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Topics: News, US News, World News, Donald Trump
Kit Roberts
Topics: News, US News, World News, Donald Trump
Cuba's president has issued a defiant message to Donald Trump after US threats against the nation.
Miguel Díaz-Canel promised that a US attempt to invade Cuba would be met with 'impregnable resistance' on the island.
Taking to social media, he wrote: “Only in this way can the fierce economic war be explained, which is applied as collective punishment against the entire people.
“In the face of the worst scenario, Cuba is accompanied by a certainty: any external aggressor will clash with an impregnable resistance.”
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Trump has repeatedly alluded to the possibility of US military intervention in Cuba, saying on Tuesday: “We’ll be doing something with Cuba very soon.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has also given a clear message, saying that Cuba needs 'new people in charge'.
He said: “Their economy doesn’t work…They’re in a lot of trouble, and the people in charge, they don’t know how to fix it, so they have to get new people in charge.”
Cuba's economy has struggled since the US cut off its supply of oil, which had mainly come from Venezuela.
This has led to mass power outages across the island as the grid doesn't ahve any means to generate power, with most of the 10 million inhabitants in a power cut on Monday according to CNN.
In his second term, Trump has already shown a strong willingness to intervene.
Venezuela has been the first target, with Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro detained by US forces and strikes carried out against the Venezuelan capital Caracas.
Since then, the US has also put an embargo in place on Venezuelan oil exports.
Trump has also intervened in Iran, carrying out strikes over three weeks alongside.
US attacks in Venezuela and Iran lend weight to Trump's threats against the US' southern neighbour, with Havana located just a few hundred miles from Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence.
Cuba has been a difficult topic for US foreign policy since Fidel Castro's anti-imperialist revolution in 1959.
As Castro grew closer to the USSR, the US backed the unsuccessful Bay of Pigs Invasion in an attempt to remove him, as well as isolating Cuba with economic sanctions.
However, it appeared that after decades of tension US-Cuban relations appeared to be thawing towards the end of Barack Obama's presidency in 2015.
Obama was able to relax some visa restrictions, allowing US-Cuban citizens to visit family in the country.
There was also some relaxation of imports and exports on the country, and the mood around Cuba prior to 2016 appeared to be that it was only a matter of time until Castro's communism began to morph into something different.
However this all changed after Trump was elected to the White House, and soon reintroduced a punishing embargo on Cuba.