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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Unbreakable Cuba: Why Washington still fears a defiant island</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Janna Kadri</div>
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<div class="gmail-reader-estimated-time" dir="ltr">August 5, 2026</div>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><p>For
over six decades, Cuba has been cast as a strategic threat not because
of its military power, but because its enduring sovereignty and
resistance to US dominance challenge Washington's control over the
hemisphere.</p><div><ul id="gmail-content-slick-0"><div aria-hidden="false"><li>
<a href="https://alpha-en-media.almayadeen.net/media/image/2026/2/25/7fb25edb-b04b-43d2-8fa1-9975032901d7.jpg?width=1000" tabindex="0"><img src="https://alpha-en-media.almayadeen.net/media/image/2026/2/25/7fb25edb-b04b-43d2-8fa1-9975032901d7.jpg?width=1000&preset=w700" alt="Unbreakable Cuba: Why Washington still fears a defiant island" class="gmail-moz-reader-block-img"></a>
Illustrated by Zeinab al-Hajj for Al Mayadeen English
</li></div></ul>
<p>In Washington policy circles, Cuba is framed as a destabilizing
actor. Official language speaks of malign influence, hostile alignment,
and strategic risk. But beyond executive orders and national security
memoranda lies another reality: families preserving what little food
they have through prolonged power cuts, elderly residents enduring
suffocating nights without fans, and young professionals struggling to
imagine a future under relentless economic pressure.</p>
<p>That reality became impossible to ignore again this week. Cuba\u2019s national electrical grid <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/cuba-suffers-another-nationwide-blackout-after-power-grid-co">collapsed late on August 2</a>,
plunging an island of roughly 10 million people into darkness. The
system failed again the following day while authorities were attempting
to restore it. The August 2 outage was the sixth islandwide blackout
since the beginning of the year, while rolling power cuts in some areas <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/cuba-suffers-new-blackout-as-energy-crisis-deepens-under-us">have lasted more than 20 hours</a>. In Havana, residents have resorted to sleeping along the Malecón to escape the heat inside powerless homes.</p>
<p>Daily life increasingly revolves around the availability of
electricity and fuel. Meals must be prepared before power disappears.
Water cannot be pumped into apartment buildings when electricity is
absent. Refrigerators remain empty because food cannot reliably be
preserved. Public transportation and basic services falter as fuel
supplies tighten.</p>
<p>Cuba\u2019s electrical system is unquestionably old, underfunded, and
vulnerable. Internal planning failures and delayed maintenance cannot
simply be dismissed. Yet neither can the external conditions under which
the system operates. Cuba is attempting to maintain an aging,
fuel-dependent grid while facing <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/cuban-fm-blames-us-blockade-for-power-outages--rejects-threa">restrictions on financing, spare parts, maritime transport and energy imports</a>.</p>
<p>These scenes are routinely invoked in Washington as evidence of
internal dysfunction or inevitable collapse. Far less acknowledged is
that Cuba functions under one of the most <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/cuba-faces-aggression-with-innovation--resistance--diaz-cane">sweeping, punitive and enduring sanctions regimes</a> in modern history.</p>
<h2>The sanctions architecture</h2>
<p>For more than six decades, the United States has constructed an
extensive sanctions regime targeting Cuba\u2019s trade, banking, shipping,
investment and fuel supply.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/cuba-faces-aggression-with-innovation--resistance--diaz-cane">Helms-Burton Act</a>
codified the embargo into US law. The Cuba Restricted List limits
transactions involving numerous state-linked entities, while Cuba\u2019s <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/cuban-fm%3A-us-ignored-un-vote-to-lift-embargo-on-cuba-29-time">continuing designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism</a>
heightens compliance risks for banks, insurers and foreign firms. Title
III of Helms-Burton creates additional deterrence by allowing lawsuits
over property nationalized following the Revolution.</p>
<p>Containment now operates primarily through financial and legal
leverage. Dollar dominance, secondary exposure, banking restrictions and
litigation risks encourage institutions outside the United States to
avoid transactions that may be legally permissible but commercially
dangerous.</p>
<p>On June 30, 2025, US President Donald Trump signed National Security
Presidential Memorandum-5, restoring and strengthening the hardline Cuba
policy of his first administration. It instructed US agencies to
restrict transactions involving military-linked Cuban entities, tighten
travel enforcement and oppose measures that could strengthen the Cuban
state.</p>
<h2>The pressure intensified sharply in 2026.</h2>
<p>On January 29, Trump issued Executive Order 14380, <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/analysis/trump-s-executive-order-and-the-options-of-cuba">declaring Cuba an \u201cunusual and extraordinary threat\u201d</a> to
US national security and foreign policy. The order established a
mechanism through which additional tariffs could be imposed on imports
from countries that directly or indirectly supplied oil to Cuba.</p>
<p>The additional tariff actions authorized under that order were
terminated on February 20. The national emergency itself, however,
remained in effect, as did the <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/trump-admin-weighs-oil-blockade-on-cuba-for-regime-change--p">wider campaign to prevent Cuba from obtaining fuel</a>.
