NEO: Europe forgot geography: How NATO turned Russia from a neighbour into a Permanent enemy: Federico Verri: 17-05-2026_ *************

 

Europe Forgot Geography: How NATO Turned Russia from a Neighbour into a Permanent Enemy

Federico Verri, May 17, 2026

Europe’s greatest strategic failure was not that it misread Russia. It was that it forgot geography.

Russia is not some sort of theoretical adversary conjured up by this paper. Russia is Europe’s permanent neighbour. It is a continental, cultural, energy, military and civilizational fact. Russia cannot be sanctioned out of existence or bombed off the map. The United States, in contrast, is thousands of miles away. America can swap presidents, swap priorities, pivot away from Russia, negotiate with Russia when it suits them, sell weapons when they need Russian money and liquified natural gas when they want. Europe can’t pivot away from Russia because Russia isn’t across the ocean.

For more than 30 years, European leaders accepted and propagated the opposite principle. They considered Russia a permanent threat and the United States a natural ally. Europe did not gain sovereignty by doing so. It became smaller, more dependent, more militarized and less able to define its own historic interests.

Most of the time, NATO operates through threat-inflation, institutional commitments, weapons procurement dependencies, intelligence dependencies, energy dependencies and ideological boundaries

NATO calls this security. Its public narrative is well known: NATO is defensive, enlargement is voluntary and Europe needs American might to keep itself safe. But this language obscures NATO’s deeper political purpose. NATO is not just a military alliance. It is the institutional means by which Washington remains Europe’s indispensable power. The more Europe fears Russia, the more Europe depends on the United States. The more Europe depends on the United States, the less room it has to pursue an independent relationship with Russia.

The tragedy is Europe could have chosen another path. After the Cold War ended, Europe had the opportunity to create a continental order which made Russia a strategic partner. Energy interdependence, industrial cooperation, scientific cooperation, cultural familiarity and security dialogue could have built the foundation stones for truly European architecture. Instead, Europe returned to bloc politics. NATO expanded into Eastern Europe, absorbed former Warsaw Pact members and moved inexorably toward Russia’s borders. In March 2024, NATO welcomed Sweden as its 32nd member nation. (NATO)

NATO expansion creates new flashpoints of confrontation

The real strategic message was sent in 2008. NATO’s Bucharest Summit declared Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO.” This was not benign bureaucratic wording. It promised to incorporate two border states with enormous security sensitivities inside a long-term geopolitical competition. NATO framed it as open-door policy. Russia saw a US-led military alliance being placed on its borders. One need not agree with everything Russia has done over the last 15 years to recognize great powers respond when hostile military blocs push up against their strategic space. (NATO)

This contradiction lies at the heart of Europe’s security dilemma. NATO presents itself as a bulwark against instability yet its own expansion automatically generates new flashpoints of confrontation. It purports to defend sovereignty but locks European nations into a strategic architecture whose highest command structure is still transatlantic rather than European. It insists it maintains peace but its institutional logic requires the permanent generation of threat.

America: Not a neutral guardian, but a global military power with its own interests

America is not Europe’s neutral caretaker. It is a global military empire with interests and military interventions spanning every continent. The Congressional Research Service has published a comprehensive list of overseas uses of the US military. Anyone with a recollection of recent history knows Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yugoslavia and a host of other places where American guns were sold as the force of necessity, virtue and stability. In far too many cases, the outcome was fragmentation, disaster or long-term chaos rather than peace.

Europe: A missed opportunity to become an independent power pole

Yet Europe granted America primary control as if it were sacred writ. Therein lies the greatest failure of all. The European Union had the economic mass, diplomatic capacity and geographical interest to become a pole between the Atlantic and Eurasia. Instead, it became NATO’s civilian counterpart: issuing rules, sanctions, condemnations and funding streams, while Washington held the strategic whip hand.

