The Cuban revolution endures despite more than 60 years of U.S. attacks. One system exploits the people, while the other prioritizes their needs. Which nation deserves the label of “failed’?

By Isaac Saney 30 Jul 2025 Black Agenda Report

Originally published in Facebook .

In an age where propaganda masquerades as truth and empire cloaks itself in the garb of “democracy,” few lies are as pervasive—or politically useful—as the assertion that Cuba is a failed state. This accusation, deployed with relentless regularity by U.S. officials, corporate media, and neoliberal ideologues, is meant to delegitimize a revolutionary and socialist project that has refused to bow before empire.

But what does it mean to be a “failed state”? And more importantly, who gets to define failure?

Let us be clear: Cuba is a besieged state, not a failed one. Under siege from the most powerful imperial force in the world—the United States—it has endured more than six decades of blockade, economic sabotage and subversion. The U.S. blockade is not merely a trade, financial and commercial embargo. It is an economic war designed to produce misery, scarcity, and discontent. It is a deliberate and cruel attempt to collapse a sovereign society. And yet, despite this onslaught, Cuba continues to pursue a project rooted in ethics, equality, and human dignity. It does not hide its problems; it confronts them.

Contrast this with the conditions in the so-called “developed” West. In the United States—the wealthiest country in the history of the world—over 40 million people live in poverty, with millions more living one paycheck away from destitution. Children go hungry. Entire communities are criminalized. Access to healthcare is rationed by income. Gun violence, mass incarceration, addiction, homelessness, and the erosion of democratic rights are not aberrations; they are features of a system in which profit trumps people.

In the United Kingdom, a country that once governed a vast colonial empire, the situation is no better. Austerity has gutted public services. Food banks have become institutionalized fixtures in working-class communities. The National Health Service, once a global model of publicly funded healthcare, has been bled dry by privatization. Homelessness is rising. Inequality is deepening. And the political class blames the poor for their own misery while rewarding the rich for their predation.

So let us ask: who is the failed state?

Cuba, despite having a GDP per capita a fraction of the U.S. or UK, provides universal healthcare, free education through to the doctoral level, and a literacy rate that surpasses many wealthy nations. Life expectancy in Cuba is on par with the U.S.—a country that spends more on healthcare than any nation on Earth, but still fails to provide it to tens of millions. In the midst of devastating shortages caused by the blockade, Cuba sent doctors to dozens of countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, while the U.S. hoarded vaccines and the UK prioritized profits for pharmaceutical companies.

And perhaps most importantly, when confronted with rising inequality and hardship, the Cuban state does not blame the people. It does not pathologize poverty. It does not criminalize desperation. It does not call the poor lazy, or the vulnerable expendable. It recognizes that social vulnerability is a collective challenge, not an individual failure.

As Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel recently affirmed, “The Revolution does not hide its problems. It faces them with ethics and social justice, even in the midst of extreme circumstances.” This is the essence of revolutionary responsibility: to claim one’s people, even and especially in their suffering. Unlike the leaders of capitalist states, who see the working class and the marginalized as burdens or threats, Cuban leadership speaks of the vulnerable as ours. “Our homeless. Our inequalities. Our vulnerable youth.” In that single possessive word, “our”, is a world of difference.

This is the living embodiment of Amílcar Cabral’s revolutionary axiom: “Tell no lies, claim no easy victories.” Cuba does not pretend all is well. It does not present a façade of invincibility. But it does not give up. It does not disown the poor. It does not privatize social suffering or profit from despair. It seeks, even amid crushing sanctions, to provide care.

More than thirty targeted social programs have been launched in Cuba to address inequality and social distress. These are not neoliberal “efficiencies” or charity-based palliatives. They are redistributive, rights-based initiatives aimed at repairing and restoring the social fabric. And they are pursued not because they are easy—but because they are right.

Meanwhile, in Western nations that claim to be paragons of democracy and development, politicians deploy rhetoric of “personal responsibility” while enabling systems of exploitation. Homeless people freeze on the streets while billionaires buy their next yacht. Prisons expand while schools decay. Fossil fuel corporations rake in record profits as the world burns. And rather than speak of our vulnerable, Western leaders speak of “those people,” as if inequality and immiseration were a natural condition or personal choice.

Again, we ask: who is the failed state?

Failure is not the inability to avoid hardship. It is the refusal to respond to hardship with dignity and justice. A failed state is not one that suffers, but one that abandons. By this measure, it is not Cuba that has failed. It is those Western states that have abdicated any sense of collective responsibility, any commitment to equality, equity, and any belief in solidarity.

Cuba, on the other hand, chooses the harder road—the one lined not with wealth but with principle. It stumbles, it struggles, but it does not surrender. And in refusing to lie, to claim easy victories, or to devalue human life, it reminds us of what a government can be: not a guardian of the financial oligarchy but a steward of dignity.