Venezuelan shipments had already been cut off following the US
operation that removed President Nicolás Maduro, while Mexico
subsequently halted deliveries amid mounting pressure from Washington.</p>
<p>On May 1, Trump signed Executive Order 14404, substantially <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/cuba-condemns-trump-order-expanding-us-sanctions">broadening Washington\u2019s sanctions authority</a>.
The order allowed measures against foreign companies and individuals
operating in Cuba\u2019s energy, mining, financial, defense and security
sectors. It also authorized secondary sanctions against foreign
financial institutions facilitating significant transactions involving
targeted entities.</p>
<p><a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/us-sanctions-amount-to-collective-punishment-on-cubans--cuba">Successive rounds of designations</a>
followed. Cuban officials, state enterprises, fuel distributors,
financial networks, tourism institutions and other entities were
targeted throughout May, June and July. The most recent round, announced
on July 23, designated another nine entities and two individuals.</p>
<p>The humanitarian consequences are no longer merely theoretical.
United Nations experts have described the fuel restrictions as a form of
\u201c<a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/un-experts-warn-us-fuel-blockade-on-cuba-violates-int-l-law">energy starvation</a>\u201d, warning that they have pushed essential services toward the brink and directly harmed Cubans\u2019 enjoyment of basic rights.</p>
<p>These <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/us-blockade-deepens-cuba-s-energy-crisis--but-island-adapts">measures</a>
constrain fuel access, interrupt financial flows and increase
transportation and insurance costs. Yet Cuba remains a small Caribbean
nation without anything resembling conventional military parity with the
United States.</p>
<p>Why, then, is it persistently framed as a strategic threat?</p>
<h2>Why Cuba has always mattered</h2>
<p>Cuba\u2019s strategic significance predates the 1959 Revolution.</p>
<p>Positioned near the maritime crossroads of the Gulf of Mexico, the
Caribbean and major Atlantic shipping lanes, the island has long
occupied a central place in US regional security thinking. Control over,
or alignment with, Havana was historically linked to protecting
southern sea routes, securing Gulf Coast access and dominating the
approaches to the US mainland.</p>
<p>By the early 20th century, that strategic interest had translated
into extensive economic penetration. US capital controlled or held major
interests in Cuba\u2019s sugar industry, railroads, utilities, refineries
and banking sector, embedding the island within a US-centered economic
order.</p>
<p>Preferential trade arrangements tied Cuban exports overwhelmingly to
the US market, reinforcing dependence on sugar and restricting economic
diversification. Havana displayed modern infrastructure, foreign
investment and a profitable tourism economy, while rural regions endured
land concentration, seasonal unemployment and entrenched poverty.</p>
<p>By the 1950s, Havana\u2019s tourism industry had also become closely
associated with gambling, organized crime and commercialized sex.
