US State Department’s Cuba conspiracy report exposes its own desperation
Campaign News | Friday, 24 July 2026
The Cuba Solidarity Campaign condemns the US State Department’s latest propaganda attack on Cuba and the international solidarity movement.
Its report, Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism, presents the extraordinary claim that the Cuban government is the "connective tissue" of a vast global anti-US conspiracy. According to the report, Havana is responsible for everything from the Sandinista Revolution and the Black Panthers to Black Live Matter and today's anti-ICE and Palestine solidarity movements.
The report also attacks progressive organisations across the United States, including the National Network on Cuba, Code Pink, the National Lawyers Guild and the Democratic Socialists of America. It is not simply an attack on Cuba, but on those who oppose the Trump administration's policies and challenge the US blockade.
It reserves particular venom for the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), portraying an organisation established to build international friendship, host delegations and connect Cuba with solidarity movements as the centre of a sinister worldwide network. Cultural exchanges, friendship associations, sister-city links and visits to Cuba are all treated as forms of subversion, and the report even celebrates the Trump administration's sanctions against ICAP.
In the State Department's paranoid worldview, even friendship is a threat. Washington wants not only to blockade Cuba, but to blockade friendship with Cuba.
Beyond the United States, the report names the Cuba Solidarity Campaign and CSC's solidarity brigades. In doing so, it also attacks the many British trade unionists, MPs, students and campaigners who have travelled to Cuba over decades to learn from the Cuban people and witness the impact of the US blockade first hand. Every year, delegations organised by CSC, including representatives from UNISON, Unite, NEU, PCS, CWU, the RMT and other trade unions, visit Cuba to meet health workers, teachers, trade unionists and local communities. They return inspired not by propaganda, but by what they have seen with their own eyes: the extraordinary resilience of the Cuban people in the face of relentless economic warfare. The report even singles out Jeremy Corbyn MP for joining the March 2026 Nuestra América humanitarian convoy, during which he, Richard Burgon MP, and CSC’s Natasha Hickman delivered medical aid to a cancer hospital and witnessed first-hand the devastating human impact of the US siege.
Are British trade unionists who deliver medical aid to hospitals a security threat? Are teachers visiting Cuban schools part of an intelligence network? Are MPs who witness the humanitarian consequences of US sanctions agents of a foreign power? The report's logic is as absurd as it is dangerous.
People in Britain are not drawn to solidarity with Cuba because they are manipulated by Havana. They join CSC because they recognise the injustice of a six-decade blockade that seeks to make an entire people suffer for defending their sovereignty.
Those who travel with CSC see the consequences of US policy for themselves. They meet doctors unable to obtain essential medicines, communities enduring prolonged power cuts and shortages, and ordinary Cubans determined to defend their country despite immense hardship. These experiences inspire solidarity because they expose the human cost of the blockade.
Many are also inspired by Cuba's extraordinary record of internationalism – from supporting the struggle against apartheid in southern Africa to sending medical brigades to communities affected by disasters and epidemics around the world.
The State Department cannot accept that people might support Cuba because of these realities. Instead, it portrays every friendship organisation, delegation and humanitarian campaign as part of a foreign influence operation. That is not serious analysis. It is Cold War propaganda.
The report also exposes the desperation of the Trump administration. Since January it has tightened its economic war against Cuba still further, targeting oil supplies, foreign investment, finance, tourism and humanitarian aid. These measures have deepened shortages of food, fuel and medicines, contributed to worsening blackouts and had devastating consequences for public health.
Yet despite this unprecedented pressure, the Cuban people have not surrendered.
Washington cannot break Cuba – so it smears its friends
In desperation, Washington has responded with more sanctions, more threats and now a report that attempts to discredit the organisations exposing the humanitarian consequences of its policy.
The hypocrisy is impossible to ignore. While smearing solidarity organisations, the US government openly spends millions of dollars through agencies such as USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy funding organisations and media projects dedicated to undermining Cuba's government and supporting regime change.
This report should therefore be seen for what it is: a smear campaign against Cuba, ICAP and the international solidarity movement, and an attempt to intimidate opposition to a failed policy condemned by the overwhelming majority of the world's governments every year during the United Nations General Assembly vote.
CSC stands in solidarity with ICAP and with our sister organisations in the United States and elsewhere that have been targeted. We reject attempts to smear campaigners, trade unionists and humanitarian activists whose only "offence" is opposing an illegal and inhumane blockade.
No amount of propaganda will change the reason the Cuba solidarity movement exists. It exists because millions of people reject decades of US economic warfare and collective punishment of the Cuban people.
This report will not intimidate us. It will strengthen our determination to campaign against the blockade, expose the truth about its human consequences and build even greater solidarity with Cuba.
The more Washington tries to isolate Cuba, the more solidarity Cuba will receive.
