Month: March 2026

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Annayah Prosser, Assistant Professor in Marketing, Business and Society, University of Bath

Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda video game series celebrated its 40th anniversary in February 2026. Millions of players across the world have grown up alongside the 21-title series, from the release of the original game on the Famicom gaming system in 1986, to the most recent game, Echoes of Wisdom, published for the Switch in 2024.

The Zelda games were inspired by series creator Shigeru Miyamoto’s childhood in the Japanese countryside. They frequently involve complex environmental exploration and problem solving.

Over time, the series has moved from pixelated forests into high resolution, awe-inspiring landscapes. In that time, Zelda has become an intergenerational success, released in new forms for new generations with each Nintendo console.

Many Zelda games serve as flagships for these new consoles, tying the game experience into new technological capacities – showcasing the motion control of the Wii, the dual screens of the DS, and the joystick first introduced on the the N64. Just as the console technology has evolved, so has the Zelda series.

The series is one of Nintendo’s biggest commercial successes, with an estimated 150 million copies of the games sold worldwide. The most popular game within the series, Breath of the Wild (released on the Switch in 2018), has sold more than 34 million copies to date.

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Read more:
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom review – a masterclass in rewarding curiosity

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Beyond the game

As well as fun past times, video games can be important vehicles for social connection and personal development. The Zelda series grapples with age-old struggles of good versus evil and destruction versus creation.

I’m the editor of the Psychgeist of Pop Culture: The Legend of Zelda – an open-access book which explores the social and psychological impact of the series across a variety of domains. In the book, researchers like myself show how engaging with virtual stories and problems can help us to better understand our own day-to-day lives. For example, recent research from social scientist George Farmer shows that playing video games can be a helpful form of stress relief during times of crisis.

The moral dilemmas presented in the Zelda games also help to train players for real-world social action. Experimental psychologist Kathryn Francis argues in her chapter that the games provide players with an immersive virtual space for moral reflection and development.

In my own chapter, I analysed the environmental narratives of the games Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom to assess their potential impact on players. I argued that experiencing the environmental devastation wrought by villains in the games, and having the power to save the world in this setting might also equip players with the tools and motivation to address the climate crisis in real life.

The Zelda series can also help players to understand and interrogate their identities, and the roles we play within our own lives. The games allow players to explore what it means to be a hero, villain, or a princess with increasing freedom of expression and action.

They can choose to save the world as quickly as possible (by doing a “speedrun”) or they can take their time to get to know the community and environment. This freedom of play allows for different experiences which appeal to different types of players, making the series particularly versatile. In the games players get to experiment with different quests and narrative paths, and learn more about themselves, their values and preferences in the process.

Forty years on, the Zelda franchise shouldn’t just be seen as a purely economic success. Rather, it should be understood as a cultural powerhouse which has had a very real impact on the lives of millions around the world.

Given the generational staying power of these games, many Zelda fans across the world will be eagerly awaiting the next step for the series. What might the 40th anniversary celebrations bring? Will a new title be revealed? What will the first Switch 2 Zelda game be? Will the virtual world translate well to the upcoming live-action film?

Regardless of the answers to these questions, the series likely will likely to have a significant impact on its players around the world for decades to come.

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Annayah Prosser does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why the Legend of Zelda games still resonate with players after 40 years – https://theconversation.com/why-the-legend-of-zelda-games-still-resonate-with-players-after-40-years-276456

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Travis LaCroix, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Durham University

For four decades, a controversial idea has shaped how autism is understood by researchers, healthcare professionals and the public: the claim that autistic people are “mind blind”. The phrase suggests an inability to grasp what others think or feel. It is simple, memorable – and wrong.

The claim rests on a concept called “theory of mind”. In everyday terms, theory of mind is the ability to recognise that other people’s thoughts, beliefs and emotions may differ from your own. This idea explains why someone understands that a joke can fall flat, that a promise can be broken, or that a friend can be mistaken without lying. It is often presented as the key to how people make sense of one another.

The idea entered psychology in the late 1970s, when researchers began asking how children learn to reason about other minds. Simple stories were designed to test this ability, often involving a character who holds a false belief. If a child could predict that the character would act on that belief, they were taken to have a theory of mind. These tasks quickly became a standard tool in developmental research.

