M A Hossain,
The streets of Havana, once alive with music and the hum of daily life, now tell a quieter story: one of long lines at gas stations that have nothing to dispense, hospitals flickering in and out of power, and garbage piling in corners because the trucks that once cleared it lack the fuel to move. This is not the aftermath of a natural disaster or a civil war. It is the result of deliberate policies enacted by the world’s most powerful government — a self-inflicted siege that risks human lives and global norms.
Call it what it is: a man-made humanitarian catastrophe.
To understand how we arrived here, we must revisit the anatomy of this crisis not as abstract geopolitics but as the lived reality of people now confronting shortages that affect every aspect of daily life — electricity, healthcare, transport, food supply, sanitation, and even the ability of airlines to fly in and out of the island.
Sanctions vs. Blockade
Washington has long maintained an embargo on Cuba dating back to 1962. But the recent escalation — particularly the U.S. declaration of a “national emergency” empowering tariffs on countries supplying oil to Cuba and the effective blockage of Venezuelan oil destined for the island — transcends conventional sanctions and resembles, in form and function, a blockade that constricts the flow of basic life needs.
An embargo, at least in theory, restricts trade between two states. A blockade, however, is unmistakably a tool of warfare: it stops goods from reaching a population regardless of sovereignty or third-party interests. And when the list of affected goods includes energy so essential that its absence destabilizes hospitals, water systems, sanitation services, and food production, we leave the realm of political pressure and enter that of collective punishment.
Sanctions may be an instrument of coercive diplomacy; blockades are instruments of desperation.
Scarcity as a Weapon
The tightening of U.S. measures has had immediate, devastating effects. Power grids that once staggered have now faltered into rolling blackouts. Cuban health officials report that ambulances struggle to find fuel, hospital services are hampered by outages, and vital flights bringing in medical supplies cannot land because jet fuel is exhausted.
These aren’t inconveniences. They are strategic conditions engineered to degrade daily life to a point where society itself begins to crumble.
In purely geopolitical terms, the United States is playing chess — redirecting Venezuelan oil exports away from Havana, threatening penalties on nations that would assist Cuba, and insisting that Cuba represents an “unusual and extraordinary” threat to U.S. security. But the board on which these moves unfold is not theoretical: it is an island with 11 million residents trying to procure basic sustenance while blackouts last up to 20 hours a day.
What we see now is a scarcity weaponized: energy constraints imposed to foment instability and, potentially, to provoke political change through suffering. This is policy masquerading as pressure, a strategy that uses human needs itself as leverage.
The Architects of Regime Change and Their Miscalculations
Every geopolitical gambit has architects, and in Washington today they are not faceless bureaucrats. The hardliners pushing this rollback of détente and tightening of economic constraints are driven not merely by strategy but by an ideological fixation on regime change. In the U.S. context this fixation traces to political constituencies, historical grievances, and the enduring memory of Cold War antagonisms rather than a clear assessment of present realities.
The danger in this worldview is that it misreads the durability of the Cuban state and the consequences of pushing a society already facing infrastructural challenges beyond the brink. It assumes that deprivation will produce revolution, rather than desperation; that civic order will break toward political reform, rather than collapse into lawlessness and despair.
This is not an abstract concern. Latin America has witnessed the fallout of destabilized states — from Venezuela’s economic unraveling to Haiti’s cycle of political violence and humanitarian breakdown. Any scenario in which Cuba becomes acutely deprived of essential services carries a real risk of “Haitianization”: a spiral of insecurity, social atomisation, and uncontrollable migration. The Cuban state might not simply crack; its collapse could trigger regional chaos.
It is worth remembering that Cuba’s revolutionary project and its social institutions have survived decades of hardship, internal missteps, and shifting global alliances. The assumption that severe deprivation will yield a controllable political transition misjudges both Cuban resilience and the unpredictable dynamics of popular suffering.
Regional and International Consequences
This crisis does not exist in a vacuum. As U.S. tariffs and threats isolate Cuba economically, other global players are stepping in. Russia has publicly supported Cuba’s sovereignty and pledged aid, while China’s involvement in renewable energy initiatives on the island underscores the broader geopolitical competition now unfolding.
Latin American governments and regional organizations — from the Organization of American States to the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States(CELAC) — have thus far offered muted responses. The lack of a unified regional pushback against unilateral coercive measures reflects political diversities and strategic hesitations. But it also reveals how U.S. foreign policy, in its current form, may be eroding the diplomatic framework necessary to manage crises collaboratively rather than confrontationally.
The warning from international institutions is clear: punishing a nation’s economy in ways that directly threaten its civilian population violates the principles of human rights and international norms. The United Nations’ human rights office has criticized fuel blockades as undermining human dignity — a signal that the legitimacy of such measures is not universally accepted, even among U.S. allies.
Diplomacy Over Destabilization
There is a paradox at the heart of this crisis. Cuba’s government has expressed willingness to hold talks with the United States without preconditions, in terms that respect its sovereignty. But the very policies meant to compel negotiation — sanctions that break supply chains, tariffs that choke imports, and threats against third-party nations — make constructive dialogue more difficult.
True diplomatic engagement requires acknowledging the humanity of the other side — not just their calculus of power. It means recognizing that populations, not regimes, bear the immediate cost of coercive policies.
The lesson of history is that coercion rarely yields stable, positive political change. More often, it begets resentment, internal repression, and long-lasting distrust. The smarter course, geopolitically and ethically, is to shift away from maximum pressure toward a strategy that blends pragmatic engagement with clear red lines — one that addresses legitimate security concerns while ensuring that human lives are not held hostage to political ambitions.
Reassessing Priorities Before the Brink
Cuba today stands at a juncture: its energy grid failing, its hospitals struggling, its services collapsing, and its people bracing for greater suffering. What began as an old embargo has morphed into something more akin to a blockade that imperils basic human needs.
If the United States wishes to promote stability, democracy, and human dignity in the Western Hemisphere, it must reconsider strategies that put civilians at risk. The alternative — watching a society unravel under the weight of engineered scarcity — is not just a policy failure but a moral one.
Humanitarian catastrophe isn’t an inevitability; it’s a choice. And in the case of Cuba, it is time to choose differently.
M A Hossain, political and defense analyst based in Bangladesh. He can be reached at: writetomahossain@gmail.com
This article published at :
1. Eurasia Review, USA : 25 February, 26
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