Collective Punishment

Reexamining US Sanctions on Cuba Through a Human Rights Lens When a government tells a people that their suffering is not the result of external pressure but of their own leaders’ corruption, it is not offering analysis—it is offering alibi. The recent statement by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to the Cuban people, which dismisses the impact of six decades of comprehensive sanctions while attributing economic hardship solely to domestic governance, asks Cubans to accept a narrative that contradicts both lived reality and the basic logic of how economic coercion functions. Sanctions are not surgical instruments. They are broad-spectrum economic measures that restrict access to finance, technology, medicine, food, and essential infrastructure across entire societies. When a country cannot import spare parts for power plants, when hospitals cannot access critical medicines due to banking restrictions, when families spend hours searching for basic necessities—these are not unintended side effects. They are the mechanism by which pressure is applied. The theory of change is explicit: create conditions of scarcity and hardship sufficient to generate popular discontent, which in turn creates political pressure for change. This is not speculation; it is the stated logic of coercive diplomacy. When that pressure fails to produce the desired political outcome—as it has not in Cuba for over sixty years—the narrative shifts. The suffering is no longer acknowledged as a tool of policy but is reattributed to the moral failings of the sanctioned government. This rhetorical move serves a crucial function: it absolves the sanctioning power […]