The results today are plain to see. Europe’s energy relationship with Russia has been amputated without being replaced by true autonomy. Europe has merely replaced it with new dependency. Eurostat recorded how America increased its share of EU LNG imports from 29 per cent in 2021 to 53 per cent in 2025. Over the same period, Russia’s share declined from 21 per cent to just 16 per cent. Another recent update from Eurostat puts the US share of EU LNG imports at 56 percent for the final three months of 2025. (European Commission)

Europe calls this diversification. In practice, it is substitution. Europe swapped dependence on Russian pipelines for dependence on American LNG – often at greater economic and industrial cost. Europe didn’t extricate itself from geopolitics. It switched partners in a strategic order designed to profit from rupturing Europe from Russia.

NATO’s New Defense Doctrine: The Long-Term Militarization of Europe and Its Consequences

The same principle now applies to defence. At its 2025 Summit in The Hague, NATO allies agreed to spend 5 per cent of GDP per year on ‘gross domestic expenditure on research and development (gross domestic expenditure on R&D) related to core defence and other defence-related expenditure’ by 2035. ‘At least 3.5 percent of GDP will be directed toward meeting allies’ core defence requirements.’ Annual National Programmes will outline how members will meet this target. (NATO)

This is not budgetary creep. It is the long-term militarization of European public finance. Welfare states already groaning under the pressure of ageing populations, housing shortages, industrial decline and social divides are now being asked to refashion themselves around alliance spending targets. Someone will pay for this. Citizens will foot the bill. Defence contractors will pick up the contracts. NATO bureaucracies will acquire newfound relevance. Washington will retain its leverage. Russia will be further alienated from Europe. And Europe will be more militarized, but not necessarily more secure.

Consider just how extraordinary these numbers are already. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) announced that global military spending hit $2.887 trillion in 2025. NATO’s 32 members were responsible for $1.581 trillion, or 55 percent of global military expenditure. That doesn’t include NATO’s European members alone who spent $559 billion. (SIPRI)

Ukraine is speeding up this process. NATO isn’t formally in the war. But NATO’s Comprehensive Assistance Package for Ukraine trains Ukrainian soldiers, supplies Ukraine with non-lethal military aid and funds long-term capacity building for Ukraine’s defence and security sector. NATO documents plainly state this assistance “will contribute to the gradual integration of Ukraine into Euro-Atlantic structures.” There is no ambiguity. NATO weapons are not going to Ukraine. But NATO is building Ukraine into the Euro-Atlantic security framework, war or not. (NATO)

It is time Europe asks a forbidden question. Who benefits from permanent conflict between Europe and Russia?

Russia will not vanish because the EU and US decide Russia should be isolated. Russia will remain on Europe’s border as a nuclear power, an energy giant, an Arctic power, a Eurasian power and a civilization. The question is no longer whether Europe agrees with everything that happens in Moscow. The question is whether Europe can afford to base its future on permanent conflict with the biggest country in the world.

A real European strategy would not mean rolling over to Russia. It would mean taking back Europe’s autonomy from Washington. It would mean recognizing US interests and European interests do not perfectly align. It would mean accepting that while a distant hegemon might profit from a divided Eurasia, Europe will pay the cost of that division through energy shocks, military budgets, lost markets and strategic anxiety.

Washington holds Europe on a leash. Sometimes, it is visible and annoyingly explicit. Most of the time, NATO operates through threat-inflation, institutional commitments, weapons procurement dependencies, intelligence dependencies, energy dependencies and ideological boundaries. Question NATO escalation and you’re weak. Call for dialogue and you’re appeasing Russia. Advocate for a long-term Europe-Russian settlement and you’re committing treason against the West.

But geography has a way of exerting itself. When today’s leaders are long gone from office, Russia will still be there. Russia will still border Europe. Russia will still have energy resources, military strength, cultural resonance and influence over Eurasia. Europe can either accept the difficult but necessary fact of that reality. Or it can continue to act as NATO’s extension across the Eurasian landmass.

