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First the regimes, then the others.
Trump’s method and the complicit silence of the West.
There is a logic to what Trump is doing. It is not madness, it is not unpredictability: it is a method. And the method works because nobody stops it.
First Venezuela. In January, the United States military captured Nicolás Maduro in a direct military operation, Washington then recognised the transitional government and took control of Venezuelan oil. Then Iran: joint military operations with Israel that led to the death of Ayatollah Khamenei. Now Cuba.
Cuba has received no oil shipments since the beginning of January, following United States pressure. Trump signed an executive order imposing tariffs on any country that supplies oil to the island, producing in effect a total energy blockade. The result is that Cuba’s national electricity grid has collapsed completely, leaving an island of ten million people in the dark. It is not the first time: this is the third major blackout in four months.
And while Cuba was plunging into darkness, Trump was telling journalists at the White House: “Whether I liberate it or take it - I think I can do whatever I want with Cuba. They are a very weakened nation right now.”
Take it. As though it were a territory, a piece of property, a deal to be closed.
The regime pretext
I already know what many will say: but Cuba is a dictatorship, Iran was a theocracy, Maduro was an autocrat - is it not right to liberate those peoples?
It is an argument that deserves a direct answer, because it is the one being used to justify the silence of the so-called democratic world.
I want to be clear about one thing, first of all: I have condemned these regimes, and not only in words. I have demonstrated in person against the Cuban regime, against the Iranian one, against Maduro - in the streets, alongside others, putting myself out there. I am convinced that supporting peoples in their struggle for freedom is not only right but necessary.
But there is a fundamental difference that those who use the liberation pretext refuse to see: replacing a head of state with one subservient to Washington, without changing anything else, is not liberating a people - it is changing their master.
Washington has not liberated anyone, at least not so far. What Trump is doing is using force to subjugate governments he dislikes - not to bring democracy, but to install compliant governments, open markets and take resources. In the case of Venezuela, Trump recognised the transitional government and announced a deal over Venezuelan oil. Where is the democracy in any of this?
The method, furthermore, is that of striking the civilian population until it surrenders. Just as in Iran where civilians are paying the price of this aggression, Cuban hospitals have had to postpone procedures, fuel shortages have left rubbish piling up in the streets, and schools have cut their hours. The civilians who are suffering are not the regime’s officials - they are the very Cubans Trump claims to want to liberate.
And then there is a third point, the one that should make us tremble: imperial logic does not distinguish between regimes and democracies. It distinguishes between strong nations and weak ones, between those who can resist and those who cannot.
What happens when it is a free country’s turn?
This is the question nobody wants to ask out loud.
Trump has already set his sights on Greenland - an autonomous territory of Denmark, a NATO member, a European democracy. He has threatened Canada with punitive tariffs and hints at annexation. He has treated European leaders like vassals to be kept in line. Venezuela was a regime, Iran was a regime, Cuba is a regime - but Greenland is not, Denmark is not, and if the logic now being established is that of the strongest, if the international community learns to accept that borders shift by force and that sovereignty is negotiable, then nobody is safe.
The precedent being built today is not about Cuba. It is about all of us.
Silence as complicity
And Europe? Democratic governments? International institutions? Silence. Or worse: pre-emptive alignment.
This is not about sympathy for the Castro regime - it is about something more fundamental. Either international law applies to everyone, or it applies to no one. Either the sovereignty of a nation, even one that is badly governed, is inviolable - with exceptions only for interventions decided upon to protect that very law, which would place Ukraine and Palestine far higher on the list - or it becomes an optional extra that great powers reserve the right to ignore whenever convenient. European governments that stay silent in the face of Cuba being starved out, Maduro being captured, and Iran being bombed, are building the world in which one day it could be their turn - they are teaching Trump, and whoever comes after him, that the method works, that you just need to wait for the right moment, weaken the target enough, and then you can take what you want.
It is not naive to resist. It is naive not to.
I know that saying this comes at a cost. Opposing the United States has economic, diplomatic and political consequences, and it is not a comfortable position. But the alternative - standing by, hoping not to be next, buying security through silence - has already been proven to fail, because the countries that have genuflected before Trump have not obtained protection: they have obtained contempt and ever-growing demands.
A country already in difficulty like Cuba, left in the dark, is a mirror. It shows us what a world becomes when the only rule is force, and it shows us, with brutal clarity, which side those governments we call democratic are on when someone else’s rights are trampled.
The question is not whether Cuba deserves its regime. The question is what world we are building with our silence. And the answer, right now, is: a world far more dangerous than the one we inherited.
My name is Andrea Venzon. I am a political activist, and I write to help build an independent political space - free from the blackmail of great powers and from resignation. If you like what you read, subscribe. And if you can, become a paid subscriber: it is what allows me to keep writing, analysing and taking a stand without masters.