The Anatomy of a Strangulation

If you want to understand the true nature of the "Rules-Based International Order," skip the sanitized State Department briefings about human rights and democracy. Just look 90 miles south of Key West, where 11 million human beings are currently sitting in absolute, terrifying darkness.

This week, the Cuban electrical grid collapsed completely. Millions are without power. Surgeries have been canceled. Water pumps are dead, and whatever little food people had managed to scrape together is rotting in warm refrigerators. The administration’s victory lap on cable news will tell you this is just the inevitable collapse of a decrepit communist relic. But let’s do something radical: let’s look at the actual geopolitical chessboard.

What we are witnessing in Havana isn't just a failure of Marxist economics. It is the culmination of a deliberate, multi-continent, mafia-style strangulation designed by Washington. We have engineered a medieval siege, and we are pretending it’s a natural disaster.

Look at the blueprint. It is a masterclass in weaponized suffering, executed in four distinct steps:

Step One: The Caracas Heist. In January, the United States ousted Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. You can argue the merits of removing a dictator all day long, but look at the very next move: the administration immediately slapped an absolute blockade on Venezuelan oil heading to Cuba. Venezuela was supplying 35,000 barrels a day, the lifeblood keeping Cuban hospitals and generators running. We didn't just cut the cord; the White House threatened crippling tariffs on any country on Earth that dared to sell a drop of fuel to Havana.

Step Two: The Moscow Squeeze. With Venezuela offline, Cuba’s historical backup generator was Russia. But Washington had already taken care of that. By heavily sanctioning the Russian economy to the stone age over the invasion of Ukraine, cutting Moscow out of SWIFT and global shipping lanes, we guaranteed that Putin’s ability to offer debt forgiveness or ship discounted fuel to the island was severely crippled. We weaponized the global financial system to punish Russian aggression, but the collateral damage was conveniently severing Cuba's secondary artery.

Step Three: The Tehran Distraction. Now, we are dropping millions of dollars worth of Tomahawk missiles on Iran. Why? Because the administration demands total financial hegemony. Iran has historically been one of the few heavily sanctioned nations willing to sail a tanker of crude oil to Venezuela or Cuba when no one else would. By setting the Middle East on fire and bombing Iranian infrastructure, we aren't just engaging in a reckless forever war; we are eliminating the absolute last rogue supplier capable of keeping the lights on in Havana.

Step Four: The Gaza Hypocrisy. And here is the kicker, the sheer cynical glue holding this entire unethical operation together. How does Washington legally and morally justify this economic asphyxiation of 11 million Cubans? By keeping them on the "State Sponsors of Terrorism" list.

Take a step back and absorb the breathtaking hypocrisy of that. The United States currently provides infinite diplomatic cover and billions of dollars in heavy munitions to Israel while it flattens Gaza, funding and arming an actual, real-time humanitarian catastrophe that has horrified the Global South. Yet, we starve the Cuban people, denying them fuel, medicine, and basic sanitation, because their government is on an ideological naughty list drawn up by Cold War relics in D.C.

We fund the bombs falling on children in the Levant, but we claim Cuba is the terror threat so we can legally block oil shipments from reaching their power plants.

The strategy is clear, and it is monstrous. We are suffocating an island populace, depriving them of the basic biological necessities of modern life, electricity, clean water, edible food, in the explicit hope that they become so desperate, so starved, and so enraged that they overthrow their government for us. The administration literally calls it a "friendly takeover."

There is nothing friendly about tying a plastic bag over a nation's head and blaming them when they stop breathing. It is an unethical, manufactured crisis. We aren't liberating the Cuban people; we are using their suffering as a geopolitical weapon. And we are doing it in the dark.



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