After the US incursion into Venezuela, the fuel and electricity crisis in Cuba further worsened, with the majority of its revenues coming from Venezuelan oil (in exchange for security services for Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro). Last January 4, President Donald Trump said that “Cuba is about to collapse” and that he does not believe there is a need for action, given that the island “seems to be falling apart”. But as is known, the US administration’s plans can change very quickly, and last Sunday (January 11) the American president threatened Cuba to reach an agreement with the United States “before it is too late”, given that the flow of oil and money to Havana is about to stop.
Meanwhile, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel responded that Cuba is a free, independent and sovereign nation, and that no one can tell it what to do, adding that his country “is preparing to defend the homeland to the last drop of blood.”
To better understand the situation we interviewed the geopolitical analyst Andrea Gaspardo.
Why is Cuba considered unique in U.S.-Latin American relations, and how has its status evolved from protectorate to ideological enemy?
Cuba was a Spanish colony for centuries, until after the Spanish-American War it became a protectorate of the United States, despite being nominally an independent country.
In the first decades of the 20th century the island managed to organize itself as a national state, but always remained under the protection of the USA. Things changed dramatically in the aftermath of the 1953-1959 Cuban Revolution that brought Fidel Castro to the helm of the country, who established a strongly nationalist populist regime, which over time evolved into a full-blown communist regime. Castro in fact aligned himself with the USSR, and was the architect of the so-called Cuban missile crisis which in 1962 almost led to a global nuclear war.
After that crisis, throughout the Cold War and in the decades following it, a sort of truce was established between Cuba and the USA on the basis of which – while not giving up attempts to eliminate Castro and subvert the regime with means of hybrid warfare – the United States had renounced the possibility of militarily invading the island: an invasion, in fact, would have had enormous costs and risks compared to the expected benefits, not to mention the international condemnations that could derive from it. Furthermore, the risk of transforming Castro into an even stronger symbol (“rally around the flag” effect) was too high. After 1991, moreover, Cuba was no longer a Soviet outpost with the same strategic weight, and the invasion was even less justifiable.
After the Cold War, the Cuban regime continued to survive — albeit with difficulty — first under the command of Fidel Castro and then of his brother Raul. Although it had by then ceased to be a threat to the US, Cuba continued to remain a beacon of inspiration for left-wing or libertarian, populist movements, especially in Latin America.
Conditions in Cuba have gradually worsened since the 1960s. But what were the decisive factors that in recent decades have brought Cuba to the brink of systemic and demographic collapse?
During Donald Trump’s first presidency, the embargo and economic siege to which Cuba has been subjected since the Cuban revolution became even more stringent. Little by little, the voices of those who would like to change the status quo on the island and bring about the end of the Cuban regime have become increasingly louder.
Power has passed from the Castro brothers to Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel, the current president and general secretary of the Cuban Communist Party, who represents the new generation of leaders who grew up in the shadow of the Cuban revolution. Díaz-Canel also had to deal with the international crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic, which further complicated the already very delicate economic situation of the island, which in fact sank into a deep economic crisis. The near cessation of tourist flows and bilateral trade with a series of countries (especially Latin American countries, which contributed to keeping the Cuban economy alive) then did the rest.
These external shocks, combined with terrible internal management, had the effect of a tornado on the already weak economy and society of the island, so much so that if in 2016 from a demographic point of view it had around 11 and a half million inhabitants (the island’s moment of demographic maximum splendor), nowadays, due to low fertility rates (declining for decades) and mass immigration, Cuba has lost as many as 2 million inhabitants in 10 years. For all these reasons, the island is therefore currently in an extremely delicate situation.
After the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, what are the possible scenarios that the Trump administration is evaluating to bring about regime change in Cuba and what obstacles make an operation similar to the Venezuelan one difficult?
With his return to the White House in 2024, Trump has marked a new strategic turning point in foreign policy for the USA, which wants to re-establish its total (geopolitical, economic and military) dominance over the American continent as a whole, over the Western Hemisphere and over English-speaking countries.
In this context, although Cuba – as we have already said – is no longer capable of posing a threat to the United States, being the only country on the American continent that has an independent foreign policy and strategic direction, it annoys the USA. It is even more annoying if we think of other Latin American countries considered not to have good relations with Washington such as, for example, Mexico, which is deeply linked to the USA. The same goes for Colombia, whose president Gustavo Petro has been repeatedly attacked by Trump for his left-wing and critical positions towards American policies. Even Nicaragua and Venezuela, which are considered countries ideologically hostile to the USA, have seen them as their main trading partners for years.
Cuba therefore remains a unique and somewhat “indomitable” case, because it is the only country on the continent that has effectively escaped both direct and indirect control of the USA for several decades. Now the Trump administration – in line with its plan to get its hands on the entire continent or almost – wants to straighten out the issue and bring Cuba back into the US sphere of influence.
It is not yet clear whether the United States intends to wait and suffocate the island economically, whether it wants to militarily support some subversive movement that leads to the fall of the Cuban regime or whether it will opt for a full-scale military invasion, also because Cuba, despite being much smaller than the ailing Venezuela, is still a country with a government present in all spheres of society. Precisely for this reason the Cuban government cannot be eliminated from the table with a simple special forces operation as happened in Venezuela.
Trump would therefore need a different plan of action, but it is not now known what the White House is planning. Most likely, even the balance of power that prevailed until the day before yesterday on the two sides of the Florida Strait will soon change, and to find out more we can only continue to monitor the situation.
