By Anton Allahar
Anton Allahar is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Western Ontario
These are the questions of the moment. Will the Revolution implode in a civil war that pits Cubans against Cubans? Will the US invade Cuba ostensibly to liberate the people from communism (régime change)? Or will Cuba’s revolutionary status quo of socialism survive? This essay attempts to provide a backdrop for seeking answers but will begin with two philosophically related considerations: (a) the ontological or descriptive presentation of the facts and (b) the epistemological or explanatory takes on those facts. Stated differently, saying what is, is an entirely different matter from saying why it is.
To begin, then, one cannot ignore the long-standing US blockade of the Cuban economy, which, apart from its illegality (repeated UN declarations), has been condemned by at least three Catholic popes, who used such words as ‘unjust,’ ‘ethically unacceptable,’ and ‘restrictive’ to characterize it. But along with its illegality and immorality a ‘blockade’ (bloqueo) of this scope and duration is formally recognized as an act of war.
Apologists for the US aggression charge that the Cuban government uses the blockade as an excuse for their mismanagement of the economy and society. But it is not a simple either/or question for while the government, like governments everywhere, has made major and minor mistakes over the past 70 years, those mistakes cannot be divorced from the wide-ranging effects of the blockade that has coloured many of the options and actions of the government. Stated differently, the military bullying and economic harassment that accompany the blockade have continuously served to distort the options open to the government. And it is disingenuous to regard mistakes made under duress independently of that duress.
The description
This said, consider a recent hubris-filled interview (March 2026) in which Donald Trump boasted that he expected soon to have the “honor of taking Cuba in some form,” and “I can do anything I want” with Cuba. Then Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, followed up with: “The bottom line is their economy doesn’t work — it’s a nonfunctional economy …. they don’t know how to fix it …. they’re in a lot of trouble.” . And while these statements were made while the US and Cuba were supposedly in on-going private talks about their long-standing adversarial relations, add Rubio’s earlier life dream: “I boasted I would someday lead an army of exiles to overthrow Fidel Castro and become president of a free Cuba”
Along with the not-too-veiled threats of military invasion and spurred on by its swift victory in Venezuela, the US has intensified its blockade of the island. Cuba only produces about 35-40% of its energy needs and has long relied on Russia and Venezuela to meet its deficits, which in the past 6 months have been completely cut off and even friendly gestures of assistance from Mexico are blocked. Thus, not surprisingly, daily life in Cuba has been completely upended.
Tourism, the country’s life blood, is at an immediate halt and several major airlines have suspended flights. Most tourist-related activities that generate jobs (excursions, taxis, night clubs, cultural shows etc.), are curtailed and with oil and gas punishingly scarce, garbage trucks are grounded, streets have become open dumping sites, and rodent and mosquito populations have exploded, along with the diseases they bring. In addition, public transportation is virtually non-existent, businesses, schools and universities are closed, hospitals are barely functioning and even emergency surgeries are cancelled. Thousands of children, pregnant mothers and infirm seniors are suffering needlessly.
Most disruptive are electricity blackouts, water shortages, mass food spoilage as refrigerators are non-operational, scarcity of food and medicines as commercial ships are blockaded and delivery trucks are grounded. As desperation drives ordinary Cubans to desperate deeds, lawlessness, theft, petty crime and corruption abound, and for the first time in the Revolution, street beggars and homeless Cubans are visible. Most clinics, pharmacies, shops, groceries and restaurants are closed, and since most Cubans do not own cars, basic transportation is a serious challenge.
The explanation
While the temptation to blame the evil of individuals like Trump and Rubio is irresistible, the explanation goes beyond that. One must examine the society, culture and economy that produce these men, the Constitution and the Supreme Court that enable them, the fecklessness of the Congress and the corrupt Department of Justice. Add to this the wider socio-political culture wherein parochialism and political illiteracy are embraced. As American writer Isaac Asimov noted, “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of populist anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”
Asimov’s observation compliments George Orwell’s description of ‘double-think,’ and Trump’s MAGA followers (Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, Boogaloo Boys, ICE etc.), could accurately be dubbed the “proles” of America. They are fully prepped for their roles by a schooling system steeped in Christian teachings and Hollywood fantasy, that bans and burns books ‘to protect’ democratic free speech, and that seeks to sanitize history. They are dazed by mindless appeals to what Orwell called “a primitive patriotism”; singing the anthem, waving the flag and exhaling exuberant shouts of USA! USA! USA! at a perceived enemy: communists, socialists, people of colour, immigrants, gays, Muslims and even progressive journalists, who are said to be aiding the enemy. For in the haze of ‘doublethink,’ Orwell reminds us: “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
The threat of the good example
So why Cuba? Trump parrots the well-used US response: “I find that the policies, practices and actions of the Government of Cuba, socialism, constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat… to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” (my emphasis).. And just recently the state department called Cuba the “capital of 21st-century communism,” accusing the government of conducting a “campaign of subversion” that has “infiltrated the highest reaches of the US government ….”.