In 1985, one such test was used in a study of autistic children. In the “Sally-Anne” task, a doll (Sally) hides a marble, leaves the room, and returns after another doll (Anne) has moved it. Asked where Sally will look, many autistic children in that study gave the “wrong” answer. This finding was interpreted as evidence that autistic children lacked theory of mind.

The Sally-Anne test

From this experiment, a vast research programme followed. New tasks multiplied: reading emotions from photos of eyes, interpreting short stories, judging intentions from animated shapes.

Across the late 1980s and 1990s, scientific papers and popular media represented autism as defined by a core failure to understand minds. The theory stuck, appearing in academic articles, textbooks, court rulings and popular science writing.

The problem is that the evidence never supported the claim. Even in the original study, one in five autistic children passed the task. Later research found huge variation. Some studies showed most autistic participants passing theory-of-mind tests; others found little or no difference between autistic and non-autistic groups. A theory meant to describe a key deficit kept running into exceptions.

More troubling is the tests themselves. Many rely heavily on language. Performance is often better predicted by vocabulary level than whether someone is autistic.

Different theory-of-mind tasks also fail to line up with one another, suggesting they are not measuring a single underlying ability at all. If an ability cannot be measured consistently, claims about its absence become doubtful.

At this point, a straightforward scientific response would have been to reconsider the theory. Instead, it was repeatedly patched.

When autistic people passed a task, researchers argued that the task was too simple. New, more complex tasks were introduced, which produced the same mixed results. When findings contradicted the core idea, the definition of “theory of mind” quietly expanded to include eye contact, joint attention, or social motivation.

When science stops testing

This pattern matters because of what it says about how science works. Drawing on the philosophy of science, my recent analysis argues that theory-of-mind research in autism has become “degenerating”. Rather than generating new, risky predictions, the theory survives by shifting definitions and goalposts to avoid being disproved. When no possible result counts against a theory, it stops being scientific. In a subsequent response to commentators, I explore why the theory-of-mind paradigm has persisted despite its deep empirical and conceptual difficulties.

Questioning this idea did not come from a single paper or field. Psychologists, linguists, and philosophers all raised concerns. So did autistic people, whose everyday experiences often flatly contradicted the idea that they lacked insights into others.

Studies began to show that non-autistic people are just as poor at interpreting autistic expressions as the reverse. Social misunderstanding, it turns out, goes both ways.

That insight helped fuel alternative approaches. One approach frames communication breakdowns as mutual mismatches between different styles of thinking and communicating, rather than deficits located in autistic people.

Another focuses on differences in attention and interest, offering an explanation of perception, motivation and learning. These approaches generate new, testable questions and align more closely with people’s actual experiences.

Today, the field is at a crossroads. The idea that autistic people are mind blind lacks a secure foundation. Its empirical support has weakened, and its assumptions are increasingly questioned. What remains is its influence. When educators or healthcare professionals assume a lack of empathy, they are less likely to trust autistic people’s own accounts or involve them in decisions that affect their lives.

Abandoning this myth does not weaken autism science. It strengthens it. Social understanding is not absent in autism; it is shaped differently, expressed in different contexts, and often overlooked when the wrong tools are used. Autistic people are not mind blind. They think and understand differently, and the evidence has pointed that way for some time. It’s time science reflected that.

Travis LaCroix received funding from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (Canada).

– ref. No, autistic people are not ‘mind blind’ – here’s why – https://theconversation.com/no-autistic-people-are-not-mind-blind-heres-why-272848

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Alex Prior, Lecturer in Politics with International Relations, London South Bank University

Hannah Spencer’s parliamentary story – as the new Green MP for Gorton and Denton – has just begun.

Nevertheless, the life story that she presented in her victory speech was that of a plumber, not a politician. She identified herself – in present tense – by that trade; she had not grown up wanting to be a politician. She also celebrated qualifying as a plasterer during the “chaos” and “pressure” of the election campaign. She described campaigning jovially as “all this”, as if it were just a challenge in the broader adventure, not the adventure itself.

Despite, or perhaps because of, accusations that the Greens used “sectarian politics” to secure victory, the speech was one of solidarity, of aligning herself with the struggles and achievements of “the community that I am from”. Spencer said that she had lived there in one of the hardest times of her life, and presented the strength of the community “at holding things together” as an inspiration.

She aligned herself and her personal characteristics with those of the constituency, stressing that “I am no different to every single person here in this constituency. I work hard. That is what we do.”

