In January 2026, the United States has tightened its embargo on Cuba and turned it into a “maximum pressure” blockade of any imported fuel. Since then, the island has been facing chronic fuel shortages leading to frequent blackouts, collapsed public services, and deep economic hardship for ordinary Cubans. The evidence, however, speaks clearly: the blockade is counterproductive, harmful, and, many argue, illegal under international law – and brings more risks than results.
The Blockade Has a Significant Humanitarian Impact
On 29 January 2026, the President of the United States issued an executive order declaring a national emergency and authorizing the imposition of trade tariffs on imports of oil from third countries to Cuba. [1] Despite international condemnation of the order, [2] this “maximum pressure” escalation of one of the longest standing trade embargos in modern history [3] has been in place for almost five months now – and its effects are devastating. Cuba’s fuel reserves are severely depleted, leading to daily blackouts that now frequently exceed 20 hours. According to UN Human Rights, healthcare is suffering significantly from the shortage: infant mortality in the country has doubled, childhood cancer survival rates have fallen, and medicine is available only around 30% of the time. [4] An ACAPS report confirms the impact of the crisis by underlining that nearly 96,400 surgical procedures were cancelled between January and March, 46 blood banks lost operational capacity, thousands of patients had treatment disrupted, about 30,000 children went unvaccinated, and over 32,800 pregnant women faced added risk. [5] Food production in the country has since 2021 already declined because of reduced fuel access, and currently, it is expected to be dropping even more. [4] [5] The island faces increasing isolation, and not even humanitarian aid reaches it because companies do not want to risk shipping to the country – and the incoming summer temperatures may increase the risk of diseases spreading. [6]
This has not stopped Donald Trump from tightening the sanctions against Cuba even more, however. On May 1, 2026, the White House released an executive order that authorizes the blocking of any property or interest in property of any person cooperating with the Cuban government or participating in certain fields of Cuban economy. A person is blocked in this way even if they have only assisted or provided support to someone blocked by this order, and the order also allows for sanctions against financial institutions providing “any significant transactions” for any person blocked in this manner. [7] These rules are likely to discourage many non-U.S. subjects from conducting any business in Cuba, especially if they are in any way reliant on the United States, further isolating the country from the international system and plunging it even deeper into an economic crisis.
A Radical Step With an Unclear Goal
Trump’s January order and official justification of the measures argue that Cuba poses a direct and active threat to the United States, stating that Cuban policies are “designed to harm the United States and support … actors that seek to destroy the United States”. [1] The order claims Cuba maintains deep intelligence and military ties with China and hosts Russia’s largest overseas intelligence facility that allegedly targets American secrets. Another listed offence is that Cuba allegedly provides a safe haven for terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, allowing them to build influence in the region and, through that influence, destabilize it. The White House also argues that Cuba is disrupting the region through migration and by actively trying to export its political model across Latin America, which the order denounces. It blames the Cuban government for persecuting political opponents, torturing prisoners, censoring speech and press, harassing religious worshippers, and blocking civil society, and frames these not just as human rights concerns but as affronts to U.S. foreign policy values. [1]
The human rights affronts in Cuba are widely documented. The Cuban government has been continuously repressing dissent and public criticism: over 1,000 people, including 30 children, were held as political prisoners in the country as of August 2024, and government critics are facing prosecution without guarantees of fair trials. The government controls virtually all media, blocks access to independent news websites and restricts mobile data for critics. [8] In prisons, torture and cruel treatment were reported, and women activists and journalists face gender-specific repression including threats against their children and surveillance. Additionally, the country had been in a deep economic crisis even before the fuel blockade was put in place, facing significant disruptions of access to food, education, and health services, with an estimated 89% of the population living in extreme poverty in September 2025. [9]
It is, however, needed to mention that the United States has also largely disengaged from the international human rights protection system, and Washington declared that it will be cooperating with it only when doing so serves its own foreign policy interests. [10] The Trump administration has so far forcibly returned tens of thousands of asylum seekers, separated families, and held asylum seekers in indefinite detention under conditions described as cruel, inhumane, or in some cases amounting to torture. [10] [11] The federal government has also been actively working to roll back anti-discrimination protections in elections, education, and funding, [11] [12] and it has tried multiple times to curtail freedom of expression, including suppressing protests [11] and working against whistleblowers. [10] Additionally, Amnesty International documents a CIA secret detention program involving enforced disappearances and torture, with no perpetrators brought to justice, and catalogues unlawful killings of civilians abroad that it describes as war crimes. [10] It is therefore problematic for the United States to claim moral superiority over Cuba deserving of such a radical response.
