Cuba's Energy Minister Vicente de la O said on May 14 that the country has "absolutely no fuel (oil), and absolutely no diesel." Havana is running on 20-22 hour blackouts; the grid collapsed across the eastern provinces on Thursday. Trump's January Executive Order 14380 imposed secondary tariffs on any country supplying oil to Cuba. The US military operation in Venezuela removed Nicolás Maduro and cut off Cuba's main fuel supplier in one move. A Russian tanker is stranded off the coast.

1. The Blockade Is Working (Rubio, Cuban-American GOP)

This is what successful pressure looks like.

Cuba is at the table, and that's the point. Marco Rubio has spent his political life arguing Havana's government has to go. The Trump administration has acted accordingly: Executive Order 14380, the Maduro removal, and a $100 million humanitarian offer specifically designed to bypass the regime through the Catholic Church. Cuba's foreign minister initially denied the offer existed. Days later, Díaz-Canel said Cuba "will not place obstacles nor show ingratitude" if Washington was sincere. The pressure produced a posture change.

The argument is that the regime survives only on outside oxygen. Reps. Carlos Giménez, Mario Díaz-Balart, and María Elvira Salazar have pushed hard for total economic isolation as the only thing that dislodges the Castro government — the position summarized in commentary as "no oil, no travel, no oxygen." US-based Cuban opposition groups signed the Liberation Accord in Miami, demanding the dismantling of the Cuban Communist Party. The blockade is a means; the end is finally on the table.

2. This Is Engineered Starvation (UN, OHCHR, Díaz-Canel)

Twenty-two-hour blackouts aren't policy. They're collective punishment.

A democracy doesn't get to legally turn off the lights of an entire country. UN human rights experts called the executive order "a serious violation of international law and a grave threat to a democratic and equitable international order," and have described what is happening as "energy starvation." OHCHR has documented hospitals canceling surgeries, disrupted water systems, food supply threats, and an "acute and persistent humanitarian crisis." The UN Special Rapporteur has called for the sanctions to be lifted.

The political target is real. The civilian toll is the means. Díaz-Canel calls the situation a "genocidal energy blockade" — propaganda framing, but the math underneath isn't. Eleven million people are living without electricity twenty-two hours a day so that a handful of senior regime officials might agree to step aside. Whatever the pressure is achieving politically, that is not a humanitarian policy.

3. Blame The Regime (William LeoGrande)

Cuba's grid was collapsing before the embargo. Decades of mismanagement made the blockade lethal.

Cuba meets only 50 to 70 percent of its electricity needs on a good day. William LeoGrande of American University: the grid is "way past its normal useful life," and "the technicians working on the grid are magicians to keep it running at all given the shape that it's in." The country's 16 thermal plants were built between the 1960s and 1980s with Soviet, Japanese, and Czech technology. Effective output sits well below 2,000 megawatts on a good day.

Putting all the eggs in the Venezuela basket was a political choice. When Venezuelan supply slowed to a trickle by 2016, Cuba had a decade to diversify. It didn't. A Russian tanker stranded off the coast in May is a symbol of the strategy: dependence on a small number of allied authoritarian states with their own crises. The blockade was the match. The fuel-soaked floor was Cuba's.

4. There's No Plan Here (Foreign Policy, Restraint)

Removing Maduro didn't fix Venezuela. Removing Díaz-Canel won't fix Cuba.

The plan is to remove a man and hope the institution dissolves. Foreign Policy reported in March that Washington might "settle for something less than regime change — just as it has in Venezuela," pressing instead for replacing Díaz-Canel with someone more open to economic reform. As Al Jazeera analysts have pointed out, the institutional apparatus governing Cuba would remain in place regardless of who occupies the presidency. The Cuban Communist Party, the military, the security services — none of those leave with Díaz-Canel.

The migration is already starting. The Cuban Observatory of Conflicts recorded 1,133 protests in April 2026, up 29.5 percent from a year earlier. The post-collapse Cuba that arrives on the rest of the Caribbean and the South Florida shoreline will be Washington's problem too. The "no oil, no travel, no oxygen" approach assumes the collapse stays inside the island; history doesn't suggest that's how this ends.

Where This Lands

The blockade is doing what it was designed to do; the question is whether what it was designed to do is what anyone wanted. Hawks see decades of failed engagement vindicated — the regime is at the table for the first time. UN experts see a deliberate humanitarian catastrophe with foreseeable consequences for civilians. Energy analysts see a country whose infrastructure was unlikely to survive another decade in any case. Restraint voices see a Venezuela rerun without an exit plan.

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