By Sana Motorwala, Fall 2025 Marcellus Policy Fellow

Both Cuba and Venezuela have been at the forefront of Latin American foreign policy, especially with recent tensions that have increasingly characterized Cuba and Venezuela as “countries of concern.” They have both been positioned as countries antithetical to the United States, with their communist and socialist systems portrayed as threats to U.S. national interests. This surface-level analysis removes the role that the United States has played in preventing economic growth in Cuba and Venezuela. Both these countries have faced crushing American economic sanctions, which have had negative impacts on their economies and populations.

Furthermore, broad financial and sectoral sanctions like those Washington has imposed on Cuba and Venezuela are not conducive to producing regime change but instead result in dire humanitarian consequences for the population of a given country. At the same time, sanctions actively undermine U.S. national security initiatives in Latin America by exacerbating regional instability and promoting forced displacement. The expansive U.S. embargo and crushing sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela, respectively, should be lifted to mitigate the human impact of these policies.