Thomas Graham in Tijuana and Ruaridh Nicoll in Havana
Fri 30 Jan 2026 13.08 EST
Sheinbaum’s comments came after a week of increasing threats from Washington. US officials briefed that gunboats could be deployed off Cuba, and said efforts were under way to find Cuban ministers prepared to collaborate with the US.
Speaking on Wednesday, Mike Hammer, the US chargé d’affaires in Havana, said: “The Cubans have complained for years about a ‘blockade’, but now there is going to be a real blockade.”
Historically they often actually have the reverse effect.
Sanctions aren’t subtle, they aren’t some sneaky way of hurting a country and so the people blame the government and try to overthrow it. They are about as subtle as bombing a country then blaming the government. Everyone who lives there sees directly the impacts of the sanctions and knows the cause is the foreign power. When a foreign power is laying siege on a country, then it often has the effect of strengthening people’s support for the government. Even the government’s flaws can be overlooked because they can point to the foreign country’s actions to blame.
Indeed, North Korea is probably the most sanctioned country in history yet is also one of the most stable countries on the planet.
I thought it was a bit amusing when Russia seized Crimea and the western world’s brilliant response was to sanction Crimea as well as to shut down the water supply going to Crimea, which Russia responded by building one of the largest bridges in Europe to facilitate trade between Russia and Crimea as well as investing heavily into building out new water infrastructure.
If a foreign country is trying to starve you, and the other country is clearly investing a lot of money into trying to help you… who do you think you are winning the favor of with such a policy?
For some reason the western mind cannot comprehend this. They constantly insist that the western world needs to lay economic siege on all the countries not aligned with it and when someone points out that this is just making people of those countries hate the western world and want nothing to do with them and strengthening the resolve of their own governments, they just deflect by calling you some sort of “apologist” or whatever.
Indeed, during the Cuban Thaw when Obama lifted some sanctions, Obama became rather popular in Cuba, to the point that his approval ratings at times even surpassed that of Fidel, and Cuba started to implement reforms to allow for further economic cooperation with US government and US businesses. They were very happy to become an ally of the US, but then suddenly Democrats and Republicans decided to collectively do a 180 u-turn and abandon all of that and destroy all the good will that have built up.
But the people of Cuba are not going to capitulate because the government is actually popular, as US internal documents constantly admits to, and that popularity will only be furthered by the increased blockade. US is just going to create a North Korean style scenario off the coast of the US.