So the next time the charge is made—Cuba is a failed state, ask: compared to what? To a world where billionaires fly to space while countless millions can not afford rent? To a system that sacrifices the poor on the altar of profit? To societies that punish vulnerability and commodify health, education, even life itself?

Cuba is not perfect. No society is. But it is a project still rooted in justice, still committed to the people, still alive with revolutionary ethics. That, in a world drenched in cynicism and cruelty, is not failure. It is the kind of success that capitalism will never understand.

So let us ask again—clearly, honestly, and with conviction: Who is the failed state? And which is the failed system?

Isaac Saney is a Black Studies and Cuba specialist and coordinator of the Black and African Diaspora Studies (BAFD) program at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

July 30, 2025 — The River Reporter – Narrowsburg, New York

By IKE NAHEM and ERIN FEELY-NAHEM

Today a great crime is being committed by the U.S. government, with Donald Trump and Marco Rubio deepening further the cruel policies of Joseph Biden and Antony Blinken aimed at asphyxiating the Caribbean island of Cuba through unremitting, cruel, extraterritorial sanctions, which amount to bullying economic warfare. 

Ever since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959, the United States government—under both Republican and Democratic White Houses and Congresses—has been committed to the destruction of its example by any means possible. This bipartisan Washington policy is hated hemispherically and internationally. This is registered in near-unanimous condemnation every year in the United Nations General Assembly for the past 30 years. 

U.S. anti-Cuba policy is also broadly opposed in the United States. Over 116 City Councils—including cities large (Chicago, New York City, Pittsburgh) and small; dozens of central labor councils and national and local labor unions; and religious institutions. (For the full list, visit nnoc.org.) 

Over these many decades, those means have gone beyond mendacious propaganda and conscious disinformation. More important has been direct material aggression and covert subversion: assassination (the revolutionary leader Fidel Castro was targeted for murder some 638 times); terrorism (over 3,500 Cubans have been killed in terrorist attacks organized illegally from U.S. territory); industrial sabotage; mercenary invasion at the Bay of Pigs; the introduction of biological agents to spread dengue fever; and many more sordid examples. All of this has been thoroughly documented in files released under the Freedom of Information Act and innumerable books and documentary films. 

So why has the U.S. government continued to expend so much energy and resources to overthrow the government and social system of our Caribbean neighbor? Is it really a sincere opposition to “communist tyranny” and for “democracy”?  

Such boilerplate of course is belied by Washington’s historical record of installing and supporting vicious military dictatorships that grind workers and peasants into destitution in the service of the U.S. capital. It’s a bloody legacy of horrific crimes of U.S. interventionism, overthrowing democratically elected governments, and has resulted in many, many hundreds of thousands of lives extinguished.  

Perhaps the answer has more to do with the example of Cuba’s amazing social advances which resonate across the Americas and the world: eliminating [illiteracy]; smashing Cuban-style Jim Crow segregation; elevating the status of women; access to free health care, a state-of-the world science and biotechnology industry that has life-extending medications and vaccines for lung cancer (collaborating with the Roswell Center in Buffalo, NY), diabetic foot ulcers and much more. Perhaps most decisive has been Cuba’s foreign policy of international solidarity and support for the struggles of working people, which invariably is at odds with U.S. foreign policy. 

President Barack Obama, under mounting hemispheric pressure, started to shift U.S. policy in the direction of U.S.-Cuba normalization in 2014-15. Great hopes were raised in Cuba and around the world. He removed Cuba from the spurious U.S. “State Sponsors of Terrorism” list. Over the course of his first term, Donald Trump reversed nearly all of Obama’s limited but important policy changes. Surprising some and breaking his 2020 campaign promises, Joseph Biden continued and even deepened Trump’s policies. Trump 2 and Rubio are preparing yet further bipartisan aggression. 

Today, Cuba is under very harsh economic circumstances. The accumulated damage of the U.S. economic war has been devastating: shortages, energy blackouts, long lines, rising costs, growing inequality. Most heartbreaking is the effect of the blockade on Cuba’s system of free, universal health care. 

We are calling on people of conscience and consciousness in our beautiful region to speak out and act! Support and join the newly formed Upper Delaware River Cuba Si Coalition. Look for our website, which is under construction. Join us in this great cause! 

Ike Nahem and Erin Feely-Nahem are longtime Cuba solidarity activists who honeymooned in Havana in 1998. They have organized dozens of delegations to visit the island. Ike is a retired Amtrak locomotive engineer and a  Teamsters Union member. Erin is an LMSW and retired longtime leader in the fields of domestic violence, where she organized shelters for battered women (and some men), low-income housing and HIV-AIDS advocacy in New York City. They live in Cochecton. Both are founders and organizers of Cuba Si NY/NJ and the International US-Cuba Normalization Coalition.

