The US war machine has turned its sights on Cuba. Marco Rubio, the Cuban-American secretary of state who has long craved the fall of the island’s communist government, made that clear again last week. While professing a preference for a “negotiated settlement”, he said the chances of a deal were “not high”. A couple of months ago, I saw up close the economic devastation already inflicted by decades of US siege – and, since January, by a crippling oil blockade introduced by Donald Trump.
The US has now charged the country’s former president Raúl Castro with conspiracy to kill US nationals, four counts of murder and two counts of destruction of aircraft over the downing of two planes in 1996. The evidence points increasingly in one direction: it is all grimly reminiscent of the indictment of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, used to justify his kidnapping by US forces.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is leaking intelligence claiming that Cuba has acquired more than 300 military drones, supposedly to attack the US base at Guantánamo Bay. “It’s a growing threat,” claimed one anonymous “senior US official”. The idea that, after several decades of tense relations with the US, a drastically weakened Cuba would suddenly launch an attack on the superpower only 90 miles from its shores, inviting overwhelming retribution, is plainly a fantasy. It is a desperate, threadbare homage to the “weapons of mass destruction” pretext used to invade Iraq. » | Owen Jones | Thursday, May 28, 2026
These are some of my thoughts on the unnecessary suffering of the poor, besieged Cubans. All because of a disgraceful, unfeeling president and his not-to-be-trusted side-kick, Marco Rubio.