According to UN experts, the claim that Cuba poses an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States also has little credibility, as does the statement that the country hosts and supports terrorist groups. The experts argue that the claims are presented purely to justify the use of exceeding coercive power. [2]
Despite all of that, the Trump administration is set on increasing the pressure put on Cuba. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has stated openly that the goal is to force Cuba into dramatic political and economic transformation, while Trump himself has suggested Cuba is “seeing the end” and floated the idea of a “friendly takeover”. [13]
The Blockade: Possibly Illegitimate and Still Ineffective
The way the United States chose to achieve this goal is, regardless of its justification, disputed under international law. UN experts said that “energy starvation as a coercive tool is incompatible with international human rights norms” and that it violates multiple principles of the international order. [14] Other UN human rights experts believe that the United States does not have the authority under international law to sanction a third party just for lawfully trading with another country and insist it breaks multiple multilateral agreements regarding international trade and security. They consider the unilateral character of the order tricky, since it lacks authorisation from the United Nations Security Council, and believe it not to be based in UN’s collective security. [2] Professors of international law, Rob McLaughlin and Michael Schmitt, express themselves similarly, suggesting that the oil-denial campaign coercively intrudes on Cuba’s domaine réservé, its choice of political and economic system. They also state that the repeated threats of the Trump administration to take over Cuba “are threats of force for which no valid jus ad bellum justification exists and therefore are a violation of international law”. [15]
The choice to use economic sanctions to achieve the stated goal is also inherently problematic. The effectiveness of economic sanctions has been widely researched, and the consensus is that they rarely achieve their desired goal. While they are able to achieve modest policy changes in about 50% of cases, with the complexity of the desired effect, the effectiveness decreases. Economic sanctions are successful in achieving a total regime change or democratization only about 30% of the time. [16] Although that is not a small number, there are many factors contributing to the possible failure of the sanctions, and in Cuba, there is enough of them for the embargo that has been in place since 1962 to not be effective. Scholars like LeoGrande [17] and Zimbalist [18] argue that the U.S. embargo on Cuba has not only failed on all fronts but also helped the regime gain credibility and stay in power. Zimbalist underscores this by claiming that the only effect the embargo has had is that it has made the lives of Cuban civilians harder. [18]
It could be argued that the current fuel blockade surpasses the by now common economic sanctions enacted by the United States and therefore will be more effective. After all, as a result of the new U.S. tariffs and sanctions, Cuba has been descending into one of its worst crises since the fall of the USSR, with few countries willing to provide support. Will Freeman, an expert on Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, however, believes that even under this pressure, a full regime change is unlikely, as the Communist party is deeply rooted in the country’s political system, and there seems to be no one who could replace it. [13] The Trump administration seems to be aware of this, as apart from the blockade, they have also taken steps to increase their influence within the regime. [19]
So, what effects do the new U.S. measures have on Cuba? The reports vary. The New York Times, based on their visit to Cuba, claim that the Cuban population wishes for two things: for the blockade to end, and for the United States to not invade Cuba. [20] The Havana Times, an independent Cuban newspaper, contests this view and claims that Cuban people want the United States to change their regime, and in many cases, to take over Cuba. [21] This divide might be caused by the duality of the “rally around the flag” effect. [22] When an authoritarian country is targeted by economic sanctions, its citizens tend to react differently to them – while the common populace is frustrated and more likely to oppose the regime and protest, the elites and political activists, including some of those belonging to the opposition of the regime, increase their loyalties to the regime and shift blame for the deteriorated economic conditions on the sanctioning country. [23]
