Cuba has endured decades of sanctions and trade restrictions, but the choking off of its oil supply, which comes almost entirely from Venezuela and Mexico, has left the country on the brink.
The Trump administration wants to coerce Cuba into accepting sweeping reforms, making it more aligned with the US and less aligned with countries like Russia.
Last month, John Ratcliffe, the head of the CIA, held a summit with senior Cuban officials, delivering a stark message: Allow real change or face military intervention.
Donald Trump said in March that he thinks he will have the "honour of taking Cuba" and has repeated his threats to topple the Communist government with increasing regularity.
Yet Cuba's president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, remains intransigent - and ordinary Cubans are paying the price. Petrol is rationed to 20 litres a month per person, but on the black market, if they can find it, Cubans are paying more than £5 a litre for petrol. It means many of the classic 1950s vehicles, which have become a trademark of the tourist industry, lie stranded.
I burst into tears even watching this! This is proof, if proof were indeed needed, that those across the Pond are cruel swine! This is ideological warfare, pure and simple, the price of which innocent, ordinary and extremely poor Cubans have to pay the inordinately HUGE price. Such UNNECESSARY suffering! And stupid Americans believe that Trump is God’s latest prophet! How ridiculous! How thick! How benighted! How dopey can people be?
As far as I am concerned, this very spectacle, this very suffering draws into question whether there is a god at all! Still less an omnipotent one. For verily, if God truly exists, and He is omnipotent, then he must surely be an exceedingly CRUEL God to allow such suffering and misery to be caused by a self-centred, ruthless man He could so easily take home in the twinkling of an eye! — © Mark Alexander