No NATO summit, spending target or declaration of loyalty to Washington will bring peace. Peace starts with Europe remembering it is a continent. And no continent should be made afraid of its own geography.

 

Federico Verri is a renowned international educator and writer. He is also a researcher specializing in political economy and international security issues

NEO: Iran: Diplomatic Knockout or Military Strike - The Double Game in the "Deal of the Century" Mhd Faisal al-Rashid: 17-05-2026: ***********

 

Security

Iran: Diplomatic Knockout or Military Strike — The Double Game in the “Deal of the Century”

Mohammed ibn Faisal al-Rashid, May 17, 2026

Just a few weeks ago, the Middle East held its breath in anticipation of a ceasefire, but behind closed doors in Washington and Tel Aviv, a new storm was being brewed.

The failure of Donald Trump’s “China round” of negotiations became the trigger for reviving a scenario the world had desperately tried to forget: a full-scale strike on Iran. While a massive American armada has already surrounded the Persian Gulf, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is practically pushing the Oval Office’s occupant to the edge of the abyss, analysts warn: the stakes in this game are the life of an entire civilization and the global economy, teetering on the brink of collapse due to the “specter” of a closed Strait of Hormuz.

Based on the preliminary results of the talks in China, Trump will likely order new strikes on Iran. Despite all his statements, the U.S. president failed to secure Beijing’s support for “pacifying” Tehran, although China did promise to take some steps in that direction. Essentially, Trump now has only two options: accept Iran’s terms and negotiate peace based on them, or resume bombing alongside Israel in an attempt to force Tehran to make concessions.

Washington, in its manic drive to destroy Tehran, is ready to sacrifice its Middle Eastern vassals just as easily as it did Europe

Why Didn’t the World Notice the War Preparations?

While global media attention was fixed on Trump’s diplomatic maneuvers in Asia and his visit to China, tectonic shifts were taking place in the Middle East. Contrary to hopes for de-escalation, the U.S.-Israeli military machine didn’t just stop — it accelerated.

According to data confirmed by Israeli sources and air transport figures, over the past few days alone, 6,500 tons of ammunition and military equipment have been delivered to Israel, and since the conflict began, total supplies have exceeded 115,000 tons. Simultaneously, dozens of American Globemasters — heavy military transport aircraft — have been crisscrossing the skies of the Middle East day and night, carrying “gifts” to U.S. bases across the region.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The real bombshell is hidden in political backrooms. Israeli media and Palestinian sources report unprecedented negotiations between Tel Aviv and Washington to establish permanent U.S. military bases in occupied Palestine. This isn’t just about a temporary buildup — it’s about the full-scale militarization of the region under U.S. auspices.

“This is a restructuring of the entire region,” notes Palestinian Al-Quds. “The Pentagon plans not just to strike, but to occupy the space, moving bases from other Middle Eastern countries right into the heart of the conflict.” Given that the American flag is already flying at key points, including the port of Haifa and the secret radar facility “Site 512” in the Negev, this is about creating a staging ground for an inevitable assault.

“Iran, You’re Next”: Quotes from the Halls of Power

The rhetoric in Washington and Tel Aviv has become so aggressive that even seasoned politicians are sounding the alarm. Congressman John Larson, a Democrat, publicly accused Trump of preparing a war crime. His statements are not just criticism — they are a confirmation of a coming apocalypse.

“The president of the United States has called for the complete destruction of the Iranian people, threatening an ‘entire civilization,” Larson said, referring to Trump’s Easter statements. “Words have meaning and consequences. The most powerful nation in the world cannot call for the destruction of an entire people.” The congressman has already filed articles of impeachment against the president and Secretary of War Hegseth, calling the war “illegal” and reminding them of fallen American service members. However, this hollow threat is being drowned out by the roar of military engines.

