The US Must Stop Asphyxiating Cuba Now

Since the Cuban Revolution overthrew a US-backed dictatorship and asserted national independence, Cuba has remained in the United States' crosshairs. The country has endured nearly 600 assassination attempts against its leadership, along with countless covert and overt operations aimed at destabilizing its government. For more than six decades, the US has also imposed an economic embargo explicitly designed to bring about regime change.

By any honest measure, this policy has failed. What it has succeeded in doing is fostering deep resentment toward the United States, not only in Cuba, but across much of the world, while inflicting immense suffering on ordinary Cubans.

Basic necessities such as food, paint, printing paper, baby formula, syringes, and other lifesaving supplies, including vaccines and cancer treatment drugs, are either restricted by the embargo or priced far beyond most people’s reach. A simple walk through Havana tells the story: crumbling infrastructure, uncollected trash, and growing numbers of people gathering near tourist areas, hands outstretched in desperation.

Fuel shortages are widespread, inflation is at historic highs, and a sharp decline in tourism, Cuba’s primary economic lifeline, has made daily life nearly unbearable for many.

It is time for the United States to respect Cuba’s sovereignty and lift the embargo and accompanying sanctions.

In response, the Cuban government has expanded the private sector, legalized small- and medium-sized enterprises, decentralized food production, and opened its markets to limited foreign investment, all while attempting to maintain the core socialist principles of the revolution. It has also reduced reliance on fossil fuels, slowly shifting to solar energy. In 2025, renewable energy accounted for more than 10% of Cuba’s energy consumption, an increase from 3% the year before.

Yet these measures alone cannot offset the outsize impact of US policy and the blockade, which has been dramatically tightened in recent months. The latest effort to cut off of nearly all oil shipments to the island has led to daily blackouts and deepened human suffering.

It is time for the United States to respect Cuba’s sovereignty and lift the embargo and accompanying sanctions. They are a cruel and inhumane form of collective punishment that disproportionately harms the most vulnerable. These sanctions, without legitimate justification, have restricted travel for Americans, made remittances far more difficult, and unjustly placed Cuba on the State Sponsor of Terrorism list. That designation effectively cuts the country off from the global banking system, making even basic international transactions nearly impossible. The absurdity is stark: Cuban biotechnology produced five globally used Covid-19 vaccines, while the US embargo restricted Cuba’s ability to purchase syringes to administer them.

Cuba should not be treated as a political chess piece to demonstrate US economic and military might. It is a proud nation of nearly 11 million people who want nothing more than to be good neighbors. It is time for the United States to end its asphyxiation of Cuba and allow the Cuban people to determine their own future, a future free from US interference, coercion, and perpetual threat.