“Standing with humanity itself means standing with Cuba,
as a key step in defeating Trump’s push for endless war.”
Richard Burgon MP spoke at Stop the War’s recent International Anti-War Conference. You can read an edited version of his speech below.
2026 began with Trump bombing Venezuela nd kidnapping its President. Since then, we’ve had threats to Greenland, the ongoing arming of Israel’s genocide, and a murderous war on Iran, causing great harm to the people in Iran and driving up prices worldwide.
Some think these are the acts of a madman. It is something far more dangerous: it is a plan. A plan set out in Trump’s new National Security Strategy.
Trump’s Security Strategy is a new form of US gangster politics, where might is right, where the international rules established after World War II are ripped up because they stand in the way of American power.
That system was far from perfect, but Trump’s alternative will make the world more dangerous for everyone, including here in Europe, where Trump has made clear he wants far-right parties in power – and his billionaire allies are pushing hatred online to achieve that.
But Trump’s Strategy places one region in its crosshairs more than any other: Latin America. The Strategy is explicit: Latin America, its resources and 700 million people will be little more than a US colony. Trump’s Strategy says the United States will “Reassert and enforce the Monroe Doctrine to restore American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere.”
It’s a vision of domination. Venezuela was just the starting gun. It was never simply an oil grab of the world’s largest reserves. It was the start of a new power grab to dominate an entire continent, and Cuba is next in line.
To control an entire region, you must first defeat those who most consistently resisted domination. For decades, Cuba has been a beacon of independence, an example of national sovereignty over resources, proof that a small country can refuse to submit. That is why Cuba is deemed a threat and why Trump believes Cuba must be broken. And that is why we must now build the biggest movement of solidarity with it.
No nation on Earth has shown greater solidarity with others than Cuba. Where Washington sends bombs around the world, Cuba sends doctors. Where the US backs genocide, Cuba helped defeat apartheid in South Africa.
I recently visited Cuba on a humanitarian delegation. Not a drop of oil had arrived for three months. The hardship was immense, the cruelty plain to see. But so too was the dignity and determination of the Cuban people.
Trump will not stop with Cuba. He will seek to crush every progressive movement across Latin America. No government that challenges US domination in any form will be tolerated. It is a counter-revolution against everything Latin America’s progressive movements have won over the past quarter-century: against asserting sovereignty over natural resources; against using national wealth for healthcare, education and public services; against greater regional integration that reduces dependence on Washington.
None of that is acceptable to Trump; to prevent it, Trump will prop up far-right fanatics across the continent, attack democratic freedoms, violate basic human rights, and crush popular movements just as the US did in the 1970s and 1980s when it backed military dictatorships across Latin America and armed death squads. Hundreds of thousands were murdered, tortured and disappeared.
That is why the struggle for Cuba’s sovereignty is not only a struggle for Cuba, but for the future of Latin America and self-determination the world over. The great Cuban poet and fighter for national liberation José Martí once declared:
“Humanity is our homeland.”
And today, standing with humanity itself means standing with Cuba, as a key step in defeating Trump’s push for endless war.
- Richard Burgon is the MP for Leeds East, the Secretary of the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs and a regular contributor to Labour Outlook. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.
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