On Sunday, March 22, 2026, Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio appeared on NBC's Meet the Press. Cuba had just experienced its third nationwide power blackout in March — the second in a week. The island's electrical grid had collapsed again. Millions of people were in the dark.
De Cossio was not there to talk about the lights.
He was there to respond to US President Donald Trump's threat, issued March 16, that the US expected to have the "honour" of taking over Cuba. De Cossio said Cuba had "historically been ready to mobilise as a nation for military aggression" and added: "We don't believe it is something that is probable, but we would be naive if we do not prepare."
That is a government in a state of near-total energy collapse, on national television, saying it is prepared for war with the United States.
The Sequence of Events
To understand where things stand, you need to track what has happened since January 2026, because events have moved fast.
January 3, 2026: US military personnel detained Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. The operation — widely described internationally as an abduction — cut off Cuba's primary oil lifeline. Venezuela had been supplying Cuba with subsidized oil under a deal dating to the early Chávez era, sometimes exceeding 100,000 barrels per day in exchange for Cuban medical personnel and security advisors. With Maduro in US custody and the Venezuelan government in chaos, those shipments stopped.
January–March 2026: The Trump administration imposed a fuel blockade on Cuba, warning foreign oil exporters that supplying Cuba could trigger punishing US tariffs. According to Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, Cuba has not received oil from any foreign supplier for three months. The country produces only about 40 percent of the fuel it needs domestically.
March 2026: Three nationwide grid collapses. Oil-fired thermoelectric plants running on near-empty reserves. Hospitals and water systems on emergency power. Public protests, including the reported burning of a Communist Party headquarters in the provincial town of Morón — a rare and significant breach of the political norm in Cuba.
March 16, 2026: Trump escalated rhetoric, saying Cuba's leadership was "on the verge of collapse" and that he expected to "take over" the country.
March 22, 2026: De Cossio on NBC. Cuba's military posture goes public.
What the US Military Actually Said
Trump's rhetoric and the Pentagon's posture are not the same thing — and the gap between them matters.
General Francis Donovan, head of US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which oversees US military operations in Latin America and the Caribbean, testified before a US Senate hearing this week. His testimony drew a sharp line between Trump's public language and what US forces are actually doing.
Donovan told the Senate that US troops were not rehearsing for an invasion of Cuba and were not actively preparing to take over the Communist-governed island. He explicitly stated the military was not conducting invasion preparations.
What Donovan said the US military was prepared to do:
- Address threats to the US embassy in Havana
- Defend the US military base at Guantanamo Bay
- Aid US government efforts to manage potential mass migration from Cuba if conditions deteriorated further
The migration concern is not theoretical. Cuba has already seen substantial emigration over the past several years, with record numbers of Cubans entering the United States via the southern border in 2022 and 2023. A sustained energy collapse — no power, strained hospitals, food distribution disruptions — could accelerate that flow dramatically. The US military's most concrete operational preparation appears to be for that scenario.
The Diesel Dispute
One detail from this weekend crystallizes the level of tension.
The US embassy in Havana requested permission from Cuban authorities to import diesel fuel — for its own generators, to keep the embassy running through the blackouts. Cuba refused.
The Associated Press, citing two US officials, reported the refusal on Saturday. Cuba has not publicly explained the decision. The most straightforward reading: it's a reciprocal signal. The US is blocking Cuba's oil imports. Cuba is blocking the US embassy's diesel.
Separately, de Cossio made clear that Cuba's system of government is not on the table in the ongoing US-Cuba dialogue. He described the talks — which Havana has characterized as "serious and responsible" — as entirely separate from any question of political structure. "The political system of Cuba is not up for negotiation," he said, "and of course neither the president nor the position of any official in Cuba is subject to negotiation with the United States."
