US intensifies blockade on Cuba amid accusations of drone threats

Get you up to speed: US intensifies blockade on Cuba amid accusations of drone threats

Trump taking over Cuba is a ‘fantasy’ – the country can’t be pacified | News World

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel has stood defiant to Donald Trump (Picture: Shutterstock)

The US blockade on Cuba is stressing an already tumultuous relationship between the two countries, as Donald Trump accused Cuba of having drones capable of striking mainland America.

A months-long energy blockade on behalf of the Trump Administration has plunged the island into a blackout, with food and medical supplies running low.

By the end of 2026, the US government is hoping to ‘change leadership’ of Cuba, and is looking for government insiders to ‘cut a deal’ to make it possible, reports in January said.

US claims that Havana has drones that could attack mainland Florida have been dismissed by the Cuban government as ‘fraudulent’.

There are also fears that Trump could use it as a reason for a military intervention, which he’s been hinting at for months now.

Dr Stephen Wilkinson, of the International Institute for the Study of Cuba at The University of Buckingham, told WTX that a continued blockade or attempted military coup in Cuba would be the biggest tragedy in American foreign policy in years.

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Residents have been forced to cook by candlelight and fire (Picture: AFP)

‘Taking over Cuba is just another fantasy, just like the idea that the US can defeat Iran is a fantasy,’ he explained.

‘They’ve underestimated the Iranians, and they’re underestimating the Cubans. The Cubans are made of very tough stuff. They’re not going to give up.’

Dr Wilkinson added: ‘The Cuban people are very nationalistic and have really been fighting for 200 years for their independence. First against the Spanish, and then, the United States, after it imposed a government on them which they didn’t really want.

‘The revolution of 1959 was really an assertion of Cuban independence and sovereignty from the United States. By trying to reassert its dominance over Cuba, the United States will only deepen the resistance of Cubans towards it.’

The US government has been meeting with Cuban exiles in Miami and Washington, in hopes of reaching a government official in Havana who could help make a change happen – but Dr Wilkinson said those talks show that this potential conflict is another ‘class conflict’.

A brief history of the US-Cuba relationship

The relationship isn’t just about communism, Dr Wilkinson tells WTX.

In 1803, the United States began to desire to take Cuba and make it a state of the Union. At the time, Cuba was a Spanish colony. Hopes of taking over the country then didn’t work out, but decades down the line, politicians made another attempt.

Cuba sits at the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico, and the US wanted sovereignty over the land to protect sea lanes towards the Mississippi Delta, and then the sea lanes to the Panama Canal.

Later, there were American investments in Cuban sugar and economic ties that made Cuba even more vital to the US.

‘The relationship has very little to do with 20th-century ideological struggles. It has mainly to do with 19th-century anti-colonial struggles,’ Dr Wilkinson told WTX. ‘The Cubans have wanted their sovereignty and independence and have fought for it for a long time.’

In 1902, the US intervened after Cuba won independence from Spain and imposed a constitution and settlement on the new country, which was met with backlash.

Throughout the 20th century, the Cuban people fought for independence again, before finally gaining it in 1959, when Fidel Castro took over.

The United States then tried to kill Castro and tried to invade during the failed Bay of Pigs.

For decades after Castro took power, many Cubans fled towards the United States. In 2015, Barack Obama and Raúl Castro began normalising relations again in a major win for diplomacy.

When Trump took office for the first time, however, these were reversed, and Cuba was designated as a state sponsor of terrorism.

The revolution in Cuba did lead to severe economic hardship, food shortages and medical shortages – along with political crackdowns. This led to millions fleeing the country.

‘The ordinary people of Cuba asserted their independence in 1959, and the bourgeoisie, the Cuban upper class, left and went to live in the United States,’ Dr Wilkinson argues.

‘For the last, getting on for 60 years, there has been an internationalised class struggle, and that’s what’s coming to a head now.

‘The people who wish to try and recover Cuba for themselves are living, in my opinion, a Gatsby-esque fantasy: the idea that you could recreate the past and go back to 1959, and try to erase what’s happened in between.’

Cuba has close ties to Venezuela, having received oil and funding from the Caracas government before Nicolas Maduro was ousted.

Since then, the country has been facing increasing blackouts, queues at supermarkets and petrol shortages as it undergoes its worst economic crisis in decades.

What does the US actually want?

The US government has pushed for change in Cuba for decades (Picture: AFP)

For decades, the US has wanted government change in Cuba. Author and historian Louis A Perez wrote that Americans have ‘convinced themselves that they have a beneficent purpose […] from which Americans derived the moral authority to presume power over Cuba’.

Boiled down simply, the US sees Cuban independence as a threat because its government and people don’t want US involvement at all, and are socialist.

The Cuban Missile Crisis also put a sour taste in Americans’ mouths, after the Soviet Union placed nuclear missiles across Cuba, leading to a 13-day standoff between the two countries.

Cuba’s alliances with other countries, such as China, Venezuela and Iran, have concerned US government officials.

Dr Wilkinson points out: ‘ The US wants to disband the army, disband the police force, completely dismantle the current government and build a new one in Cuba. They’ve got a blueprint for a kind of colonial regime for a period while they’re ‘rebuilding the country’.

‘The problem is that they won’t find very many Cubans who would be willing to collaborate with them.’

What happens now?

Castro was almost killed by US forces multiple times (Picture: Archive)

If recent and distant history is anything to go by, the standoff could go in two different ways.

Dr Wilkinson argues: ‘The situation in Cuba now is literally one of the United States starving the Cuban people. This is very similar to what the Israeli government did to the people in Gaza, and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to use the term ‘Gazification’ of Cuba, because this is really what’s happening.

‘This is the worst regime of sanctions that Cuba has been placed under since the very beginning.’

A 1960 US government memo nicknamed the ‘Mallory Memorandum’ also points to what the government wanted in Cuba then – and what seems to be happening now.

‘…Denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government,’ the memo read, referencing a plan to overthrow the Cuban government.

Dr Wilkinson adds: ‘The original objective of that embargo was to cause starvation so that people would rise up and overthrow the government. It was an intention to create a situation of social unrest in Cuba, which would then provide the excuse for an occupation of the island.

‘And that’s really what’s happening again right now.’

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