Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel on Thursday said, “We don’t want that [confrontation] but it is our duty to be ready to avoid it… and if it were unavoidable, to win it.”
Diaz-Canel made the remarks in Havana during a ceremony marking the 65th anniversary of the US’s failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion — a CIA-backed operation launched after US-owned properties and businesses on the island were nationalized by Fidel Castro and his fellow revolutionaries.
He told thousands gathered for the event that the nation is “ready” for another attack as US President Donald Trump continues to threaten the tiny southern neighbour.
The US and Cuba have been archenemies since the country’s 1959 revolution, and Trump has revived elements of the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, a US policy aimed at preventing outside interference in the Western Hemisphere.
Late last year, Trump ordered US warships to the Caribbean to target what the US described as drug-smuggling boats. In January, he cited the doctrine when the US military arrested Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and extradited him to the US to face drug-trafficking charges. After Maduro’s abduction, Trump imposed a blockade on oil and gas to Cuba and warned that “Cuba’s next.” Following a US war against Iran on February 28, Trump again floated the idea of “taking” Cuba, which has also endured massive nationwide blackouts attributed to the US oil blockade.
Diaz-Canel called the situation “very grave” and invoked the socialist ideals of Fidel Castro. He rejected claims that Cuba is “a failing nation,” accusing the US of seeking a pretext for intervention.
“Cuba is not a failed state. Cuba is a besieged state,” Diaz-Canel said. “Cuba is a state facing multidimensional aggression: economic warfare, an intensified blockade and an energy blockade.”
Recent talks between the two sides intended to reduce tensions have been held, though few details have emerged. The US trade embargo on Cuba, imposed after the revolution, remains in place nearly 70 years later.
Edited by: Wesley Dockery