US Weaponization of Nature, Accident and Disease in Cuba: From the 1960s Drought and Hurricane Flora to the 2020s COVID and Hurricane Ian

The US government does not rely only on sanctions, proxy wars, psychological operations (psy-ops), funding of opposition, and direct invasion to create socioeconomic hardship and political conflict in a targeted country to weaken and overthrow its government. It also takes advantage of “natural disasters” by deliberately impeding the targeted government’s ability to recover from them. The US targeting of Cuba epitomizes this weaponization of nature. Since 2020, the US government—from the Trump to the Biden administrations—purposefully tightened already draconian sanctions against Cuba during the height of the COVID pandemic of 2020–1, kept them in place, and then refused to provide meaningful disaster relief when Hurricane Ian devastated the western end of the archipelago in October 2022.