By Pedro Monzón Barata – Mar 16, 2026
Pedro Monzón Barata argues that Trump’s latest executive order and threats against Cuba represent a deliberate escalation of long-term US pressure aimed at strangling the island’s economy and sovereignty. Cuba’s response is one of resistance, adaptation, and defense across energy, diplomacy, and national survival.
A new and more direct threat now falls upon Cuba, imposed by the brutal force of the empire. On March 5, 2026, while the world’s attention was fixed on the unfolding imperial aggression against Iran, President Donald Trump made a chilling and arrogant declaration: after Iran, Cuba is next. In a phone interview with Politico, he stated bluntly that “Cuba’s going to fall, too”. The following day, at a White House event, he reiterated that action against Cuba is “just a question of time” once the conflict with Iran is concluded. This is not mere rhetoric; it is the public announcement of a premeditated plan to erase our nation from the map.
His plans increasingly include a final military aggression, but the reinforcement of the energy blockade is a chosen weapon for this final assault. Washington seeks to shut down power plants, water pumps, hospitals, ambulances, and transportation, freezing the country’s economy. This tragedy, the work of the United States government, represents an act of historical cynicism without parallel in the 21st century, crossing the final threshold of unconventional warfare to inflict massive suffering upon a peaceful population.
The blackouts of 12, 16, and 20 hours that we endure are not a geopolitical accident or a management crisis, but rather large-scale State terrorism, a crime against humanity perfected with the coldness of an executioner who determines the exact point where to cut in order to provoke maximum agony. Trump’s executive order of January 29, 2026, which declares Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” is consistent with the military intervention in Venezuela and the kidnapping of Maduro. They are arms of the same pincer whose ultimate purpose is not to overthrow a government, but to erase from history the living example of the Cuban Revolution.
The imperial rhetoric of “sanctions,” “democracy promotion,” and the “fight against terrorism and drugs” is the rotting shell that conceals the genocidal face of U.S. foreign policy. What moral legitimacy can a nation claim that has elevated state violence to both doctrine and practice? From Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Vietnam and Raqqa; from financing death squads in Central America and the Middle East to torture in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo (usurped Cuban territory) while protecting convicted terrorists on U.S. soil, such as Luis Posada Carriles, the mastermind behind the mid-air bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 innocent people, on October 6, 1976. Washington’s accusations are a pathological projection: it accuses Cuba of what constitutes its own essence. Its terror has a concrete face: children without oncology medications, respirators that fail, food that does not arrive due to lack of fuel. This immoral policy has been condemned for 32 consecutive years at the United Nations. It is the policy of the gangster who burns down the house when the victim refuses to kneel.
The persistence of the crime
This policy of terror did not emerge with Trump, nor with the 21st century. It has a precise origin, a founding document that reveals its genocidal intent.
On April 6, 1960, Undersecretary Lester D. Mallory drafted the foundational memorandum of this U.S. policy toward Cuba, declassified years later as irrefutable proof of genocidal intent: “The majority of Cubans support Castro… There is no effective political opposition… The only foreseeable way to deny him internal support is through disenchantment and dissatisfaction arising from economic hardship… All possible means must be employed quickly to weaken Cuba’s economic life, deny it money and supplies, provoke hunger, desperation and the overthrow of the government.” Trump’s 2026 executive order is the application of the Mallory principle with 21st-century tools.
This energy aggression did not begin now. From 2019, oil tankers were pursued, threatened and intercepted in international waters; shipowners fined and intimidated for fear of losing access to the U.S. economy. The executive order was the formalization of an energy war already underway. Now the total supply of energy is prohibited, the vital fluid of any modern society, with the same objective as always: to provoke desperation to overthrow the Revolution, but with increased lethal precision. The perverse calculation seeks multi-system collapse as a breeding ground for “humanitarian” intervention. They do not want peaceful transition, but a docile failed state to administer and from which to erase the ghost of insurgent dignity.
Total blackout and total asphyxiation
What the empire seeks is not a simple economic adjustment, but a humanitarian collapse. The world witnessed this on March 4th, when a failure at the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant, the country’s largest, left two-thirds of the nation without electricity, including Havana. This was no accident. It was the most brutal manifestation of the “energy war” declared by Washington. As the Cuban News Agency has denounced, Trump’s executive order replicates the genocidal formula of the 1960 Mallory Memorandum: to provoke hunger and desperation in the population to overthrow the Revolution.
