THE United States is forcing an oil boycott against Cuba through pressure on Mexico — a targeted blow aimed at bringing the island to its knees economically and forcing a regime change.

The decision by the Mexican government to no longer ship oil to Cuba threatens to initiate a countdown to the island’s economic collapse.

Following the US attack on Venezuela, Washington had already prevented oil from that country from being exported to Cuba.

Mexico stepped in temporarily and supplied over 40 per cent of Cuba’s oil imports.

The oil stop and the siege of Cuba

As a consequence of the Mexican oil stop, which occurred under pressure from US President Donald Trump, the US sanctions regime against Cuba is turning into a siege aimed at the complete sabotage of power generation, all production, and tourism.

At its core, however, the siege by the US is aimed at a regime change in Cuba within weeks. It is about breaking the country’s sovereignty.

Trump is already jubilant that Cuba “is on the verge of failure.” All investments that rely on supplying Cuba with renewable energies fall short in terms of time. Cuba cannot economically survive the years until proper functioning and substitution of oil imports.

The US is aiming for political collapse, which would bring the island back under total US control, as it was before the Cuban Revolution.

Targeted military actions, like in Venezuela, to enforce the imperialist US strategy are also being hinted at by the administration in Washington.

Imperialist expansion in the hemisphere

In doing so, the US president continues his war for domination of the western hemisphere, also to show the world that other powers cannot protect any country on the American continent from US access.

In his strategy, Trump knows neither friend nor foe. What the European Nato states celebrate as a negotiation success in the case of Greenland is essentially nothing other than the complete handover of the country to the US, with targeted access to all raw materials, as well as the opportunity to expand territorially through the extension and establishment of military bases on the island.

Even Argentina under Javier Milei, a close ally of the US, risks losing its sovereignty in the south of the country. Reports are multiplying that the US wants to secure access to the port of Ushuaia, which is central for access to Antarctica about 1,000km away. Here too, it is about the exploitation of raw materials, which are only formally protected until the year 2048.

In any case, the Argentinian government has hastily brought the port in the far south of the country under its control, apparently to facilitate a handover to the US.

Global blitzkrieg strategy of the US

As in the case of Cuba, Trump is proceeding at maximum speed.

Preparations for a US attack on Iran are running at full speed, connected with preventing Nouri al-Maliki becoming prime minister in Iraq, because he would not make his country available for an attack on Tehran.

The US president openly threatens Iraq if the wrong prime minister is elected there. To lull Russia and China into a sense of security, the US administration is seemingly approaching them and promoting peace negotiations in one case, while in the other case the economic war is frozen for a year.

As in the run-up to the Ukraine war, the US is relying on a new deception to arm its auxiliary states and entities undisturbed. It is about eliminating disobedient countries at lightning speed in order to renew US imperialism globally, for the decisive confrontation with China.

Nato is and remains the central global instrument for enforcing US hegemony and for holding Europe accountable. For the US, Europe is nothing more than a bridgehead on the Eurasian double continent and an extension of the US western hemisphere.

Anyone in Europe who is still jubilant today about the US’s oil war against Cuba could tomorrow already be in the crosshairs of US imperialism.

The US is relying on a blitzkrieg strategy. This will certainly achieve considerable successes at first. But the decisive question is what counterforces it unintentionally mobilises.

The vision of a US-colonised world is nothing more than a nightmare that challenges resistance. Or to put it in the words of Che Guevara, “Our two greatest problems are first, imperialism; and second, imperialism.”

Sevim Dagdelen was a member of the German Bundestag from 2005 to 2025 and is currently a member of the Federal Executive Board of the German party BSW (Bundnis Sahra Wagenknecht / The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance).