Analysis of: Cuba on the brink as Trump turns up the pressure: ‘There is going to be a real blockade’
The Guardian | February 1, 2026
TL;DR
The US is engineering Cuba's total collapse by threatening tariffs on any nation selling oil to the island, weaponizing economic dependency to achieve what military invasion could not. This is imperialism stripped bare—a superpower openly starving 11 million people to eliminate an alternative to capitalism.
Analytical Focus:Material Conditions Contradictions Interconnections
The Trump administration's threat to impose tariffs on any country selling oil to Cuba represents imperialism at its most naked: the deliberate engineering of a humanitarian catastrophe to achieve regime change. With Cuba facing complete fuel depletion within three weeks, we witness the material logic of imperial power—not military invasion, but the weaponization of economic dependency to strangle a nation into submission. The article reveals how material conditions determine political possibilities. Cuba's survival depends on fuel imports for electricity, transportation, agriculture, and water distribution. By targeting this single chokepoint, the US leverages its position at the center of global trade networks to enforce compliance from third parties like Mexico, which cancelled shipments despite claiming a 'sovereign decision.' This demonstrates how formal sovereignty means little when core capitalist powers can threaten devastating economic consequences for defiance. The situation exposes fundamental contradictions in the global capitalist order. The US simultaneously champions 'freedom' while openly planning to starve a civilian population; it claims Cuba harbors terrorists without evidence while conducting what amounts to economic warfare against civilians. Meanwhile, Cuba's internal contradictions sharpen—a doctor earns more driving a motorcycle taxi than practicing medicine, revealing how external siege combines with internal dysfunction to erode the material basis of socialist achievements. The question becomes whether these compounding crises will generate popular mobilization or collapse.
Class Dynamics
Actors: Cuban working class (including professionals reduced to informal labor), Cuban state apparatus, US imperial state and capitalist class, Mexican government (caught between popular solidarity and US pressure), Diplomatic corps and international capital, Cuban exiles and potential collaborators being courted by US
Beneficiaries: US capitalist interests seeking access to Cuban markets and resources, Miami exile bourgeoisie anticipating return of confiscated property, US military-industrial complex justifying Caribbean hegemony, Those with dollar access in Cuba's dual economy
Harmed Parties: Cuban working class facing imminent fuel, food, and medical crisis, Cuban pensioners and state workers with worthless wages, Hospital patients and vulnerable populations, Agricultural workers and rural communities, Any nation seeking independent trade relations outside US approval
The US exercises overwhelming structural power not through direct military force but through control of global trade and financial networks. Cuba's traditional allies—Venezuela (regime-changed), Russia (distracted), China (cautious)—prove unable or unwilling to break the stranglehold. Mexico's capitulation despite rhetorical resistance demonstrates how peripheral nations remain subordinate to core imperial powers regardless of nominal sovereignty.
Material Conditions
Economic Factors: Complete dependency on imported fuel for basic infrastructure, 11% economic contraction 2019-2024 plus additional 5% through 2025, Hyperinflation destroying purchasing power of peso wages, Dual currency system creating internal class stratification, Collapse of traditional aid relationships (Venezuela, Russia)
Cuba's socialist mode of production, already strained by decades of embargo and the loss of Soviet support, faces existential material crisis. The relations of production—state ownership of major industries, guaranteed social services, controlled prices—cannot function without fuel. A doctor driving taxi represents the decomposition of socialist labor allocation under siege conditions; productive labor becomes impossible when the material base collapses. The base is being deliberately destroyed to force transformation of the superstructure.
Resources at Stake: Oil imports (84,900 barrels from Mexico being only 2026 shipment), Diesel reserves (estimated 3 weeks remaining), Electrical grid capacity, Agricultural production and food security, Water distribution infrastructure, Cuba's nickel reserves and potential offshore oil (long-term US interest), Control of Caribbean shipping lanes
Historical Context
Precedents: 60+ years of US embargo against Cuba, 1990s Special Period following Soviet collapse, US sanctions and regime change operations against Venezuela, January 2026 violent removal of Maduro, Historical US interventions in Latin America (Guatemala 1954, Chile 1973, Nicaragua 1980s), Iraq sanctions regime killing estimated 500,000 children
This represents a continuity of US policy toward socialist experiments in its declared sphere of influence—the Monroe Doctrine enforced through economic rather than military means. The current phase intensifies neoliberal-era 'soft power' coercion while returning to the explicit regime-change rhetoric of earlier periods. After Venezuela's fall, Cuba becomes the final domino in eliminating alternatives to capitalist integration in the hemisphere. The pattern is consistent: isolate economically, create humanitarian crisis, blame the victim government, then either foment internal coup or justify intervention.
