Across Cuba today, darkness has become a fact of daily life. Hospitals ration energy and food spoils before it can reach families. Without electricity, water pumps cannot operate, nor can food be refrigerated, leaving residents scrambling for basics. Across the island, people are improvising survival in the face of a deepening crisis.

This is often described as an “economic collapse,” but that framing obscures the real cause. It is the predictable—and intended—result of a decades-long policy of economic warfare led by the United States, now accelerated to a new level of aggression.

An Energy Siege

In early January 2026, after the kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro, the Trump administration moved to cut off the flow of Venezuelan subsidized oil to Cuba, a lifeline that had sustained the island’s economy for more than two decades. Weeks later, on January 29, President Donald Trump announced a full-fledged oil blockade on Cuba, threatening heavy tariffs on any country that exported oil to the island.

Cuba’s oil imports fell 35% in the first ten months of 2025 compared to the previous year. By January 2026, oil imports dropped to zero. The consequences cascaded immediately. As widely expected, the measures resulted in severe fuel shortages, leading to widespread power outages and disruptions to essential services, including fuel for hospitals and garbage collection, as well as the grounding of international flights and the shutdown of public transportation.

Trump’s “maximum pressure” strategy—shaped heavily by Secretary of State Marco Rubio—has been building since Trump’s first term, when Rubio helped restrict Americans’ ability to travel and send money to the island, cut off Cuba’s access to international finance, and deploy dozens of additional sanctions over everything from hotel contracts and cruise lines to banking and investment. Now, in Trump’s second term, that strategy has accelerated into full gear.

On January 29, 2026, Executive Order 14380 was signed, declaring a national emergency and authorizing the imposition of additional tariffs on imports from countries that directly or indirectly supply oil to Cuba. Cuba’s deputy foreign minister accused the U.S. of resorting to “blackmail and coercion to try to force other countries to join its universally condemned blockade policy against Cuba.” 

Manufacturing Scarcity

To understand Cuba’s current crisis, one must follow the chain reaction set off by sanctions. No fuel means no electricity. No electricity means no refrigeration. No refrigeration means food shortages. No transport means empty shelves.

According to the United Nations Human Rights Office, the blockade and ensuing fuel shortage have threatened Cuba’s food supply and disrupted the country’s water systems and hospitals. The lack of fuel has also hampered UN World Food Programme relief efforts. 

Hospitals are using emergency generators, but these depend on scarce diesel, leaving patients at risk during prolonged power outages. The tourism industry, one of Cuba’s key revenue sources, has taken a blow as hotels and restaurants attempt to maintain services amid rolling blackouts. Energy insecurity deepens inequalities, disproportionately affecting lower-income and rural communities that often lack the resources for backup generators. 

Economic Warfare in Plain Sight

Mainstream coverage in the United States often frames Cuba’s situation as a failure of its economic model. This narrative is politically convenient. Yes, Cuba faces internal challenges such as aging infrastructure, years of underinvestment, and the collapse of the Soviet-era support system. But no country can be meaningfully evaluated while under one of the longest and most comprehensive sanctions regimes in modern history.

Since 1960, the blockade has cost Cuba an estimate of more than $150 billion. Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla told the UN General Assembly that between March 2024 and February 2025, the blockade caused $7.5 billion in damages, an impact comparable to the entire national GDP of at least 30 countries represented at the UN.

The new oil blockade makes explicit what U.S. policy has long denied: that economic warfare against Cuba targets civilians in the name of “regime change.” After decades of euphemisms, Washington is openly embracing economic warfare on Cuba’s civilian population.

In international law, “collective punishment” means imposing penalties on an entire civilian population for actions they did not personally commit. This practice is prohibited under the 1949’s Fourth Geneva Convention. Pierre-Emmanuel Dupont, an expert on sanctions law and formal legal adviser to the UN special rapporteur on sanctions, said the blockade constitutes collective punishment “to the extent that it hits each and every Cuban citizen irrespective of their relationship with the government or regime.” 

Other UN experts also stressed: “In the absence of authorization from the United Nations Security Council, the executive order has no basis in collective security and constitutes a unilateral act that is incompatible with international law. There is no right under international law to impose economic penalties on third States for engaging in lawful trade with another sovereign country.” 

The historical intent of this policy was never concealed. In 1960, then deputy assistant secretary of state Lester Mallory made it clear: the U.S. government should deny “money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” That logic has never been abandoned, only updated.

From Blockade to Solidarity

Every year since 1992, the UN General Assembly has overwhelmingly voted to condemn the blockade of Cuba as contrary to international law and the UN Charter. When the General Assembly held its most recent vote in October 2025, 165 out of 193 member states voted to end the blockade. Among them were some of the world’s most populous nations—Brazil, China, Nigeria, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan—representing approximately 92% of the world’s population. The international community’s verdict is clear and consistent. Washington’s response has been to intensify enforcement rather than reflect.

There is nothing inevitable about this crisis. It is the result of political choices made in Washington, and it can and should be reversed by political choices made there as well.

Ending the blockade would not solve all of Cuba’s challenges overnight. But Cuba’s foreign minister has noted that suspending the embargo for just five days would prevent a financial loss of roughly $100 million. Suspending it for 12 days would cover the entire annual maintenance budget of the island’s electric energy system.

For those committed to global justice, the position should be clear: solidarity, cooperation, and respect for sovereignty. Sanctions always hit the most vulnerable first and hardest—and yet these same people are often erased from the narratives used to justify the policy.

Cuba is not collapsing. It is being deliberately, systematically strangled, with full knowledge of the human cost. The world has rendered its verdict, year after year, at the United Nations. Now it is time for movements, organizations, and people of conscience to add their voices: lift the blockade, end the siege, and let Cuba breathe.