Havana calls US military threat an 'atrocious crime' as Trump presses blockade strategy

Cuba's deputy foreign minister has warned that any American military action against the Caribbean island would amount to an "atrocious international crime", rejecting the US president's assertion that the Cuban government has failed and telling Washington that Havana retains its right to self-defence.

Carlos Fernandez de Cossio made the remarks on Sunday during an appearance on C-SPAN's flagship interview programme, Washington Journal, in which the veteran Cuban diplomat — a career foreign-service official who has represented Havana in Washington before — directly addressed the escalation of rhetoric coming out of the Trump administration. He also dismissed repeated US claims that Cuba is a "failed state", arguing that a country of more than 10 million people cannot simultaneously be non-functional while the United States continues to describe it as a sovereign state deserving of diplomatic engagement.

The comments follow two extraordinary US interventions in the space of a week. On Tuesday, Donald Trump told the United Nations General Assembly that "freedom will be coming" to Cuba — a formulation broad enough to cover almost any scenario, and one that prompted members of the Cuban delegation to walk out of the assembly hall. Then, on Saturday, the president raised the military option explicitly while speaking to reporters, saying: "I don't think we'll need the military. Cuba is failing very badly." The two remarks have sharpened a debate that until recently was conducted almost entirely in economic terms.

Fernandez de Cossio's most severe accusation was directed not at the prospect of an invasion but at the cumulative economic measures the United States is already employing. He said that coercing countries that refuse to "submit" — by disrupting their commercial shipments, attempting to reduce a population to hunger, depriving it of dependable healthcare and withholding fuel, "as the US has done for nine months now" — is "equivalent to a genocide". The charge frames the blockade not as ordinary statecraft but as a systematic attack on civilians, an accusation that carries particular legal and moral weight given that Cuba has repeatedly described itself as a country under siege.

The sanctions regime itself is not new. Washington has pursued a policy of maximum economic pressure against Havana for more than 60 years, a posture that successive administrations have preserved and periodically tightened, restricting trade, travel, financial transactions and remittances. What distinguishes the current period, according to the article, is the addition this year of an oil and fuel blockade — a measure that goes to the heart of an island economy dependent on imported petroleum for power generation, transport, agriculture and industry. Cuban officials say the effect has been to cripple national infrastructure, producing acute fuel shortages and rolling power outages that have become a routine feature of daily Cuban life.

The knock-on effects are what officials describe as systemic difficulties securing food and other basic necessities for a population exceeding 10 million. Power cuts complicate the operation of hospitals and clinics, water pumping and cold storage; fuel scarcity slows the movement of agricultural goods from farms to urban markets; and the medical system, which the United States has itself described as a vulnerable point, depends on imported supplies that a blockade makes harder to obtain. The humanitarian argument has become the sharpest point of contention between the two governments, with Havana arguing that a policy aimed at regime change is landing hardest on people rather than on officials.

On the question of force, the deputy foreign minister said Havana must prepare its population for the possibility of US military aggression. He acknowledged that Cuba may end up standing alone, but insisted the country will exercise what he called its "legitimate right to self-defence" — language that draws on Cuba's stated doctrine of perpetual resistance to coercion and that keeps the theoretical possibility of confrontation alive on both sides of the Florida Straits.

Diplomatically, Fernandez de Cossio offered a more measured message. He said bilateral channels with Washington remain open, but have produced minimal results because of what he called the "economic stranglehold" of continuing sanctions. Cuba, he said, is willing to engage with the United States "in a respectful manner" — but only on terms that accommodate mutual dignity, benefit both populations, and respect state sovereignty. The conditions attached suggest a prerequisite for talks: a change in the economic framework, rather than a change in rhetoric alone.

That framing is echoed from a wider direction inside the General Assembly, where several countries this week condemned the US sanctions and blockade as unlawful and incompatible with international law. Every year the UN has been asked to weigh a resolution ending the embargo, and the vote has historically drawn overwhelming support, with the United States standing largely alone in opposition — a diplomatic isolation that the US critics say undercuts Washington's claim that its approach is a legitimate collective endeavour rather than a unilateral policy.

Analysts caution that the shift from economic pressure to open talk of military force changes the risk calculus for the entire region. Cuba's geography places it within bombing range and a short maritime hop of US territory, and the political pressures facing US presidents seeking to appear tough on Havana rarely produce a shift toward conciliation. Havana's parallel strategy — publicising the worst-case scenario in order to avoid it — also carries risks, since repeated warnings can harden US resolve rather than soften it.

What happens next turns on a small number of observable steps: whether the administration follows through on its stated openness to talks conditioned on a change of government in Havana, whether the fuel blockade is eased or expanded, and whether the power outages and shortages Cuban officials describe begin to ease. The gap between Washington's insistence that the military will not be necessary and Havana's insistence that force would be a crime against a peaceful neighbour is, for now, the widest it has been in years.

The stakes extend well beyond the island itself. A humanitarian and economic crisis in Cuba of the scale described tends to feed irregular migration towards Florida, reshaping politics in both capitals and ensuring that the Cuban question remains permanently lodged inside American domestic debates — which, in turn, makes de-escalation more difficult each time the rhetoric hardens.