After 64 years of sanctions and blockades against Cuba, the United States are now trying to starve out the entire country’s population in an explicit attempt to force régime change — and Canada cannot sit on the sidelines.

The US is preventing oil from reaching the country which depends on imports to power its electrical grid, its economy, and generally provide for its people. The American plan to steal Venezuelan oil is at the heart of the crisis, cutting off the island nation’s main supply.

The situation in Cuba is getting worse day by day. Schools are closed, public transit is shutting down, garbage collection is coming to a grinding halt, domestic food production is severely impacted. This attack on the Cuban people is completely unjustified and amounts to yet another war being waged by American dictator Donald Trump.

It is not clear what purpose continued sanctions serve. After 64 years of crushing the Cuban economy, Cuba has a slightly higher life expectancy than the US and the country and its régime have survived decades in spite of the outside pressure. But today, the country is at a breaking point.

They have not done anything dramatically different to warrant the fresh tightening of an already-unjustified noose. Rather, it is part of Trump’s expansionist imperialism. He is intent on dominating the western hemisphere through his “Donroe doctrine,” and Cuba is just another unaligned country to bring to heel.

Our government put out an advisory recommending against all non-essential travel to Cuba months ago. All commercial flights between Canada and Cuba have already stopped. Canada’s government is acutely aware of the situation, monitoring it with the cold clinical calculation of a distant observer.

We all heard Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech in Davos earlier this year describing the rupture in the world order caused by the American descent into chaotic authoritarianism, the need for middle powers to work together, to keep us at the table rather than on the menu.

With that clear-eyed understanding of the circumstances, we do not need to kowtow to American whims on the world stage, especially on issues such as Cuba where we have not been aligned with the United States since Pierre Trudeau visited the country in 1976.

We need to overtly recognise the injustice taking place, the public health risks, the wholesale shutdown of an entire country at the whim of a madman. It is up to Canada to do everything in our power to break the blockade and ensure that basic supplies, including oil, reach Cuban shores.

To let the Cuban people suffer at the hands of the Americans simply to avoid confrontation with a man who has already threatened us with annexation will accomplish nothing. All it will do is show our own vulnerability for when he turns the same aggressive attention toward us.

Helping Cuba survive this American attack is not pure selfless philanthropy, it is part of uniting the other states of America against the Donroe doctrine, the Trumpian worldview which seeks to subjugate every one of us. He has already attacked Venezuela, is collapsing Cuba, threatening Greenland, and openly discussing annexing Canada.

When Trump comes for us, we can only expect support if we remember the poem — and speak out for those for whom he is already coming.

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

–Pastor Martin Niemöller