130 countries still back Cuba. That’s the lowest in decades

Issue #408: For the 34th time, the UN told the U.S. to end its embargo on Cuba, but with the fewest 'yes' votes in decades. I went through reporting from across the Americas, Africa, and Germany to answer: Why did so many countries switch? Why is Cuba in such a bad state right now? And what happens next?

Also this week: Egypt silenced one of its last independent news sites, Bolsonaro's son is "president" from Florida, the UN might finally get a woman in charge, and "Call of Duty" became a foreign policy tool.

This newsletter has been edited by Jonathan Ramsay.

The UN told the U.S. to end the Cuba embargo, for the 34th time

A note on words: Cuba and many of its allies call it a "blockade"; the U.S. calls it an "embargo." I use "embargo" because that's the term in the UN resolution itself.

What happened:
On Wednesday, the UN General Assembly voted again on a resolution that Cuba brings every year, calling on the U.S. to end its economic embargo on the island. It passed easily. However, support dropped for the second year in a row, and much more sharply this time: 130 countries voted in favor, 25 abstained, and 17 voted against, including the U.S. and Israel. Last year the result was 165 to seven, with twelve abstentions. Another 21 member states didn't vote at all, compared with nine in 2025.

Why this matters: This year's resolution received the lowest number of 'yes' votes in decades. For three decades, this vote has been one of the clearest signs of how isolated the U.S. is on Cuba. At the first vote in 1992, 59 countries backed the resolution, three opposed it and 71 abstained. In 2016, during former U.S. President Obama's thaw with Havana, it got 191 'yes' votes and no one voted against. This year's drop is the result of a deliberate campaign, say the Cuban government and some journalists.

Good to know: The vote is symbolic. Only the U.S. Congress can lift the embargo, which dates back to 1960, after Fidel Castro's revolution and the nationalization of U.S.-owned property. The resolution has passed every year since 1992 (except 2020 because there was no vote).

Tell me more:
Things got pretty heated before the vote. Representatives from Cuba and the U.S. were shouting at each other, both in the UN corridors and on the floor of the General Assembly. Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, told the Assembly that there is no blockade. He said U.S. companies exported US$876 million in goods to Cuba in the first eight months of 2026, including fuel. Cuba says those sales don't offset all of the sanctions. After the vote, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla wrote on Twitter/X that the U.S. was subjecting Cubans to "an act of collective punishment and genocide."

How has the support been from the rest of the Americas for Cuba?

• First time 'no's: Colombia and Costa Rica voted 'no' for the first time.
• Switch-ups: Ecuador switched from abstaining to voting 'no' this year, joining the U.S., Israel, Argentina, and Paraguay, which already voted 'no' last year.
• Trump's new friends: Chile (after 33 years), Honduras, and Peru voted 'yes' last year. This time they abstained. All three have newly elected presidents who get along well with U.S. President Trump. Chile also said they abstained over human rights abuses.

The rest of the world?

• Uganda, speaking for the Non-Aligned Movement, called the tightened U.S. measures "a form of collective punishment."
• Singapore, for ASEAN, warned that more than 60% of essential medicines are in short supply and that nearly 100,000 surgeries are pending, more than 11,000 of them for children.
• Namibia, speaking for the African Group, said the African Union has called for lifting the embargo for 17 years in a row. (Did you know about Cuba's support for Namibia's liberation struggle against apartheid South Africa?)
• Plenty of countries voted 'yes' and still criticize Cuba. Australia and New Zealand, for example, said their 'yes' is not an endorsement of Cuba's government.

Why is Cuba in such a bad state right now?

• The U.S. removed Maduro in January. On January 3, the U.S. "abducted" (Maduro's own word) Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and on January 29, an executive order set up a process for imposing tariffs on any country that supplies oil to Cuba. Venezuela had been Cuba's main fuel supplier for two decades, and U.S. pressure also pushed Mexico to stop its oil shipments.
• The lights keep going out. Cuba's grid collapsed completely eight times this year.
• The UN's human rights experts are alarmed. In August, UN human rights experts (who are independent, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, and work unpaid) condemned the new U.S. measures as an attempt to change the constitutional order of a sovereign state through threats and coercion. Sanctions announced in July even hit energy companies, blocking fuel purchases for humanitarian purposes. In June, UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk had already warned that the sanctions are directly harming Cubans, especially the most vulnerable.
• Cuba says it is losing a lot of money because of this embargo. Cuba's government says the embargo cost it about US$8 billion between March 2025 and February 2026 alone, and about US$179 billion over six decades. These figures come from the Cuban government and haven't been independently verified. Independent Cuban outlet Directorio Cubano notes that the crisis also comes from the pandemic and Cuba's own economic policy mistakes.

How did the U.S. get so many countries to switch?
With lots of pressure, according to the reporting. In a leaked July cable, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told U.S. embassies to push their host governments to object to a UN debate on Cuba. Investigative journalists Peter Kornbluh and Ken Klippenstein published it in The Nation. The cable told allies to publicly criticize Cuba and told non-aligned countries to stay quiet. It didn't fully work: The General Assembly still approved that debate in July, with 136 in favor, 9 against and 30 abstaining. Ahead of last week's vote, Rubio urged El Salvador's Nayib Bukele to align with U.S. positions at the UN (El Salvador ended up not being present for the vote). Waltz was satisfied that so many...