Is Cuba next in line for a US attack?
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly said it could be, and USA Today on Wednesday cited “sources familiar” with the matter who said that the Pentagon is “quietly ramping up” preparations to wage war on the socialist nation if Trump gives the order.
On Monday, Trump flippantly declared that “we may stop by Cuba after we’re finished with this,” referring to the illegal US-Israeli war on Iran.
Trump has also said that he believes he’ll “be having the honor of taking Cuba,” language echoing the 19th century US imperialists who took that island as well as Puerto Rico and the Philippines from Spain in another war waged on dubious pretense.
“Whether I free it, take it – I think I can do anything I want,” Trump said of the island and its 11 million inhabitants.
The USA Today report – authored by Kim Hjelmgaard, Rick Jervis, and Francesca Chambers – sparked widespread alarm among advocates for peace.
“This is not a drill. Trump is preparing to take the US into another illegal war against Cuba to appease the Miami mafia,” Progressive International co-general coordinator David Adler said Wednesday on X. “We must stop him. It’s not too late.”
Cubans – who have been subjected to generations of privation and hardship while subject to the internationally condemned US economic embargo of their island – have mostly shrugged off Trump’s threats, with some observers noting that Cuba’s socialist era has outlasted a dozen American presidents.
Responding to a question about a possible US attack on his country, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that “if that happens, there will be fighting, and there will be a struggle, and we will defend ourselves, and if we need to die, we’ll die, because as our national anthem says, ‘Dying for the homeland is to live’.”
Numerous observers expressed shock, but not surprise, that Trump – the self-proclaimed “peace president” who has bombed 10 countries, more than any other US president – is setting his sights on Cuba, which American presidents since Thomas Jefferson have coveted.
Trump has been threatening Cuba since his first administration, when he systematically rolled back the Obama administration’s diplomatic normalization with the island’s government. He also activated a provision of the Helms-Burton Act allowing lawsuits over property confiscated after the Cuban Revolution.
On the last day of his first term, Trump re-designated Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism, a move critics slammed as absurd given that Cuba has never carried out any acts of terrorism – unlike the United States and the militant Cuban exiles it harbors, who have a decadeslong record of terrorist bombings and other attacks, as well as numerous failed or aborted attempts to assassinate the late revolutionary leader Fidel Castro.
Since returning to office, Trump has ratcheted up military threats and economic pressure on Cuba, which was already reeling from decades of US sanctions and the inefficiencies of centralized state control. Trump tightened the embargo by severely restricting fuel imports, exacerbating an energy emergency characterized by blackouts and deadly suffering among the most vulnerable Cubans, including sick people and children.
Last month, US Senators Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) introduced a war powers resolution aimed at preventing Trump from attacking Cuba without congressional authorization as required by law. Numerous war powers resolutions related to Iran, Venezuela, and Trump’s extralegal high-seas boat bombings have failed to pass.
Brett Wilkins is a San Francisco-based journalist and author who contributes regularly to Common Dreams and Counterpunch. He is also a member of Collective 20, a new anti-war collective with Noam Chomsky, Medea Benjamin and others.