US military makes preparations for assault on Cuba within “90-120 days”

27 September 2026facebook iconA Marine Corps UH-1Y Venom crew chief fires an M134 minigun during a maritime interdiction operation in the Pacific Ocean on Sept. 2, 2026. The vessel was boarded and cleared before being destroyed. [Photo: Marine Corps ]The US Army Reserve has asked for preparations to supply the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) for a military assault against Cuba, “possibly needed in 90-120 days,” according to an internal Army message reported Friday by CBS News.

The report came three days after President Donald Trump used his address to the United Nations General Assembly to announce that Washington was seeking “a fundamental change in the situation in Cuba.” He declared:

It’s an absolutely failed State. It’s failing like never before and it will fall. Marco Rubio is handling the negotiation. He’s deep into negotiations with Cuba. Let’s see what happens. We’ll not allow a haven for foreign adversaries to threaten America on our own doorstep.

On Saturday, Trump responded to the CBS piece on Friday, telling reporters: “I’d say that Cuba and us will make a deal. I don’t think we’ll need the military. Cuba is failing very badly. We want to help Cuba. We want to open Cuba up to our people.” The emphasis fell on the last point.

The Pentagon’s preparations, together with the genocidal fuel blockade and sanctions, make clear that Washington is not seeking a compromise or diplomatic “deal” with Havana. The Cuban leadership has already put the island’s economy on offer. What US imperialism seeks, as it did in Venezuela, is direct control over Cuba’s resources, government and territory.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez condemned the blockade as “collective punishment” aimed at triggering a humanitarian crisis, itself a crime under international law.

The barbaric measures, more broadly, are designed take revenge for the 1959 revolution, destroy what remains of the revolution’s social gains and reimpose colonial slavery. The model is the puppet regime of Fulgencio Batista prior to 1959, when American politicians, businessmen and the Mafia freely enjoyed Cuba’s real estate, casinos and brothels.

“Anonymous leaks” like those in the CBS report are themselves an instrument of pressure on Havana. The purpose of the blockade was spelled out by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in August: “What we’re trying to teach them is there are no escape valves…. Every time they create a new mechanism in which they try to get out of the noose, we just close it off.”

Since the oil blockade began in January, infant mortality in Cuba has doubled, according to the UN. Not even during the Special Period of the 1990s, after Soviet aid ended, were conditions this severe. Cubans lie awake through sweltering nights without fans, unable to refrigerate food, besieged by mosquitoes and epidemics.

The Cuban delegation walked out as Trump spoke, and Chinese Vice President Han Zheng called from the same stage on “the relevant country to immediately stop using threat of force against Cuba and immediately and completely lift the blockade and sanctions against Cuba.”

There is no reason to idealize either the walkout or Beijing’s words. Cuban Foreign Minister Rodriguez added in his remarks at the UN that, “We have always been and will always be prepared for dialogue with the government of the United States.” Since confirming talks with Washington on March 13, the Cuban government has invited the FBI to the island and announced that Cubans abroad, including the right-wing gusano capitalists in Miami, may invest in and own businesses.

For its part, Beijing stood by as Washington seized control of the Venezuelan oil that was being traded to service billions of dollars in Chinese loans.

Trump’s threats against Cuba, delivered in the same speech in which he threatened to annihilate Iran, were made with open contempt for international law. In August, UN independent human rights experts warned that the fuel blockade launched in late January and the stream of US sanctions against any foreign firm doing business with the island risk creating a “silent Gaza.” In other words, the Cuban population is being annihilated not by bombs but by the deliberate deprivation of fuel, food, medicine, electricity and water.

Last week, UN special rapporteur Ben Saul concluded that the 68 US strikes on small fishing boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific through August, which had killed at least 223 people, amounted to “serial extrajudicial killings” that “plausibly constitute crimes against humanity.” The toll has since passed 230.

These massacres, carried out on the unproven claim that fishing boats were carrying drugs, have served as the pretext for the largest US military deployment in the Caribbean since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and a return to gunboat diplomacy.

The Army message reviewed by CBS lists six formations. They include a combat sustainment support battalion and an expeditionary sustainment command to run fuel, transport and supply across a theater of operations, an engineer battalion, a medical brigade, a forward resuscitative and surgical detachment to treat casualties near the front, and a military police brigade, whose missions include security and detentions. These are units for seizing and holding territory and imprisoning those who resist.

Earlier this year, according to CBS, US forces reconnoitered the seafloor and maritime approaches around Cuba, and planners considered an air assault by thousands of troops of the 101st Airborne Division. Moreover, the CIA has formed a Cuba task force to recruit spies and run covert operations.

Can you explain what is meant by calling the Cuban government a 'bourgeois nationalist' regime, and how does that differ from a genuine workers' state?What role has the Democratic Socialists of America historically played in relation to US foreign policy, and why would a figure like Mamdani avoid criticizing Trump's threats against Cuba?Ask more questions at SocialismAI.comThe Venezuelan experience shows Washington’s aim. In October 2025, the New York Times reported that President Nicolás Maduro had spent months offering the US a dominant stake in Venezuela’s oil and gold. Trump rejected it because he wanted complete subordination. After years of devastating sanctions, US forces seized Maduro on January 3. A classified CIA assessment had concluded that regime loyalists, including Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, were best placed to keep the state apparatus under control. Since the US intervention, Rodríguez has maintained the Chavista apparatus in power, administering a US protectorate that has handed Trump control over the country’s finances, and both its domestic and foreign policies.

The Castroite leadership is similarly offering economic concessions while insisting that the ruling layer keep its privileges and serve as Washington’s main partner.

Whether Washington proceeds through a raid, an invasion or a CIA-engineered palace coup cannot be predicted; it is actively planning for a military attack and occupation. Trump’s advisers have told the New York Times that they believe the Cuban government “could be gone by the time of the midterm election in the United States in November.”

The class character of the Cuban regime, like that of the Venezuelan, explains why it cannot mount a real defense. A bourgeois nationalist government, resting on the army, depends on the world market and imperialist finance capital, and it fears the independent political mobilization of the working class in Cuba, the United State and internationally, far more than it fears Washington.

No leading Democrat has made any public statement against either Trump’s threat against Cuba at the UN or the Pentagon preparations reported by CBS. This includes members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) such as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The day before Trump’s speech at the UN, Mamdani hosted and praised Trump at Gracie Mansion, providing a political cover for the unpopular fascist in the White House.

Nor have they said a word about the threat Trump made against the DSA itself from the UN podium. In a step toward criminalizing opposition to an unprovoked war on Cuba, Trump said Havana had “cultivated ties to subversive and radical groups such as the Communist Party USA, Antifa, and the Democratic Socialists of America.”

The Democratic Party has only proposed token and failed resolutions in Congress or written letters to Trump complaining about the social consequences of Trump’s measures within the framework of support for regime change in Havana. In the meantime, the Democrats have voted to keep the war machine now aimed at Cuba financed, covering the entire period in which the Army Reserve units would be “needed.”

The working class in Cuba, the United States and across the hemisphere must understand that the struggle against Trump’s assault on Cuba is the same as the fight against war, dictatorship and capitalist exploitation everywhere and requires an international, independent and revolutionary struggle against all capitalist parties and governments.