Cuba should not be treated as a political chess piece to demonstrate US economic and military might.
People paticipate in a rally against the US embargo in Santa Clara, Cuba on April 25, 2021.
(Photo by Joaquin Hernandez/Xinhua via Getty)
A. Shallal
Feb 05, 2026
Common Dreams
Since the Cuban Revolution overthrew a US-backed dictatorship and asserted national independence, Cuba has remained in the United States’ crosshairs. The country has endured nearly 600 assassination attempts against its leadership, along with countless covert and overt operations aimed at destabilizing its government. For more than six decades, the US has also imposed an economic embargo explicitly designed to bring about regime change.
By any honest measure, this policy has failed. What it has succeeded in doing is fostering deep resentment toward the United States, not only in Cuba, but across much of the world, while inflicting immense suffering on ordinary Cubans.
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Basic necessities such as food, paint, printing paper, baby formula, syringes, and other lifesaving supplies, including vaccines and cancer treatment drugs, are either restricted by the embargo or priced far beyond most people’s reach. A simple walk through Havana tells the story: crumbling infrastructure, uncollected trash, and growing numbers of people gathering near tourist areas, hands outstretched in desperation.
Fuel shortages are widespread, inflation is at historic highs, and a sharp decline in tourism, Cuba’s primary economic lifeline, has made daily life nearly unbearable for many.
It is time for the United States to respect Cuba’s sovereignty and lift the embargo and accompanying sanctions.
In response, the Cuban government has expanded the private sector, legalized small- and medium-sized enterprises, decentralized food production, and opened its markets to limited foreign investment, all while attempting to maintain the core socialist principles of the revolution. It has also reduced reliance on fossil fuels, slowly shifting to solar energy. In 2025, renewable energy accounted for more than 10% of Cuba’s energy consumption, an increase from 3% the year before.
Yet these measures alone cannot offset the outsize impact of US policy and the blockade, which has been dramatically tightened in recent months. The latest effort to cut off of nearly all oil shipments to the island has led to daily blackouts and deepened human suffering.
It is time for the United States to respect Cuba’s sovereignty and lift the embargo and accompanying sanctions. They are a cruel and inhumane form of collective punishment that disproportionately harms the most vulnerable. These sanctions, without legitimate justification, have restricted travel for Americans, made remittances far more difficult, and unjustly placed Cuba on the State Sponsor of Terrorism list. That designation effectively cuts the country off from the global banking system, making even basic international transactions nearly impossible. The absurdity is stark: Cuban biotechnology produced five globally used Covid-19 vaccines, while the US embargo restricted Cuba’s ability to purchase syringes to administer them.
Cuba should not be treated as a political chess piece to demonstrate US economic and military might. It is a proud nation of nearly 11 million people who want nothing more than to be good neighbors. It is time for the United States to end its asphyxiation of Cuba and allow the Cuban people to determine their own future, a future free from US interference, coercion, and perpetual threat.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
A. Shallal
A. Shallal is the founder and CEO of Busboys and Poets.
Full Bio >
Since the Cuban Revolution overthrew a US-backed dictatorship and asserted national independence, Cuba has remained in the United States’ crosshairs. The country has endured nearly 600 assassination attempts against its leadership, along with countless covert and overt operations aimed at destabilizing its government. For more than six decades, the US has also imposed an economic embargo explicitly designed to bring about regime change.
By any honest measure, this policy has failed. What it has succeeded in doing is fostering deep resentment toward the United States, not only in Cuba, but across much of the world, while inflicting immense suffering on ordinary Cubans.
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Cuba Condemns Trump Claim That It Poses ‘Extraordinary Threat’ to US
Basic necessities such as food, paint, printing paper, baby formula, syringes, and other lifesaving supplies, including vaccines and cancer treatment drugs, are either restricted by the embargo or priced far beyond most people’s reach. A simple walk through Havana tells the story: crumbling infrastructure, uncollected trash, and growing numbers of people gathering near tourist areas, hands outstretched in desperation.
Fuel shortages are widespread, inflation is at historic highs, and a sharp decline in tourism, Cuba’s primary economic lifeline, has made daily life nearly unbearable for many.
It is time for the United States to respect Cuba’s sovereignty and lift the embargo and accompanying sanctions.