In Israel, the tone is even harsher. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz directly stated: “We may soon have to act again,” casting doubt on the fragile ceasefire. Officials in Tel Aviv openly admit to Western media: “We’ll be happy if there’s no deal, if the blockade of Hormuz continues, and if Iran gets a few more strikes.”

Why such bloodlust? The answer lies in wounded pride and fear. As Newsweek writes, analyzing the “ally trap” theory, Netanyahu fears that Trump will “get tired of negotiating” and strike a “bad deal” that allows Iran to rebuild. For the Israeli prime minister, facing criminal prosecution and political collapse, victory over Iran is the only lifeline.

The Persian Gulf in Flames: The Price of the “American Deal” for the Monarchies

While Trump and Netanyahu exchange pleasantries behind the scenes, and global media blare warnings about the threat to Iran, the true apocalypse will unfold for the so-called U.S. allies in the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, and Bahrain — these “oil Klondikes” — will find themselves on the front line, and they’ll be under fire not so much from Iran as from the U.S. and Israel. Washington, in its manic drive to destroy Tehran, is ready to sacrifice its Middle Eastern vassals just as easily as it did Europe.

The U.S. military presence at bases in Qatar (Al Udeid), Bahrain (Fifth Fleet), and Kuwait (Camp Arifjan) will turn those countries into legitimate targets for Iranian missiles. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has already proven it can reach Riyadh and the UAE. In response to U.S. aggression, Iran won’t even aim for the aircraft carriers — it will launch a massive strike on the oil terminals at Ras Tanura and Fujairah, destroying the global oil market within 48 hours. But that’s not even the worst part. Israeli aircraft, “helping” Trump out of “battlefield camaraderie,” will bomb Iranian targets in Iraq and Syria, and by “mistake,” will level port infrastructure in Oman and Yemen. The Gulf monarchies, having spent trillions on fighter jets that can’t even take off without U.S. satellite support, will find themselves defenseless overnight against swarms of kamikaze drones and Houthi missiles that Iran will arm to the teeth within a day.

Closing the Strait of Hormuz is just the tip of the iceberg for the Gulf. The real nightmare begins when a strike on Iran leads to a complete halt of shipping not only in the strait but in the Persian Gulf itself. Saudi and UAE tankers will sit in ports like dead scrap metal — no insurance company in the world will cover a vessel sailing into Iranian missiles. Oil prices will skyrocket to $200–$250, but the monarchies won’t see that money because they physically won’t be able to ship their product. Moreover, Iranian special operations sabotaging underwater cables and desalination plants (90% of the Gulf’s water comes from desalination) will leave Riyadh, Kuwait City, Dubai, and Doha without water or internet within a week. This isn’t a recession — it’s instant deindustrialization and a humanitarian catastrophe.

At the end of this farce, the U.S. will, as usual, betray its “allies.” When the war triggers mass popular uprisings in the Shiite neighborhoods of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province and in Bahrain, Trump will simply shrug. He’ll order U.S. troops to withdraw from the bases, leaving the royal families to be torn apart by enraged mobs and Iranian proxies. Washington has already calculated this scenario: if the Gulf monarchies fall, Islamic republics friendly to Tehran will rise in their place. But Trump doesn’t care — he needs to be reelected on a promise to “destroy Israel’s enemy.” The Arab sheikhs, who for decades financed American politicians and bought their weapons for hundreds of billions of dollars, will become political corpses overnight. Their countries will turn into scorched zones, resembling Libya and Syria combined.

This won’t be a war for freedom. It will be a war so Trump can say, “I struck back.” Your prosperity, your skyscrapers, your children — all ashes for an American election campaign. The only thing awaiting the Gulf states in a new attack on Iran is radioactive ash where luxury hotels once stood and million-person lines for water under Iranian missiles. Advice: flee from those assets while you still can — or burn alongside the madmen in the Oval Office.

