11 Million Cubans Are Poised to Starve Without Venezuelan Oil. How Many Will We Allow to Die?

In the wake of one of the more momentous weekends for U.S. foreign policy in the last several decades, it’s difficult to know where to even begin in analyzing the Trump administration’s brazen (and stunningly swift) attempt at regime change in Venezuela. The United States’ abduction of President Nicolás Maduro, who faces arraignment today in New York City on indictments both obvious (involvement in cocaine trafficking) and absurd (“conspiracy to possess machineguns”), was, in the eyes of most legal scholars, profoundly illegal, an obvious violation of the prohibition of force enshrined in the United Nations Charter. It’s not good business for anyone to live in a world where a regional superpower simply gets to attack a sovereign nation at will, kill any who oppose them and abduct a head of state, even if that head of state is illegitimate as Maduro was. But rather than attempt to litigate Maduro’s removal, let’s instead turn our attention to one of the most critical situations that has arisen as a result of it: The impending collapse, anarchy and deadly conditions brewing in Cuba, which depended desperately on Venezuelan support for its continued existence.

In the midst of his jaw-dropping pronouncements to a gaggle of media following Maduro’s capture, in which he threatened Colombia with a similar invasion, insisted that the U.S. needed possession of Greenland, and generally reveled in the fact that none of his own party have the guts to stand up to his tyrannical strong man posturing, Trump also found time to talk up the warm and fuzzy relationship the U.S. would now supposedly have with Venezuela. He insisted that we are now “in charge” of and “running” the country despite the official head of state now being Maduro’s vice president Delcy Rodríguez, who started off defiant before seeming to quickly buckle, most recently putting out statements about how she looks forward to “cooperation” and “coexistence” with the United States. Trump and co. are clearly looking to establish Rodríguez as a compliant ruler for the time being as American oil companies flood the country to begin the laborious process of modernizing the Venezuelan oil industry. Notably, there was not a peep from Trump about diplomat Edmundo González, the actual winner of 2024 elections that should have made him Venezuela’s rightful president, essentially acting as a proxy for recent Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado, who was barred from running. Consider us shocked that Trump cares not the tiniest bit about democracy. But the pertinent Trump quote is this:

“We’re gonna cherish a country. We’re going to take care of, more importantly, of the people, including Venezuelans that are living in our country that were forced to leave their country, and they’re going to be taken very good care of.”

So yeah–we’re going to “cherish” Venezuela. We’re going to take care of them, little babies! But guess what we’re not going to take care of? That would be the massive humanitarian crisis in Cuba that the U.S. removal of Maduro will inevitably create. Among his many threats and promises of U.S. entanglement in Latin America mentioned by Trump this weekend, the President was grilled by media on what this would mean for an already destabilized Cuba. Trump described the country as “ready to fall,” but said that direct U.S. action wouldn’t be needed, that its collapse would simply occur either way.

“I think it’s just going to fall,” Trump said. “I don’t think we need any action. Looks like it’s going down. It’s going down for the count.”

Trump: “Cuba is ready to fall. Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall. I don’t know if they’re gonna hold out.”

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) Jan 4, 2026 at 8:13 PM

For once, frighteningly, Trump is almost certainly correct in this assessment. But what those blunt words strategically avoid saying is that when we talk about Cuba “falling,” we are talking about a free-for-all of blood, destruction, chaos and mass death, which will no doubt be aimed at the weakest and most vulnerable human beings living in the country, occurring only 90 miles off U.S. shores. Within only days or weeks, we will likely be looking at a crisis the likes of which Cuba hasn’t seen in decades, one that could be far worse than the so-called Special Period following the fall of Cuba’s patron the Soviet Union in 1991, which resulted in Cuba spending the majority of the 1990s in stagnation and near famine. And when Cuba goes dark and begins tearing itself apart, the entirety of the U.S. plan as far as Donald Trump and Marco Rubio are concerned appears to be “Sit back, point and laugh.” Neither has articulated any concern whatsoever, or any plan to aid impoverished, starving Cubans, even if they somehow go through with a popular upheaval that destroys the Castro-founded Communist Party of Cuba. I can see essentially no scenario here that doesn’t involve mass death, a situation that the U.S. has directly caused with its incursion into Venezuela and takeover of the oil industry. It shouldn’t need to be said, but we bear a moral responsibility to innocent Cuban citizens as a result.