Addis Ababa, July 28 (Prensa Latina) Deputy Prime Minister Jorge Luis Tapia Fonseca reaffirmed Cuba’s willingness to contribute to positioning food systems at the center of development agendas to combat hunger, poverty, and inequality.

Speaking at the opening session of the Second Review of the United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS+4), Tapia Fonseca reaffirmed that achieving these goals, especially for countries in the South, requires a joint and united mobilization of all.

She called for the promotion of cooperation mechanisms in the agricultural sector that would allow for the creation of platforms for food chains with a focus on social protection, with the participation of young people, women, and rural communities.

He also called for increased collaboration among countries, prioritizing the exchange of experiences in food security, sovereignty and self-sufficiency, nutrition and health, science and innovation, agroecology, agricultural extension, and the proper management of food loss and waste, among others.

“None of this will be possible as long as the current unjust international order prevails, in which trillions of dollars are spent each year on military spending and in which many of us are victims of unilateral coercive measures that hinder our development aspirations,” the Havana representative denounced.

Along the same lines, he stated that this international order is incapable of preventing the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip in Palestine, a victim of genocide by Israel, from facing a serious food crisis and hundreds of people, including children and the elderly, from dying of malnutrition and hunger.

Cuba, he emphasized, despite the economic, commercial, and financial blockade imposed by the United States government, remains committed to seeking creative solutions that will allow it to move forward and counter the impact of this unilateral measure.

He mentioned the Food and Nutrition Sovereignty and Security Law, approved on the Caribbean island in 2022, which facilitates the joint action of all national and local institutions and structures linked to food production, with the primary support of agroecological development and its proven environmental protection.

“The resources to eradicate hunger and transform food systems are available; all that’s needed is political will and commitment to use them for the benefit of the people,” the Cuban deputy prime minister asserted.

In this regard, he added that South-South cooperation demonstrated that with solidarity and determination, it is possible to promote food security.

He expressed his gratitude to the United Nations and the governments of Ethiopia and Italy for organizing UNFSS+4, as well as for the hospitality provided to the Cuban delegation.

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Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Jul 7 (Prensa Latina) Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel denounced the consequences of the coercive measures imposed by the United States on the construction of the Caribbean country’s social and development projects.

“The blockade is an act of aggression, whose offensively extraterritorial implementation harms the sovereignty of all states,” the Cuban president stated on Sunday while speaking at the 17th BRICS Summit panel on “Strengthening Multilateralism, Economic, and Financial Affairs, and Artificial Intelligence.”

Diaz-Canel remembered that in recent days, the US Government approved a new package of measures, through a Presidential Memorandum, aimed at stifling the country’s economy.

“No other country has had to build its social and development project under the prolonged, cruel, and systematic application of an economic, commercial, and financial siege by the greatest power in history,” he noted.

The Cuban head of State underscored that unilateral listings and certifications, based on criteria he described as unfounded, such as Washington’s designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, have no space in the 21st century.

The United States has no moral authority or international mandate to certify Cuba or any other country, he said.

To face common challenges, Diaz-Canel emphasized, humanity urgently needs solidarity, respect for differences, dialogue, cooperation, and integration.

“Present and future generations have the right to live in a world of peace and security, where social justice, respect for cultural, ethnic, and religious diversity, and democratic access to science and technology prevail,” he reflected in his speech.

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Montevideo, July 27 (Prensa Latina) The Communist Party of Uruguay reaffirmed Cuba’s right to independence and to build socialism, according to a statement by the Central Committee of that political group, released on the occasion of the commemoration of the 72nd anniversary of the assaults on Moncada and Carlos de Cespedes barracks.

The assaults (July 26, 1953) and the subsequent impact leave valuable lessons for those of us fighting for social emancipation, the statement states.

The Communist Party of Uruguay affirmed that respect for the sovereignty and self-determination of peoples includes the freedom to build another social system, as Cuba is doing despite the economic, financial, and commercial siege by the United States.

The declaration emphasizes that the triumph of the Cuban Revolution opened a historic stage of socialist construction, of achievements and conquests, and of permanent internationalist solidarity; therefore, they reaffirm the demand, which is shared by the vast majority of the world’s countries, for an end to the criminal U.S. commercial and financial blockade.

The Uruguayan communists demanded that the U.S. government remove Cuba from the unilateral list of state sponsors of terrorism; this is a falsehood and causes additional economic and financial harm to the Caribbean island, it denounces.

We reject the latest measures adopted by the Donald Trump administration, which further deepen the harassment and siege against Cuba, the text concludes.

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