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By Anne Kamath and Umer Azad for Codepink
The world is witnessing yet another manufactured humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in plain sight in Cuba. This crisis is not the result of any internal collapse or mismanagement. It is the deliberate outcome of United States policy, a policy of collective punishment designed to impose economic suffocation on an entire population to extract political change. President Donald Trump has openly declared his intention to overthrow the Cuban government by year’s end, meaning Washington is transforming its decades-old blockade into a full-scale siege. The Trump administration has absurdly designated the small, peaceful Caribbean nation as “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States, weaponizing tariffs and economic coercion against any country that dares to sell oil to Cuba.
The consequences are immediate and impossible to ignore. Cuban authorities have announced that jet fuel will be unavailable at airports across the country starting this week, disrupting airport operations and grounding both domestic and international carriers. Canadian airlines have already announced contingency plans for flights to and from Cuba, assessing reroutes, suspensions, and assistance for stranded travelers. But aviation is only the most visible edge of a far deeper collapse. If Cuba’s energy infrastructure fails, people will die. This is not a metaphor. It is inevitable. Without electricity, food cannot be grown, preserved, or transported. Medicines cannot be produced, refrigerated, or administered. Hospitals cannot operate. Ambulances, incubators, and ventilators will stop.
This deprivation is not at all incidental. It is intentional. Administration officials and the extreme right Cuban American political establishment have been explicit: the goal is to inflict suffering, to manufacture hunger, medicine shortages, and nationwide blackouts as instruments of regime change. Washington’s intentions could not be clearer. The United States is attempting to strangle an entire nation into submission.
While the U.S. pursues this deliberate campaign of suffering, Ottawa has once again chosen the path of procedural dithering, offering words instead of action. Canada’s response, to no one’s surprise, has been another Kafkaesque exercise in bureaucratic evasion. When Senator Yuen Pau Woo asked officials from the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade what Canada is doing to prevent this potentially catastrophic humanitarian disaster in Cuba, the exchange exposed more absence than action. Pressed for specifics, the response was: “There are no specifics.” The officials further conceded that “there is no humanitarian response plan for Cuba that I’m aware of,” explaining that Canada’s engagement has been framed as “more looking at the development context and not the humanitarian context.” In practice, this distinction functions as a delay mechanism. The government is “looking into the matter,” as it so often does, deferring urgency behind the process while conditions deteriorate. The latency appears less accidental than structural. And, as usual, no timeline has been offered, no indication of when this period of observation will end, or when statements will give way to action.
This pattern is not all new, nor is it confined to Cuba. It is, in fact, a continuation of a long record of calibrated restraint and strategic silence. Canada’s response over the past few years has been consistent, predictable, and deeply inadequate. By now, Canada has perfected the art of tactful bystanding, present in language, absent in consequence. Ottawa has expressed concern, called for de-escalation, and urged all parties to respect international law, but it has avoided naming responsibility and evaded confronting its closest ally. Canada criticizes outcomes while refusing to challenge the very system that produces them. This is simply appeasement dressed up as diplomacy. While statements are issued, the systems that produce these horrors remain untouched, leaving ordinary people, Palestinians, Venezuelans, Iranians, and now Cubans, to bear the consequences.
For the past two years, the United States has funded and enabled genocide in Gaza, where tens of thousands of civilians have been killed with U.S. weapons, under U.S. protection, with full knowledge that no meaningful consequences will follow. A recent Al Jazeera investigation revealed that U.S. supplied thermal and thermobaric munitions, burning at 3,500 degrees Celsius, effectively evaporated nearly 3,000 Palestinians, leaving no trace of their bodies, a stark illustration of unchecked barbarism. And as we speak, Israeli authorities are reportedly preparing to execute Palestinian prisoners under mandatory death penalties in military courts for vaguely defined “terrorism” offenses, laws applied only to Palestinians. And yet Canada, despite claiming to have imposed an arms embargo, continues to supply ammunition and weapons parts that fuel this violence. Canadian factories produce fighter jet components, explosives, and munitions that flow through U.S. channels directly into the assault, sustaining the machinery of death while Ottawa issues carefully worded statements of concern.
This silence is not confined to Gaza. After the United States launched strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, Ottawa responded with bland calls for calm and diplomacy. Still, it deliberately refrained from directly condemning Washington’s military action, instead echoing cautious G7 language about negotiation without even naming the U.S. role in the escalation.
