United States President Donald Trump announced, on May 22, that he was considering launching military action against Cuba, following decades of failed attempts by US imperialism to destabilise the island nation and destroy its socialist project.
“Other presidents have looked at this for 50, 60 years,” Trump said. “It looks like I’ll be the one that does it.”
Trump’s announcement came just two days after the US Department of Justice indicted former Cuban president and defense minister, Raul Castro, now 94, on murder charges.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the US was “very serious” and was “losing patience” with Cuba after US demands for “regime change” were rejected in talks between the two nations.
Rubio is known as a Cuban-American hawk and gusano (“worm” — the Cuban term for traitor). His parents fled Cuba for Miami in 1956 during the US-installed Fulgencio Batista dictatorship. They returned to Cuba briefly before turning against the 1959 socialist revolution.
Rubio accused Cuba of being a national security threat because of its close ties with “America’s enemies”, including China and Russia.
“Cuba has gotten used to buying time and waiting us out,” Rubio said. “They’re not going to be able to wait us out this time.”
While Rubio said Trump prefers a peaceful negotiated deal, he told the media the odds of diplomacy succeeding are slim “given who we’re dealing with right now”.
When pressed on whether the US could use force to topple Cuba’s government, Rubio said that Trump “always has the option to do whatever it takes to protect the national interest”.
Beacon
For Trump, Rubio and the US ruling class, protecting the US national interest means overthrowing Cuba’s elected government and destroying the Cuban revolution and what it represents across Latin America and the world.
Cuba’s revolution is characterised by grassroots participatory democracy. Despite having received material, political and military aid from the former Soviet Union, the country has forged its own path, rejected bureaucratic Stalinism and is a beacon for socialist internationalism and solidarity.
This was one of the reasons Cuba was embraced by the 1960s worldwide youth radicalisation. Revolutionary leader Ernesto (Ché) Guevara’s image was everywhere. Cuba’s socialist internationalism was exemplified by his slogan: “Create two, three and many Vietnams.”
Black nationalists, Pan Africanists and pro-socialist internationalists praised and supported the Cuban Revolution. Many Black militants fled to Cuba from the US in the 1960s and ‘70s, after facing state surveillance, violence and threats.
Trump and his autocratic regime are repeating the lies used to justify invading Venezuela and abducting President Nicolás Maduro, on January 3, and to justify the US-Israeli war on Iran and support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Trump says the US should have “taken out” the Iranian regime 47 years ago, when the Iranian people overthrew the Shah. In regard to Cuba, he says the US should have overthrown the revolution decades ago.
Why now?
Trump declared the day he took office for a second term that the US — with the most powerful military in human history — has the right to impose its will over the world. He does not claim that US actions are based on “defending democracy” or a “rules-based order” as previous Republican and Democratic US presidents have done.
The allegations against Raul Castro being used as justification for action are based on the defensive measures taken by the Cuban government in 1996, when civilian aircraft flown by counter-revolutionary Cuban exiles from Miami were shot down after they entered Cuban airspace, despite warnings.
Raul was defense minister at the time. His brother, Fidel, was president and head of the Communist Party.
Solidarity needed
Cuban President, Miguel Díaz-Canel, blasted the charges as a “political stunt”, designed to justify possible US aggression.
The Cuban government issued a statement on May 20, condemning the indictment, saying: “Cuba’s response to the violation of its airspace [in 1996] constituted an act of legitimate self-defense, protected by the Charter of the United Nations, the 1944 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation, and the principles of air sovereignty and proportionality.
“The inaction of the US government in the face of the warnings issued by Cuba at the time, revealed its complicity in the planning and execution from its territory of violent, illegal, and terrorist actions against the Cuban government and people, a recurring and systematic practice since the triumph of the Revolution to present day.
“It is highly cynical that this accusation is made by the same government that has murdered nearly 200 people and destroyed 57 vessels in international waters of the Caribbean and the Pacific, far from US territory, with the disproportionate use of military force, for alleged links to drug trafficking operations that were never proven, which qualify as extrajudicial executions, in accordance with International Law, and murders, according to US laws themselves.
“This spurious accusation against the leader of the Cuban Revolution adds to the desperate attempts by anti-Cuban elements to construct a fraudulent narrative in an effort to justify the collective and ruthless punishment against the noble Cuban people, through the strengthening of unilateral coercive measures, including the unjust and genocidal energy blockade and threats of armed aggression.”
Fuelling speculation of a military attack even further, the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group arrived in the Caribbean the same day that Castro’s indictment became public. The Navy claimed the deployment was part of ongoing regional military exercises. Unofficially, it sent a strong threat to the Cuban people.
Cuba’s ally, China, condemned US “interference” and declared its support for Cuban sovereignty, as have countries across the Global South.
But with warships now circling the Caribbean, tightening sanctions, and Trump openly talking about intervention, the threat against the Cuban people is approaching its most dangerous level in years.
“Hands Off Raul Castro” and “Hands Off Cuba” protests have occurred in the US in response. Many of those who protested Trump’s war on Iran have participated.
The US war on Cuba is at a new stage with total blockade of energy resources.
Time for action is urgent. Solidarity with the Cuban government and people is more important than ever.