Cuba: Why It Remains a Material Threat to US Imperialism

It is an error to assume that Cuba’s threat to the U.S is merely ideological or symbolic, as it fails to account for the material threat that Cuba’s revolutionary state poses to US imperialism.

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For over sixty years, the United States has maintained an economic, commercial, and financial blockade against Cuba—a siege that the United Nations General Assembly has annually and systematically condemned, as it constitutes a crime against humanity and a flagrant violation of international law. The persistent justification offered by the United States for this siege has been Cuba’s alleged “crime” against capitalism: the nationalization of U.S.-owned property following the Cuban Revolution, without compensation to the capitalist, neo-colonial rulers who had controlled Cuba’s industries. This logic remains a significant pillar of international law today.

However, while this explanation has been repeated like a catechism by the United States and its advocates for capital, it conceals the true “crime” for which Cuba is being punished: not only did it dare to expel American capital—it outright opposed imperialism, asserted its own sovereignty, and later established a socialist movement that risked upending the Monroe Doctrine, a cornerstone of American imperialism.

Consequently, Cuba remains a “threat” to the United States, not because of its military capacity—which is negligible—but because its very existence refutes the core claims of capitalism: namely, that capitalism is the most efficient economic system, that poor nations must accept neo-colonial dependency, and that the United States has the right to rule the Western hemisphere unchallenged. More importantly, as a multipolar world emerges from the contradictions of capitalism itself, the revolutionary state of Cuba is ideally positioned to serve as a conduit for China and the BRICS bloc to enter the Americas—thereby materially threatening U.S. imperialism. Thus, it is an error to assume that Cuba’s threat to the United States is merely ideological or symbolic, as such an assumption fails to account for the legitimate material implications that Cuba’s revolutionary state poses to U.S. imperialism.

To elaborate this argument, this article provides a historical synopsis of U.S. involvement in Cuba within the context of imperialism. It dissects how American capital acquired its Cuban holdings through the process of primitive accumulation; how the 1959 Revolution simply repossessed what had been stolen from the Cuban people; how the U.S. legal system was subsequently weaponized to punish Cuba for its audacity in opposing imperialism; and how the ongoing blockade proves that the threat Cuba poses was, and remains, existential to the very fabric of U.S. imperialism.