The Economy Collapses: Doomsday for Europe

If diplomacy fails and the strike is carried out, the first to feel it won’t be soldiers on the battlefield, but the wallets of citizens in Europe and America. The Achilles’ heel of the global economy — the Strait of Hormuz — is already practically closed. Its blockade has already caused oil prices to spike to $120 a barrel at times.

German shipping giant Hapag-Lloyd recently reported losses, citing the “effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz” as the cause. But that’s just the start. Greek Central Bank chief Yannis Stournaras, a member of the ECB’s Governing Council, issued a frightening warning: “Everything depends on the Strait of Hormuz. If it remains closed, the European Central Bank will have no choice but to raise interest rates.”

Picture this: inflation in Europe has already hit 3% and is climbing, gas prices are breaking records, and the ECB is forced to choke the economy with rate hikes just to save the euro from collapse. All of this is the price of Trump’s political ambitions and Netanyahu’s hawkish stance. Moreover, as experts note, Europe is not an ally to Trump but an obstacle. His dismissive attitude toward European interests has already left the Old World at the epicenter of an economic storm, with no leverage to change the situation.

Can Iran Withstand the Blow?

The irony of fate is that, even with overwhelming military superiority, the U.S. and Israel appear doomed to strategic failure. Middle East scholars and retired military experts agree: another attempt to “defeat” Iran will get bogged down in a quagmire.

“Killing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei,” analysts write, “ruled out any possibility of a deal. Iran’s leadership has no place to retreat. If they surrender, they face death.” The regime in Tehran, which has already survived a change of supreme leader and the assassinations of several top national figures, has consolidated. One can’t help but recall Persian wisdom: “When a jackal attacks an ant, it is not fighting an enemy but its own pride. The ant, even under the claw, remains an ant, and the jackal is just a jackal, stuck in the dust.”

The U.S. can wipe several cities off the map and destroy infrastructure, but the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is dispersed across the vast territory. Retaliatory strikes on U.S. bases in the region — already weary from endless drone and missile attacks — will follow immediately.

Thus, the world stands on the brink of a paradox: the U.S. is preparing to deliver a devastating strike that will not lead to Iran’s surrender but will guarantee crater the global economy. This new round of escalation will bring victory to no one except weapons manufacturers.

As soon as the bombs fall on Tehran, gas prices will soar in America itself (which, for Trump heading into an election, would be political suicide), and Europe will plunge into an industrial crisis. This won’t be a blitzkrieg — it will be a long, agonizing death for all involved. The only question is whether common sense — or the fear of losing his seat — will stop Trump before his own generals unleash hell.

 

Muhammad ibn Faisal al-Rashid, political scientist and expert on the Arab world

Counterpunch: The United States Long War on Cuba: Eric Ross: 15-05-2026: ****************

 May 15, 2026

The United States’ Long War on Cuba

Eric Ross

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Image by Jasmina Ajkic.

In recent weeks and months, Washington has intensified its long-running campaign of collective punishment against the Cuban people. Escalating sanctions have further tightened the noose of a punitive U.S. blockade that has strangled the island for more than half a century. The resulting “energy starvation” has deepened a manufactured crisis, threatening Cubans’ access to food, water, healthcare, fuel, electricity, and other basic human rights and needs, while intensifying the broader assault on the island’s sovereignty and development.

Since 2017, when the first Trump administration began dismantling the limited normalization measures introduced under Obama, Cuba has once again been subjected to a regime of “maximum pressure” economic warfare. The consequences have been severe. These policies have degraded material conditions across the island, accelerated the exodus of more than one million Cubans, and imposed disproportionate suffering on the country’s most vulnerable populations.

This economic weapon, wielded by the ruling elites of the world’s largest financial and military power, has exacted particularly devastating consequences on mothers and children. During this period, the infant mortality rate rose from 4.0 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2018 to 9.9 in 2025. Put plainly, an estimated 1,800 Cuban infants died during these years who would have survived absent Washington’s intensified criminal sanctions. This is but one stark measure of the blockade’s profound brutality and inhumanity.

