The government of Cuba today denounced the United States’ military deployment in the Caribbean Sea, considering it a direct threat to the region, driven under «absurd pretexts» and in clear violation of the spirit of peace promoted by Latin American and Caribbean countries.
The declaration from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Minrex), disseminated this Thursday, states that the deployment of US forces constitutes «a grave threat and an aggressive demonstration of force» that attacks the sovereignty and self-determination of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean.
Likewise, it underlines that this action ignores the collective commitment of the 33 member countries of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in proclaiming the region a Zone of Peace.
It states that Washington’s accusation of linking the legitimate government of Venezuela and its president, Nicolás Maduro Moros, with illicit drug trafficking networks is unfounded and responds to a disinformation strategy.
The declaration recalls that not even the United States’ own Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) included the Venezuelan government in its annual report as a facilitator of drug trafficking to US territory.
Furthermore, the text indicates that these accusations form part of a historical pattern of lies used by the United States to justify military interventions in the region. In this sense, the Minrex pronouncement brings up the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, based on the false assertion of the existence of weapons of mass destruction.
That pretext served to attack and invade a sovereign country, provoke the death of hundreds of thousands of its citizens and the forced displacement of a similar number, recalls the Chancellery of the Antillean country.
The declaration highlights a revealing fact: according to the 2025 Global Drug Report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the United States is the largest market for narcotics in the region and probably in the world. In this sense, the text underlines that within the country itself operate the largest networks that stimulate consumption, guarantee distribution, facilitate trafficking and launder the enormous profits of drug trafficking, with relative impunity and without an effective government effort to stop them.
The declaration states that the substantial sums generated in this illegal market incentivise the creation and expansion of criminal networks in Latin America and the Caribbean. Additionally, it criticises the US «vigorous arms industry» and its lax regulations on marketing, which feed the lethal power of criminal groups in the region.
Likewise, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs rejects the use of irregular migratory flows as justification for militarising the Caribbean Sea. At the same time, it firmly questions whether the deployment of nuclear submarines, warships and disproportionate war potential in a historically peaceful zone is an adequate or legitimate response to address organised crime, drug trafficking or migration.
«Who with a minimum of common sense and honesty can believe that this massive military deployment truly seeks to combat these phenomena?» the document asks, qualifying the operation as another example of the renewed application of the Monroe Doctrine, a historical tool of US interventionism in America.
Cuba reiterates its commitment to the effective and transparent fight against drug trafficking, the defence of national sovereignty and the promotion of regional peace. And, in line with what was expressed by President Miguel Díaz-Canel during the XIII Extraordinary Summit of ALBA-TCP on past 20th August, it calls on the countries of the region to denounce «firmly the new demonstrations of imperialist force» that threaten the stability of the Caribbean and Latin America.
