By Paul TAYLOR
For many Europeans of my generation, Cuba was as much a progressive cause as it was a country.
In our student days of selective idealism (mine were in the mid-1970s), it was a brave little country that had overthrown a corrupt regime that was secretly collaborating with the American mafia. In a popular revolution led by the charismatic Fidel Castro and the iconic guerrilla leader Che Guevara, it then resisted a devastating American embargo to defend its independence. Hasta la victoria siempre! (Always to victory!)
Now Cubans are suffering in abject poverty, with little or no electricity, while coping with a US blockade of fuel supplies – ordered by Donald Trump as part of a policy of maximum pressure aimed at either toppling the island’s communist rulers or forcing them to open up to US capitalism. The US decision to charge Raúl Castro – Fidel’s 94-year-old brother and successor, who remains a key figure in power even in retirement – with murder in connection with the 1996 downing of two US light aircraft shows how determined Washington is to eliminate the old guard. Factories and transport have been paralyzed by a lack of power. Hospitals are struggling desperately to treat patients – with minimal fuel to keep emergency generators running.
Yet few people beyond the radical left fringes of European politics are protesting the clearly illegal strangulation of the Cuban economy and people, much less opposing the American pressure on Havana by sending fuel or power generators. The world will not lift a finger to protect Cuba from Trump’s deadly coercion or to prevent regime change. Even outrage is rare.
This is partly because Cuba’s traditional friends and allies – Russia, Venezuela, Mexico and Brazil – are either paralyzed, distracted, or have more important issues to resolve with Washington. Also, because the Cubans’ plight is largely the result of their irresponsible rulers, who have done little to help their own people.
The fact that Cubans enjoy neither freedom nor prosperity is not so much due to the US embargo as to decades of communist mismanagement, which suppressed economic initiative and freedom of expression in the name of a lower-level egalitarianism. “Cuba today is anything but libre [free],” said Herman Portocarero, the former Belgian and EU ambassador to Havana, who negotiated the 2016 EU-Cuba Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement. “This is a tropical island with a lot of fertile land that for many years imported 80 percent of its food.”
The EU and Brazil offered financial incentives and technical assistance to help Cuba shift from sugarcane cultivation to food production. “We tried, and the Brazilians also tried to do something about it, but we failed. Every time we ran into a wall of ideology and dogma,” Portocarero said. Up to a million Cubans, mostly educated, have emigrated in the past two years.
Cuba’s long line of foreign “benefactors” ended in January, when Trump’s military blitzkrieg overthrew Venezuela’s leftist government, kidnapping President Nicolás Maduro and his wife – to face trial in the US. That ended the subsidized shipments of Venezuelan oil that had kept Cuba afloat. With few exports, the country barely survives on remittances from Cuban immigrants, mostly to the US and Canada. Even its iconic rum, Havana Club, is sold in imported bottles because high energy costs make it uneconomic to produce glass in Cuba.
Russia, Havana’s main protector and economic partner in the Soviet era, is mired in an unwinnable war in Ukraine. It has watched helplessly as its main ally in the Middle East, Syria under the Assad regime, collapsed into civil war and as its other regional friend, Iran, was bombed by the US and Israel. Moscow sent a cargo of oil to Cuba in March, which the US allowed to pass on “humanitarian” grounds. No other country – not even left-wing Mexico and Brazil – has dared to send fuel for fear of secondary US sanctions.
China, which has friendly relations with Havana, has not challenged the US blockade. Xi Jinping has bigger issues to discuss with Trump. There is no indication that Cuba was even mentioned during their summit this month. It is not a big enough market for China to worry about. As for Europe, it is more divided than ever over the Cuban issue and focused on Russia’s war in Ukraine and the US-Israeli war against Iran, which has restricted energy supplies and sent fuel prices skyrocketing.
Within the EU, Spain and France have traditionally been Havana’s main supporters and the most vocal critics of the US embargo – which has been in place since 1962. For years, you could fly directly from Madrid to Havana, but now many flights are being suspended as tourism has collapsed. And for years, the EU unanimously supported an annual UN General Assembly resolution calling for an end to the embargo. But in 2025, Hungary voted against it, while the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania abstained.
For many on the left, such as veteran politicians Jeremy Corbyn and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the Cuban issue is about anti-imperialism and sovereignty. But for the right, it is about anti-communism and individual freedom, especially in the Central European countries that lived for decades under Soviet rule.
Even Spain, where a leftist government has prided itself on standing up to the US by condemning the war on Iran and refusing to use its bases for the operation, has been strangely silent in the face of Trump’s pressure on its former colony. It is true that the leaders of Spain, Mexico and Brazil issued a joint statement last month condemning the “grave situation” facing the Cuban people. They called for respect for sovereignty and international law, but did not explicitly mention the US or the oil embargo, and promised only increased humanitarian aid, not energy supplies.
Whether Washington imposes a “deal” on Cuba’s current leaders or tightens its noose in an attempt to topple them, don’t expect Europe to do anything to stop the next episode of the “Donroe Doctrine.” The Europeans have bigger problems with Trump, too. They may have history with Cuba, but the US has geography and geopolitics on its side. (The Guardian)