Thus, like Presidents Kennedy and Reagan before him, Trump wants to convince the world that while the US has a population of 350 million and a land area of approximately 3,531,905 square miles, Cuba, with about 10 million and a land area of 42,426 square miles, can pose a serious threat to them, and all of this despite the seven-decade illegal blockade, the Bay of Pigs (1961), Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) and other threats of invasion.
But the real threat is what political philosopher Noam Chomsky has labelled ‘the threat of the good example.’ For Cuba has outpaced all the other dependent, capitalist Caribbean and Latin American countries on the leading social indicators of well-being: health care, doctor-patient ratio, hospital beds per capita, longevity, housing, free education at all levels, equalization of wages for both men and women, infant and maternal mortality rates, childhood diseases, foreign humanitarian aid etc.
Further, the Cuban ‘threat of the good example’ could spread to encourage other similarly-placed countries to reject American capitalist subordination and to experiment with what Chomsky has described as “a very low-level social revolution.” Chomsky invokes the ‘rotten apple theory’ and notes that: “If a tiny, poor country like Grenada can succeed in bringing about a better life for its people, some other place that has more resources will ask, ‘why not us’?” Recall 1983 when Reagan declared that tiny Grenada ‘pointed a dagger at the heart of the free world’ and launched his invasion. To this Chomsky adds: “This sounds comical, but that kind of story helps mobilize support for aggression, terror and subversion ….The danger is that the rot—social and economic development—may spread.” Thus, the final threat of the good example presented by Cuba for the world to see is their successful defiance of US aggression for seven decades.
The impasse
While US-Cuba negotiations are on-going, details are guarded but center on two themes: (a) the powerful Cuban-American lobby that is seeking reparations for lost property and businesses etc., and (b) the US government’s ideological battles against the threat of the good example. For it is important to remember that Cuba has always been an integral part of US domestic politics (Monroe Doctrine; Manifest Destiny). As Moses Yale Beach, editor of the New York Sun and advisor to US President James Polk (1845-1849) wrote in 1847: “Cuba by geographical position, necessity and right belongs to the United States, it may and must be ours ….” This was a follow-up to US Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, who in 1823 declared: “There are laws of political as well as physical gravitation; and if an apple severed by the tempest from its native tree cannot choose but fall to the ground, Cuba, forcibly disjointed from its own unnatural connection with Spain … can gravitate only towards the North American union ….”
Hence, the current stand-off between the US and Cuba has a long history of American “obsession” with owning Cuba. Also, the ideological distinction between capitalism and socialism, conservatism and progressivism, engendered the early US opposition to the 1959 Revolution and saw the US embargo (later a blockade) that literally drove Cuba into the arms of the USSR. For the Cuban Revolution did not begin ideologically as a socialist revolution but was more nationalist and populist in its orientation. The aim was to rid the country of dependent capitalism, the American-Italian mafia-owned casinos, gambling, prostitution, drugs and political corruption. When the revolutionaries moved to nationalize the banks, ownership of essential utilities, sugar plantations, hotels etc., the US government moved to undermine the revolution that it labelled ‘communist.’ Then, too, there was the local Roman Catholic church’s role in the counter-revolution.
Conclusion
Cuba, therefore, is on the brink and because Trump is losing the war with Iran, he desperately needs a distraction; “a win.” Will Cuba be next? He has already indicted former president, Raúl Castro (age 94), for conspiracy to kill US nationals and destroy US civilian aircraft. Could the already-volatile situation, along with threats of invasion à la Venezuela, spark a political implosion tied to the engineered desperation among ordinary Cubans?
Inflation is completely out of control, the banking system is non-functioning and a thriving black market in US currency has developed. Cubans are reliving the ‘special period’ but this time on steroids. So, what happens next is anybody’s guess. I say ‘guess’ because it is entirely in Trump’s hands and it is widely known that he is narcissistic, unpredictable and Commander-in-Chief of the world’s most powerful military. The Constitution gives him powers that no previous president has tested. Further his control of the Supreme Court and a totally feckless Congress. ‘Might makes right’ and his control of the US military echoes Mao Tse-tung’s realist’s confession: “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” At home Trump consistently ignores the Constitution and abroad he is able to commit war crimes with impunity. He even violates the Geneva Conventions that outlaw the use food and medicine as weapons of war. Starving civilians and blocking medical and humanitarian aid, as the US and Israeli on-going genocide campaign are currently witnessing in Gaza, constitute war crimes. But when the bully has the biggest guns, he seeks understandably to deny others the right to acquire such guns.
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