Donald Trump, national security advisor John Bolton and secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a menacing and reckless “troika of imperialism,” hopelessly attempt to justify with the most ridiculous excuses the senseless cruelty, arrogance and stupidity that conform current U.S.  relations with some of our neighbors south of the border. We are talking, of course, about Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, sovereign countries that, whatever one may think about their governments, have every right to refuse blindly obeying Washington’s orders and to protect their natural resources against the tentacles of greedy international corporations.

In a futile attempt to sound witty, the unbearably dense Bolton has called those nations “the troika of tyranny,” and along with Trump, Pompeo, the sinister Elliott Abrams and the eminently ductile Marco Rubio, utters platitudes such as “restoring democracy,” “ending dictatorship,” etc. while doing his best to starve the people of those nations into submission and threatens them with war: “all options are on the table.” But the smoke screen is not thick enough to hide their real intentions.

So far, their plots to overthrow Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro have failed, and now the imperial troika has Cuba in the crosshairs. Bolton, whose hostility toward the island is well known, announced in Miami new sanctions on the Cuban people last April 17, supposedly aimed at effecting a change on the island’s leadership and political system.

Yet, the truth is that after 60 years of unremitting hostility and failure, Trump, Rubio and the rest of the Washington cast of corrupt politicians and bureaucrats are well aware that sanctions won’t accomplish the “regime change” they keep talking about. That’s not their real intent. Rather it is a matter of naked cruelty, a way of punishing a small country with an “uppity” government and a population that has resisted all attempts by Washington to subjugate them and make them their lackeys. And in their imperial arrogance, that's something they cannot forgive or forget. Call it what you will, but cowardly trying to starve and impoverish an entire nation is terrorism of the worst kind.

Not surprisingly, neither Cuba nor decent Cuban-Americans are taking the return to Cold War policies sitting down, as the group Cuban Americans for Engagement (CAFE)  makes clear in its website.

“Once again, the Trump administration chooses to be on the wrong side of history, by destroying the legacy of Barack Obama, who promoted a policy of rapprochement and diplomacy, against the grain of what most of the governments of this country have promulgated. It chooses, on the contrary, to perpetuate the illegitimacy of interventionist and disrespectful positions that undermine the sovereignty and right to self-determination of countries in the region, turning a deaf ear to the claims of an American and Cuban-American majority that supports the lifting of the embargo and the restoration of relations between Cuba and the United States.”

CAFE follows its words with action by circulating a petition in the form of a strong open letter to Pompeo urging him “to reconsider your position on these topics and to act on the benefit of both countries.”

The voices of those in favor of a rational Cuba policy and against cruelly increasing the suffering of its people must be heard as forcefully as possible. They may believe otherwise, but the “troika of imperialism” does not own the world.

 Please, sign CAFE’s petition at Change.org.