The supposed strategic genius of Fidel Castro was always an intellectual fraud
14ymedio, Rolando Gallardo, Huesca, Spain, 8 March 2026 — In the corridors of power in Cuba, the nervousness is obvious. As the regime watches its ideological cronies burning out and staggering on the global stage, the leadership in Havana seems determined to “poner sus bardas en remojo” — to start taking precautions — as the international pressure tightens around it. The response from the Castro successor to the pressure of a U.S. administration closing the net around the regime has not been openness or dialogue, but the dusting off of a disastrous plagiarism from Fidel: the doctrine of the “war of the whole people.”
Under the varnish of national sovereignty, this strategy hides a grim logic: mobilizing a mass of citizens with no military training and effectively turning them into legitimate targets for any potential expeditionary forces. This is not heroic defense but the design of a pre-planned massacre, intended to be used as propaganda leverage to portray the regime as a victim before world public opinion.
A caricature of fanaticism
The supposed strategic brilliance of Fidel Castro was always an intellectual fraud. The “war of the whole people” is nothing more than a caricature of the desperate tactics used by Adolf Hitler in the final days of the Third Reich. Just as the German dictator mobilized women, the elderly, and children in the Volkssturm to resist the unstoppable advance of the Allies, the Cuban regime now intends to sacrifice its population under a nihilistic premise: if the system cannot survive, the nation must perish with it.
It was Hitler himself who said the German people did not deserve to live if they were incapable of defeating their enemies. Today the PCC appears to share that same contempt for the lives of those it governs.
In practice, concepts such as “sovereignty,” “popular will,” or “collective good” are nothing but empty packaging. The reality is a political caste ready to sink the population into the sea if it cannot keep hold of the helm itself. What is sold as patriotism is essentially a Caribbean mutation of Hamas tactics in Gaza, where the value of a citizen is measured by their usefulness as a human shield or as a televised corpse that helps win the battle of global narrative.
The collapse of logistics and the Sierra myth
The viability of this armed resistance, under the island’s current conditions, is nonexistent. The regime appeals to nostalgia for the civil war of 1956–1959, but it deliberately ignores a crucial economic factor: the rebel groups back then survived in the mountains thanks to an extensive supply network of food, medicine, and provisions coming from private businesses and prosperous farms — the very same economic base that Castroism itself later destroyed.
In the impoverished Cuba of 2026, marked by energy collapse and chronic shortages, sending elderly people and armed youths up into the mountains would immediately trigger a logistical disaster. Without an economic base to sustain them, any attempt at prolonged resistance would end either in mass surrender due to conditions incompatible with life or in widespread death from hunger and treatable diseases. Logistics — not enemy fire — would be the first executioner of this improvised militia.
International law and the loss of “protected person” status
By reviving this doctrine, the regime is not only defying military logic but dismantling the legal framework that protects human life. According to the Geneva Conventions, a civilian enjoys immunity from direct attack as long as they do not take part in hostilities. But the moment a citizen picks up a rifle or carries out acts of sabotage, that protection disappears and the person becomes a combatant.
This strategy creates a situation of “unprivileged combatants.” When the state hands out weapons, it is deliberately erasing the line of distinction. This ambiguity is a deadly trap; historically it has led to tragedies where expeditionary forces, unsure and fearing ambushes in urban environments, fire at any suspect, exponentially increasing collateral casualties.
For the ruling elite, this scenario is not a mistake but an objective: the more civilian victims there are, the more material they will have for their victimhood propaganda machine.
The leadership’s shield and the end of the mystique
The regime tries to suggest that armed resistance in the Middle East can tip the balance, ignoring that such movements are sustained by mystical indoctrination and a culture of martyrdom that has little to do with Cuban society. The people of Cuba are not looking for glory in the afterlife or sacrifice for a dying dogma. What most people want is prosperity, food, and freedom. After decades of deprivation, many openly long for the capitalist consumerism that official discourse condemns.
Arming a population that lacks even the most basic necessities is the final act of immorality by a dictatorship that knows it is nearing its end. By turning every neighborhood into a barracks and every citizen into an improvised soldier, the Cuban state is not defending the nation but building a wall of flesh and blood to protect the privileges of the elite at the expense of the physical safety of the population.
The “war of the whole people” confirms that, for Cuba’s leaders, sovereignty does not lie in the wellbeing of citizens but in the preservation of their own power. If history is any guide, this “final crime” will not be remembered as a heroic act of resistance but as the last gasp of a ruling caste that preferred the possibility of a national holocaust rather than accepting its own obsolescence.
Cuba today does not need rifles in the hands of civilians; it needs the state to stop using its people as bargaining chips in a war that exists only in the delusions of those unwilling to let go of control.
Translated by GH
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