M A Hossain<\/p>\n
The streets of Havana, once alive with music and the hum of daily life, now tell a quieter story: long lines at petrol stations with nothing to dispense, hospitals flickering in and out of power, and rubbish piling up because the trucks that once cleared it lack the fuel to move. This is not the aftermath of a natural disaster or civil war. It is the result of deliberate policies enacted by the world\u2019s most powerful government \u2014 a self-inflicted siege that risks human lives and global norms.
\nCall it what it is: a man-made humanitarian catastrophe.
\nTo understand how we arrived here, we must revisit the anatomy of this crisis not as abstract geopolitics but as the lived reality of people confronting shortages that affect every aspect of daily life \u2014 electricity, healthcare, transport, food supply, sanitation and even the ability of airlines to fly in and out of the island.
\nWashington has long maintained an embargo on Cuba dating back to 1962. But the recent escalation \u2014 particularly the US declaration of a \u201cnational emergency\u201d empowering tariffs on countries supplying oil to Cuba and the effective blockage of Venezuelan oil destined for the island \u2014 transcends conventional sanctions and resembles, in form and function, a blockade that constricts the flow of basic necessities.
\nAn 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. When the list of affected goods includes energy so essential that its absence destabilises hospitals, water systems, sanitation services and food production, we leave the realm of political pressure and enter that of collective punishment.
\nSanctions may be an instrument of coercive diplomacy; blockades are instruments of desperation.
\nThe tightening of US measures has had immediate and devastating effects. Power grids that once staggered have now collapsed 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 has run out.
\nThese are not inconveniences. They are strategic conditions engineered to degrade daily life to a point where society itself begins to crumble.
\nIn purely geopolitical terms, the United States is playing chess \u2014 redirecting Venezuelan oil exports away from Havana, threatening penalties on nations that would assist Cuba, and insisting that Cuba represents an \u201cunusual and extraordinary\u201d threat to US security. But the board on which these moves unfold is not theoretical: it is an island of 11 million residents trying to secure basic sustenance while blackouts last up to 20 hours a day.
\nWhat we see now is scarcity weaponised: energy constraints imposed to foment instability and potentially provoke political change through suffering. This is policy masquerading as pressure, a strategy that uses human need as leverage.
\nEvery geopolitical gambit has architects, and in Washington today they are not faceless bureaucrats. The hardliners pushing this rollback of d\u00e9tente and tightening of economic constraints are driven not merely by strategy but by an ideological fixation on regime change. In the US context, this fixation stems from political constituencies, historical grievances and the enduring memory of Cold War antagonisms rather than a clear assessment of present realities.
\nThe 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 deprivation will produce revolution rather than desperation; that civic order will bend towards political reform rather than collapse into lawlessness and despair.
\nThis is not an abstract concern. Latin America has witnessed the fallout of destabilised states \u2014 from Venezuela\u2019s economic unravelling to Haiti\u2019s cycle of political violence and humanitarian breakdown. Any scenario in which Cuba becomes acutely deprived of essential services carries a real risk of \u201cHaitianisation\u201d: a spiral of insecurity, social atomisation and uncontrollable migration. The Cuban state might not simply crack; its collapse could trigger regional chaos.
\nIt is worth remembering that Cuba\u2019s revolutionary project and 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.
\nThis crisis does not exist in a vacuum. As US tariffs and threats isolate Cuba economically, other global players are stepping in. Russia has publicly supported Cuba\u2019s sovereignty and pledged aid, while China\u2019s involvement in renewable energy initiatives on the island underscores the broader geopolitical competition now unfolding.
\nLatin American governments and regional organisations \u2014 from the Organisation of American States to the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) \u2014 have thus far offered muted responses. The lack of a unified regional pushback against unilateral coercive measures reflects political diversity and strategic hesitation. It also reveals how US foreign policy, in its current form, may be eroding the diplomatic framework necessary to manage crises collaboratively rather than confrontationally.
\nThe warning from international institutions is clear: punishing a nation\u2019s economy in ways that directly threaten its civilian population violates principles of human rights and international norms. The United Nations human rights office has criticised fuel blockades as undermining human dignity \u2014 a signal that the legitimacy of such measures is not universally accepted, even among US allies.
\nThere is a paradox at the heart of this crisis. Cuba\u2019s 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 \u2014 sanctions that break supply chains, tariffs that choke imports and threats against third-party nations \u2014 make constructive dialogue more difficult.
\nTrue diplomatic engagement requires acknowledging the humanity of the other side \u2014 not merely their calculus of power. It means recognising that populations, not regimes, bear the immediate cost of coercive policies.
\nThe 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 towards a strategy that blends pragmatic engagement with clear red lines \u2014 one that addresses legitimate security concerns while ensuring that human lives are not held hostage to political ambitions.
\nCuba 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.
\nIf 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 \u2014 watching a society unravel under the weight of engineered scarcity \u2014 would not merely be a policy failure but a moral one.
\nHumanitarian catastrophe is not an inevitability; it is a choice. And in the case of Cuba, it is time to choose differently.<\/p>\n
The writer is a political and defense analyst based in Bangladesh. He can be reached at writetomahossain@gmail.com<\/p>\n
Courtesy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
M A Hossain The streets of Havana, once alive with music and the hum of daily life, now tell a quieter story: long lines at petrol stations with nothing to dispense, hospitals flickering in and out of power, and rubbish piling up because the trucks that once cleared it lack the fuel to move. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[13085],"class_list":{"0":"post-533900","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-article","7":"tag-m-a-hossain"},"yoast_head":"\n