Cuba denounces the "absurd" pretexts of the US military deployment in the Caribbean Sea

Statement by the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs, translated from the Spanish

The Cuban government strongly rejects the current deployment of U.S. military forces in the Caribbean Sea. This dangerous act represents a grave threat and an aggressive show of force that threatens the sovereignty and self-determination of the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean. It also ignores the commitment of the 33 member countries of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States when they proclaimed the region as a Zone of Peace.

The US claims associating the legitimate government of Venezuela and its President Nicolas Maduro with criminal organizations involved in illegal drug trafficking is an absurd pretext that is unfounded. Leaders in Washington are irresponsibly disregarding the assessment of their own Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) that, in its report this year, does not mention the Venezuelan Government among the authors or enablers of drug trafficking operations threatening the United States territory.

The Government of the United States resorts to lies once again to justify violence and plunder. They utilize them in the renewed application of the dominance strategy rooted in the Monroe Doctrine, which is essential to their interventionist approach in the Americas. On the basis of similar fallacies, they have carried out ruthless aggressions resulting in considerable and prolonged human costs. An example from recent decades was the charade about the alleged presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. This pretext served to attack and invade a sovereign country, causing the death of hundreds of thousands of its citizens and the forced displacement of a similar number.

The United States is the largest market for narcotics in the region and possibly the world, according to the World Drug Report 2025, published by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. This fact is well-known and the international community has a duty to denounce it. The largest networks are situated in the US, promoting consumption, ensuring distribution, and aiding in the movement, collection, and accumulation of substantial profits. Such networks launder the resulting drug money within the country's own economy with relative impunity, without serious and effective efforts being made by the government to stop it.

The immense proceeds from the illegal US market encourage the emergence and operation of drug trafficking networks in Latin America and the Caribbean. The influential arms industry in that country, along with its unrestricted commercialization privileges, fuels the deadly power of the region's criminal organizations. Neglect and failure to act on the root causes of the phenomenon within the United States will only intensify the regional impact of this scourge.

Cuba reiterates its firm commitment to the honest and effective fight against illegal trafficking in drugs, the defense of national sovereignty and the promotion of peace and stability in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Cuba denounces in equally strong terms the use of irregular migration flows as an excuse to turn the waters of the Caribbean Sea into a war zone. No one with minimum common sense and honesty believe that the quantity of the troops, the combat materiel, naval forces, including nuclear submarines, and the firepower that the United States has sought to deploy in this peaceful area of the world, is the appropriate manner to fight organized crime, illicit drug trafficking or irregular migration flows, nor that this deployment is truly pursuing its stated goals.

Cuba reiterates the call made by President Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermúdez, at the 13th Extraordinary Summit of ALBA-TCP, on August 20, to firmly denounce the new imperialist shows of force.

Havana, 28 August 2025.

This work was translated an shared via a License CC-BY-NC