Communist Cuba has been a thorn in America’s side for nearly 70 years. Every president since Dwight Eisenhower has had to deal with a hostile regime less than 90 miles from the United States. But recent events have presented President Donald Trump with a historic opportunity, and the president should seize it.
The Cuban regime, nominally headed by President Manuel Diaz-Canel but in fact controlled by an oppressive security apparatus, is tottering. Now is the time for the Trump administration to increase diplomatic pressure so that a threat close to our shores can swiftly arrive in its proper place on the ash heap of history.
Cuba is in dire straits. Cuban officials announced on March 16 that the country was suffering an islandwide blackout. Between 9 and 11 million Cubans, which is most of the country’s population, were without power. Hospitals and other emergency care providers scrambled through the third major blackout in just four months.
Some leftist commentators and organizations try to blame Cuba’s ills on the United States; the Democratic Socialists of America, for example. But the U.S. isn’t what causes Cuba’s fatal malaise, communism is.
Since the Castro regime seized power in 1959, Cuba has regressed, its growth has retarded, and progress has been made impossible. In February, with tensions with the U.S. growing, Cuba put on showy military maneuvers on National Defense Day. It featured oxen towing aged equipment, which embodied the nation’s decline and gave fodder for commentators. But Cuba isn’t a joke. For nearly seven decades, it has been a tragedy.
The malaise and the regime responsible for it would have ended long ago but for the assistance provided by the U.S.’s enemies, first Moscow and now Beijing.
During the Cold War, Cuba relied on patronage from the Soviet Union. With communism’s collapse in Europe more than three decades ago, Cuba’s archaic regime is increasingly a vestige of an epoch that is gone but should not be lamented.
As sclrotic as it is, however, Cuba still poses a threat. Both China and Russia have used it as a forward operating base. In June 2023, the Biden administration confirmed that China, our foremost adversary, was using spy bases in Cuba. Havana has long served as a means for our enemies to project power in our hemisphere, to wreak havoc and sow discord.
After the Soviet Union disintegrated, Cuba needed another sponsor and found one in Hugo Chavez, the dictator in Venezuela. Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, helped keep the lights on in Cuba with supplies of oil at discounted prices in exchange for Cuba sending its military and other security goons to Caracas to protect the Venezuelan strongmen. Cuba’s infamous security agencies, long feared for their ruthlessness and skill, kept Venezuela’s dictators … until they didn’t.
Trump changed all that with a dazzlingly effective military operation in January. U.S. forces captured Maduro in Caracas in a raid in which they also killed dozens of Cuban agents. It was a bold reassertion of U.S. power in the Western Hemisphere. In one fell swoop, our warfighters seized a wanted narcoterrorist who masqueraded as the legitimate head of state.
Now, Trump controls the taps that either supply or deny Cuba’s regime the energy supplies it needs. Protests have erupted in Cuba over deteriorating conditions. This leverage shouldn’t be wasted. Trump seems to recognize the opportunity.
THE US SHOULD GIVE JAPAN WHAT IT NEEDS
As Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently observed, Cuba has a “nonfunctional” economy that “doesn’t work” and has “survived on subsidies from the Soviet Union and Venezuela.” Cuba, Rubio said, “needs new people in charge.” Trump has even taken it a step further, saying he thinks he will have the “honor of taking Cuba.” The regime fears it will share Maduro’s fate. It should be.
The Trump administration is in talks with the Cuban regime. It is right to push and use all diplomatic means available to remove a long-standing and pernicious dictatorship in our backyard. It would be a victory for Cubans and a blow to the U.S.’s enemies. Timing and fate might present Trump with a chance to achieve something that has eluded his predecessors.
