Oppose US Imperialist Aggression Against Cuba!

Editorial Board

US imperialism is accelerating its preparations for war against Cuba.

Imperialist-in-Chief Donald Trump has repeatedly told monopoly media that his administration will turn its attention to Cuba after the war on Iran. With the administration signing a Memorandum of Understanding—phases towards a peace agreement—with Iran on June 14 after suffering significant defeats, it is setting the stage for its next invasion.

The Butchers Sharpen their Knives

In late May, the US had moved the Nimitz carrier group within striking distance of Cuba on its way to port in the US,and it has concentrated strike aircraft in Florida and Puerto Rico. Thousands of troops have been placed at the ready, according to Politico, enough force for quick incursions or “decapitation strikes”, though not enough for a large-scale ground invasion and occupation.

Politically, the US has increased pressure on the Cuban government through its farcical indictment of Raul Castro for defending his country from Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) infiltration, while sanctioning the Cuban president and other officials. Economically, the US has intensified its sanctions against the island, imposing a baby-killing energy blockade against Cuba since late January.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Department of War Secretary Pete Hegseth have repeatedly stated that military aggression to remove the Cuban government from power is on the table should Cuba not submit to US demands for “reforms” to turn Cuba back to a US semi-colony.

The CIA chief’s recent visit to Havana is indicative that the US believes it is in the position to make demands as a victor without the dangers of an invasion. One demand is to let in masses of Starlink devices, the internet service of monopolist trillionaire Elon Musk, which were recently smuggled into Iran as part of US-Zionist subversion plots.

Desperate for a victory following its humiliating defeat to Iran and its allies, US imperialism sees Cuba as an easy target, with Trump claiming in January the Cuban government is “ready to fall”. Sitting right off the US’s coast, Cuba is small and lightly armed compared to Iran; it does not have the “strategic depth” of a large territory, masses of missiles, or armed regional allies prepared to fight alongside it. Cuba’s economy has also been crippled by decades of US sanctions and blockade.

The strategic reserve of Cuba is its own people and its history of anti-imperialist struggle, along with the masses of Latin America, who rightly see Cuba as a symbol of resistance, gun in hand against US imperialist domination.

That it is a small country with relatively few weapons is not decisive. It is the people who are decisive and their leadership, those who wield and direct the weapons. This is the lesson of Gaza; tiny, besieged for decades, and victoriously resisting to this day.

“There Will Be No Surrender Here”

The presence of resistant Cuba in the US’s “backyard” has been a painful blow to US imperialist domination of Latin America since Cuba’s 1959 revolution. The island is an obstacle to US imperialism’s resurgent Monroe Doctrine, seeking to increase the subjugation of Latin America to shore up its status as the sole hegemonic imperialist superpower. US imperialism feels threatened by the resistance of the masses of Latin America (with recent examples including strikes and mass protests in Mexico against FIFA and the uprisings of workers and peasants in Bolivia), as well as by the threats of increased incursions from rival imperialist capital—Russia, China, but also Canada and the European powers.

Far from surrendering under the immense pressure of the criminal US blockade, Cuba continues its decades-long epic of resistance. Its coastguard defeated an attempted incursion by lackey forces in February, and its President Miguel Díaz-Canel has remained defiant, mobilizing mass rallies under the slogan “Tear down the blockade” while arming its people and engaging the Cuban masses in “National Defense Day” exercises.

The familiar US imperialist approach to subjugation is on display here: to cowardly assault the whole people with blockade and sanctions, causing widespread blackouts and food shortages, delaying thousands of surgeries, disrupting medical care for pregnant women, imposing severe economic shock—in short, genocide. The Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), quoted by Drop Site News, shows a 148% increase in infant mortality directly caused by the US blockade and sanctions from 2018 to 2025, even before the 2026 strangulation. The US imperialists are experts at killing children and hope by this to win their wars.

US monopolists see Cuba as a stepping stone on their rampage across Latin America, not an isolated target. It is also not simply a personal vendetta of ultra-reactionary ideologues like Secretary of State Rubio. Rather, Rubio’s vendetta serves plans to overcome the situation of severe decomposition US imperialism finds itself in: to demoralize and suppress the Latin American peoples’ resistance, outmaneuver imperialist rivals, and plunder the region’s rare earth minerals and oil and gas reserves.

Cuba’s defense is at once a bulwark against the plans of US imperialism to dominate and further subjugate Latin America, and a continuation of its unfinished revolution toward the country’s complete independence through New Democratic Revolution, carried out through People’s War under the leadership of its reconstituted Communist Party.

That Cuba has yet to capitulate is already a defeat for US imperialism, which seeks to shatter the Cuban people and the Cuban revolution without risking military invasion. While every day the blockade brings suffering to the Cuban masses, every day also marks an epic of resistance to the butchers and plunderers.

“There will be no surrender here,” said a member of the Cuban militia to Drop Site News in April. In an echo of the heroic words of the resistance party Hezbollah in Lebanon, she says surrender has been erased from the Cuban vocabulary.

