Gus­ta­vo Vél­iz Oli­vares

Cu­ba Am­bas­sador to T&T

Over the past sev­er­al months, mea­sures di­rect­ed against Cu­ba have been ex­pand­ed, in­ten­si­fied and sig­nif­i­cant­ly broad­ened. At the same time, a nar­ra­tive has in­creas­ing­ly emerged in in­ter­na­tion­al pub­lic dis­course por­tray­ing Cu­ba as a threat to the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of the Unit­ed States. Such a char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion de­serves care­ful scruti­ny.

The eco­nom­ic, com­mer­cial and fi­nan­cial block­ade im­posed on Cu­ba for more than six decades has, in the cur­rent con­text, tak­en on new di­men­sions. Its ef­fects are be­ing felt with par­tic­u­lar sever­i­ty in the en­er­gy sec­tor, health­care, trans­porta­tion, ed­u­ca­tion, food dis­tri­b­u­tion, and oth­er es­sen­tial ar­eas of dai­ly life.

An en­er­gy siege

The Ex­ec­u­tive Or­ders is­sued on Jan­u­ary 29, 2026 (Ex­ec­u­tive Or­der 14380) and May 1, 2026 (Ex­ec­u­tive Or­der 14404) have fur­ther in­ten­si­fied re­stric­tions af­fect­ing Cu­ba’s ac­cess to en­er­gy re­sources. These mea­sures amount to an un­prece­dent­ed form of eco­nom­ic and en­er­gy pres­sure, with con­se­quences that are in­creas­ing­ly be­ing com­pared to those of a naval block­ade.

Dur­ing the first half of 2026, on­ly one tanker from the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion reached Cu­ba car­ry­ing hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance, in­clud­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100,000 tonnes of crude oil.

The hu­man­i­tar­i­an con­se­quences of re­strict­ing ac­cess to es­sen­tial en­er­gy sup­plies mer­it se­ri­ous in­ter­na­tion­al at­ten­tion. En­er­gy is in­dis­pens­able not on­ly for eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, but al­so for hos­pi­tals, wa­ter sys­tems, trans­porta­tion, food dis­tri­b­u­tion, re­frig­er­a­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and vir­tu­al­ly every as­pect of mod­ern life.

Hu­man cost

The cur­rent sit­u­a­tion can be de­scribed as a form of “silent geno­cide.” While the le­gal char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of that term is a mat­ter that re­quires care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion un­der in­ter­na­tion­al law, there can be lit­tle doubt that pro­longed eco­nom­ic re­stric­tions can have pro­found hu­man­i­tar­i­an con­se­quences when they af­fect ac­cess to food, med­i­cine, fu­el, med­ical equip­ment and oth­er es­sen­tial goods.

The cen­tral con­cern is the im­pact on or­di­nary peo­ple.

Ac­cord­ing to fig­ures pre­sent­ed by the Cuban au­thor­i­ties, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 100,000 pa­tients are cur­rent­ly on sur­gi­cal wait­ing lists, in­clud­ing some 12,000 chil­dren. It has al­so been re­port­ed that around 67,000 chil­dren un­der one year of age have been un­able to com­plete their vac­ci­na­tion sched­ules on time.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 117,000 adults and 1,200 chil­dren are al­so re­port­ed­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in ob­tain­ing ap­pro­pri­ate can­cer treat­ments. The num­ber of peo­ple dy­ing from can­cer in the coun­try has risen sig­nif­i­cant­ly, with dai­ly can­cer deaths surg­ing past 70.

Cuban au­thor­i­ties have al­so re­port­ed that in­fant mor­tal­i­ty in­creased from ap­prox­i­mate­ly four deaths per 1,000 live births in 2018 to 9.9 in 2025. They fur­ther re­port that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 34,000 preg­nant women have been un­able to re­ceive all the pre­na­tal ul­tra­sounds con­sid­ered nec­es­sary.

These fig­ures should not be viewed sim­ply as sta­tis­tics. Be­hind every num­ber there is a hu­man be­ing: a child, a moth­er, a fa­ther, a pa­tient, or a fam­i­ly con­fronting un­cer­tain­ty.

The Cuban na­tion­al health sys­tem re­port­ed­ly in­cludes 395 es­sen­tial phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts, of which ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300 are cur­rent­ly un­avail­able. Cuban au­thor­i­ties at­tribute these short­ages in sig­nif­i­cant part to dif­fi­cul­ties ob­tain­ing raw ma­te­ri­als, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­puts and oth­er sup­plies.

Sim­i­lar­ly, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 16 min­utes of the block­ade’s eco­nom­ic im­pact would cor­re­spond to the an­nu­al cost of ac­quir­ing “nusin­ersen,” a med­i­cine used in the treat­ment of spinal mus­cu­lar at­ro­phy, es­ti­mat­ed at ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$250,000. These com­par­isons il­lus­trate a fun­da­men­tal point: eco­nom­ic poli­cies have hu­man con­se­quences.