In response, the Cuban government has expanded the private sector, legalized small- and medium-sized enterprises, decentralized food production, and opened its markets to limited foreign investment, all while attempting to maintain the core socialist principles of the revolution. It has also reduced reliance on fossil fuels, slowly shifting to solar energy. In 2025, renewable energy accounted for more than 10% of Cuba’s energy consumption, an increase from 3% the year before.
Yet these measures alone cannot offset the outsize impact of US policy and the blockade, which has been dramatically tightened in recent months. The latest effort to cut off of nearly all oil shipments to the island has led to daily blackouts and deepened human suffering.
It is time for the United States to respect Cuba’s sovereignty and lift the embargo and accompanying sanctions. They are a cruel and inhumane form of collective punishment that disproportionately harms the most vulnerable. These sanctions, without legitimate justification, have restricted travel for Americans, made remittances far more difficult, and unjustly placed Cuba on the State Sponsor of Terrorism list. That designation effectively cuts the country off from the global banking system, making even basic international transactions nearly impossible. The absurdity is stark: Cuban biotechnology produced five globally used Covid-19 vaccines, while the US embargo restricted Cuba’s ability to purchase syringes to administer them.
Cuba should not be treated as a political chess piece to demonstrate US economic and military might. It is a proud nation of nearly 11 million people who want nothing more than to be good neighbors. It is time for the United States to end its asphyxiation of Cuba and allow the Cuban people to determine their own future, a future free from US interference, coercion, and perpetual threat.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
A. Shallal
A. Shallal is the founder and CEO of Busboys and Poets.
Full Bio >
To Stand Against US Aggression, the World Must Rise for Cuba
The latest escalation of the US blockade against Cuba — in the form of an executive order authorizing punitive tariffs on any country that dares supply oil to the island—is a cruel and criminal act of economic warfare that will bring nothing but starvation, deprivation, and despair to its people.
Cuban soldiers take part in the Torchlight March on the 173rd anniversary of National Hero Jose Marti (a leader of Cuba’s independence from Spain and founder of the Cuban Revolutionary Party) in Havana on January 27, 2026. Thousands of Cubans, mostly young people, marched in Havana on January 27 night in protest against US threats against the Caribbean island during the traditional ‘torchlight march’.
(Photo by Adalberto Roque / AFP via Getty Images)
Cabinet of the Progressive International
Feb 04, 2026
The latest escalation of the US blockade against Cuba — in the form of an executive order authorizing punitive tariffs on any country that dares supply oil to the island—is a cruel and criminal act of economic warfare that will bring nothing but starvation, deprivation, and despair to its people.
Cuban soldiers take part in the Torchlight March on the 173rd anniversary of National Hero Jose Marti (a leader of Cuba’s independence from Spain and founder of the Cuban Revolutionary Party) in Havana on January 27, 2026. Thousands of Cubans, mostly young people, marched in Havana on January 27 night in protest against US threats against the Caribbean island during the traditional ‘torchlight march’.
(Photo by Adalberto Roque / AFP via Getty Images)
Cabinet of the Progressive International
Feb 04, 2026
Common Dreams
We will not mince words. The ‘policy’ of the Trump administration is a total siege: a modern mechanism for collective punishment designed to strangle life itself by cutting off fuel for hospitals, schools, water, transport, and food distribution.
Cuba already faces severe fuel shortages, with blackouts stretching daily and essential services collapsing under the weight of sanctions and depleted imports. Cuba’s remaining oil stocks could run out in mere weeks, threatening the lives of millions who have done nothing to justify this escalation.
..
This is the culmination of a long-standing strategy articulated in US law — from the expansive embargo codified by the Helms–Burton Act in the 1990s to the Cuban Assets Control Regulations first enforced in the 1960s — that openly sought to apply “maximum pressure” to force political transformation in Havana and defeat a vanguard in the struggle against the US’s hemispheric domination.
Now, with this new Executive Order, the logic of siege has reached its apotheosis: sanction not only Cuba but every nation that dares show solidarity, effectively demanding that sovereign states choose between the interests of their own people and the dictates of an empire.
Cuba stood with oppressed peoples globally — from defeating apartheid in South Africa to sending doctors to the frontlines of epidemics — and now it is our time to act with audacity, moral courage, and collective force.
Already Mexico — Cuba’s last significant oil lifeline — has been pressed into uncertainty, warned that continued support could trigger tariffs on its economy. In doing so, Trump has revealed so-called ‘secondary sanctions’ as the empire’s principal weapon against international solidarity.
Trump has been clear: this siege is but a springboard toward regime change. It is the same strategic blueprint that saw Venezuela’s sovereignty undermined, its oil lifelines severed, its people plunged into crisis while the world stood by in lethargy.
We cannot repeat that failure. The international community was too slow to prevent the bombardment of Caracas; we must not be passive while the groundwork is laid for similar violence against the people of Cuba.
If Cuba is to survive as an independent nation it will be because of the continued resilience and vitality of its revolutionary project — and the solidarity of movements and nations around the world defying empire and rising to challenge this injustice.
We must organize community support networks, coordinate diplomatic resistance, demand that governments refuse to enforce secondary tariffs, and amplify Cuban voices against this assault on international law, human dignity, and basic human rights.
Those efforts, both from within and beyond the Progressive International, must accelerate — today. History will judge those who saw this moment and turned away. Cuba stood with oppressed peoples globally — from defeating apartheid in South Africa to sending doctors to the frontlines of epidemics — and now it is our time to act with audacity, moral courage, and collective force.
Stand with the Cuban people now; stand against this siege, this economic assault, this unfolding humanitarian disaster; join together in the provision of key supplies to the island, from medicine to food to fuel for its people; and stand for the right of all nations to self-determination and human dignity, or be complicit in its destruction.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Cabinet of the Progressive International
The Cabinet of the Progressive International is the executive body of the Progressive International, launched in 2020 with a mission to unite, organize, and mobilize the world’s progressive forces. The body is comprised of eight members of the Council and two representatives from the Secretariat.
Full Bio >
We will not mince words. The ‘policy’ of the Trump administration is a total siege: a modern mechanism for collective punishment designed to strangle life itself by cutting off fuel for hospitals, schools, water, transport, and food distribution.
Cuba already faces severe fuel shortages, with blackouts stretching daily and essential services collapsing under the weight of sanctions and depleted imports. Cuba’s remaining oil stocks could run out in mere weeks, threatening the lives of millions who have done nothing to justify this escalation.
..
This is the culmination of a long-standing strategy articulated in US law — from the expansive embargo codified by the Helms–Burton Act in the 1990s to the Cuban Assets Control Regulations first enforced in the 1960s — that openly sought to apply “maximum pressure” to force political transformation in Havana and defeat a vanguard in the struggle against the US’s hemispheric domination.
Now, with this new Executive Order, the logic of siege has reached its apotheosis: sanction not only Cuba but every nation that dares show solidarity, effectively demanding that sovereign states choose between the interests of their own people and the dictates of an empire.
Cuba stood with oppressed peoples globally — from defeating apartheid in South Africa to sending doctors to the frontlines of epidemics — and now it is our time to act with audacity, moral courage, and collective force.
Already Mexico — Cuba’s last significant oil lifeline — has been pressed into uncertainty, warned that continued support could trigger tariffs on its economy. In doing so, Trump has revealed so-called ‘secondary sanctions’ as the empire’s principal weapon against international solidarity.
Trump has been clear: this siege is but a springboard toward regime change. It is the same strategic blueprint that saw Venezuela’s sovereignty undermined, its oil lifelines severed, its people plunged into crisis while the world stood by in lethargy.
We cannot repeat that failure. The international community was too slow to prevent the bombardment of Caracas; we must not be passive while the groundwork is laid for similar violence against the people of Cuba.
If Cuba is to survive as an independent nation it will be because of the continued resilience and vitality of its revolutionary project — and the solidarity of movements and nations around the world defying empire and rising to challenge this injustice.
We must organize community support networks, coordinate diplomatic resistance, demand that governments refuse to enforce secondary tariffs, and amplify Cuban voices against this assault on international law, human dignity, and basic human rights.
Those efforts, both from within and beyond the Progressive International, must accelerate — today. History will judge those who saw this moment and turned away. Cuba stood with oppressed peoples globally — from defeating apartheid in South Africa to sending doctors to the frontlines of epidemics — and now it is our time to act with audacity, moral courage, and collective force.
Stand with the Cuban people now; stand against this siege, this economic assault, this unfolding humanitarian disaster; join together in the provision of key supplies to the island, from medicine to food to fuel for its people; and stand for the right of all nations to self-determination and human dignity, or be complicit in its destruction.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Cabinet of the Progressive International
The Cabinet of the Progressive International is the executive body of the Progressive International, launched in 2020 with a mission to unite, organize, and mobilize the world’s progressive forces. The body is comprised of eight members of the Council and two representatives from the Secretariat.
Full Bio >
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