Analysis
Cuba faces a barrage of threats, from viruses to open warfare
In Havana, leaders have no doubt that U.S. intervention in Venezuela and Colombia would open up the scenario of a direct attack on Cuba. Setting the stage for this dangerous scenario, a relentless social media war against Cuba has been underway for months.
Cuba is in a full-blown systemic crisis. It is in recession for the third consecutive year (while the figures for recent months have not been released). Hurricane Melissa is approaching, and the island is being forced to shut down power plants that are already failing to supply the country with electricity. But nature has little to do with this. In Cuba, when it rains, it pours.
One manifestation of the crisis of the state (and of the party that constitutes its backbone) can be seen in the city streets, where piles of garbage often mix with water leaks, including from sewage lines. This is in addition to the daily, hours-long apagones (blackouts) that tear down the population’s morale and undermine their confidence in any policies to improve the situation.
In recent days, alarm has grown over a possible epidemic of various arboviruses (Chikungunya, Zika, Oropouche, and Dengue, especially its most dangerous hemorrhagic variant). Hospitals are overwhelmed, schools are half-empty. The “virus” is everywhere and on everyone’s lips, while the Nile mosquitoes responsible for its spread are rampant. This situation could worsen in the east of the island with the imminent impact of Hurricane Melissa.
However, the island’s government and political leadership are most worried because of another danger: the unprecedented aggressiveness of the current Trump administration (which includes not only the president himself but also the anti-Castro and anti-Bolivarian obsession of Secretary of State Marco Rubio and various Cuban-American hawks).
In addition to blockading the Venezuelan coast for weeks with a massive naval and air deployment (recently joined by the large aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford), the U.S. offensive deployment has sunk several boats allegedly "carrying drugs," causing the deaths of several people. The escalation then continued with Trump authorizing CIA operations inside Venezuela with the stated aim of changing its government: eliminating President Nicolás Maduro “and his political-military group,” all accused of being drug lords (of the Tren de Aragua and the Cartel de los Soles, alleged to be led by army generals).
What caused the most acute alarm was the U.S. tycoon’s recent attack on Colombian President Gustavo Petro – whom he also claimed was associated with drug cartels – and the sinking of another alleged Colombian narco-boat in Pacific waters.
Trump has called Petro “an evil man” and the “narco-in-chief.” These accusations are absurd to anyone with common sense who follows Latin America. The Colombian president, though a leftist and former guerrilla, was democratically elected and has waged a strong fight against drug cartels as part of his strategy to bring peace to a country tormented for decades by armed groups. Colombia has always been considered one of the United States' most reliable allies (the U.S. has nine military bases and installations in the country) and is a non-member NATO partner. The military threats from the current tenant at the White House are therefore particularly serious and indicate the extent to which Trump and his administration are determined to impose the Monroe Doctrine by force, to realize the “manifest destiny” of the U.S. to control the subcontinent south of the Rio Grande.
In Havana, leaders have no doubt that U.S. intervention in Venezuela and Colombia would open up the scenario of a direct attack on Cuba. Other alarming signs point towards this hypothesis. The Trump administration's diplomatic apparatus is working to win over allies (including through economic blackmail), especially in Latin America, to agree to vote down the UN resolution that Cuba presents every year against the 60-year blockade unilaterally imposed by the U.S., which is set to happen at the next UN General Assembly (at the end of the month). For years, this yearly resolution has been approved almost unanimously by all UN member states, with the exceptions of the U.S. and Israel – a censure (admittedly, only a symbolic one) of the aggressive policy of the United States.
This year, ominous defections are looming. Bolivia’s newly elected right-wing president, Rodrigo Paz, has already announced that he will not invite the presidents of Cuba, Venezuela or Nicaragua to his inauguration. The president of the Dominican Republic, Luis Abinader, under U.S. pressure, has ruled out inviting the same three countries to the Summit of the Americas to be held in December in Santo Domingo. And after President Milei’s success in Argentina’s legislative elections, it is certain that the next new head of Argentine diplomacy will not vote in favor of Cuba’s resolution.
Setting the stage for this dangerous scenario, a relentless social media war against Cuba has been underway for months. This is what the Mexican philosopher Fernando Buen Abad calls “the cognitive war against Cuba.” On a semantic level, he says, there is a veritable “carpet bombing” against the proud assertion of popular sovereignty that forms the core of the Cuban Revolution: tens of thousands of bots are being deployed to brand Cuban sovereignty as “international isolation,” socialism as a “dramatic economic collapse” that produces misery, and the progressive government as “a dictatorship.”
The strategy of cognitive warfare is not to debate ideas, but to take advantage of a crisis situation – one largely intended and created for more than 60 years by the U.S. embargo – in order to spread a policy of “systemic hatred” against anything that represents resistance to the neoliberal order and Trumpism. According to Buen Abad, this is a “cognitive blockade” that runs parallel to the economic, commercial, and financial one enacted more than 60 years ago by Washington with the explicit purpose to “cause hunger and misery in Cuba and induce its population to rebel.” It is, therefore, “the old colonial policy, but today with Netflix aesthetics,” with the efficiency of AI-created deepfakes and spread by an army of bots. A mobilization is needed against Trump’s arsenal, both real and virtual.
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/piove-sul-bagnato-a-cuba-ormai-e-crisi-di-sistema on 2025-10-28