“We don’t do politics,” said a doctor at Cuba’s National Oncology Institute. “We just want to provide support to the population.” That was in 2024, during a research trip to Cuba where we interviewed tired doctors, who explained how the US sanctions made their work impossible. They could not order the necessary surgical equipment or other parts of the radiotherapy treatment machines, and they lacked the resources needed to treat the large number of cancer patients.
Doctors in various Cuban medical centers that we visited explained that the biggest problem during the COVID-19 epidemic was not, unlike other countries, the availability of vaccines, which Cuba developed and produced in large quantities. It was importing needles and, crucially, life-saving ventilators, after the American trade purchased two Swiss companies that previously supplied Cuba. Doctors everywhere complained that, because of the US embargo, they faced shortages of dental prostheses, prosthetic legs, and incubators, and lacked the most basic medical supplies “from serum to intravenous bags, and even paracetamol.”
“We don’t do politics,” said a doctor at Cuba’s National Oncology Institute. “We just want to provide support to the population.” That was in 2024, during a research trip to Cuba where we interviewed tired doctors, who explained how the US sanctions made their work impossible. They could not order the necessary surgical equipment or other parts of the radiotherapy treatment machines, and they lacked the resources needed to treat the large number of cancer patients.
Doctors in various Cuban medical centers that we visited explained that the biggest problem during the COVID-19 epidemic was not, unlike other countries, the availability of vaccines, which Cuba developed and produced in large quantities. It was importing needles and, crucially, life-saving ventilators, after the American trade purchased two Swiss companies that previously supplied Cuba. Doctors everywhere complained that, because of the US embargo, they faced shortages of dental prostheses, prosthetic legs, and incubators, and lacked the most basic medical supplies “from serum to intravenous bags, and even paracetamol.”
That was before the present United States fat barrierwhich US President Donald Trump imposed on January 30 and which has worsened the situation in Cuba. Today, ambulances often run out of fuel, and endless power outages make it impossible for hospitals to function as usual. Cuba is now facing a downward spiral that could lead to an outright humanitarian collapse — especially if Trump follows through on threats to further increase regime change efforts. In a recent speech to Florida Republicans, he even hinted at the possibility of military action. Cuba, Trump said, is “in its last moments of life.”
Trump has closed The fate of Cuba for the United States to arrest Venezuelan leader Nicholás Maduro in January. Immediately after the January 3rd attack on Venezuela, Trump said “Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall. I don’t know if they’re going to hold on.” By January 29, he had invoked the International Economic Emergency Act (IEEPA) and issued executive order declaring that Cuba is an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the national security of the United States. procedure approved tariffs and other punitive measures on countries that supply oil to Cuba. It remains to be seen whether the US Supreme Court’s ruling on the Trump administration’s tax administration, which it deemed unconstitutional, will remove some of the effectiveness of those threats.
Developments in the past few weeks, including the US Coast Guard to interrupt of oil tankers bound for Cuba, increases an unprecedented level of coercion and isolation. Even the Kennedy administration’s “quarantine”—it avoided the word “embargo” for international legal reasons—at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 did not prevent Cuba from obtaining important foreign goods and oil; was reduced by intercepting military equipment.
The goals of the Trump administration are clear. goal, are written without controversy by the Secretary of State of the United States Marco Rubio, it is a “change of government.” The active congressional representative, María Elvira Salazar, has served clearly he acknowledged that civilian suffering is an unfortunate but necessary business in the pursuit of political reform. Such statements confirm what decades of restrictive policy have is shown elsewhere: Harm to civilians is not accidental but intentional as a mechanism of pressure.
Yet US officials still use conflicting rhetoric frequently. At times, they fully accept the true purpose of US sanctions, and at others, they deny US responsibility because of the economic decline and daily deprivation of ordinary people.
Finally, the current oil embargo is an escalation of the US embargo that has sought to undermine Cuba’s economy for decades. The US embargo – and especially the high pressure levels imposed during Trump’s first presidency and largely maintained under the Biden administration – has restricted the Cuban government’s access to foreign currency and credit, causing permanent shortages and rising prices, hampering access to water and transport, and weakening a health system that was, until recently, one of the best in Latin America.