Economic dynamism existed, but it was externally anchored and profoundly
unequal.</p>
<p>The nationalizations that followed the Revolution therefore disrupted
more than individual foreign corporate holdings. They dismantled an
entrenched structure of ownership and dependency, transferring control
over land, industry and finance while redefining sovereignty in material
terms.</p>
<p>Under doctrines such as the <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/donroe-doctrine--trump-s-neocolonial-drive-in-latin-america">Monroe Doctrine</a>, the Caribbean had long been treated as a sphere of expected US alignment. The Cuban Revolution overturned that presumption.</p>
<p>Land reform, nationalization and the rejection of US economic
dominance challenged not only particular commercial interests but the
broader political order Washington sought to preserve across the
hemisphere. An example had to be made, and the Cuban people were
subjected to an economic blockade designed to ensure that defiance
carried an unbearable price.</p>
<h2>The threat of example</h2>
<p>Cuba\u2019s \u201cmodel problem\u201d for Washington was never only what Havana
represented internally, but what it appeared to make possible elsewhere.</p>
<p>During the 1960s, Cuba aligned itself with <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/analysis/the-united-states--total-war-against-cuba--resistance-and-so">anti-colonial struggles</a> and
presented this commitment as internationalist solidarity. US
policymakers interpreted the same activity as the export of subversion.</p>
<p>Algeria became an early emblem. Cuba supported the National
Liberation Front during Algeria\u2019s struggle against French colonialism
and, after independence, sent a medical mission to assist a health
system depleted by the departure of French doctors.</p>
<p>The significance was not merely the size of the mission. A recently
liberated, economically pressured Caribbean country was sending medical
workers across the Atlantic to another newly independent state. Cuba was
demonstrating that international influence did not have to take the
form of financial domination, military bases or resource extraction.</p>
<p>Angola further cemented this perception.</p>
<p>In November 1975, as Portuguese colonial rule collapsed and
foreign-backed movements fought for power, Cuba launched Operation
Carlota in support of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola.
Havana portrayed the intervention as an act of anti-imperialist defense
and solidarity with African liberation.</p>
<p>Cuba\u2019s role cannot be separated from the wider Cold War. But reducing
it entirely to superpower alignment also obscures its independent
political and ideological motivations, including its support for African
independence and opposition to apartheid South Africa.</p>
<p>For Washington, the conclusion was unmistakable: Cuba was capable of
shaping political outcomes beyond its size, particularly in decolonizing
societies where competing models of sovereignty and development
remained in contention.</p>
<h2>Axis, allies, solidarity</h2>
<p>Cuba\u2019s contemporary relevance to Washington also lies in its
relations with states that resist US regional and international policy,
particularly Venezuela and Iran.</p>
<p>Cuba\u2019s <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/iran--cuba-sign-cooperation-agreements--first-in-22-years">diplomatic relationship with Iran</a>
dates back more than four decades. Formal relations were re-established
following the 1979 Iranian Revolution and developed through <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/irans-raisi-cubas-diaz-canel-sign-multiple-cooperation-agree">political dialogue</a>, commercial agreements and <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/iran-stands-in-solidarity-with-cuba-against-us-sanctions">mutual opposition to unilateral sanctions</a>.</p>
<p>Havana has supported <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/cuba-opposes-anti-iran-sanctions-rejects-us-interference%3A-cu">Iran\u2019s right to peaceful nuclear technology</a>
and repeatedly opposed military threats against the Islamic Republic.
