In April of 1960, just over a year after the establishment by Fidel Castro of a revolutionary communist government in Cuba, the US state department issued an internal memo about its prospects for bringing down the new regime. The memo acknowledged that Castro had the support of an overwhelming majority of Cubans, and that there was no effective political opposition remaining on the island. Military intervention from outside would be counterproductive, as it would only serve to strengthen communist support, and so the correct American approach would be to create “economic dissatisfaction and hardship” among ordinary Cubans.

“If such a policy is adopted,” the memo recommended, “it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

This, from the beginning, was the policy aim of the most powerful country on the planet toward the tiny communist nation 90 miles to its south: to strangle its economy, to starve and immiserate its people until it collapsed into chaos – out of which could be fashioned a regime more amenable to US geopolitical and business interests.

Despite causing a great deal of hardship and deprivation to Cubans, the policy known to Americans as the “embargo”, and to Cubans as the “blockade”, has famously never achieved its desired effect. (This was not the only approach, of course: the CIA’s history of failed assassination attempts on Castro – exploding cigars, poisoned chocolate milkshakes, employment of mafia hitmen – is as well documented as it is farcical.)

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For a while there, it looked like the US might be finally adopting a rapprochement policy toward Cuba, with the Obama administration starting the process of loosening trade and travel restrictions, and re-establishing diplomatic ties. But the Trump White House, driven by Cuban-American secretary of state Marco Rubio’s advocacy of forcible regime change, has rolled back the normalisation of the Obama era.

In January, in the immediate aftermath of the US military strikes on Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president, Trump issued an executive order declaring a state of “national emergency” with respect to a threat to US security from Cuba. The executive order specifically threatened punitive tariffs against any nation attempting to export oil to Cuba. Ever since then, the US has been actively intercepting ships in the Caribbean and seizing oil shipments bound for the island.

There is, from a human rights perspective, a very sturdy case to be made against the Cuban regime. In 2021, in response to protests against the government’s handling of the Covid pandemic and its general authoritarianism, the state doubled down on its repression of dissent – imprisoning protesters, and targeting their families with intimidation and surveillance. Since then, the US has seen a significant increase in Cubans arriving, fleeing the worsening conditions on the island.

But the Trump administration is, true to form, not even paying lip-service to the idea of human rights or the cause of Cuban freedom. Those new arrivals to the US have been faced with another form of authoritarianism, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, eager to fulfil their deportation quotas, wait outside immigration courts in Miami to round up Cubans seeking asylum.

So what does Trump, or perhaps more accurately Rubio, want to happen in Cuba? The results of the tightened blockade since January have been entirely predictable – which is to say, horrific. The island has run drastically low on fuel reserves, and its power grid has given way under the strain. Transport has ground to a near-total halt. The healthcare system, most distressingly, is collapsing. (That system was once among the world’s best; despite the devastating effects of the embargo, the country’s life expectancy and infant mortality rates have for decades been comparable with the wealthy countries of the West.)

[ Power blackouts, fuel shortages and mass emigration: Cuba’s crisis weighs heaviest on the elderlyOpens in new window ]

The population, and disproportionately its children, has been suffering from dengue fever and malnutrition. The most vulnerable Cubans – the sick, the elderly, newborn infants in need of critical care – are being killed by this brutal blockade.

These are not mere unfortunate consequences of the US government’s quarrel with the Cuban communist party. The specific intention of the blockade is that it will cause precisely these kinds of effects, that it will bring about such terrible suffering and deprivation that collapse becomes inevitable.

Causing sustained and deliberate harm to a civilian population in order to force a desired political change: this is collective punishment, and there is, from a moral perspective, little to distinguish it from terrorism. The Irish Government’s response to this situation has been forthright and unequivocal – the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has updated its website to advise against unnecessary travel to Cuba. (“Challenges to the importation of fuel are compounding ongoing issues with Cuba’s national power grid,” runs the carefully bland observation in the Travel Alert.)

The Government’s official opposition – ie, the Belfast rap trio Kneecap, who increasingly constitute a kind of gonzo shadow cabinet – have meanwhile stepped into the breach. Last weekend, they arrived in Havana as part of an international convoy delivering tons of humanitarian aid to the island.

The Irish State has, to be clear, long taken the position that the embargo against Cuba serves no useful political purpose, that it is a cause of unnecessary suffering and deprivation. This remains the stance of the current Government, but you wouldn’t necessarily know that from its silence on the world stage. And you certainly wouldn’t know it from the Taoiseach’s total impassivity in the Oval Office last week, as Rubio sounded off about the country’s “non-functional economy” as though he and his own government had nothing to do with it, and as Trump mused, “We’ll be doing something with Cuba very soon.”

The very least our Government can do in response to the renewed and redoubled barbarism of the current blockade is to restate unambiguously its opposition to the collective punishment of the Cuban people.

© The Irish Times