the will of the people. The resistance of the Cuban people and their determination not to submit to the imperial designs of the United States, are seen by the White House as a real threat to the attempts by Washington's power circles to impose their will and absolute dominance on the rest of the world.
Every doctor sent to places no one wants to go, every vaccine developed under adverse conditions, every school sustained against imposed defunding, is a stone thrown against Washington's imperial discourse. Revolutionary humanism is not a slogan, but a practice that reorganizes priorities: saving lives before saving profits, educating before indebting, sharing before accumulating.
What is intolerable to the US government is not the existence of a small, rebellious country like Cuba, but the practical demonstration that another order of values is not only desirable, but possible. The current US administration, with its fascist rhetoric of walls, punishment, and supremacy, continues to embody the most cynical phase of a system that does not tolerate difference when it becomes an example. The aggression against Cuba is also an aggression against the very idea of popular sovereignty, against the possibility for people to decide without asking permission. This is why the US threatens, sanctions, attacks, and lies; because in the face of brute force, it only fears one thing: the power of ideas and the persistence of an example that demonstrates that even under siege, it is possible to live differently, think differently, and fight without renouncing dignity. Today, the Cuban resistance acquires an even deeper dimension; it not only survives a relentless and genocidal economic war, but also, by its very existence, denounces the obscenity of a superpower that punishes dignity and criminalizes sovereignty.
Condemning this criminal policy, and especially the latest measures adopted by the Trump Administration, is not only a defense of Cuba and its people. Defending Cuba in the current circumstances is also to defending life, humanity, international solidarity, and fraternity among peoples. In the current context, it means affirming sovereignty, the right of peoples to determine their own path, and respect for international law. Guaranteeing access to essential resources, protecting political autonomy, and rejecting unilateral sanctions, constitute an act of affirmation of global justice, equity and defending multilateralism. The US aggression reinforces the need for active international solidarity against unilateral domination, and for rejecting the use of economic pressure and the threat and use of force against independent nations as a central weapon of foreign policy.
Malcolm X, one of the Great fighters for civil rights in the US pointed out in a memorable speech, “ If you want to change your condition , you must first change your courage ; fearless people cannot be oppressed .” ; and then he add : "people who decided to stand together , cannot be push back one by one. Unity turns resistance into power."