The Justifications are Bloody and Threadbare Rags

The “War on Drugs” and “cartel government” excuses for intervention, trotted out with a shameless lack of evidence and hypocrisy against abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the Venezuelan government, is not present in the case of Cuba—except insofar as Trump says Cuba supported Maduro’s government. Instead, Rubio says Cuba is ruled by a “kleptocratic Communist system”, which, with optimum vagueness, he claims threatens the “national security” of the US “in our hemisphere.”

US imperialism has also used the bogeyman of Iran’s Shahed drone to portray Cuba as a threat. On May 17, monopoly outlet Axios published a “leaked” report of US classified intelligence claiming the Cuban state acquired 300 Shahed-type suicide drones from Iran to attack the US military base and torture site Guantanamo Bay occupying Cuban territory, as well as other military targets. Cheap to produce, difficult to detect, and easy to deploy, Shahed drones have given Iran an important tactical advantage in its defensive war, forcing the US to spend billions of dollars on significantly more expensive technology to counter the weapon.

The accusation is a pretext, a thin justification for continued aggression. There will no doubt be more “evidence” concocted as only 15% of those polled in the US by the CEPR support invading Cuba.

It would be good if the Axios report is correct. Weapons in the hands of a resistant people become firebrands, burning indelible words of victory into the rotten hulk of US imperialism.

Cuba’s Natural Resources

The true “kleptocrats” are the financial oligarchy of the US, salivating at the natural resources so close to US shores and angry at their profits lost through Cuba’s nationalization of US monopolies and the country’s subjection by other imperialists. This is Rubio’s “national security” the oligarchs seek, the security of US monopoly profits.

According to the 2020-2021 US Geological Survey of Cuba, the island has some of the largest reserves of nickel and cobalt in the world, industrially-important minerals alongside the rare earth minerals of Latin America also in the US’s sights.China currently dominates the world’s reserves of rare earth minerals, critical for the manufacture of electric vehicle (EV) batteries, technological equipment (such as artificial intelligence), and military technology. Particularly at a time when the US’s stockpile of missiles and interceptors are greatly depleted while it seeks more war, the US is making a mad dash to increase its share of critical and rare earth minerals.

Cuba’s untapped oil and gas is likely enticing to the US financial oligarchy, as the US’s strategic reserves of oil hit record lows, suffering under Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz. The undiscovered oil and natural gas deposits off Cuba’s coast total an estimated 4,098 million barrels of oil and 13,268 billion cubic feet of gas according to a US government 2024 geological survey. Stealing this would not provide short-term relief for the working class at the gas pump, to be sure, but would provide freedom of movement for the ruling class to be temporarily less hemmed in when it comes to its ability to rampage and pillage to preserve its profitability.

Workers Have Everything To Gain From Supporting Cuban Resistance

The Trump administration and the Republican Party mafia face the prospect of a significant loss of control over the government bureaucracies in the midterm elections, especially after US imperialism’s resounding defeat against Iran and the ensuing inflation. Trump’s approval rating is at a record low, and a perceived easy victory of “taking” Cuba after decades of sanctions and blockade no doubt seems appealing to the administration. However, the victory has not been quick in coming—every day that Cuba resists, US imperialism’s defeat is deepened.

The relatively muted protests in the US to the war of aggression against Iran in March do not portend the same will happen in the case of military aggression against Cuba, as the midterm elections will coincide with increased economic pressure on the working class, compounded by yet more criminal military aggression.

The US ruling class is increasingly militarizing the country, hand-in-hand with the reactionization of the state, carrying out genocide abroad and terror at home. However, its foundations are shaky due to the increasing decomposition of US imperialism and so, wanting to secure its grip, it moves piece by piece, bearing its bloody weight here, then there—city to city at home, country to country abroad, moving from failure to failure everywhere.

US imperialism is decaying and weak, and like a sickly beast it lashes out to strengthen its status as sole hegemonic superpower. The “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine manages the imperialist aggression with acute knowledge of its limitations—it cannot commit to occupation after occupation, or open battles of attrition. Hence, the oligarchy prefers quick, decisive battles that seek to terrorize peoples and nations into submission.

Monopoly media commentators like the journal Foreign Affairs admit that Cuba will not be militarily defeated easily, because its government is resilient and its people armed, arguing that diplomacy under the continued threat of further starvation is a surer weapon for US domination.

Recall that it was 32 Cuban soldiers who died heroically defending Venezuela from US aggression in January.

As is felt acutely in the war against Iran, the price of US militarization and aggression is more pain for the working class: increased cost of living, skyrocketing military budgets, cuts to social welfare programs, and the increased decadence of the oligarchy, who just crowned its first trillionaire Elon Musk. Workers are saddled by rising debt coupled with stagnant wages while the ruling class promises of resurgent US industry have turned to ash in the furnace of monopoly profits accompanying automation and layoffs. The gap between profits for the monopolists and wages for the workers continues to widen and “our” ruling class prepares more wars of aggression to steal the oil and mineral wealth of poor people abroad for their own enrichment.

It is up to the revolutionaries to link opposition to the genocidal blockade and another unjust war waged for the profits of the financial oligarchy to the workers’ struggles against this same oligarchy’s exploitation and aggression at home, to raise the conscious necessity for struggle against the butchers of the oppressed people, including support for the armed struggle of the Cuban nation against US aggression.

Image: The flag of Cuba. Credit: Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla on X.

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