Alongside all the talk of “we”, of common interests and lack of difference, Spencer singled out several audiences for her story. One such audience? Her now-plumberless “customers”, to whom she duly apologised: “I’m sorry, but I think I might have to cancel the work that you had booked in, because I’m heading to parliament”.

Spencer also addressed those who voted for her, and those who didn’t. She spoke of “my Muslim friends and neighbours”, who “are just like me: human”. She discussed the “left-behind” (“I see you, and I will fight for you”), and people doing jobs like hers: “We will finally get a seat at the table”. And she addressed “our white working class communities, the background that I have become so glad to be from”.

A personal and political journey

My research focuses on political narratives and storytelling as a means of communication: the stories that parliaments contain and project, the stories we tell about the places we’re in and the stories that politicians use to communicate themselves to voters. Spencer’s speech is an attempt to portray a compelling story to her new constituency.

She spoke about how moving away from the constituency to nearby Trafford made the qualities of Gorton and Denton’s community “even clearer”. Only realising your love for a place and the people in it when you’ve moved away is a familiar narrative device. As Joni Mitchell once sang, “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone”.

In Spencer’s speech, this tactic carried a sharper political edge. This is a constituency that people move away from to get the “nice life” that Spencer described: “good schools, a thriving high street and clean air”.

This part of the story carried a rebuke to an audience that Spencer was addressing, but not by name: the Labour Party, for whom this was a traditionally safe seat. Spencer observed that “working hard used to get you something”.

I would argue that “you”, in this context, is a reference to traditional Labour voters. The implication here is that it is voting Labour that “used to get you something”.

Being a politician now isn’t an aspect of Spencer’s story that she’s keen to claim. She may now sit at Westminster, but she appears to frame this as an extension of who she already is — a worker, a neighbour, a constituent — in a new arena.

In doing so, she attempts to recast political representation itself as continuity of identity. The challenge, of course, will be whether she can sustain that claim. It is easier to say “I am no different” on a victory stage following a byelection win than from the House of Commons. The durability of her narrative – and perhaps her political appeal – will rest on whether she can remain recognisably “from” the constituency while operating within the institution of parliament.

Alex Prior does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. ‘Working hard used to get you something’: what Hannah Spencer’s speech tells us about her, and the state of British politics – https://theconversation.com/working-hard-used-to-get-you-something-what-hannah-spencers-speech-tells-us-about-her-and-the-state-of-british-politics-277121

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Yuen Chan, Senior Lecturer, School of Arts and Social Sciences, Department of Journalism, City St George’s, University of London

The sentencing of Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai to 20 years in prison on February 8 on charges of sedition and collusion with foreign forces prompted international outrage.

Lai founded the now shuttered pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper – and supporters of press freedom around the world pointed to the chilling effect the sentence would have on the media, in a city once vaunted as a beacon for press freedom in Asia.

The reaction was more muted in Hong Kong, where dissent has been stifled since Beijing imposed the draconian National Security Law in 2020, following months of protests in 2019. A local security law enacted in 2024 further expanded the scope of the city’s national security legislation.

Privately, some local journalists say Lai’s conviction will have limited impact on their work. They have already felt heavily constrained by the security laws and what they’re calling the “new normal” – an overarching national security apparatus and culture. Although saddened, they were not altogether surprised at the severity of Lai’s sentence.

One journalist told me they were more shaken by the sentences of up to ten years that were meted out to six senior Apple Daily editors and writers for “just doing their jobs”.

Since the national security law, Hong Kong journalists’ jobs have involved a great deal of dancing around shifting boundaries as to what can and can’t be reported. Inevitably, this has meant exercising greater self-censorship.

In an editorial on the sentencing, the Ming Pao newspaper, which has long positioned itself as a neutral paper of record, suggested the Lai ruling has brought these boundaries into sharper focus, concluding: “Collusion with foreign forces cannot readily be dressed up as journalism.”

The newspaper said that as Hong Kong now operates within the framework of the national security legislation: “The media must operate within this legal framework while continuing to report facts and hold power to account, a balance essential to preserving the city’s pluralism and openness.”

But it hoped “the Lai case will prove a watershed, allowing space for press freedom to widen step by step, so the media can fulfil its responsibilities more effectively”.

