Donald Trump’s growing effort to destabilise Cuba is a natural extension of the US President’s policy to reshape Latin America. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the administration wants to see the collapse of this Caribbean communist regime by the year’s end.

That would be a manifestly good thing, given that many thousands brave shark-infested waters to escape Cuba every year. Between 2022 and 2023, some estimates suggest a staggering 18% of the population fled from the regime. As foreigners enjoy the island’s tropical sun while sipping mojitos and visiting child prostitutes, the Cuban people have only grown poorer and more desperate. Amid that desperation, the regime has only cracked down harder on them. Cuba’s true testimony is not the healthcare paradise dreamed up by gullible Western liberals, but instead of a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in real time.

Cuba is also an ardent enemy of the US. Recent years have seen a ramping up of Chinese military and intelligence activity on the island. All the while, the regime has continued its close engagement with the most hostile elements of the Russian intelligence services and military. American security would be improved by driving these two top global adversaries away from Florida’s doorstep.

Trump knows from his intelligence briefings that Raúl Castro’s government is under extraordinary economic pressure. Energy shortages are rampant, access to the most basic medical care and food supplies is heavily rationed, and living standards have collapsed. But things are about to get even worse, as Cuba loses access to oil from Venezuela. Replacing those energy supplies will be impossible for at least five years, if ever.

Yet Trump is also motivated here by an increased confidence in his own power. The US President is especially emboldened by what he sees as highly successful military action during his second term. He often describes in glowing terms the “B-2s [bomber aircraft]” which carried out air strikes on Iran’s nuclear programme last June. The success of that high-risk, high-reward military intervention encouraged Trump to order attacks on drug smuggling vessels from Colombia and Venezuela beginning last September. After months of warnings, he then ordered the operation earlier this month to seize Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. Trump is now coercing the remainder of Maduro’s regime by blockading Venezuelan oil exports.

From the White House’s perspective, the beauty of this policy rests on its leveraging of sharp military power without an entangling American occupation. Maduro is sitting in a prison cell, Acting President Delcy Rodríguez is broadly sympathetic to US demands, and Trump appears dominant. Unlike what the US President described as the “stupid wars” of Afghanistan and Iraq, no Americans are patrolling under fire in Caracas — at least not yet. Encouraged by his highly trusted Secretary of State Marco Rubio (whose parents are Cuban), Trump now wants to cement his foreign policy legacy by doing what John F. Kennedy could not: ending communist Cuban rule.

The importance of the Maduro raid cannot be underestimated here. While that served as a strategic hammer blow to the economic viability of the Castro regime, it also struck deeply at Cuba’s tactical deterrence credibility. For decades, the Cuban intelligence and security apparatus was regarded in Washington as worthy of American caution. But with Delta Force killing at least 32 Cuban military and intelligence personnel in the Maduro raid, and doing so without any American casualties, communist Cuba now appears less a hardened porcupine sitting at Florida’s foot, and more a snail ripe for a tasty dish of escargot.

After all, as with Gaza, Trump has made no secret of his excitement at the prospect of turning dilapidated coastal locales into luxury resorts. Cuba has a lot of tropical sea-facing real estate. And while that will strike loathing into Castro and the Cuban military elite, there is far less they can do about it today than even a few years ago. Demanding they make major concessions, Trump is banking on them blinking or being deposed by a more favourable partner.

---

Tom Rogan is a national security writer at the Washington Examiner

TomRtweets

---