{"id":647503,"date":"2026-05-16T22:34:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T22:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/647503\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T22:34:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T22:34:12","slug":"cubans-prepare-for-invasion-as-us-escalates-tensions-with-long-suffering-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/647503\/","title":{"rendered":"Cubans prepare for \u201cinvasion\u201d as US escalates tensions with long-suffering island"},"content":{"rendered":"

Havana, Cuba\u00a0\u2014\u00a0\n <\/p>\n

\n A few days ago, the manager of the building where CNN\u2019s Havana bureau is located rapped on our door with an urgent message: She needed to know if we would be coming to work during the \u201cimminent\u201d US invasion.\n <\/p>\n

\n Washington\u2019s intense pressure campaign on Cuba had already been keenly felt in day-to-day life. Under the ongoing US oil blockade, power flickers off in our offices several times a day. The compounding economic crisis means there\u2019s no fuel for the building generator or even toilet paper for the bathrooms. Every day, I walk past an enormous artificial Christmas tree in the lobby that no one has bothered to take down.\n <\/p>\n

\n But now the building manager told me she had been tasked with \u201corders from above\u201d \u2014 like all office buildings in the city, it is owned by the state \u2014 to come up with a plan for the building in case of imperialist attack. As in an American attack. (The Trump administration has not said that it is planning any military operations in Cuba.)\n <\/p>\n

\n Cubans have lived with the threat of US military action for so long that it has become a dark joke. \u201cCuando vienen los americanos\u201d \u2014 when the Americans come \u2014 is the expression Cubans employ with their trademark black humor to say how a long-running problem \u2014 of which there are countless \u2014 will one day be resolved.\n <\/p>\n

\n Now it really does look, one way or another, like the Americans are coming.\n <\/p>\n

\n CIA Director John Ratcliffe\u2019s visit to Havana this week aboard a not-very-clandestine airplane emblazoned with the words \u201cUnited States of America\u201d was deeply shocking for many Cubans, and the clearest sign yet that tensions are reaching critical mass.\n <\/p>\n

\n If the US is the Evil Empire for the Cuban government, then the head of the CIA, the agency that in the 1960s concocted fantastical plots to assassinate Fidel Castro with exploding cigars and poisoned scuba suits, is Lucifer himself.\n <\/p>\n

\"CIA<\/p>\n

\n There are whole museums in Cuba dedicated to CIA\u2019s nefarious misdeeds against the revolution.\n <\/p>\n

\n In photos released by the CIA, Cuba\u2019s dour spy chiefs greet their American counterparts in a protocol house with blackout curtains on the windows and a long table oddly bursting with floral arrangements. Except Ratcliffe, the US intelligence officers have their faces blurred out to obscure their identities.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt is the height of historical irony,\u201d Peter Kornbluh, a co-author of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana, said of the US spymaster\u2019s sudden appearance on the communist-run island.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cRatcliffe\u2019s mission was to make Cuba a \u2018do or die\u2019 offer it ostensibly can\u2019t refuse. Political scientists call this \u201csubmission diplomacy,\u201d Kornbluh told CNN.\n <\/p>\n

\n Cuban officials said that during the visit, they laid out the case why their island does not pose a threat to the US \u2014 countering the Trump administration\u2019s legal justification for oil blockade that has plunged the island into an economic nosedive, per a Cuban government statement.\n <\/p>\n

\n Those arguments apparently fell on deaf ears. Ratcliffe accused the Cuban officials of hosting Russian and Chinese listening posts on the island and thwarting US interests in the region, according to US officials.\n <\/p>\n

\n If the US has been employing a carrot-and-stick approach with Cuba in recent months \u2014 offers of aid or economic coercion \u2014 carrots no longer appear to be on the menu.\n <\/p>\n

