Cuba's national electric grid collapses, leaving millions without power
reuters.com
reuters.com
Cuba has been embargoed which prevents US owned businesses, as well as any businesses which operate in the US, from trading with it. An embargo is not an act of war, it's a way for market economies to apply economic pressure using their soft power. It's not enforced by the military away from the territory of the country placing the embargo and is instead enforced domestically using the police.
Large oil-producing countries that traded with Cuba include Venezuela, Russia (the USSR before 1990), China, and Iran. Market democracies are all pretty OK with the embargo, because trade with a country that doesn't recognize property rights is inherently fraught.
The embargo continues, as it has for decades, but the oil blockade is a real thing.
It hasn't, that's a Trump special. Cuba's energy insecurity goes back a lot longer.
Use whatever word you want to use to describe the situation, but the practical result strongly resembles a blockade.
Yeah, only China remains unencumbered because only China didn't collapse under the weight of an absurd ideology and crushingly oppressive government. Thanks to Xi's heavyhanded interventions and reassertion of state control, they're trending the wrong way.
The USSR couldn't compete with the free world and collapsed. Venezuela had been shedding refugees for decades before Trump abducted the pro-Havana regime. Iran murdered 30,000 protestors in the streets before the US started bombing it. No matter how you slice it, Cuba had decades of steady imports from friendly nations and yet has remained poor and underdeveloped because of its economic model. No amount of trained doctors or public healthcare can compete with the fact that, until recently, it was illegal to start a business on the island.
If we rewind to 2015 before Trump ever took office, none of these were different. All of those countries were flimsy states and unreliable trading partners, and Cuba routinely dealt with famines and shortages. American pressure doesn't help, but even if the US hadn't embargoed Cuba when the revolution happened it would still have been forced to embargo it afterwards when the Cuban government started launching into its anti-US foreign interventions (there's a fascinating Wikipedia rabbit hole there, if you're bored).
I will use words to describe the situation that actually describe the situation. Cuba sucks at trade because it has been continuously alienating its largest neighbor and blocking domestic industry from forming since the revolution.
Mind you, the US even supported the Cuban Revolution against Batista (despite supporting him for decades). That lasted until the revolutionary government started seizing American holdings and executing landlords.
The history of the two countries is complicated and it does both of them a disservice to pretend like this is a black-and-white "evil imperialist US embargoes a fledgling, innocent socialist Republic."
Cuba Plunged Into a Nationwide Blackout Trump demands taking it or overthrowing regime; testimonials from a local and a visitor (video, English) begins at 35:56
https://democracynow.cachefly.net/democracynow/360/dn2026-03... (SD, mp4)
https://ewheel.democracynow.org/dn2026-0317.mp4.torrent (HD, torrent of mp4) *
https://archive.org/details/dn2026-0317_vid *
* Available several hours from time of writing
Protesters Reportedly Attack Communist Party Office in Cuba as Energy Crisis Deepens (yesterday)
https://www.democracynow.org/2026/3/16/headlines/protesters_...
Communism with Cuban characteristics.
Then got energy independent-- by importing a lot of solar panels, wind turbines from China.
then they wouldn't be suffering an energy embargo from the US.
for the few cases they need hydrocarbons import from Russia.
An alternative plan: Cuba could also, at any point, have given up on Communism and rejoin the rest of the world. Even China sold out a lot of its communist ideals if we’re being honest, which helped the West feel pretty okay doing business with them.
Why should they? If it wasn't for the decades of sabotage it would've been working for them reasonably. Should they succumb to the bullying from another country that hates their ideals?
Are there, have there ever been, any examples of real communist states where most of the commoners are not in poverty?
To be clear, the classic example of Cold War Russia and the USSR - their founders were clear that it wasn't communism .. just an "interim socialist phase" on the path to communism.
Still just authoritarian rule with an excess of epaulettes, braid, and big hats.
I'm not pro communism (which ever book version), nor a fan of the USSR, North Korea, the Mao revolution, etc - but real communism appears to be as rare as real capitalism.
The big problem seems to be broligarchies - small elite groups bullshitting everybody else from their seats of power.
> The big problem seems to be broligarchies - small elite groups bullshitting everybody else from their seats of power.
economic activity - export labor to China, Africa they've already been doing that already.
they still receive money from other countries not just the US.