Contradictions
Primary: The US simultaneously presents itself as champion of freedom and human rights while openly engineering mass civilian suffering—the contradiction between liberal ideology and imperial practice has never been starker. The diplomat literally says 'now there is going to be a real blockade' while celebrating 'Freedom 250.'
Secondary: Cuba's socialist achievements (universal healthcare, education) become impossible to maintain when the material base is destroyed, creating internal pressure against the system they were meant to prove superior, Mexico claims 'sovereign decision' while transparently capitulating to US pressure, exposing the fiction of peripheral nation sovereignty, China expresses 'deep concern' but has historically bought Cuban oil rather than supplying it, revealing the limits of anti-imperialist rhetoric, Cuban professionals earn more in informal service work than their trained professions, inverting socialist labor value
Three possible trajectories emerge: (1) Regime collapse and US-backed restoration of capitalism, which would validate imperial pressure as strategy; (2) Popular mobilization and resilience that weathers the storm, requiring some external breakthrough; (3) Internal fragmentation as the US cultivates defectors within the Cuban government. The material timeline—three weeks of fuel—creates urgent pressure toward resolution. Without external intervention or dramatic internal mobilization, the contradictions appear to favor US objectives in the near term, though the longer-term contradictions of ruling a hostile, impoverished population would remain.
Global Interconnections
Cuba's crisis cannot be understood outside the broader recomposition of US hegemony in the Americas following Venezuela's fall. The 'violent removal' of Maduro on January 3rd established that the US will use force to eliminate challenges to its regional dominance; the economic strangulation of Cuba demonstrates the alternative coercive mechanism. Together, these represent the enforcement of capitalist integration throughout the hemisphere—eliminating the last spaces where alternative modes of production survive. This connects to global patterns of core-periphery relations under late capitalism. Cuba's vulnerability stems precisely from its peripheral position in global production networks—dependent on fuel imports, lacking the industrial base for autarky, unable to access global financial systems due to US-dominated institutions. The weaponization of this dependency reveals how 'free trade' functions as imperial leverage; nations are 'free' to trade with Cuba only until the US decides otherwise. Mexico's capitulation demonstrates this clearly: formal sovereignty dissolves when confronted with threatened tariffs from the hegemonic power. The 'rules-based international order' has no rules preventing the open starvation of civilian populations by economic means.
Conclusion
Cuba's imminent fuel crisis represents imperialism operating at full intensity—the deliberate destruction of a society's material basis to eliminate an ideological alternative. For workers and anti-capitalists globally, this demands clear-eyed analysis: the US will deploy every tool, from naval blockades to tariff threats, to prevent any society from demonstrating that alternatives to capitalism can exist. The coming weeks will test whether international solidarity can materialize into concrete material support, whether Cuba's internal organization can sustain popular mobilization under extreme duress, and whether the contradictions of imperial overreach create openings for resistance. Whatever the immediate outcome, the lesson is structural: socialist projects in peripheral nations face not just internal challenges but coordinated imperial assault on their material foundations. Building resilient, internationalist solidarity networks capable of breaking such sieges remains an urgent task for the global left.
Suggested Reading
- Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism by V.I. Lenin (1917) Lenin's analysis of how advanced capitalist nations exploit peripheral regions through economic mechanisms rather than direct colonization directly illuminates how the US uses trade dependency and financial control to strangle Cuba without military invasion.
- The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (2007) Klein's documentation of how crises are engineered or exploited to impose capitalist restructuring parallels the US strategy of creating humanitarian catastrophe in Cuba to force regime change and market opening.
- The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality by Jason Hickel (2017) Hickel's analysis of how global inequality is maintained through structural mechanisms—debt, trade rules, intervention—provides essential context for understanding Cuba's vulnerability within the imperial world system.
- The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (1961) Fanon's examination of colonial violence and its psychological dimensions helps analyze both the dehumanizing logic of siege warfare and the conditions under which colonized peoples resist or succumb to imperial pressure.