\"CIA<\/p>\n

\n Just hours after Ratcliffe left Havana, news leaked that US federal prosecutors were seeking an indictment against former Cuban President Raul Castro, officially retired but still referred to on the island as the \u201cleader of the revolution\u201d and widely believed to be calling the shots from behind the scenes.\n <\/p>\n

\n Many Cuban exiles in Miami would cheer an indictment of Castro for his alleged role in the 1996 shootdown of two planes belonging to the Cuban-American exile organization Brothers to the Rescue. An indictment would prepare the ground for the possible capture and trial of Castro \u2014as it happened in Venezuela in January with Cuba\u2019s ally Nicolas Maduro.\n <\/p>\n

\n But any action against Castro, who turns 95 in June and now has trouble walking without the help of attendants and his bodyguard grandson, would be the final escalation of already simmering tensions, likely leading to a break in diplomacy \u2014 if not open conflict.\n <\/p>\n

\n Several Cuban officials have told me amid the rumors of a Castro indictment in recent weeks that such a development would end negotiations and set the stage for a military intervention to which they would sacrifice their lives if needed.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe are ready,\u201d Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel announced on May Day, \u201cAnd I say it with a profound conviction that I have shared with my family, to give our lives for the revolution.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"Cuba's<\/p>\n

\n Cuban state-media has published images of civilians receiving military training as part of what Fidel Castro envisioned as the \u201cwar of the entire population\u201d in which Cubans armed by the government would fight a guerrilla war of attrition against foreign invaders.\n <\/p>\n

\n The plan counts on Vietnam-style guerrilla combat rather than a conflict between armies.\n <\/p>\n

\n Some of the videos released show soldiers carrying out maneuvers with Soviet arms older than they are. In one clip, they\u2019re pulling an anti-aircraft gun with oxen.\n <\/p>\n

\n Despite the Cuban armed forces\u2019 lack of modern weaponry, military historian Hal Klepak told CNN the island\u2019s military still could put up dogged resistance to a US attack on the ground.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThey have shown, as we\u2019ve seen over and over again in natural disasters, that they are capable of mobilizing the population, they are capable of getting people out,\u201d Klepak said.\n <\/p>\n

\n As conditions deteriorate on the island and power cuts stretch all day, some Cubans say \ufeffthat at least a conflict would end their prolonged suffering.\n <\/p>\n

\n State hospitals are now deprived of many basic medicines, Cubans complain of food rotting in their fridges during lengthy blackouts and uncollected trash piles up in nearly every neighborhood of the island.\n <\/p>\n

\"People<\/p>\n

\n Washington\u2019s oil blockade has drained the island of its last reserves, the energy minister announced this week. New sanctions against companies doing business with Cuba are halting most maritime shipments to the island, guaranteeing that food prices and hunger will spike even higher.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIf half of us die, half of us die,\u201d one woman told me during a protest over the power cuts in Havana this week where demonstrators beat pots and pans for so long that the steel was caved in with dents. \u201cBut at least the other half get to live in peace,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n

\n A successful US attack that topples the Cuban government could unleash a wave of political reprisals, said Ada Ferrer, a Cuban-American historian and author of Keeper of My Kin: Memoir of an Immigrant Daughter\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIf I think about times in Cuban history when political change has happened, when unpopular governments have been removed or have fallen one way or another, there\u2019s always been violence that followed,\u201d she told CNN.\n <\/p>\n

\n The island\u2019s government is advising the populace to get ready for potential upheaval.\n <\/p>\n

\n Cuba\u2019s Civil Defense agency this week circulated \u201ca family guide on how to act during a hypothetical military aggression against Cuba\u201d that recommended, among other steps, preparing a backpack of non-perishable items.\n <\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n A neighbor of mine in Havana was dismissive of the war planning.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThey tell us to prepare like if it were hurricane that\u2019s coming,\u201d he told me, \u201cBut already, we have run out of everything.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Havana, Cuba\u00a0\u2014\u00a0 A few days ago, the manager of the building where CNN\u2019s Havana bureau is located rapped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":647504,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-647503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647503\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}