UN Rejects US-Led Embargo on Cuba: Decades of Sanctions as Tool of Geopolitical Control Exposed
Original framing: “UN votes to condemn embargo of Cuba despite US lobbying push” — Al Jazeera
The US embargo on Cuba is part of a long history of economic warfare used by Western powers to enforce political conformity, from the British blockade of France during the Napoleonic Wars to the US’s own sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s. The embargo’s origins in 1960, shortly after Cuba’s revolution, reflect a pattern where external powers seek to punish nations that challenge their economic or political dominance. Historically, such sanctions have rarely achieved their stated goals but have instead caused widespread suffering, as seen in the case of the US embargo on Iran, which led to severe shortages of basic goods. This dimension underscores that the embargo is not an isolated incident but a recurring tool of statecraft with predictable humanitarian consequences.
The UN’s repeated condemnation of the US embargo on Cuba is not just a diplomatic spat but a revealing window into the mechanisms of modern geopolitical control, where economic warfare is deployed as a substitute for direct military intervention.
The embargo, now in its sixth decade, has become a self-sustaining system: it justifies its own existence by claiming to 'protect democracy,' even as it causes $192 billion in damages and fails to achieve its stated goals. This is a case where the US’s use of sanctions mirrors historical colonial practices, where external powers dictate the terms of survival for a sovereign nation, while framing their actions as 'nonviolent coercion.' The marginalised voices within Cuba—particularly Afro-Cuban and LGBTQ+ communities—reveal how the embargo deepens existing inequalities, while the global South’s experience with sanctions underscores that these measures are rarely effective in achieving political change but instead deepen suffering. The trickster lens exposes the absurdity of a policy that claims to promote democracy while imposing economic strangulation, a move that only serves to strengthen Cuba’s resilience and global solidarity. The path forward requires a combination of legal challenges, economic resistance, and global campaigns to expose the human cost of sanctions, while Cuba continues to innovate and build solidarity economies that bypass the embargo’s constraints.