However, local journalists I spoke to described this position as naïve and wishful thinking, and said the red lines are no clearer now than before. Selina Cheng, chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA), believes the constraints on free expression in Hong Kong go far beyond a legal framework.

“If we call it a legal framework, it’s giving the system some kind of legitimacy,” Cheng told me. “In reality, the way it operates is there is a lot of destruction of due process, creating an atmosphere of fear and anxiety in those working in industries of expression.”

Apart from being arrested and jailed, Cheng says journalists and their family members have been doxed, with their personal details posted online, and harassed. Both individual journalists and news outlets have been targeted by unusual tax audits.

Tai Po tragedy

Cheng was one of several journalists I spoke to who pointed to the November 2025 fire which killed 168 people in Tai Po’s Wang Fuk Court Estate as a potent symbol of the current state of press freedom and freedom of speech in Hong Kong.

In the immediate aftermath, local and international journalists interviewed victims and reported extensively on suspected corruption and lack of oversight of building works on the site. But residents and other potential interviewees soon became reluctant to speak to reporters following the arrests of people who had posted comments online.

A student who started a petition for an independent inquiry was arrested – and then recently expelled from his university just weeks from graduation, even though he hasn’t been charged.

For one veteran journalist, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of bringing trouble to their organisation, what led to the Tai Po tragedy highlights a “media failure”. The news outlets which had most doggedly pursued stories about building maintenance, bid-rigging and corruption were the investigative site Factwire and Apple Daily, so “when these outlets disappeared, a lot of the reports also petered out”.

“In the past, you’d have lots of commentary in the media after an incident like this,” they explained. “There’d be legal scholars, experts, people from all different sectors. But now, the universities don’t allow people to comment and articles are spiked or censored, so it’s hard to raise and maintain public concern.”

Snitch culture

The journalist spoke of a system that extends beyond the legal framework of the national security law that restricts speech, through the control of public opinion and a “snitch culture” that weaponises complaints.

A Hong Kong police national security hotline was launched in November 2020; by June 2025, the city’s security chief said it had received more than 920,000 reports. Public bodies and funding organisations also regularly receive complaints about platforming of funding groups or individuals perceived to be pro-democracy or supportive of the 2019 protests.

Last October, a public venue cancelled a play written by Candace Chong, a leading playwright who was been vocal about censorship. The body that manages the Xiqu Centre, part of the West Kowloon Cultural District, said it had received complaints that the show – which depicts a love triangle between three men – defamed Hong Kong.

There are signs the “media failure” is already affecting governance. In January, the government introduced a controversial seat belt law requiring all bus passengers to buckle up while seated, only to shelve it five days later. The bill had received little scrutiny in Hong Kong’s now opposition-free legislature.

“It’s really unthinkable for a government to push out a bill, get it rubber-stamped by the legislature, and then withdraw it because they suddenly realise people are unhappy or the legislative details haven’t been thought through,” the HKJA’s Cheng told me. “It shows how the government misjudged public sentiment. This can be attributed to how the media isn’t free any more.”

Yuen Chan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Twenty-year sentence for Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai is a further blow for journalists feeling the heat of Beijing’s crackdown on press freedom – https://theconversation.com/twenty-year-sentence-for-hong-kong-media-mogul-jimmy-lai-is-a-further-blow-for-journalists-feeling-the-heat-of-beijings-crackdown-on-press-freedom-276992

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Maxwell Modell, Research associate, Cardiff University

The victory of the Greens in the Gorton and Denton parliamentary byelection is a landmark for the party. But our new research reveals the Greens have received limited airtime over the last year despite almost doubling their support in the polls and in party membership.

While Reform UK has seen a spike in media coverage since it took a commanding lead in the polls, our research shows the Greens have not received more airtime in recognition of their growing popularity.

Broadcasters have to abide by due impartiality rules, but they have the editorial freedom to balance the airtime of political parties. They consider factors such as a party’s vote share at the last UK general election or a party’s electoral performance at the most recent devolved, regional and local election. Other factors to consider include the latest trends in opinion polls tracking voting intention, and whether what a party is saying the news organisation considers significant or, as the BBC says, whether they are “making the political weather” by setting the agenda.

After winning the byelection, this raises the question: should the Greens now be given more airtime?

Limited coverage of Greens

Our Impartiality project team has been tracking coverage of UK opposition parties on BBC News at Ten and ITV News at Ten, the UK’s most-watched nightly TV news bulletins.