The immediate cause of the blackout was the “weakness of the electrical system due to lack of fuel.” Since January 9th, no fuel-laden ships have arrived on the island, and the odious U.S. pressure through threats of tariffs on countries that send oil to Cuba has paralyzed imports . President Trump himself admitted this on March 5, stating: “We cut off all oil, all money, or we cut off everything coming in from Venezuela, which was the sole source. And they want to make a deal”. Meanwhile, the Trump administration, in an act of limitless cynicism, maintains a “de facto blockade” while allowing certain very small shipments only to private businesses, attempting to divide the nation and create a dependency that undermines sovereignty. It is the same script: finance a fifth column while asphyxiating the people.
State terrorism and its human consequences
The consequences of this criminal policy have names and faces. While Cubans stood in line to buy candles during the massive blackout, the world could see the face of the State terrorism we denounce. A father, Damián Salvador, expressed it with the rawness of someone with nothing left to lose: “Everything you have in the fridge spoils: meat, the baby’s milk, everything” .
The revolutionary government, far from surrendering, has implemented emergency measures to preserve essential services: a four-day work week for the state sector, fuel rationing, and the reduction of transportation and educational activities. These are the measures of a nation preparing for the worst without ceasing to function, prioritizing life. But the reality is that fuel scarcity is pushing sensitive sectors like health, transportation, and water supply to the limit, leading even the United Nations to warn of an imminent risk of “humanitarian collapse.”
Trump’s ominous ‘friendly takeover’ threat
While the Iranian people resist and confront the US-Israeli aggression that has already cost thousands of lives, including children killed in airstrikes , Trump has turned his gaze to our homeland with increasing belligerence. On March 9, he escalated his threats dramatically, suggesting the possibility of a “friendly takeover” of Cuba—or perhaps not so friendly. “It may be a friendly takeover, it may not be a friendly takeover. It wouldn’t matter because they’re really, they’re down to, as I say, fumes. They have no energy. They have no money. They’re in deep trouble on a humanitarian basis,” Trump declared. This is the language of a colonial power, treating sovereign nations as territories to be acquired.
The empire’s strategy is clear: first Venezuela, then Iran, and now Cuba. Trump has boasted that the capture of President Maduro on January 3 and the destabilization of Venezuela were essential steps in cutting off Cuba’s lifeline. He has publicly acknowledged that the worsening situation on our island is the direct result of his “intervention.” And now, as the conflict in Iran grows more complicated than anticipated, he has signaled with characteristic arrogance that the far-right Secretary of State, Marco Rubio (the son of Cuban immigrants with a long history of animosity toward the Revolution) is waiting in the wings to take charge of the Cuban portfolio.
State terrorism as doctrine
This pattern of exploitation and aggression is not exceptional; it is the consistent doctrine of U.S. foreign policy. U.S. foreign policy is a catalogue of State terrorism: overthrowing democratic governments (Mossadegh in Iran, Arbenz in Guatemala, Allende in Chile), support for bloody dictatorships (Pinochet, Videla, Somoza), the invasions of Panama and Grenada; wars based on open lies as in the case of Iraq; drone bombings in eternal wars; creation and financing of terrorist groups. And what is the blockade but massive economic terrorism? The difference between a terrorist with a bomb and a bureaucrat who denies insulin to a child is only a matter of method: both inflict pain to break wills. This is the true face of the empire: a pain-generating machine that presents itself as the only doctor capable of healing the wounds it inflicts.
Imperial propaganda as champion of democracy and human rights crumbles before the facts. The United States has no moral authority to judge. It is the principal violator of sovereignties, the world’s greatest exporter of violence, and a historic sponsor of state terrorism. While accusing Cuba of human rights violations, Washington granted asylum in Miami to terrorists Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch; kept Julian Assange confined and tortured for exposing its war crimes; and, in Guantánamo, continues to usurp Cuban territory and subject individuals to prison and torture without trial.
But setting aside the immorality of the accuser, we must ask a more fundamental question: are there objective reasons for Cuba to deserve punishment? The documented answer is a resounding no. Cuba respects and promotes human rights as an absolute priority. There is no proven case of torture or inhumane repression. It is a country of peace where social justice and solidarity are the very essence of the system: free universal health care and education, progressive labor legislation and social security, inclusive political participation, selfless international cooperation, and much more. While in the U.S. and Europe, peaceful demonstrations are brutally repressed, people are discriminated against, poverty and migration are criminalized, and prison systems hold millions, Cuba maintains enviable citizen security and prioritizes equity and solidarity as principles of the State.