This division in the population brings heightened risk of violence breaking out. Not only is there a risk of clashes between the two groups, [23] but economic sanctions may lead to increased human rights abuses from the state as coercive measures to stifle protests. [24] In general, there is a pipeline between protests and increased state repressiveness – and both of those get triggered by economic sanctions. [25]
Additionally, the current U.S. policy of sanctions and isolation towards Cuba does not harm only the Cuban population. It also actively undermines U.S. national interests and causes the very same issues President Trump blames Cuba for in his January executive order. According to a report published by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, intensive sanctions bring Cuba closer to China and Russia, because they limit potential intellectual and cultural exchanges between the United States and Cuba and instead contribute to the island seeking these exchanges elsewhere. Quincy Institute’s analysts also believe that sanctions stimulate migration to other countries by deteriorating the already poor living conditions in Cuba, and that they limit the opportunities for U.S. businesses to compete in the Cuban market. [26] This statement is supported by a report published by the Texas A&M University in 2010, where it was estimated that lifting sanctions against Cuba would bring the United States 6,000 jobs and that it would significantly help U.S. agricultural sector, health care, business and financial services, real estate, and trade. [27]
Some could argue that economic sanctions are, despite all the aforementioned problems, some of the few tools the United States has at its disposal to put pressure on the Cuban government to improve human rights in the country and should therefore be kept in place. It might even seem like the fuel blockade is working. After all, in April 2026, the Cuban government announced the release of 2,010 prisoners as a “humanitarian gesture” towards the United States and even immediately started releasing them. [28] Human rights organizations, however, remain wary. Amnesty International points out the lack of transparency in the pardon and warns that the released people may remain under restrictions, surveillance, and a constant threat of being returned to prison. [29] Human Rights Watch, in turn, draws attention to the fact that no political prisoners were identified among the to be released people. [30] It can be therefore concluded that the blockade is not an automatic guarantee of an improvement on the island.
The Blockade Is Not the Road to Transformation
What the evidence reveals is that the U.S. fuel blockade of Cuba is not only contested under international law but also counterproductive in its own terms. If the goal truly is to establish a new regime in Cuba, the chosen method of coercion is unlikely to achieve it. If the United States cares about the human rights of the Cuban people, its order goes directly against it, as it not only negatively affects the Cubans’ quality of life, but also risks an increase in violence and state repression without any clear results. And if the United States truly wishes to lower the risk Cuba poses to it, regardless of whether this risk is deserving of declaring a national emergency over or not, tightening the already existing economic sanctions against Cuba may paradoxically only increase it rather than eliminate it.
While the goal of removing an authoritarian regime is a worthy one, the steps the United States has taken so far are only bringing Cuba to the brink of a humanitarian crisis and exacerbating the already strained relationship of the United States with international law. [31] When it comes to the idea of a takeover that the United States has raised, the Cuban people may not be unified in their wish for the United States to invade their country – but even if they were, such an invasion would cause many more problems than the ones covered in this article. Therefore, the United States should consider a different approach, because so far, it has only harmed its own and the Cuban population without moving the Cuban government one step closer to the political transformation Washington claims to seek.
Reviewed by Dávid Dinič and Veronika Zwiefelhofer Čáslavová
Cover image: Cubahora/Flickr
Sources
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[2] United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner. (2026). UN experts condemn US executive order imposing fuel blockade on Cuba. Retrieved from https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2026/02/un-experts-condemn-us-executive-order-imposing-fuel-blockade-cuba
[3] U.S. Department of State. (n.d.) Cuba Sanctions. Retrieved on June 14, 2026, from https://www.state.gov/cuba-sanctions
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