In 2025, we found the Greens were the sixth most covered opposition party, being referenced in just 32 items, behind the Conservatives (375), Reform UK (213), the Liberal Democrats (116), the Scottish National Party or SNP (46) and ahead of Plaid Cymru (10).

We also tracked how often a party was the leading focus of a broadcaster’s report. The Greens led four items – three on BBC and one on ITV. These stories related to the Greens’ May local election campaign, Zack Polanski winning the party leadership in September and the party conference in October. But neither BBC News at Ten and ITV News at Ten covered the announcement or build-up to the leadership contest.

In contrast, Reform UK led 69 items, Conservatives led 45 items, the Liberal Democrats led 14 items and the SNP led 13 items.

The Greens also appeared on only four episodes of BBC Question Time during 2025. That was about a third as often as the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK.
Despite the leadership change, the subsequent surge in membership and the sustained rise in poll ratings (from 11% in August 2025 to 17% in December 2025), broadcast coverage of Greens did not increase at the end of 2025.

This shows a potential inequality in the treatment of the rising left and right parties. The BBC cited improvements in opinion polling as one of the factors behind the increased coverage of Reform UK, but the Green party’s popularity has not received anywhere near the same recognition.

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Read more:
What Hannah Spencer’s historic win means for the Green party’s future

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In May 2025, news coverage of Reform UK increased substantially following its victories in local and mayoral elections, which broadcasters considered a sign that the party was now a major player in UK electoral politics. Our research even showed in September 2025 Reform UK was referenced on TV news more than the Conservatives, the party that is supposed to be the UK’s parliamentary official opposition.

The question now is whether broadcasters will take the Green party’s victory in Gorton and Denton as a similar sign of its electoral significance and increase media coverage of the party.

While broadcasters have not broken any of the UK’s rules on due impartiality, our new research raises questions about how they have been interpreting impartiality in a new multi-party system.

Traditionally they have relied on allocating airtime according to parties with the largest number of MPs and total vote at the last general election. They have also factored in performances at the latest local, regional or devolved elections. But they now appear to making more subjective judgements about allocating airtime according to the opinion polls or the newsworthiness of parties.

Given the Greens’ growing popularity, their distinctive set of policies, charismatic leader and byelection victory, they might now look set to receive more media attention and scrutiny over the coming months.

Maxwell Modell receives funding from the AHRC for research into broadcasters’ impartiality.

Matt Walsh receives funding from the AHRC for research into broadcasters’ impartiality.

Stephen Cushion has received funding from the BBC Trust, Ofcom, AHRC, BA and ESRC.

– ref. Why isn’t the Greens’ growing success reflected in media coverage? – https://theconversation.com/why-isnt-the-greens-growing-success-reflected-in-media-coverage-277137

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By William M. LeoGrande, Professor of Government, American University School of Public Affairs

A boat carrying 10 heavily armed men entered Cuban territorial waters on Feb. 25, 2026, intent, according to officials in Havana, on infiltrating the island nation and undermining the communist government through acts of sabotage and terrorism. When the men opened fire on an approaching Cuban Border Guard patrol boat, the border guards returned fire, killing four and wounding the other six. Another Cuban American who had allegedly flown to Cuba from the United States to meet the infiltration team on the beach was later arrested.

While details about the incident continue to come out, the gun battle comes at a time of heightened tensions between Cuba and the United States, which for weeks has been pursuing a de facto total oil blockade of the island. The latest episode is also reminiscent of the early 1960s, when Cuban exiles, trained and armed by the CIA, tried to infiltrate Cuba to conduct acts of sabotage and assassinate the leaders of the Cuban Revolution.

As a longtime expert on U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America and co-author of a history of the bilateral diplomacy between the United States and Cuba, I know that Cuba’s exile community has long contained paramilitary elements. Encouraged by Washington’s intensified sanctions and heated rhetoric, and a weakened government in Havana, these elements seem to sense an opportunity now.

Cuba’s exiled paramilitaries

Following the triumph of the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro’s rise to power in 1959, U.S. policy toward the new government was antagonistic almost from the start.

In 1961, the CIA under President John F. Kennedy organized the Bay of Pigs invasion – a military operation by exiled Cubans aimed at overthrowing the young Castro government.

