Trump taking – Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel has dismissed US claims about drones and warned against outside meddling, as a months-long energy blockade and wider US pressure fuel blackouts and shortages. A Buckingham academic says attempts to engineer a leadership change
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel has met Donald Trump’s pressure with defiance as the US blockade and drone allegations escalate tensions between Washington and Havana.
The row has sharpened over claims from the Trump administration that Cuba has drones able to strike mainland America. The Cuban government has rejected those allegations as “fraudulent”.
At the same time. a months-long energy blockade linked to the Trump administration has plunged the island into blackouts. with food and medical supplies running low.. Behind the scenes. reporting earlier this year said that by the end of 2026 the US government hopes to “change leadership” in Cuba. seeking government insiders to “cut a deal” to make that possible.
Fears have been building that the drone claims could be used to justify military action.. Trump has been hinting at intervention for months. while Dr Stephen Wilkinson. from the International Institute for the Study of Cuba at The University of Buckingham. said a continued blockade or any attempted military coup would amount to the biggest tragedy in American foreign policy in years.
“Taking over Cuba is just another fantasy, just like the idea that the US can defeat Iran is a fantasy,” Dr Wilkinson told Metro. “They’ve underestimated the Iranians, and they’re underestimating the Cubans. The Cubans are made of very tough stuff. They’re not going to give up.”
He added that Cuba’s resistance is rooted in long-running struggles for independence: “The Cuban people are very nationalistic and have really been fighting for 200 years for their independence.. First against the Spanish. and then. the United States. after it imposed a government on them which they didn’t really want.. The revolution of 1959 was really an assertion of Cuban independence and sovereignty from the United States.. By trying to reassert its dominance over Cuba, the United States will only deepen the resistance of Cubans towards it.”
Dr Wilkinson also pointed to how US talks with Cuban exiles in Miami and Washington to reach potential government figures in Havana could shape the conflict. He said the negotiations signal another “class conflict”.
One of the persistent tensions in the dispute is that the US pressure being described—energy shortages. alleged “change leadership” plans. and claims about Cuban drones—sits alongside Cuba’s outright rejection of the drone story as “fraudulent”. while Dr Wilkinson frames the US approach as attempts to reassert dominance that. in his view. would deepen resistance.
The wider relationship has long been bound up with competing ambitions, Dr Wilkinson said.. He described early US interest in acquiring Cuba as early as 1803, when Cuba was still a Spanish colony.. While that bid failed. he said later attempts returned. driven by Cuba’s position at the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico and US desire to control sea lanes towards the Mississippi Delta and the Panama Canal.
He also referenced American investments in Cuban sugar and economic ties that made the island “even more vital to the US”.. Dr Wilkinson said the relationship. in his telling. “has very little to do with 20th-century ideological struggles” and instead links back to “19th-century anti-colonial struggles”.
As Cuban independence emerged, he pointed to an intervention in 1902 after Cuba won independence from Spain, when the US imposed a constitution and settlement on the new country, which he said was met with backlash.
He traced later events including the failed Bay of Pigs after Fidel Castro took power in 1959, and said many Cubans fled towards the United States for decades afterwards. In 2015, Barack Obama and Raúl Castro began normalising relations, described as a major win for diplomacy.
When Trump took office for the first time, those steps were reversed, Dr Wilkinson said, with Cuba designated as a state sponsor of terrorism.
In his view. the 1959 revolution also triggered severe economic hardship. including food shortages and medical shortages. alongside political crackdowns that contributed to millions fleeing the country.. He argued that the 1959 independence claim was followed by an internationalised struggle: “The ordinary people of Cuba asserted their independence in 1959. and the bourgeoisie. the Cuban upper class. left and went to live in the United States.. For the last. getting on for 60 years. there has been an internationalised class struggle. and that’s what’s coming to a head now.”
Dr Wilkinson criticised efforts to “recover Cuba for themselves”, comparing them to a “Gatsby-esque fantasy”: “the idea that you could recreate the past and go back to 1959, and try to erase what’s happened in between.”
He also said Cuba has close ties to Venezuela. having received oil and funding from the Caracas government before Nicolás Maduro was ousted.. Since then. Dr Wilkinson said. Cuba has faced increasing blackouts. queues at supermarkets and petrol shortages. with the island described as in its worst economic crisis in decades.
As the immediate standoff continues, Dr Wilkinson said the US objective has long been framed as replacing the Cuban leadership.. He cited historian and author Louis A Perez. who wrote that Americans had “convinced themselves that they have a beneficent purpose […] from which Americans derived the moral authority to presume power over Cuba”.
Dr Wilkinson boiled the motivation down to what he said is a belief that Cuba’s independence is a threat because its government and people “don’t want US involvement at all, and are socialist”.
He linked US concerns to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Soviet Union placed nuclear missiles in Cuba and triggered a 13-day standoff. He also said Cuba’s alliances with countries including China, Venezuela and Iran have concerned US officials.
“The US wants to disband the army, disband the police force, completely dismantle the current government and build a new one in Cuba,” Dr Wilkinson said. “They’ve got a blueprint for a kind of colonial regime for a period while they’re ‘rebuilding the country’.”
But he added that the practical obstacle is that “they won’t find very many Cubans who would be willing to collaborate with them.”
Looking ahead, Dr Wilkinson suggested the confrontation could follow two directions, based on past patterns.. He said the current situation amounts to pressure through hardship: “The situation in Cuba now is literally one of the United States starving the Cuban people.” He compared it to what he said the Israeli government did in Gaza. and used the term “Gazification” for Cuba. saying “this is really what’s happening”.
He called it “the worst regime of sanctions that Cuba has been placed under since the very beginning.”
Dr Wilkinson also cited a 1960 US government memo nicknamed the “Mallory Memorandum”. which he said laid out what the US government wanted then. and which he argues mirrors what he sees happening now.. The memo. he said. described “Denying money and supplies to Cuba. to decrease monetary and real wages. to bring about hunger. desperation and overthrow of government”. and was tied to a plan to overthrow the Cuban government.
“The original objective of that embargo was to cause starvation so that people would rise up and overthrow the government. ” Dr Wilkinson added.. “It was an intention to create a situation of social unrest in Cuba. which would then provide the excuse for an occupation of the island.. And that’s really what’s happening again right now.”
For now. the Caribbean standoff remains defined by competing claims: the US says Cuba has the means to strike the mainland. while Cuba calls those claims “fraudulent”; the US is described as seeking leadership change by the end of 2026. while Cuban defiance and worsening shortages underscore how far apart the two sides appear to be.
Cuba Donald Trump Miguel Díaz-Canel US blockade drones energy blockade blackouts sanctions International Institute for the Study of Cuba University of Buckingham