Why we're going to Cuba

On January 29 of this year, Trump announced a de facto oil blockade against the island nation, threatening to slap harsh tariffs on any country which “directly or indirectly sells or otherwise provides any oil to Cuba.” In February, the Russian tanker Sea Horse abruptly diverted its course from Cuba, carrying more than 200,000 barrels of oil the Cuban people had been counting on. Since then, widespread electricity blackouts have become a regular occurrence. People can’t refrigerate their food, garbage is piling up in the streets since there’s no fuel for trucks to collect it, and preventable disease is spreading. Worst of all, doctors in Havana report that over 3,000 people who rely on dialysis machines are at risk of dying from loss of power.

Words like “sanctions” and “restrictions” really don’t capture the reality. This is an undeclared economic war, and a lethal one. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio want to bring about regime change in Cuba, and have demanded that President Miguel Díaz-Canel resign from office. So they’re inflicting as much pain and suffering on the Cuban people as they can, in hopes of bringing the entire nation to its knees. If the blackouts continue, they will kill people; it’s possible they already have.

The blockade is obscene on a human level, and it’s illegal under international law. You couldn’t ask for a more clear-cut case of collective punishment. Last September, the General Assembly of the United Nations voted overwhelmingly to lift U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba, with 165 countries in favor of sanctions relief and only seven against—including, tellingly, both the United States and Israel. But the U.S. has so far gotten away with its role in the collective punishment and starvation of Gaza, and it’s now committing the same crime against Cuba.