At the end of February, Donald Trump offered what appeared to be an offhand comment about a potential “friendly takeover” of Cuba in the wake of the capture of Nicolas Maduro. At the time, it sounded like speculative goal-setting, as is Trump’s wont. Yesterday, though, Trump repeated his claim at a presser at the Doral country club, with more specificity. Reporters followed up on the assertion, and Trump indicated that Marco Rubio has already plunged into talks with the remnant Castroites in Havana:
USA Today’s Francesca Chambers reported yesterday, with updates this morning, that progress in these talks may have gone further than first thought. While the Havana government denies that negotiations have taken place, the two sides have begun to flesh out what normalization might look like under Trump rather than the brief period of engagement under Barack Obama. There is no doubt that Cuba’s position is much worse than it was a decade ago, and that it has no other options at the moment:
Trump argued that Cuba had depended for decades on Venezuela’s aid, which has run dry after the U.S. capture of Nicolas Maduro to face narco-terrorism and trafficking charges. Delcy Rodriguez, who succeeded Maduro, has been cooperating with the United States and not sending aid to Cuba.
“Venezuela sends them no energy, no fuel, no oil, no money, no nothing,” Trump said. “Without Venezuela they couldn’t have made it. We cut them off from everything else. So yeah, they’re going to make either a deal or we’ll do it just as easy anyway.”
What are the advantages of cutting a deal for the creaking and collapsing Castro communist regime? It’s not just economic benefits, although those would accrue rapidly. Rubio may be planning an escape route from an angry populace:
The details of the deal that could cover ports, energy and tourism are not known but could include a relaxation of restrictions on Americans traveling to the Caribbean island.
Discussions have included an off-ramp for President Miguel Díaz-Canel and for members of the Castro family that ruled Cuba for decades to remain on the island. The U.S. government has floated dropping some sanctions.
“Off ramps” certainly seem to be in the news today. The leftover leaders of Fidel’s regime will need them more than Trump will, however. After nearly 80 years of communist repression, the people of Cuba may want to put some of them up against a wall when the collapse finally arrives. They’re already worried about what happens in any transition, as well they should be, considering the misery of the population they have subjugated. Even the normally cheerleading American media has long since stopped pretending that the Cuban healthcare system delivers superior results for ordinary Cubans, or for anyone else, either.
The need to cut a deal and take an “off ramp” grows every day, too. Although the conflict in Iran has pushed Cuba to the back burner, the regime knew it would just be a matter of time before Trump executes a “maximum pressure” campaign to force the “takeover”:
“Cuba just bought itself a window — but it’s a narrow one,” Robert Munks, head of Americas research at risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft, told CNBC by email.
“The operation against Iran removes Cuba – temporarily – from Washington’s sights, as the US administration will be preoccupied with the Gulf campaign in the coming weeks.”
But Munks said he expected Cuba to return to the headlines, adding that the Cuban diaspora in South Florida would apply pressure and Washington has shown it is prioritizing the Western Hemisphere in its remodeled national security strategy.
“The regime in Havana remains in control, for the moment. Any unrest caused by economic hardship could be sudden and spontaneous, which would give Washington a pretext to refocus on pressuring the regime,” Munks said.
Don’t forget that Cuban leadership may need to cut deals of a different sort if they can’t reach an accommodation with Rubio. The Department of Justice has already started efforts to apply the Maduro model to Cuba’s political leadership and may soon have indictments on the table that could justify a Maduro-style operation in Havana:
A federal prosecutor in Florida is looking to build criminal cases against leaders of Cuba’s government and Communist Party, according to people familiar with the matter, as President Trump has openly suggested the country would be his next target for regime change.
The Trump administration used criminal charges as a justification for the ouster of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
The Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Miami has created a working group that includes officials from the Treasury Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to gather evidence for such prosecutions, the people familiar with the matter said. Prosecutors are looking for potential crimes related to drugs, immigration and other violations, they said.
Cuba isn’t seen as a drug trafficking hub. The involvement of Treasury officials suggest prosecutors could be pursuing charges for sanctions violations, legal experts said.
In other words, Trump and Rubio plan a full-spectrum pressure campaign to force Diaz-Canel and his cronies to give up power and allow the US to shape a new direction for Cuba. It would present the most robust demonstration of the “Donroe Doctrine” since the capture of Maduro from Venezuela, but more importantly, would rid the hemisphere of the malignant epicenter of socialism in the Western Hemisphere. That, plus the soft regime change already taking place in Venezuela, would finally put a spike in efforts by Russia and China to create chaos in the US sphere of influence and allow us to protect our interests around the world more effectively. It would also show that the US can manage strategic interests simultaneously in multiple theaters, a lesson that will resonate in Moscow and Beijing.
Diaz-Canel probably cares less about that, though, than his own survival and retirement. A “friendly takeover” of Cuba probably sounds better to the Fidelito than any of the likeliest alternatives.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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