The paradox of the ‘unusual and extraordinary threat’
This leads us to an apparent contradiction that, upon examination, reveals the true nature of the conflict.
How can an island of 10 million people, a supposed “failed state in decline,” pose an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the superpower? It is a crude fallacy, meant only to confuse. But if we dig beneath the surface, it reveals a real substance: they do not fear Cuba for our military or economic size, but for the power of our example. The demonstration that a small, poor, and blockaded people can build a more just society, resist for decades the aggression of the most powerful empire, and export solidarity instead of war. This proves that another world is possible, that dignity is neither bought nor sold, and that popular sovereignty prevails over imperial domination. That is why they must destroy Cuba: our very existence disproves their narrative that there is no alternative to savage capitalism.
Cuba resists and does not stop
And yet, despite this existential threat, Cuba does not merely endure; it advances.
Cuban resistance is not immobility but constant movement, permanent adaptation, and incessant creativity. We do not resist to remain static, but to continue existing and advancing. Cuba has erased the concept of collapse that the empire predicts, transforming obstacles into opportunities and scarcity into a stimulus for innovation.
Aware of our energy vulnerability, the Island has been conceiving actions to confront the fuel blockade. They are not improvisations, but the result of strategic analysis, contingency scenarios and accumulation of moral and material reserves, which cannot always be made public.
Along with resistance against the blockade, we work sovereignly to resolve our own problems and deficiencies. We are aware of management insufficiencies, errors committed and structures to perfect. But precisely because we seek solutions by our own means, without external tutelage, the blockade is doubly criminal: it asphyxiates us and reduces our capacity for correction with our own resources.
From ‘option zero’ to ‘war of all the people’
This capacity for self-correction and adaptation is not new. It was perfected in the crucible of the Special Period, and from that experience emerged concrete strategies.
Certainly, the response to aggression has been calculated, serene, and decisive. When the enemy turns off our lights, we turn on collective intelligence and draw on past experience. One legacy of the Special Period was the conception of “Option Zero”: a limit scenario, for which we are prepared, grounded in the decision to resist, selflessly, in defense of sovereignty. It entails draconian yet rational energy rationing; the absolute prioritization of fuel for life-sustaining services; urban and suburban agriculture for food self-sufficiency; a return to animal traction and bicycle transportation; and the conversion of industry to low-consumption technologies. Essential services are prioritized: hospitals, where electricity decides between life and death; general and special education centers; and fundamental industries for survival and development. The basic productive and social fabric are all protected.
The response: serenity, rationality, and energy sovereignty
But the empire and its lackeys, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, are wrong again if they believe desperation will make us surrender. The serenity and conviction I speak of were demonstrated on March 6th, when, in less than 48 hours, 80% of homes in Havana and most of the country had their electrical service restored. That capacity for response is not improvisation: it is the maturity of a people who have overcome far worse crises.
In parallel, we accelerate the renewable energy revolution. Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz made it clear: “Cuba continues to work to achieve energy sovereignty.” These are not empty words. While Washington blocks, we build. We are accelerating the installation of 49 new photovoltaic parks that are already contributing over 1000 MW to the system, doubling renewable generation from 3% to 10% in the last year. The goal is to reach between 15% and 20% of the energy matrix with clean sources by the end of the year. Furthermore, the government has approved tariff and tax exemptions for families and businesses to import and install solar panels. We turn the lack of fuel into the greatest opportunity to harness the sun we have in abundance. It is the victory of collective intelligence over brute force.
Cuba: 5 Detained for Vandalism Amid Protests Against the Energy Crisis Generated by US Blockade
Diplomacy and the principle of solidarity
This battle is not fought only within our borders. It extends to every diplomatic trench where the truth of Cuba is at stake.
On the diplomatic and legal front, we wage a global battle for truth. We dismantle accusations by exposing the aggressor’s illegal actions. We insist that the correct term is blockade, not embargo: more precisely, it is economic and political war. The difference is legally and morally crucial: an embargo is a measure between belligerents; a blockade is an act of war designed to isolate, asphyxiate, and starve a civilian population, with extraterritorial reach that even violates the sovereignty of third countries.
