By Mafa Kwanisai Mafa

There are moments in international politics when diplomatic language is no longer enough. The speech delivered by Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla at the United Nations General Assembly on 26 September 2026 was one such moment.

Its central message was blunt: the world cannot build peace while powerful states continue to use military pressure, economic coercion and political intimidation against weaker nations.

Sixty-six years after Fidel Castro stood at the same United Nations rostrum and called for the disappearance of the “philosophy of plunder” and the “philosophy of war”, Cuba returned to that historical argument with renewed urgency.

The Cuban government says that expansionism, military aggression, economic coercion and attacks on national sovereignty are once again threatening the foundations of international law.

That warning deserves serious attention. The world is witnessing a dangerous contest over who has the right to define international order. Is international law a universal principle applying equally to the powerful and the weak, or is it a set of rules invoked selectively when convenient?

Can sovereignty be respected only when exercised by powerful countries? Can smaller nations be told that they are free while their economies are subjected to external pressure designed to influence their political choices?

According to Rodríguez, the United States has intensified what Havana describes as a multidimensional campaign against Cuba, including severe restrictions on fuel supplies, trade, financing, technology and international business. He stated that more than 7,000 containers were stranded in ports and argued that the measures were affecting food, medicines and medical equipment. Cuba characterises the tightening of these measures as economic warfare directed ultimately at ordinary people.

The language is deliberately uncompromising because the Cuban government sees the issue as one of survival and sovereignty. And this is where the Cuban argument moves beyond Cuba itself. If economic coercion becomes an accepted instrument of international politics, every developing country becomes vulnerable. A country does not have to be invaded by soldiers to have its sovereignty weakened. It can be pressured through finance, trade, technology, shipping, investment, and access to essential commodities. Political independence becomes increasingly hollow when economic survival depends on satisfying the demands of stronger powers.

Africa knows this history. The continent carries the scars of colonial conquest, economic extraction, and political interference. Its peoples know what happens when sovereignty is treated as a privilege granted by powerful outsiders rather than an inherent right of nations. The struggle for political independence was therefore never simply about raising a national flag. It was about recovering the right to determine national priorities, control national resources, and choose development paths without external domination.

That is why Cuba’s position continues to resonate across much of the Global South. Cuba’s history has made sovereignty central to its political identity. Rodríguez argued that attempts to force political change through economic suffocation amount to an assault on the sovereignty for which generations of Cubans fought. He also rejected the characterisation of Cuba as a threat to the United States, pointing instead to Cuba’s record of international cooperation and its longstanding engagement with other developing countries.

Whether one agrees with every aspect of Havana’s political system or not, the broader principle deserves to be separated from ideological differences: no nation should have its sovereignty determined by the economic or military power of another.

That principle must apply universally. It must apply to Cuba. It must apply to Palestine. It must apply to Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran, Africa, and every other country whose sovereignty is contested or pressured. It must also apply to nations whose governments are politically unpopular with Washington, Beijing, Moscow, Brussels, or any other major power.

There can be no genuine international order if sovereignty is selective. There is another lesson in Cuba’s statement: resistance cannot mean refusing to change. Rodríguez acknowledged the severe challenges confronting the Cuban economy and described ongoing efforts to transform the country’s economic and social model while maintaining independence, sovereignty and social achievements.

The Cuban leadership has presented these changes as an attempt to adapt to difficult external conditions without surrendering political independence.

That is an important distinction for developing countries. National sovereignty should not become an excuse for economic stagnation. Nor should economic reform become a pathway to external domination. The real challenge is to modernise while retaining the policy space necessary for a country to determine its own destiny.

This is precisely where the Global South needs a stronger voice. Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean cannot afford a world in which international institutions become spectators while powerful states determine outcomes through unilateral pressure.

The United Nations was created to prevent precisely such a system. Yet Cuba argues that the organisation’s authority is being weakened by violations of international law and the increasing use of coercion.

The answer cannot be the destruction of multilateralism. It must be its democratisation. The United Nations must become more representative, more effective and more capable of defending the principle that every state, large or small, has equal sovereign dignity. Cuba explicitly called for strengthening the UN and bringing it closer to the peoples of the world.

This is not merely a Cuban question. It is an African question. It is an Asian question. It is a Latin American question. It is a question for every country that refuses to accept that military power, economic wealth or technological superiority should determine whose sovereignty matters.

The international system stands at a crossroads. One road leads towards a world in which the strongest impose their will and weaker countries are expected to comply. The other requires genuine multilateralism, sovereign equality, peaceful settlement of disputes and respect for the right of peoples to determine their own future.

Cuba’s message to the United Nations is therefore larger than Cuba itself. Its government is demanding that the international community confront the consequences of allowing coercion to become normal practice. It is also reaffirming solidarity with countries and peoples confronting colonial legacies, sanctions, intervention and struggles for self-determination, including African and Caribbean nations.

The most powerful line in the speech was also the simplest: “The law of the jungle cannot be the future of humanity.”That warning should not be dismissed as rhetoric. A world governed by the law of the jungle is a world where military strength becomes law, economic power becomes justice, and the sovereignty of smaller nations becomes negotiable.

Humanity has already travelled that road. Colonialism travelled it. Imperial conquest travelled it. The slave trade travelled it. Wars of aggression travelled it. The United Nations was supposed to mark a different direction. The challenge today is whether the world dares to defend that principle when doing so becomes politically inconvenient.

Cuba has placed the question before the international community with characteristic defiance. Others may agree or disagree with Havana’s politics, its economic choices, or its interpretation of events. But the fundamental question cannot be avoided: Can there be peace without sovereignty, development without policy independence, or international law without equality among nations?

If the answer is no, then the struggle for a more just international order cannot be postponed. The world does not need another century of domination dressed up as diplomacy. It needs sovereign nations, equal before international law, cooperating rather than coercing, trading rather than strangling, negotiating rather than threatening, and building peace rather than preparing for war.

As Cuba’s Foreign Minister concluded, the alternative is not inevitable. A better world remains possible if peoples and nations struggle with determination to build it.