Afrasianet - Ibrahim Yunus - Cuba today faces not just a new round of pressure, but a comprehensive engineering aimed at dismantling the republic with tools that go beyond sanctions to redraw the geopolitical map of the Caribbean and the entire Western Hemisphere.
U.S. policy toward Cuba has reached a definitive turning point in recent weeks, moving from a mere tightening of the economic blockade to a complex arrangement that combines the military threat, the oil embargo, secondary sanctions, and the prosecution of the island's historic leadership.
These instruments no longer operate in isolation, but are operating within a coherent pressure system aimed at reshaping the island's political and economic environment and imposing new realities in the Caribbean.
Prosecutions provide legal cover, secondary sanctions push foreign companies out of the Cuban market, an oil embargo overwhelms the power grid and cripples the economy, and the U.S. military buildup in the region waiting for the right moment.
The latest action by Washington was the U.S. Justice Department's criminal indictment of 94-year-old former Cuban President Raul Castro over the 1996 downing of two Rescue Brothers planes after they repeatedly violated Cuban airspace in defiance of dozens of warnings from Havana.
Among the charges against Castro is "conspiracy to kill American citizens," a move that carries political significance beyond the judicial dimension, as Washington appears to be seeking to produce legal legitimacy for a broader escalation against the state, similar to the path it adopted against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro months ago.
This coincided with the revival of hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation claims against Cuba under the Helms-Burton Act, reflecting the confrontation moving to a new level of legal and financial warfare.
This latest judicial escalation coincided with large-scale economic and financial moves. On May 1, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to move sanctions from the tariff framework restricted by the US Supreme Court last February to the Asset Ban and Financial Sanctions Regime based on the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which is more stringent and expansive.
The targeting is no longer limited to Cuban state institutions, but also to any foreign company or entity that deals with the energy, mining, ports or financial services sectors associated with secondary sanctions that could lead to the freezing of their assets or denial of access to the U.S. financial system.
The sanctions quickly expanded. On May 7, sanctions were imposed on the military group GAESA, which controls a large share of the Cuban economy, as well as on Moa Nickel, a joint venture with Canada.
On May 18, more than 10 officials were added to the list, including the ministers of energy, communications, justice and the speaker of the National Assembly, as well as the Interior Ministry, the Intelligence Directorate and the Revolutionary Police. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that more would be imposed in the coming weeks.
This punitive system has produced an impact beyond Cuba itself. Germany's Hapag-Lloyd and France's CMA CGM announced this month that they would halt all bookings to and from the island due to the risk of secondary sanctions, which threatens to disrupt nearly 60% of Cuba's shipping traffic.
The U.S. Treasury Department has given foreign companies until June 5 to terminate any dealings with GAESA, which is responsible for managing the ports and the Mariel Special Economic Zone. Canada's Sherritt also immediately suspended its participation in the nickel joint venture.
Thus, the US sanctions have turned from mere tools of pressure on the government to a cross-border mechanism that effectively imposes political and financial discipline on foreign companies and countries that fear losing their access to the US market and the global dollar system.
At the heart of all this lies the energy crisis, which reached its most intense moment since the beginning of the naval blockade of the island in mid-May. Cuba's Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levi, announced that the country's diesel and fuel reserves had been completely exhausted after the last Russian shipments arrived on March 31.
The electricity deficit hit a record 2,204 megawatts, while the country's largest power plant collapsed for the ninth time in a row, the power grid in the east of the country was disrupted, and outages in some areas reached 20 hours a day.
This crisis cannot be understood in isolation from the broader U.S. strategy in the region. Cuba produces only a limited portion of its oil needs, relies heavily on Venezuelan supplies until U.S. pressure on Caracas escalated in recent months, and Mexico temporarily suspended commercial oil shipments to the island to avoid the tariffs threatened by Washington, while continuing to send humanitarian and food aid.
A Russian tanker bound for Cuba changed course in late March to Trinidad and Tobago for fear of sanctions or detention. Since then, the island has relied on intermittent and unstable flows of fuel in the form of aid, at a time when it needs only several tankers a month to keep its electricity grid stable.
At the same time, military indicators are rising dramatically. On April 14, the White House directed the Pentagon to intensify preparations for possible military operations against the Cuban island.
Flight data analysis has also spotted more than 25 U.S. reconnaissance flights near the Cuban coast since early February, including P-8 and RC-135 aircraft and MQ-4C Triton high-altitude strategic drones.
Later, the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and its strike group entered the Caribbean Sea on the 20th of this month, in parallel with the announcement of the accusations against Raul Castro, in a pattern similar to the previous US aggression against Venezuela and the war on Iran.
In the same context, the "Axios" website published on the 17th of this month allegations that Cuba has 300 attack drones with Russian and Iranian support, in a narrative that clearly bears the characteristics of the traditional pretexts that often precede any US military escalation.
In this context, the New York Times revealed that CIA Director John Ratcliffe visited Havana on the 14th of this month, where he met with officials of the Cuban Ministry of the Interior and Raul Rodríguez Castro, the grandson of the former president, as part of a negotiation track parallel to the current escalation.
The U.S. demands included the closure of Russian and Chinese listening stations on the island and the full opening of the economy to U.S. capital, reflecting that the current pressures are aimed not only at modifying the Cuban government's behavior, but also at completely reshaping Cuba's geostrategic and economic position.
In the face of this complex arrangement, Cuba's position seems to be firm in its refusal to infringe on national sovereignty and the republican system. President Díaz-Canel does not stop calling sanctions "immoral, illegal and criminal," and recently warned that any military aggression will have myriad consequences.
In this context, Havana accelerated the shift to solar energy to mitigate the effects of the blockade to 10% of the national grid, passed a new immigration law on May 5 that eliminates the 24-month restriction on citizens staying outside the country, and on April 3 released more than 2,000 prisoners in the largest release in a decade.
Mexico, Russia, China and others have also continued to provide humanitarian assistance that has partially eased isolation.
The timing of this escalation seems to be linked to the Trump administration's attempt to achieve a rapid political breakthrough in the Western Hemisphere in light of the attrition in the confrontation with Iran and the approaching US midterm elections, in addition to Washington's almost clear conviction that the model used against Venezuela can be reproduced against Cuba, after it proved effective in combining the military threat, naval blockade, and prosecutions.
Thus, Cuba today is facing not just a new round of pressure, but a comprehensive engineering aimed at dismantling the republic with tools that go beyond sanctions to redraw the geopolitical map of the Caribbean and the entire Western Hemisphere.
