Havana warns of 'atrocious crime' as US military threats against Cuba grow louder

HAVANA — Cuba's deputy foreign minister has warned that any United States military action against the Caribbean island would amount to a grave breach of international law, rejecting Washington's portrayal of the Cuban government as a failed state and insisting the US campaign against Havana is economic coercion by another name. Carlos Fernandez de Cossio made the remarks in an interview aired on Sunday on C-SPAN's flagship programme, Washington Journal, calling it an "atrocious international crime for the US to use military force against Cuba, which is a peaceful neighbouring country." The deliberate framing — neighbour rather than adversary — underlines Havana's insistence that Washington's hostility is unprovoked and that Cuba has committed no act of aggression to justify the threats now circulating in US political speech.

His comments followed two extraordinary interventions by US President Donald Trump on the world stage. In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump declared that "freedom will be coming" to the island, a remark that prompted the Cuban delegation to walk out of the assembly hall in protest. On Saturday, the US president raised the spectre of military action more directly, telling reporters: "I don't think we'll need the military. Cuba is failing very badly." For critics of the administration's policy, the two remarks undercut any suggestion that Washington's approach toward Havana is strictly diplomatic — presenting, instead, a choice between economic strangulation and force.

Fernandez de Cossio directly addressed that latter point, arguing that the US is already pursuing a form of coercion that stops short of bullets but, in his words, is "equivalent to a genocide." He outlined what he described as the American method of bringing non-compliant states to heel: disrupting their commercial shipments, attempting to handicap their populations through starvation, depriving them of stable healthcare, and withholding fuel. The US, he said, has been doing this "for nine months now." The word he chose carries a specific and grave weight in international law, where starvation of civilians as a method of compelling political change is treated as a war crime — a framing that goes far beyond ordinary diplomatic criticism and places the blockade at the centre of the dispute over Washington's conduct in the hemisphere.

The sanctions regime Fernandez de Cossio was defending is not, however, a creation of the current US administration. Washington has maintained a policy of maximum economic pressure against Cuba for more than 60 years, restricting trade, finance and travel with the island in an effort to force political change. What has changed under Trump is the tempo and the ambition. The administration has said openly that it wants a shake-up in Cuba's government, and officials have indicated the US is open to talks — but conditioned on Havana changing its government, a formula critics describe as an offer to negotiate only the terms of Cuban capitulation.

Earlier this year, the administration tightened the screws with an additional oil and fuel blockade, a measure that has crippled infrastructure across the country, caused widespread fuel scarcity and produced rolling power outages. The knock-on effects have reached into the most basic aspects of daily life, and government officials in Havana have cited systemic difficulties in securing food supplies and other basic necessities for a country of more than 10 million people. Because fuel underpins transport, electricity generation, agriculture and water pumping simultaneously, the consequences of the blockade spread quickly through every sector of the economy — a dynamic officials say leaves them with little margin to absorb further shocks.

On the question of possible US aggression, Fernandez de Cossio said Havana must prepare its citizens for that prospect while acknowledging that the island may have to stand alone. He stressed, however, that Cuba will exercise what he described as its legitimate right to self-defence — a phrase that carries direct resonance in the United Nations Charter, under which the use of force is lawful only in self-defence or with Security Council authorisation. Whether Washington regards its economic measures as falling outside that prohibition, or whether any escalation could be framed as a response to Cuban military action, is precisely the ambiguity critics of the policy say undermines deterrence and invites miscalculation.

The deputy foreign minister also attempted to open a diplomatic door. He said bilateral channels between Havana and Washington remain open, but acknowledged they have produced minimal results because of what he called the economic stranglehold of ongoing sanctions. Cuba, he said, remains willing to engage with the US in a "respectful manner" — but only if talks treat both sides with mutual dignity, deliver benefits to both populations, and respect state sovereignty. Each of those preconditions maps directly onto the core grievances he has aired, from access to fuel and food to questions of political independence and non-interference.

International opinion has, at least partly, sided with Havana. Several countries condemned the continued US economic sanctions and blockade of Cuba during the UN General Assembly meetings earlier this week, indicating that Washington's maximum-pressure policy faces sustained pushback even among allies. That bloc voting matters for Havana not only in moral terms but in practical ones: it complicates any US effort to portray the policy as an uncontested, regionally supported policy of regime change, and it raises the diplomatic cost of further tightening measures.

What emerges is a clash of narratives as much as a clash of policies. Washington speaks of a failing state in need of freedom; Havana speaks of a besieged population denied fuel, food and medicine, and of a genocide being committed by starvation. Between those two stories lies a very narrow space, and the recent military references — even those coupled with reassurances that troops may not be needed — have narrowed it further. Observers will watch whether the open diplomatic channels produce any concrete movement, whether the fuel blockade is tightened or eased, and whether the language of force shifts from podium statements in New York and at press briefings into actual policy.