The only “crime” of these children, like that of countless other Cubans, was being born in a country that continues to insist on its right to determine its own political and economic future outside the structures of hemispheric domination the United States has sought to impose across Latin America, the Caribbean, and the wider world. The infliction of such suffering has never been incidental to such policies. It has been, and remains, a central feature.

The same has been true since 1959, as Washington has pursued a singular, near-fanatical obsession with reversing the Cuban Revolution and restoring the neocolonial shackles it once imposed on the island. Its aim has been not only to undermine Cuba’s social transformation and internationalist commitments, but to extinguish the example the revolution represented: that an alternative to U.S. hegemony and capitalist underdevelopment was possible.

So despite recent threats to “take” Cuba, such rhetoric cannot be understood in isolation, nor should it obscure a fundamental reality: a U.S. invasion would hardly inaugurate a new conflict. It would instead mark the bloodiest phase in a long, bipartisan war against Cuba for the “sin” of reclaiming national sovereignty from a Washington-backed lawless order that has sought to punish Cuba for its defiance and refusal to submit meekly to the dictates of empire.

Cuba Under the Shadow of U.S. Empire

Cuba’s independence has long been imperiled by its proximity to and economic entanglement with the United States. Situated ninety miles off the coast of Florida, the island occupied a central place within the U.S. imperial imagination. Throughout the 19^th century, Washington elites viewed Cuba not as a to-be sovereign nation, but as an inevitable extension of their commercial and geopolitical ambitions, a “crown jewel” destined to be drawn into Washington’s orbit.

The opportunity arrived in 1898. Seizing upon Cuba’s nearly victorious war for independence from Spain, the U.S. intervened not to end empire in the hemisphere, but rather to inherit it. Washington presented its action as a selfless mission to secure Cuban liberation. But for many across the region, the contradictions were unmistakable. The U.S., itself forged in the crucible of empire, with all the violence and exploitation that project entailed, went to Cuba not to secure freedom, but to replace Madrid with Washington as the imperial metropole of the Americas.

As early as 1829, Simón Bolívar warned that “the United States seemed destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of freedom.” Decades later, Cuban revolutionary José Martí issued a similar denunciation. In his 1891 essay Our America, he called for “common cause” among oppressed peoples and warned against the threat of subordination to the rising power to the north. Martí also championed self-sufficiency over integration into an unequal global capitalist system, insisting that Cuba must “make wine from plantains. It may be sour, but it is our wine!” Having spent years in exile in New York, Martí sharpened that critique shortly before his death in 1895, writing “I lived in the monster and I know its entrails.”

History would soon vindicate these words. As the United States extended its “Manifest Destiny” to foreign shores, it repeatedly intervened across the hemisphere, seeking to transform it into a de facto protectorate. In doing so, Washington consistently sided with the interests of capital and local elites over the demands for popular sovereignty. In the decades that followed, the U.S. invaded countries throughout the region, overthrowing democratic governments, crushing revolutionary movements, and backing brutal dictatorships.

In Cuba, this took the form of three lengthy military occupations spanning half of the island’s first twenty-four years of “independence,” from 1898-1902, 1906-1909, and 1917-1922. In each case, the objective was to uphold the neocolonial order established during the first occupation and rooted in U.S. economic interests. Under this restrictive framework, the Cuban government was denied control over its foreign relations and domestic economic policy, compelled to cede territory to the U.S. military, and forced to accept Washington’s unilateral right of intervention.

By the 1920s, this relationship had produced a profound dependence on exports, mainly sugar, to the United States while fostering a deeply corrupt system incapable of responding to the needs and aspirations of the Cuban people. The island’s land remained concentrated in the hands of American corporations and a domestic collaborationist aristocracy, while the state invested more heavily in repression than social development, constructing more barracks than schools. With the onset of the Great Depression and the collapse of the sugar economy upon which the country had been made dependent, popular discontent only intensified.