Cuba's Military Reality
Cuba's armed forces — the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) — are the largest in the Caribbean and have a track record that surprised much larger opponents. In the 1970s and 1980s, Cuba deployed expeditionary forces to Angola, Ethiopia, and elsewhere in Africa that proved highly effective against South African-backed forces. Cuba's military culture treats the prospect of US invasion as an existential scenario to be prepared for at all times — it has been the defining premise of Cuban defense doctrine since 1962.
What Cuba cannot do is win a conventional war against the United States. The US military's technological and logistical advantage is overwhelming. But that's not necessarily the relevant comparison. A US military operation against Cuba would not look like the invasion of Grenada in 1983 (a small island with minimal organized resistance). It would look more like an occupation scenario — costly, politically complicated, and with no obvious exit strategy.
Historical context matters here. The US has intervened militarily in Cuba twice in the modern era:
- 1961 — Bay of Pigs: A CIA-trained invasion force of Cuban exiles landed at the Bay of Pigs. Cuban forces repelled the invasion within 72 hours. It is still taught in military schools as a case study in poorly planned covert operations. The Kennedy administration absorbed a major political humiliation.
- 1962 — Cuban Missile Crisis: The US and Soviet Union came within hours of nuclear exchange over the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. Resolved diplomatically. Castro's government survived.
Talks Are Happening — With a Hard Floor
Despite the military language, diplomacy is not dead. Cuba and the United States have been engaged in what Havana describes as ongoing dialogue since earlier in March. Cuba initiated the contact and has described it as "serious and responsible."
What Cuba has made explicit is what's off the table: its political system, its government's composition, and any change to one-party rule. De Cossio's NBC appearance was partly aimed at a domestic audience — signaling resilience — and partly at Washington: there is a floor to what Cuba will discuss, and it is not negotiable.
The US, for its part, is applying maximum pressure short of direct military action. The fuel blockade continues. The tariff threats aimed at third-country oil suppliers remain in place. Trump's public rhetoric has invoked regime change. But SOUTHCOM's general is telling the Senate no invasion is being planned.
The gap between Trump's stated desire and the Pentagon's operational posture suggests one of two things: either the regime change talk is primarily rhetorical pressure designed to accelerate Cuba's collapse from within, or there is a genuine difference between what the White House is saying publicly and what the national security apparatus is willing to execute.
Why This Matters Beyond Cuba
The Cuba situation is not just about Cuba. It sits at the intersection of several larger US foreign policy moves:
The Maduro seizure set a precedent. The January 3 detention of a sitting head of state — whatever legal justification the US cited — marked a departure from the post-WWII norm of sovereign immunity for foreign leaders. If Venezuela's president can be seized, other governments in the hemisphere are reassessing their exposure. Cuba is watching this directly, since it was the loss of Maduro that triggered its current crisis.
The fuel blockade is a test of economic warfare. The US is attempting to deprive a country of energy entirely — not through sanctions narrowly targeting government officials, but by threatening any country that dares sell Cuba oil. If it works, it establishes a template. If it produces a humanitarian catastrophe that the world watches in real time, it produces a different kind of precedent.
Mass migration is the wildcard. Cuba is 90 miles from Florida. If the grid continues to collapse and living conditions deteriorate past a tipping point, large-scale migration across the Straits of Florida becomes a domestic US political crisis, not just a foreign policy one. That is what SOUTHCOM's testimony suggested the military is actually preparing for.
The Record
Cuba's national grid has collapsed three times in March 2026. Its president says the country has received no foreign oil in three months. Its deputy foreign minister is on American national television saying the country is prepared for military attack.
The US general in charge of Latin American operations is telling the Senate there's no invasion being planned — but the US stands ready to defend its base at Guantanamo, protect its embassy, and manage a migration emergency.
Talks are happening. A floor exists on what Cuba will concede. The fuel blockade continues.
These facts do not resolve into a clean narrative. They resolve into a standoff — one in which the side with more leverage is applying it, and the side with less leverage is signaling that it will absorb the pressure rather than capitulate.
Whether that standoff ends in negotiation, collapse, or something else is the question. No one knows the answer yet.