A Hemisphere on Edge |
The streets of Havana, once alive with music and the hum of daily life, now tell a quieter story: long lines at petrol stations with nothing to dispense, hospitals flickering in and out of power, and rubbish piling up because the trucks that once cleared it lack the fuel to move. This is not the aftermath of a natural disaster or civil war. It is the result of deliberate policies enacted by the world’s most powerful government — a self-inflicted siege that risks human lives and global norms.
Call it what it is: a man-made humanitarian catastrophe.
To understand how we arrived here, we must revisit the anatomy of this crisis not as abstract geopolitics but as the lived reality of people confronting shortages that affect every aspect of daily life — electricity, healthcare, transport, food supply, sanitation and even the ability of airlines to fly in and out of the island.
Washington has long maintained an embargo on Cuba dating back to 1962. But the recent escalation — particularly the US declaration of a “national emergency” empowering tariffs on countries supplying oil to Cuba and the effective blockage of Venezuelan oil destined for the island — transcends conventional sanctions and resembles, in form and function, a blockade that constricts the flow of basic necessities.
An embargo, at least in theory, restricts trade between two states. A blockade, however, is unmistakably a tool of warfare: it stops goods from reaching a population regardless of sovereignty or third-party interests. When the list of affected goods includes energy so essential that its absence destabilises hospitals, water systems, sanitation services and food production, we leave the realm of political pressure and enter that of collective punishment.
Sanctions may be an instrument of coercive diplomacy; blockades are instruments of desperation.
The tightening of US measures has had immediate and devastating effects. Power grids that once........