International flights are being cancelled. Petrol has all but run out. Universities have closed. The electricity supply is more off than on. And nobody quite knows how it will end.

President Trump’s bet is that the communist government of Cuba is “going down for the count”, the next pawn to fall after Venezuela, in his effort to rid the Americas of anti-American regimes.

His strategy has been to squeeze Cuba where it is most vulnerable: its fuel supplies. The island produces some of its own oil, but only enough for 30 per cent of its needs. All the remaining energy that it requires to function, from fuel for power plants to diesel for food deliveries, it imports.

For the past quarter century, Venezuela was itskey supplier. But that tap has been shut off since the capture andarrest on drug trafficking chargesof President Nicolás Maduro on January 3. Other providers, such as Russia and Mexico, have chosen not to test Trump’s executive order from last month, which threatened to impose tariffs should they send oil to Cuba. No oil has arrived on the island for more than a month.

The cut-off took some weeks to be felt, but now the reality has hit. “This is a total, total collapse,” the owner of a bar close to Malecón seafront promenade in Havana, who asked for his name not to be published, said. “There is no fuel, no public transport and now no private transport.”

For the first time he could remember even Cuba’s vast black market, a normally unstoppable underground economy, had ground to a halt “because there’s no fuel to take anything anywhere”.

The sense of isolation is growing. On Sunday Havana told international airlines that none of its nine main airports would be able to provide aviation fuel from Tuesday. Three Canadian airlines — Canada is the main source of tourists to Cuba — were the first to react, and Air Canada, WestJet and Air Transat suspended their flights. This week they are all sending empty planes south to pick up thousands of stranded tourists.

So what is the end game? Marco Rubio, Trump’s Cuban-American secretary of state, was asked during a hearing at the Senate foreign relations committee last month if US policy was regime change. Unapologetically, he said it was. The US “would love to see” the Cuban government fall, he said. Trump has also said he wanted Cuba to “be free again”.

•Cuba has a problem: Trump sees ‘liberating’ it as his legacy

But back on the island there is official defiance. State TV is endlessly replaying fiery speeches of the late leader of the revolution, Fidel Castro, proclaiming that real revolutionaries fight to the death. A nervous-looking President Diaz-Canel insisted last week that “surrender is not an option”.

Source: Drudge Report