Cuba is not formally part of the Axis of Resistance, but Washington
increasingly interprets its relationship with Tehran through a wider
security framework.</p>
<p>Executive Order 14380 invoked Cuba\u2019s relations with Iran and
purported ties to Hamas and Hezbollah to manufacture a national security
justification for escalating pressure on the island. The May sanctions
order repeated the same narrative, portraying Cuba\u2019s solidarity with
Iran and the Palestinian and Lebanese Resistance movements as evidence
of hostility rather than opposition to imperialism, occupation, and
unilateral coercion. </p>
<p>Cuba\u2019s relationship with Venezuela was considerably more extensive and institutionalized.</p>
<p>Under the Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement signed by Fidel Castro
and Hugo Chávez in 2000, Caracas supplied oil to Cuba on preferential
terms, while Havana sent doctors, educators and technical personnel to
Venezuela. The partnership later expanded through the Bolivarian
Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, or ALBA, intertwining the two
countries\u2019 social programs, political projects and energy security.</p>
<p>That relationship entered a radically different phase on January 3, 2026, when US forces <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/cuba-honors-32-fighters-killed-defending-venezuela-from-us-a">attacked Venezuela and captured Maduro</a>. Cuba said <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/us-aggression-on-venezuela-killed-47-soldiers--government-co">32 of its military and intelligence personnel</a> were killed during the operation. Their remains were <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/cuba-mourns-32-soldiers-killed-in-us-aggression-on-venezuela">repatriated to Havana</a>, where they were honored in a state ceremony. Díaz-Canel condemned the US action as \u201cstate terrorism.\u201d</p>
<p>The attack also severed Cuba from its most important source of
subsidized oil. Washington subsequently warned Havana that Venezuelan
fuel and financial assistance would no longer reach the island.</p>
<p>The consequences are now visible across Cuba\u2019s streets, homes,
hospitals and electrical system. Venezuela was not simply an ideological
ally. It was a central component of Cuba\u2019s energy security, and its
forced removal from that relationship intensified an already severe
national crisis.</p>
<p><span>The cultural power of the revolution</span></p>
<p>Cuba\u2019s cultural influence presents another challenge to US power
because it operates outside conventional measures of military or
economic strength.</p>
<p>In 1961, the newly victorious Revolution launched a nationwide
literacy campaign, mobilizing young volunteers to teach reading and
writing across the island. The campaign dramatically reduced illiteracy
within a single year and became an international reference point for
mass education.</p>
<p>Its significance extended far beyond literacy figures. Education was
established as a collective right rather than a privilege, giving rural
workers, women, and historically marginalized communities greater access
to knowledge and a stronger ability to shape their own lives.</p>
<p>Cuba carried this principle beyond its borders through <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/guatemala-ends-30-year-cuban-medical-program-under-us-pressu">medical internationalism</a>.
Over subsequent decades, Cuban doctors and health workers served in
dozens of countries, frequently reaching communities affected by war,
natural disasters, epidemics, and severe shortages of medical personnel.</p>
<p>These missions embodied the Revolution\u2019s understanding of healthcare
as both a human right and an act of international solidarity. They also
provided Cuba with vital income that helped sustain its public health
system and social programs under the pressure of the US blockade. By
serving populations often neglected by wealthier powers, Cuban medical
workers forged lasting relationships with communities and governments
that decades of sanctions and political hostility could not erase.</p>
<p>The island also emerged as an important cultural center. <a href="https://espanol.almayadeen.net/noticias/politica/2208457/casa-de-las-americas-cuestiona-cumbre-antiterrorista-de-ee">Casa de las Américas</a>,
established shortly after the Revolution, provided Latin American and
Caribbean artists and writers with a space to collaborate, confront
dictatorship and explore ideas of liberation and social justice.</p>
<p>Havana\u2019s International Book Fair developed into one of the region\u2019s
largest cultural gatherings, bringing authors, publishers and readers
together in an event centered on public access to literature and
political debate.</p>
<p>Revolutionary figures reinforced this international cultural
presence. Fidel Castro became a symbol of endurance through invasion
attempts, assassination plots and decades of economic pressure. <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/what-would-che-guevara-do">Ernesto \u201cChe\u201d Guevara</a>
became a global icon of rebellion, his image detached at times from the
complexities of his life but permanently associated with the
possibility of challenging entrenched power.</p>
<p>This legacy matters because culture can project political possibility
where armies and markets cannot. Cuba showed that a small country could
invest heavily in education, medicine, culture and international
solidarity and, through those priorities, influence movements far beyond
its shores.</p>
<h2>What is the real threat?</h2>
<p>If Cuba has neither the capacity nor the intent to challenge US
supremacy, why is it labeled an \u201cunusual and extraordinary threat\u201d in
Washington\u2019s political imagination?</p>
<p>The answer lies not in Cuba\u2019s military or economic power, but in the precedent set by its survival.</p>
<p>US policy has long assumed that isolation, sanctions and deprivation
would eventually force political submission. Cuba\u2019s continued resistance
undermines that expectation. More than six decades of blockade, covert
pressure and economic coercion have failed to end the Revolution or
force the surrender of Cuban sovereignty.</p>
<p>The resulting hardship is severe: deteriorating infrastructure,
shortages of food, medicine and fuel, declining purchasing power and
outward migration. But these conditions cannot be understood without
recognizing the US blockade as a central factor.</p>
<p>Cuba is denied normal access to international credit, banking
services, energy supplies, shipping networks and investment, while
foreign firms face penalties and commercial risks for engaging with the
island. This system raises costs, restricts development and deepens
scarcity. Washington then cites the resulting crisis as proof of
systemic failure, turning the effects of coercion into justification for
further pressure.</p>
<p>Despite these constraints, <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/analysis/without-surrender--cuban-sovereign-reforms-as-continuity-of">Cuba has continued adapting rather than capitulating</a>.