It can’t be overstated how important that oil was to Cuba’s continued existence. For decades, Venezuela has been the primary supplier of energy to Cuba’s crumbling, duct-taped electrical grid, which relies almost entirely on oil burning for power generation. This oil, which reportedly averaged 35,000 barrel per day in the fourth quarter of 2025, was practically free to the Cuban government under the terms of the long-running barrio adentro agreement, in which Cuba supplied a veritable army of 15,000 intelligence agents, military and economic advisors and especially doctors and medical personnel to low-income communities in Venezuela–people who are currently fleeing back to a Cuba that can’t support them, by the way. Said oil was also one of Cuba’s main sources of income, via reselling. The country was receiving smaller amounts of oil aid from the likes of Russia and Mexico, but those shipments have also dropped precipitously, and there’s no chance that a country like Mexico is suddenly going to step up to provide the majority of Cuban energy when Trump is not-so-subtly threatening military action in Mexico as well.

Even with the steady flow of Venezuelan oil, Cuba had already been facing a massive energy crisis in 2025, characterized by frequent 12-hour rolling blackouts, harsh energy conservation tactics and frequent breakdowns–the entire power grid has collapsed repeatedly throughout the year, contributing to greatly reduced capacity for medical care, food production, etc. Millions have fled in recent years, sending the aging Cuban population into steep decline. Now with Venezuelan oil suddenly being cut off in its entirety, as the Trump administration will no doubt demand of Delcy Rodríguez, and with an effective blockade of Cuba denying oil shipments from other nations that might attempt to step in and provide aid, total power grid collapse and permanent blackouts seem inevitable within weeks. The cost will be catastrophic: Hospitals will be unable to function. Food stocks will rot as refrigeration fails. Factory and mechanized farming will become impossible. Cars will run dry, stranding people in rural communities. Proper famine will likely descend. And no one can say what the United States is planning to do about any of it, despite our actions forcing the culmination of what was no doubt already a terrible, precarious situation. We’re seemingly about to sit back and just watch the humanitarian disaster unfold, with Trump’s new “Donroe Doctrine” (only this administration could try to coin such a stupid phrase) prohibiting anyone else from assisting under threat of military reprisal. It’s as if Trump and Marco Rubio watched Netanyahu’s attempt to starve Palestine to death and thought “We can beat that.”

Rest assured: All Trump and his sycophants care about in Cuba is more regime change, without caring how it comes about or whether it costs thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of Cuban lives. The likes of Rubio (the son of Cuban immigrants and a persistent Cuba hawk) and Lindsey Graham continue to refer to Havana as the “head of the snake” in the region, happy to demonize every one of the nation’s residents in order to make starving them to death a bit more palatable.

Unsurprisingly, Cuban First Secretary and President Miguel Díaz-Canel has been railing about the U.S. abduction of Maduro, calling it “an unacceptable, vulgar and barbarian kidnapping,” and saying that the U.S. attack was an “act of state terrorism, comparable only to the crimes against humanity committed by Israeli Zionism in the Gaza Strip.” But those “crimes against humanity” will likely pale in comparison to the damage that will be caused by inaction as Cuba begins to likely tear itself apart in the coming weeks as it descends into potential anarchy.

The president of Cuba is 65. Trump is 79

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— Thor Benson (@thorbenson.bsky.social) Jan 3, 2026 at 12:50 PM

To be clear: I don’t even know what I’m suggesting here, in terms of solutions to the brewing Cuban mess, because there are no good options–there isn’t even an organized opposition party to back. The Trump administration is hoping for and effectively demanding regime change in Cuba at gunpoint, assuming that by cutting off all fuel, power and funding that the Cuban common folk will rise up and oust Díaz-Canel and the legacy of the Communist Party of Cuba. But considering that the state will no doubt hoard all remaining resources for itself, will such an uprising even be possible? And even if it was somehow “successful,” what then? Does the U.S. simply seize control of Cuba to prevent a complete humanitarian breakdown, again ignoring bodies like the United Nations? If only we had some kind of federal entity for distributing massive amounts of foreign aid … oh wait, the Trump administration and DOGE destroyed that as well.

This is a case where the other developed countries in the region are all washing their hands of the matter: They’re either embroiled in problems of their own, or quavering as they watch the United States flout international law as it follows the whim of an emerging autocratic tyrant in Donald Trump. But it’s the Cuban people who will suffer worst. They are fighting for their lives right now, while fully cognizant of the fact that things are about to get much, much worse. The only question to answer: How much death do Trump and Rubio deem acceptable? And how bad is it about to get?