The con­se­quences of re­stric­tions on a coun­try’s abil­i­ty to pur­chase es­sen­tial goods de­serve se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly when those con­se­quences af­fect vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions.

Nor­mal­i­sa­tion of con­fronta­tion­al poli­cies

An­oth­er de­vel­op­ment of con­cern is the in­creas­ing nor­mal­i­sa­tion of con­fronta­tion­al rhetoric to­ward Cu­ba.

Po­lit­i­cal dis­course sur­round­ing Cu­ba has in­creas­ing­ly in­clud­ed calls for fun­da­men­tal po­lit­i­cal change, de­scrip­tions of the Cuban state as failed and ref­er­ences to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fur­ther es­ca­la­tion.

In Jan­u­ary 2026, US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio re­port­ed­ly told the Sen­ate that he would like to see regime change in Cu­ba.

In June 2026, US Sec­re­tary of War Pe­te Hegseth vis­it­ed the US naval fa­cil­i­ty at Guan­tá­namo Bay and warned that the Unit­ed States was “pre­pared for any even­tu­al­i­ty” con­cern­ing Cu­ba.

State­ments of this na­ture in­evitably raise ques­tions about the di­rec­tion of US pol­i­cy and the po­ten­tial con­se­quences of con­tin­ued es­ca­la­tion.

What should con­cern the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, how­ev­er, is the nor­mal­i­sa­tion of poli­cies that in­crease the risk of con­fronta­tion while im­pos­ing sig­nif­i­cant hu­man­i­tar­i­an costs on a civil­ian pop­u­la­tion.

Ques­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al law

The US gov­ern­ment has in­voked, among oth­er jus­ti­fi­ca­tions, the as­ser­tion that Cu­ba con­sti­tutes an “un­usu­al and ex­tra­or­di­nary threat” to the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of the Unit­ed States. That char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion war­rants care­ful ex­am­i­na­tion.

For a coun­try of Cu­ba’s size and mil­i­tary and eco­nom­ic ca­pa­bil­i­ties to be pre­sent­ed as an ex­tra­or­di­nary threat to the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty of the US is a claim with pro­found im­pli­ca­tions. It should not sim­ply be ac­cept­ed as a mat­ter of po­lit­i­cal rhetoric,

In­ter­na­tion­al law recog­nis­es the sov­er­eign equal­i­ty of states and es­tab­lish­es prin­ci­ples gov­ern­ing the use of co­er­cion and force in in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions. Mea­sures that sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­strict a coun­try’s ac­cess to es­sen­tial re­sources there­fore de­serve care­ful scruti­ny, par­tic­u­lar­ly when their fore­see­able con­se­quences ex­tend be­yond gov­ern­ments and di­rect­ly af­fect civil­ian pop­u­la­tions.

The in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty should al­so re­main at­ten­tive to the dis­tinc­tion be­tween le­git­i­mate po­lit­i­cal dis­agree­ment and poli­cies that risk pro­duc­ing wide­spread hu­man­i­tar­i­an suf­fer­ing.

Look­ing to­ward Gaza

The sit­u­a­tion in Cu­ba in­evitably in­vites com­par­isons with the suf­fer­ing wit­nessed else­where, in­clud­ing in Gaza. The two sit­u­a­tions are not iden­ti­cal, and they should not be pre­sent­ed as such.

In Gaza, the world has wit­nessed the dev­as­ta­tion and hu­man suf­fer­ing as­so­ci­at­ed with war. Cu­ba faces a dif­fer­ent cir­cum­stance: pro­longed eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial pres­sure com­bined with in­creas­ing­ly se­vere re­stric­tions af­fect­ing ac­cess to en­er­gy and oth­er es­sen­tial re­sources. Yet, there is a com­mon hu­man­i­tar­i­an prin­ci­ple.

Ques­tion for in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty

For more than six decades, the Cuban peo­ple have lived un­der a com­pre­hen­sive sys­tem of US eco­nom­ic, com­mer­cial and fi­nan­cial re­stric­tions. The stat­ed ob­jec­tives and mech­a­nisms of that pol­i­cy have evolved over time, but its ef­fects on the Cuban econ­o­my and on or­di­nary Cubans re­main a mat­ter of in­ter­na­tion­al de­bate.

To­day, those pres­sures ap­pear to be en­ter­ing a new phase.

The Cuban peo­ple should not be re­duced to a geopo­lit­i­cal cal­cu­la­tion.

Be­hind every sta­tis­tic there is a life.

Be­hind every short­age there is a fam­i­ly.

Be­hind every de­layed med­ical treat­ment there is a per­son wait­ing. And that is pre­cise­ly why the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty can­not—and should not—re­main in­dif­fer­ent. Cu­ba is not a threat to the se­cu­ri­ty of the Unit­ed States.