Recent measures have included allowing private firms to import fuel and
medicines, expanding non-state participation in tourism, easing
restrictions on agricultural land use and authorizing foreign-backed
fuel imports. These reforms aim to address urgent shortages while
preserving the Revolution\u2019s central social achievements.</p>
<p>Cuban leaders have emphasized that such changes do not entail the
privatization of healthcare, education or other strategic sectors. The
objective is adjustment under pressure, not the dismantling of the
Revolution\u2019s foundations.</p>
<p>This adaptability challenges the portrayal of Cuba as incapable of
change. Havana is pursuing reform on its own terms rather than accepting
externally imposed models enforced through sanctions and economic
coercion.</p>
<p>A genuine strategic threat would imply military expansion,
territorial ambition or an aggressive doctrine directed against another
state. Cuba displays none of these toward the United States. The actual
imbalance runs in the opposite direction.</p>
<p>The security framing of Cuba therefore reveals less about the
island\u2019s capabilities than about Washington\u2019s expectation that
geographic proximity should produce political compliance.</p>
<h2>Sovereignty as security</h2>
<p>At the center of the conflict lies the question of sovereignty.</p>
<p>Cuba has repeatedly adjusted its economic policies, pursued
international trade and expanded space for private activity without
relinquishing its political independence or the social foundations of
the Revolution. It adapts to changing conditions but <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/cuba-s-president-rejects-trump-threats--vows-to-defend-sover">refuses to accept Washington\u2019s authority over its political system</a> or economic direction.</p>
<p>In traditional power politics, small states located near superpowers
are expected to limit their independence and accept alignment as the
price of security and economic survival.</p>
<p>Cuba has defied that expectation for more than six decades.</p>
<p>Washington\u2019s portrayal of Cuba as hostile serves a clear political
function: it justifies sanctions, frames economic coercion as defense
and sustains policy continuity across administrations. It also allows
the consequences of those sanctions to be weaponized\u2014shortages and
hardship are cited as proof that Cuba\u2019s political system has failed and
must be replaced.</p>
<p>The coercion thus generates the very conditions used to justify further coercion.</p>
<p>Stripped of inflated security rhetoric, the imbalance is clear: a
global military and economic superpower has labeled a heavily sanctioned
Caribbean island of approximately 10 million people an \u201cunusual and
extraordinary\u201d threat.</p>
<p>Cuba does not encircle the United States with military bases,
restrict its access to international trade or seek to dictate its
political system. It is Washington that has long sought to isolate Cuba,
weaken its economy and define the limits of its sovereignty.</p>
<p>The conflict is therefore not fundamentally about a military threat
or economic competition. It is about authority: whether the United
States is entitled to determine which political and economic systems are
acceptable within the Western Hemisphere.</p>
<p>Cuba\u2019s answer has remained consistent. Its sovereignty is not
conditional on Washington\u2019s approval, and its political independence is
not negotiable under pressure.</p>
<p>In that refusal to submit\u2014not in any capacity or intention to threaten the United States\u2014lies the core of the dispute.</p>
<p>What Washington calls a threat is, in reality, the endurance of a small nation insisting on choosing its own path.</p>
<p><strong>Read more: <a href="https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/rubio-s-oil-squeeze-on-cuba-risks-backfiring--analysis-warns">Rubio's oil squeeze on Cuba risks backfiring, analysis warns</a></strong></p></div></div></div>
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