I have lived under a US sanctioned country - blaming the US doesn't help - most of the fault lies in administration of said country - the effects of sanctions is less than say the effect of an incompetent administration
But what it can do is fragile. Without industrialization, there is no way to have stable wealth. China and Vietnam themselves only industrialized and followed that path after trade blockades were lifted. Without that, the Chinese reform and its opening to the market would have come to nothing.
Moreover, it is strange to defend a crime by naturalizing the idea that the criminal will always act that way. That may well be the case. In that case, it is morally necessary to turn against him and stop him.
Regardless, the fact that communism doesn't work was proven decades ago by China's shift to authoritarian state-managed capitalism. Singapore, South Korea, and, ironically, Vietnam are other examples that show that model works really well at pulling third-world countries out of poverty.
It is not just American companies. It is a blockade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Cuban_crisis
Geopolitical and sovereignty awkwardness aside (big aside I know)…. it’s obvious Cuba, and especially the average Cuban, would benefit immensely from the island becoming a US state, no?
If anyone thinks Cuba is better off in any metric now than they would have been in that alternate reality, I’d love to hear why.
I mean, pre-Castro Cuba was basically a playground for the US rich. Like, the whole revolution was about kicking those people out.
Personally, I think that's morally justified, but I don't agree that what the US has done to them since then is morally justified. Obviously people differ on their opinions of this stuff, but collective punishment (which is what the US embargoes are) is generally regarded as a war crime.
The definitions really keep mutating on the left don’t they. Economic sanctions are a “war crime,” “silence is violence,” etc.
Fuel for cooking food and providing heat is necessary for survival; deliberate prevention of this aid from reaching Cuba is a war crime.
You may have me confused with someone else, as I have never said anything about silence is violence.
Economic sanctions are definitely a method of waging war. The loss falls mostly on the ordinary people of the country, and as such are collective punishment and war crimes.
Now, is it better than bombing the people back to the Stone Age? Definitely in the short-term, but one look at what happened to Iraq after ten years of sanctions (everyone who could left) and the impact this had on post 2003 reconstruction would seem to suggest that it's the difference between acute and chronic illnesses.
> companies that do business with the U.S. which trade in Cuba do so at the risk of U.S. sanctions. The U.S. has threatened to stop financial aid to other countries if they trade non-food items with Cuba.
> The U.S. government has pursued extraterritorial measures to enforce its embargo. Cuban ambassador Ricardo Alarcón cited 27 recent cases of trade contracts interrupted by U.S. pressure to the U.N. in 1991. British Petroleum was seemingly dissuaded by U.S. authorities from investing in offshore oil exploration in Cuba despite initially expressing interest. In 1992, the U.S. State Department discouraged firms like Royal Dutch Shell and Clyde Petroleum from investing in Cuba.
It’s not like Cuba was working great until February 2026.
Thomas Jefferson
Is this for real? There has been a blockade on Cuba for decades. Any country that wants to do business with them is threatened, implicitly or explicitly. Look at how Venezuela, their primary supplier of oil, was recently invaded and taken over, and the shipments stopped.
Read this first: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_embargo_against_...
Recently, the U.S. decided that Cuba can no longer import any oil, and they are enforcing that. Is this a surprise that the grid collapses in those circumstances ?
Communism is bad (I'm from Eastern Europe...), but this collapse has nothing to do with communism. It has everything to do, with the U.S. deciding unilaterally that Cuba needs to fall.
Not to mention the trillions of dollars (and lives) given up in the pursuit of halting what we're told is a fragile, prone-to-collapse form of government for a hundred years now.
Strange that.
Show me a country that espouses true Communist principles and I'll show you ten successful Capitalist ones. Don't confuse corporatism with capitalism, the latter which is the free exchange of ideas and goods mutually beneficial to both parties in an open market.
The US's enemies keep Cuba on life support for one reason.
Work a day in the gulag for your pithy apple ration and you'll be begging to sit in an air conditioned office and choose from ten apple varieties at different prices at your local Corporate Grocer.
Could you please list these ten countries even if I cannot show you a country that espouses true Communist principles?
Please do keep in mind though:
> Don't confuse corporatism with capitalism, the latter which is the free exchange of ideas and goods mutually beneficial to both parties in an open market.
Directly stated: the problem I see is that term Capitalism is basically used as a Motte and Bailey. It seems to be the least worst option, and it certainly has benefited us greatly. But that doesn't mean it should escape criticism - especially as it lists further and further into what you're calling "corporatism"
Healthcare costs are unlimited, and healthcare doesn't solve death.
An equivalent non-partisan question would be "how many people die from lack of exercise"?