And when the U.S. carried out large‑scale strikes in Venezuela and captured its president, Canada’s official statement did not even bother to mention the United States. And, instead offered abstract calls for all parties to “uphold international law” while leaving Washington’s unilateral intervention unchallenged.
In each case, Ottawa paid lip service to restraint while leaving raw power untouched, exposing how Ottawa’s posture has consistently privileged diplomatic caution over moral accountability.
Although recently, it did seem that Canada’s posture might be shifting, tellingly, not because of mass civilian deaths abroad. The change came only when U.S. military adventurism edged closer to home. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s warnings about a collapsing rules-based international order only came after the U.S. threatened Greenland, a territory tied to NATO allies and Arctic stability. Only then did Canada speak clearly about sovereignty, coercion, and the dangers of unchecked power. The timing is telling. It suggests Canada perceives the risks of impunity only when they threaten Western interests or its own proximity, while the devastation inflicted on others remains effectively invisible.
Even then, the response has remained largely rhetorical.
And now, as the humanitarian catastrophe looms in Cuba, Canada appears to be relying on verbal gymnastics to maintain political correctness while avoiding meaningful action. Even though, on paper, Ottawa opposes U.S. sanctions and the blockade, in practice, it offers no condemnation, no advocacy, and no protection for ordinary Cubans facing hunger, blackouts, and collapsing hospitals. Suffice it to say, Canada has by now perfected the role of silent bystander to nearly an art form.
Today, the mechanisms that enable atrocity, impunity, exceptionalism, and allied silence are on full display and fully operational, and Cuba is simply the latest victim. To call the United States’ behavior “outside the spirit of international law” would be a grotesque understatement. Washington treats international law as optional, shielding mass civilian slaughter through diplomatic vetoes, launching unilateral strikes with impunity, and sustaining devastation through overwhelming military support.
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From Gaza to Cuba: How Canada Remains the World’s Most Tactful Bystander
Canada is not responsible for U.S. actions. But it is responsible for its response to them. Ottawa has deliberately hidden behind bureaucratic loopholes while allowing Canadian-made weapons components and ammunition to move through U.S. supply chains and into Israel, insulating itself from accountability while profiting from the machinery of war. Carney’s government has offered no clear or urgent plan on Bill C-233, legislation intended to curb Canadian arms exports where there is a risk of war crimes. The bill continues to hang in limbo, while Canada remains embedded in U.S. military supply chains. Canadian-made F-35 components and ammunition continue to flow to the United States, where end-use accountability effectively disappears. Simultaneously, Canada continues to export armoured vehicles and security equipment to U.S. agencies, including ICE, an institution that has detained Canadian citizens without explanation, due process, or urgency.
When Canada’s response to ICE’s documented brutalities of its own citizens is so plainly inadequate, it comes as no surprise that its response to U.S. aggression abroad is equally hollow and insufficient. None of the countries affected by the U.S. aggression, Palestinians, Iranians, Venezuelans, Cubans, or others subjected to unilateral force, believe that Canada is in their corner in any meaningful way. None. Canada’s response serves no protective function at all. It is a calculated performance of concern, engineered to evade moral obligation without disrupting U.S. power.
If Canada genuinely wants to make a difference, it can start with something simple and immediate: sell essential goods to Cuba, food, fuel, and medicine. Not statements. Not carefully worded press releases. Tangible relief that keeps lights on, shelves stocked, and patients alive. Yet, as so often before, Ottawa may retreat behind another polished, empty statement while taking no meaningful action.
Ottawa’s approach is built on a reckless assumption that Trump’s chaos is governed by strategy, that U.S. volatility is calculable, and that Canada will somehow remain exempt. That illusion has already collapsed. The same contempt for international law has now extended to Greenland, with explicit annexation threats aimed at allies. If Canada continues to hedge, appease, and delay rather than act on principle, it should not expect any support when its own sovereignty is challenged. Silence does not buy safety. It only invites escalation. If Canada does not adjust its course, it may find that when threats strike closer to home, there will be no one left willing to stand alongside it.
Anne Kamath an activist from Windsor, Ontario, whose work began over 20 years ago in opposition to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Currently, she serves as one of the organizers of CODEPINK Ontario, where a central focus of her advocacy is supporting the Land Back movement and Indigenous sovereignty. Her two decades of organizing reflect a sustained commitment to peace, justice, and decolonization.
Umer Azad is a software engineer by profession and a volunteer with CODEPINK and the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM). He previously served as the Regional Social Media Expert for Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), where he worked on digital outreach, exposing voter fraud, and documenting human rights violations.
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