Long-standing US economic sanctions against Cuba and other countries cause structural problems that have been building up for years, affecting growth, undermining infrastructure, and blocking public services. They also encourage governments to find ways to circumvent them with the kinds of financial and business innovation that both eliminate institutions and huge costs.
Soon research has shown that US sanctions kill more than half a million people a year—the same as the annual death toll of armed conflict worldwide.
One rarely mentioned consequence of America’s sanctions is that they are driving immigration. This was true in Venezuela, where they were the main source of displacement of more than 6 million people between 2017 and 2023. Ironically, the immigration crisis that resulted from the first Trump administration’s crackdown on Venezuela contributed to Trump’s crackdown on immigrants—a big factor in his re-election in 2024.
In Cuba, too, the reversal of the first Trump administration of the opening of the former President of the United States Barack Obama and the reimposition of a regime of stricter sanctions, which coincided with the beginning of this epidemic, led to greater outward migration in Cuban history. Most of the emigrants are highly educated, and their departure severely undermines many essential services. A young doctor at Cuba’s leading pediatric cardiology clinic told us that almost his entire graduating class had left the country. He was the only doctor of his generation to work there.
Sanctions have also failed to achieve their stated political goals. Cuba is perhaps the clearest case: Six decades of sanctions have yet to produce the results their architects promised. In Venezuela—which has experienced the worst recorded economic collapse outside of war in modern history—sanctions exacerbated the devastating crisis it caused tens of thousands of deaths. In both cases, the political leadership survived while the lives of the citizens deteriorated.
Beyond questions of efficiency there is a larger legal problem. Through its actions, the United States has violated the prohibition of collective punishment, enshrined in the Fourth Geneva Convention, and of economic coercion, enshrined in the Treaty of the United States of America—both treaties to which the United States is a party. And the General Assembly of the United Nations they voted for three decades condemning the US embargo on Cuba. There is a long list of legal opinions on the unreasonable illegality of US coercion against Cuba, including the most recent judgment from UN experts regarding Trump’s oil embargo order.
Water barriers are also illegal unless United Nations Charter makes it clear, they are enacted in self-defense in the face of an armed attack or are specifically authorized by the United Nations Security Council, as was the case with the blockade imposed on Iraq in 1990. This situation does not apply to Cuba.
These legal considerations can be made in the context of weakening international law in response to the negative discrimination of the United States under Trump. But there is no doubt that the international community will be adding unfounded US coercion to Cuba to its growing list of grievances. It’s one thing to impose illegal restrictions on international trade, but the extraterritorial application of US law and sanctions to other countries was initially frowned upon by European nations, and eventually forced the Clinton administration to repeal Title III of the Helms-Burton Act. The implementation of extraterritorial sanctions continues to trouble nations, and last year aim of government officials from the countries organizing the Cuban international medical mission anger.
At this point, the Trump administration’s threats to retaliate against states that send oil to Cuba are working. But to condemn what the President of Mexico Claudia Sheinbaum has to be called A “wide-reaching humanitarian crisis,” fueled by the United States, is escalating. States will be looking for any crack in the Trump administration’s ability to respond to its threats and pay close attention to what the Supreme Court’s decision against Trump’s tariffs means in practice.
More on Rubio in detail personal commitment to regime change in Cuba, it remains unclear what Trump stands to gain from weakening the island’s economy and social structure. Cuba has long distinguished itself in the Caribbean as a security mission: It reports one of the lowest homicide rates in Latin America and the Caribbean, and is neither a producer nor a hub for drug trafficking in the region. There are no entrenched criminal gangs, private militias, or armed insurgent groups operating in Cuba, and the Cuban government fully controls its borders and territories.
From a security perspective, the sudden collapse of the Cuban state could lead to internal conflicts, mass displacement, and expanded human trafficking routes in the Florida Straits. In addition to its terrible human cost, the industrial crisis could have lasting consequences for the security of the United States and the region as a whole.