Our voice has overwhelming support at the UN General Assembly, year after year, with the organic solidarity of Our America expressed through ALBA-TCP communiqués and joint declarations by organizations, institutions, countries, and prominent personalities. The Global South experiences the aggression against Cuba as its own and sees in it the essence of its own struggle.
Cuban international solidarity is an unprecedented and defining trait. Unlike the empire, which promotes terrorism, Cuba offers medical aid, education, and technical assistance. Medical brigades have saved millions of lives; educators have made entire populations literate. It is pure cooperation, not military intervention or plunder. “Doctors, not bombs,” Fidel summarized. This truth grants Cuba moral standing in the eyes of the world and inspires reciprocity.
Even within the “monster” (as José Martí called it), solidarity movements and courageous voices emerge. Cubans abroad, foreign businessmen with investments on the Island, and friendly governments and citizens offer us their support. This transnational network proves that Cuba is not alone: our cause is just, and the empire has failed to monopolize the global narrative.
Cuba and multipolarity
This growing network of solidarity is not accidental. It coincides with a profound shift in the global order.
Many ask about the possible role of critical aid from the emerging powers shaping the multipolar world order. Cuba recognizes the sincere expressions of solidarity from our most powerful friends, but we approach the issue with strategic serenity, without naive romanticism or dependence. We appreciate help in critical moments, but our final victory must be the result of our own effort, our ingenuity, and our unity.
However, Cuba’s symbolic value transcends circumstances. We are not the pariah state that propaganda paints us as; we are a nation with substantial political and moral capital, living proof that it is possible to resist and defeat the most powerful hegemonism in history. We trust, without chauvinism, that the world as a whole, and key actors in the multipolar order, will not allow the U.S. to erase Cuba from the political map. Concrete solidarity is already making itself felt with growing force.
An invincible fortress in the geopolitical storm
Our struggle is not a local matter: it is the frontline trench of a global civilizational war between genocidal unilateralism and the aspiration for a just international order based on respect and cooperation. Every day we resist, every blackout we survive, every act of aggression we dismantle, strengthens the credibility of our alternative. Defending ourselves is defending every people’s right to live in sovereignty.
The ferocity of the empire does not stop at Cuba’s borders. The aggression against Venezuela, which led to the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife last January 3rd, had a secondary objective: to wrest from Cuba its main source of fuel. However, they have once again underestimated the militant solidarity of our peoples and the fortitude of our leaders. President Miguel Díaz-Canel has reiterated the willingness to dialogue with the United States, but always from a place of respect for sovereignty and without the slightest concession to interference. When Trump threatened that “Cuba is going to fall,” our president’s response was immediate and firm: Cuba will defend itself “to the last drop of blood.”
An invincible fortress
But if diplomacy fails, if the blockade tightens, if the empire resorts to its ultimate argument, Cuba is prepared to respond with its ultimate defense.
While waging economic, communications, and diplomatic battles, we maintain unwavering vigilance and preparation in national defense. The brutal intervention in Venezuela, where 32 brave Cuban military collaborators fell while fighting overwhelming forces, did not intimidate us: it filled us with pride and revealed to us the enemy’s ferocity and the need to be ready for the maximum scenario.
When imperialism threatens, our people do not tremble or hide: they report to fortifications, firing ranges, and military units. The “War of All the People” is not an abstract concept: it is a physical reality, drilled every Saturday in every municipality, neighborhood, and workplace. It is the materialization of Fidel’s principle that every Cuban is a soldier.
This unique defensive system is not based on stealth aircraft carriers or unattainable hypersonic weapons, but on political consciousness, training, and the bravery of millions. The Revolutionary Armed Forces, as the professional backbone, integrate organically with the popular Territorial Troop Militia, who dominate the terrain and know how to use weapons, tactics, and strategies. This is “deterrence by denial” taken to the extreme: making the cost of invasion so prohibitive in blood, time, resources, and prestige that it becomes unthinkable, even for Washington’s most aggressive hawks.
They would not find a conventional army to annihilate, but an entire nation transformed into a swarm of resistance—where every citizen is prepared and trained to confront the enemy. This is not about defeating an imposed government; they would have to defeat the people themselves, because the Cuban Revolution is the entire people.
Serenity, rationality and conviction
What sustains this readiness is not fear, but a particular state of mind that visitors to the Island often remark upon.
In Cuba, one perceives a particular atmosphere of serenity, rationality, profound conviction, willingness to sacrifice, and security in final success. It is not naive euphoria or denial of danger, but the maturity of a people who have traversed multiple crises, and know the enemy’s destructive capacity and our own strength.