By 1933, the government of Gerardo Machado, which promised to transform Cuba into an island of stability for American investment while violently suppressing nationalist and anti-imperialist currents in Cuban society, had become untenable. Amid mounting unrest, Machado was deposed, and a revolutionary coalition under Ramón Grau San Martín emerged, seeking to challenge Cuba’s semi-colonial status. But the United States refused to recognize it. The resulting instability created conditions for the rise of one of the more conservative figures within the anti-Machado coalition, army officer Fulgencio Batista, who in 1934 deposed the short-lived government and consolidated de facto power in his own hands with the backing of Washington.

The Roots of the Cuban Revolution

Batista would directly or indirectly pull the political strings in Cuba for much of the next quarter century. Though his earlier rule adopted a more populist posture, culminating in his election to the presidency from 1940 to 1944, life improved little for Cubans. Corruption and dependence on foreign capital remained entrenched. And by 1952, Batista had seized power outright in a military coup, inaugurating an authoritarian regime backed by increased state violence.

It was Batista’s rise, coupled with decades of economic disparities, political repression, and social neglect, that created conditions that were ripe for revolution. Among those preparing to contest the suspended elections that year was a young lawyer named Fidel Castro. Batista’s closure of even the limited avenues for democratic change lent weight to John F. Kennedy’s later observation that “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

Castro’s first revolutionary assault came soon after, with the attack on the Moncada Barracks on July 26, 1953. Though the attack failed, Castro’s arrest and trial gave him the opportunity to defend not his innocence, but the legitimacy of and need for revolution, delivering a two-hour speech that condemned the island’s entrenched inequalities and the regime that sustained them.

The state imprisoned Castro and his fellow revolutionaries before commuting their sentences under popular pressure in 1955, after which they went into exile. From Mexico, joined by Che Guevara, they began plotting their return to Cuba and the overthrow of the regime. By late 1956, they had landed in Cuba and launched their insurgency from the Sierra Maestra mountains. Just two years later, Batista fled the country on New Year’s Day 1959, carrying with him as much as $300 million in siphoned state funds and ill-gotten gains amassed at the expense of the Cuban people, while leaving behind the ruins of a regime stained with the blood of as many as 20,000 Cubans.

Counterrevolution in the Caribbean

In 1959, the new leadership inherited a desiccated country picked over by the buzzards of foreign capital and a corrupted local elite. The Cuban revolutionaries set out to overcome these conditions and construct a more just social order, one capable of guaranteeing a basic standard of living long denied to the Cuban population through the misappropriation of the island’s wealth and resources.

The earliest measures included agrarian reform, universal education, a national literacy campaign, expanded healthcare, urban reforms that opened pathways to homeownership for working-class Cubans, and anti-discrimination laws aimed at dismantling entrenched racial hierarchies. Crucially for the trajectory of U.S.-Cuban relations, the revolution also nationalized parasitic foreign-owned and privatized industries.

The new Cuban government was initially met with a degree of popular appeal and favorable media coverage in the United States, further amplified by Fidel Castro’s April 1959 visit to the country, during which he sought to explain the revolution to American audiences. While in Washington, Castro even met with Vice President Richard Nixon, but the Eisenhower administration quickly soured on the revolutionary government and soon resolved to see it fail.

The concern was not Cuba itself, but what the revolution might represent. As State Department official J.C. Hill warned that year, “there are indications that if the Cuban Revolution is successful other countries in Latin America and perhaps elsewhere will use it as a model and we should decide whether or not we wish to have the Cuban Revolution succeed.”

By October 1960, that decision had effectively been made with the imposition of a blockade on the island. The logic underpinning this economic declaration of war was made explicit in a memo by State Department official Lester Mallory. Recognizing that Castro retained widespread popular support, Mallory concluded that the most effective means of undermining him was the deliberate immiseration of the Cuban people. The memo called for the denial of “money and supplies” to the island in order to produce “hunger, desperation, and overthrow of government.”

