Cuba’s government told its people on May 16 to prepare for a U.S. military attack.
The National Civil Defense General Staff published a family guide titled “Protect, Resist, Survive, and Win.” It tells civilians how to shelter during air strikes, with special attention to children, the elderly, pregnant women and people with disabilities.
Every household is told: know your assigned shelter. Families are told to prepare a bag with identification documents, a radio, batteries, lighting supplies, drinking water, medications, hygiene items and three days of ready-to-eat food
The guide came during Exercise Meteoro 2026, Cuba’s national civil defense drill. But this was not routine. Its introduction recalls the long record of U.S. aggression since the triumph of the Revolution: covert operations, armed bands, mercenary landings, terrorism, assassination attempts and economic strangulation.
No government issues that kind of document without reason.
Washington’s moves that same week made the reason plain.
On May 14, CIA Director John Ratcliffe flew to Havana to deliver Washington’s demand for “fundamental changes.” U.S. imperialism first tightened the fuel siege. Then it sent the head of the CIA to deliver the political ultimatum.
The administration has openly pointed to Venezuela as the model. Ratcliffe urged Cuba to take a lesson from the Jan. 3 operation in which U.S. forces kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Deputy Cilia Flores. Washington moved from threats and sanctions to kidnapping Venezuela’s leaders. Now it is pointing that threat at Havana.
Cuba rejected the ultimatum. That is what Washington cannot tolerate: a small socialist country refusing to submit.
On May 18, President Miguel Díaz-Canel warned that a U.S. military assault “will cause a bloodbath with incalculable consequences.” Cuba, he said, “is already suffering a multidimensional aggression from the U.S.” and has “the absolute and legitimate right to defend itself.”
On May 20, the Justice Department unsealed a murder indictment against former Cuban President Raúl Castro. The charges stem from Cuba’s February 1996 shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue planes. Brothers to the Rescue was a front for a U.S.-created anti-Cuba terrorist network rooted in the CIA’s war against the Cuban Revolution.
It was founded by José Basulto, a CIA operative and Bay of Pigs veteran trained in intelligence, explosives, sabotage and subversion. Now Washington is turning Cuba’s 1996 defense of its airspace into a pretext for new threats. The pretext does not have to be credible. It just has to exist.
Washington is not simply charging an individual. Raúl Castro is being targeted as one of the historic leaders of the Cuban Revolution itself. The Justice Department is manufacturing the pretext for the war drive.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla called it “a despicable and infamous act of political provocation” designed to build a pretext for further pressure and military action.
A day after the indictment, U.S. Southern Command announced that the USS Nimitz carrier strike group had entered the Caribbean Sea. The Nimitz is a floating air base: fighter jets, spy planes, radar-jamming planes and helicopters, plus the fuel, weapons, spare parts and repair crews needed to keep them flying within striking distance of Cuba. In Venezuela, the USS Gerald R. Ford supplied the same carrier threat during the Jan. 3 operation that kidnapped Maduro and Flores and killed more than a hundred Venezuelans and 32 Cuban soldiers.
On May 22, Trump told reporters he would likely be “the one” to finally act on Cuba — as if six decades of blockade, sabotage, invasion attempts, terror networks and economic warfare were “inaction.” Rubio said force remained on the table.
Cuba is not waiting to find out if Trump means it.
Cuban defense doctrine centers on what the government calls the “War of All the People.” It means prolonged, decentralized resistance by the whole population. Its purpose is simple: make any invasion too costly to sustain.
After U.S. forces kidnapped Maduro and Flores in Venezuela on Jan. 3, Cuba stepped up National Defense Days and civilian militia mobilizations. U.S. officials now claim Cuba has acquired more than 300 military drones from Russia and Iran. Axios, citing anonymous U.S. officials, said the alleged plans were only a contingency “in case hostilities erupt.” Havana calls the charge part of Washington’s campaign to build a pretext for attack. In other words, Washington is treating Cuba’s right to defend itself as a threat.
Díaz-Canel has made Cuba’s position clear: Cuba does not want war. It threatens no one in the United States. It is prepared to talk — but not on Washington’s terms. The Cuban people have defended their Revolution through the original blockade, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Missile Crisis and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Civil Defense guide is not panic. It is a revolution mobilizing its people to survive, resist and win.
Washington is applying every instrument simultaneously: fuel blockade, CIA ultimatums, Pentagon surveillance, Treasury sanctions, Justice Department indictments and carrier strike groups. These are not separate policies. They are the weapons of an imperialist state that has never accepted Cuba’s escape from U.S. control.
The goal is what it has always been — to force Cuba to surrender the sovereignty it won in the 1959 Revolution and return the island to the rule of U.S. banks, monopolies, the Pentagon and gangsters.
Cuba’s answer remains what it has always been: defend the Revolution.
Cuba is not alone. Workers and communities across the United States have taken a clear stand. City councils, county boards, state legislatures, school boards, labor councils and unions have passed 117 resolutions calling for an end to the blockade and Cuba’s removal from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. Together, they represent over 60 million people.
The International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the California Federation of Labor, the Washington State Labor Council and dozens of other labor bodies have taken that stand. So have the city councils of New York, Chicago, Detroit, Seattle and Washington, D.C.
The U.S. government is waging warfare against Cuba — economic, political, legal and military. Workers in this country have a different answer: end the blockade, no invasion, U.S. hands off Cuba.
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