The attempted invasion was a “perfect failure,” in the words of author Theodore Draper, after which the agency recruited a number of the invaders to continue to wage irregular war against Cuba. They were part of Operation Mongoose, the Kennedy administration’s multifaceted program of diplomatic, economic, political and paramilitary pressure aimed at overthrowing the Cuban government.

The CIA’s financial support for exile paramilitary groups continued into the late 1960s, until it was phased out because of their ineffectiveness. Although the CIA gave up on overthrowing Castro by force of arms, the paramilitary exile groups did not.

Two of the most prominent groups – Alpha 66 and Omega 7 – continued their war against the Cuban government for years with tacit U.S. support. “We should not inhibit Cuban exile activity against their homeland,” President Richard Nixon wrote in 1971 in response to Coast Guard efforts to arrest members of Alpha 66. Five years later, two of the most prominent paramilitary leaders, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, orchestrated the bombing of a civilian airliner, Cubana Flight 455, killing all 73 people on board.

A change in attitudes

Frustrated by their inability to depose the Cuban government, the paramilitary groups turned their attention inward. In the late 1970s, these groups launched a campaign of terrorist bombings and assassinations mainly targeting Cuban Americans who dared speak out in favor of rapprochement with their homeland. In 1979, two members of the Committee of 75, Cuban Americans who traveled to Cuba to meet with Castro to secure the release of political prisoners, were assassinated by Omega 7.

President Ronald Reagan was certainly no friend of Castro’s Cuba, but his Justice Department launched a major crackdown on the U.S.-based paramilitary groups, winning convictions against a number of their members.

The terrorist attacks subsided, but the martial impulse has remained alive among some Cuban American extremists. Small groups have continued to hold weekend military training exercises in the Everglades in Florida, home to the world’s largest Cuban diaspora. Periodically over the years, some of these weekend warriors have tried to infiltrate Cuba. Almost always, they are quickly captured by Cuban police. The most recent firefight seems to be the latest of these incidents, albeit an unusually violent one.

Ratcheting up US hostility to Cuba

The number of these incursions, along with attempts by Cuban Americans to solicit acts of sabotage over social media, have increased in recent years as relations between Cuba and the U.S. have deteriorated, now at their lowest point in decades.

In his first administration, President Donald Trump reversed President Barack Obama’s 2014 Cuban thaw by imposing the toughest economic sanctions since the 1960s. President Joe Biden left most of those sanctions in place, even as the Cuban economy suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now in his second term, Trump has turned the screws even tighter by cutting off Cuba’s oil supply from Venezuela and threatening other countries if they send oil to Cuba. The result is a profound, unprecedented economic decline on the island that threatens to precipitate a humanitarian crisis.

Both Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who built his political career by being the most vocal anti-Cuban government member of Congress, have declared Cuba a failed state and predict its imminent collapse almost daily.

These predictions from the White House, along with the seemingly unsustainable economic crisis on the island, have created an expectation that the Cuban government cannot survive. In this atmosphere, Cuban American militants might well conclude that the long-awaited moment has arrived, and those who fancy themselves soldiers might well decide to take up arms and head south to witness, participate in or even catalyze the demise of the government they have hated so much and for so long.

But Cuba is not a failed state, claims from the White House notwithstanding. The Cuban government is still fully capable of maintaining public order and defending its coastline, as the 10 people that allegedly tried to infiltrate the island found out.

Trump and his hawkish advisers, including Rubio, appear to want to force Cuba into submission, much as they have tried to do in Venezuela.

But there are no visible signs of cracks in the regime and no organized opposition to it. Many Cubans remain fiercely nationalistic and are not likely to accept any deal that requires them to surrender their national sovereignty by remaking their political or economic system to please the United States.

Absent some kind of diplomatic agreement between Washington and Havana, the Cuban economy will continue to deteriorate under the weight of the ongoing oil blockade and all the other elements of the U.S. economic embargo. This will deepen the misery of people living in Cuba and risks prompting other exiles into launching paramilitary adventures in hopes of exploiting Havana’s weakness.

William M. LeoGrande is affiliated with The Quincy Institute as a Non-resident Fellow

– ref. Cuba’s speedboat shootout recalls long history of exile groups engaged in covert ops aimed at regime change – https://theconversation.com/cubas-speedboat-shootout-recalls-long-history-of-exile-groups-engaged-in-covert-ops-aimed-at-regime-change-277049