This serenity is confidence and concentration, the calm that precedes and accompanies decisive action, the result of decades of political education, comprehensive education, and the institutionalization of revolutionary conduct. When Fidel was no longer physically among us, many predicted imminent collapse. But revolutionary perseverance is not a contingent phenomenon: it is the result of a conscious process that transformed the intuition, political attitude, and bravery of heroes, martyrs, and the Commander in Chief into a resilient, adaptive State doctrine deeply rooted in the masses. That is our capital.
The absurdity of the blockade
And yet, this entire apparatus of aggression, this six-decade war, is not only criminal—it is profoundly irrational.
Without a blockade, both peoples would benefit. U.S. businessmen would access a neighboring market of 10 million consumers; enjoy a universally recognized culture, beautiful beaches, prodigal nature and a sympathetic population. Cubans would access technology, investments and markets to enhance their development. Both peoples could establish friendly relations instead of confronting each other. It is irrational and painful to promote bloodshed in unnecessary confrontation. The blockade is absurd in every sense: economic, political, moral, cultural and legal.
Despite this absurdity, Cuba does not close the door to dialogue—but neither will it open the door to submission.
There are sectors where, despite profound differences, we can engage in dialogue and work together: environmental issues, the fight against drug trafficking, orderly migration management, and scientific cooperation. But there is a non-negotiable red line: we will not negotiate sovereignty. Not one micron. Nothing. We do not ask permission to exist, to choose our political system, or to maintain our independence. We are willing to dialogue as equals, but never under threat, coercion, or blackmail.
Trump’s miscalculation
The empire’s leader believes he can add Cuba to a list of conquests, speaking of us as “one of the small ones” for him. He boasts that his intervention has crippled us, that we are desperate to make a deal. He speaks of a “friendly takeover” as if our homeland were a piece of real estate to be acquired. He is profoundly mistaken.
What Trump fails to understand (what none of them understand) is that Cuba is not for sale. We are not desperate to make a deal; we are determined to resist. The “fumes” he believes we are running on are not the last gasps of a dying regime, but the fuel of a people whose dignity has been forged in decades of resistance. The darkness he seeks to impose on us only makes the light of our conviction shine brighter.
The victory of ideas
This leads us to the final, inevitable question:
Can the energy blockade, added to the six-decade blockade, finally subdue the Cuban Revolution? The answer is in the archives of imperial failures. They have tried everything: the invasion of Playa Girón (1961), where the Rebel Army and a newly created and still poorly trained militia inflicted their first great military defeat on U.S. imperialism in the Americas; the terrorist war of the 1960s and 1970s, with sabotage and biological attacks; the terrifying Cuban Missile Crisis (1962); the strangulation of the Special Period, which forged a resilience of steel; a permanent cultural and media war, and the seductive lure of ‘soft change.’ And now, the final assault on the energy system. But here we are: standing, fighting, creating.
Our strength is not measured in barrels of oil or megawatts, but in inexhaustible moral reserves. It is nourished by Martí’s ethic, which placed “the cult of the full dignity of man” as the first law of the Republic. It feeds on Fidel’s thought, which bequeathed the conviction that decisive battles are won with ideas, unity, and an indissoluble connection between leadership and people. It is strengthened by the living memory of every collective sacrifice overcome, from the literacy campaign to the pandemic.
The immediate path will be extremely difficult: physical darkness that hurts, scarcity that oppresses, and constant uncertainty. But it is precisely in this forced darkness where the light of our reason, our morality, and our historical certainty shines with inextinguishable force. The United States, in its pathological obsession to destroy our example, only exhibits its own brutality and moral misery, while revealing the strength of our principles.
We will do what we have always done, what we know how to do best: resist, create, and win. Because we know that a people united by a just cause, conscious of their rights, and prepared to sacrifice for their dignity and sovereignty, is a force against which all empires shatter. Our final victory will not be a headline in the Western press; it will be the eternal endurance of Cuba as a free, sovereign, socialist nation of solidarity—inspired by Martí and Fidel. It will be the triumph of the idea that another world is possible, necessary, and inevitable. As long as Cubans have the will to fight, the flame of the Revolution, like the sun we harness in our solar panels, will never be extinguished.
These are the options of Cuba.
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Pedro Monzón Barata, former Cuban Ambassador and Consul General in Sao Paolo; researcher at the Center for International Policy Research
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