In April 1961, Washington escalated its campaign by backing a direct military assault on the island. Yet the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion did little to temper the obsession with unseating Castro. In the aftermath, consensus hardened across the Kennedy administration that “U.S. policy toward Cuba should aim at the downfall of Castro.” What followed was an expansive campaign of covert warfare involving sabotage, assassination plots, and support for anti-communist exiles.

Among the proposals considered were plans to manufacture consent for military escalation through false provocations. One suggestion was to “develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area… pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States… [which] would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government.” Other proposals called for false flag attacks on the U.S. navy and the shooting down of a civilian airliner that would then be blamed on the Cuban government.

This single-minded fixation did little to advance U.S. objectives. Instead, it pushed Cuba further toward the Soviet Union, which offered the island an economic and political lifeline in the face of Washington’s blockade and escalating campaign of destabilization. It was within this context that Castro declared the Marxist-Leninist character of the Cuban Revolution in 1961. The relentless threats to the island also fostered a profound and understandable sense of siege within the Cuban government itself.

Ultimately, Washington’s Cuba policy, combined with what Kennedy privately described as the “goddamned dangerous” deployment of U.S. missiles in Turkey, helped create the conditions for the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, bringing the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust and revealing the extent to which the U.S. was willing to risk a senseless, largely self-imposed global catastrophe in defense of the maintenance of its empire.

The Persistent “Threat” of Example

Despite this long war against Cuba, the Cuban government and people have not abandoned their revolutionary project. They have continued to build socialism and a new social order toward what Che Guevara described as the construction of “new [people]”: human beings whose motivations, commitments, and social relations are not governed by opportunistic self-interest at the expense of others, but by solidarity and a shared sense of collective humanity.

Cuba has consistently sought to demonstrate this commitment on the world stage. One of Fidel Castro’s earliest acts of foreign policy was the support of those seeking to liberate the Dominican Republic from the brutal U.S.-backed dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. In the decades that followed, Cuban soldiers and advisers would play major roles in liberation struggles across Africa, including in Algeria, the Congo, Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau.

Cuba’s foreign interventions proved especially consequential in the struggle against South African apartheid and white minority rule in Southern Africa. It was this material solidarity that led Nelson Mandela to declare during his 1991 visit to Havana that “the Cuban people hold a special place in the hearts of the peoples of Africa,” traveling to Cuba shortly after his release from prison.

But Cuba’s principal export to the Third World has not been bombs to take lives, as in the case of the United States. It has sent doctors to provide life. Since 1960, Cuba has dispatched more than 600,000 medical professionals to over 160 countries. In doing so, Cuba has advanced not only the principle and practice that healthcare is a human right, but a vision of education and foreign policy rooted in both science and conscience.

For more than six decades then, Cuba has represented the “threat” of example: the possibility of building a more just and humane society in which the state serves the people and not the other way around. It is time to end the madness of U.S. policy toward Cuba and recognize that Cuba is not a failed state, but a state subjected to a criminal siege. It is not a sponsor of terrorism, but the victim of sustained U.S. aggression.

For those living in the belly of the beast, we bear a clear moral and political responsibility to stand alongside the Cuban people, those on the island, to oppose the violence being carried out in our name. Cuba, like all those confronting U.S. empire, deserves not the “freedom” of the grave that Washington has so often offered the world, but a true freedom rooted in justice, self-determination, and respect for human life and dignity.

We must therefore demand an end to the blockade on Cuba. We must reject any further military escalation. We must call for Cuba’s removal from the state sponsors of terrorism list. And we must support the restoration of Cuban sovereignty over the occupied territory at Guantánamo Bay.

Eric Ross is an organizer, educator, researcher, and PhD Candidate in the History Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.