When US President Barack Obama announced a deal to normalise relations with Cuba in 2014, Republican presidential candidates denounced it as a concession - but not Donald Trump. "I think it's fine, but we could have made a better deal. The idea of opening up to Cuba is a good one," he said at the time. Now Trump wants to prove that he can make a better deal. By deepening Cuba's economic depression, Trump hopes to inflict enough pain on the Cuban people that the government will be forced to sit down at the negotiating table and accept a "deal" that would essentially amount to surrender.
After the arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia, observers wondered if Cuba was next. At first, Trump seemed hesitant. Asked by reporters whether he would strike Cuba, he replied: “It seems like it’s collapsing on its own. I don’t think we need any action.” A few days later, he seemed to dismiss the idea of putting more pressure on Havana. “I don’t think you can put much more pressure on Havana than just going in and blowing everything up,” he said. He predicted that Cuba would “fall… on its own.”
However, emboldened by his success in taking control of Venezuelan oil, and encouraged by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has built his political career on a hard line towards Havana, Trump announced on social media on January 11: “There will be no more oil or money for Cuba - zero! I strongly recommend they make a deal, before it's too late.”
Soon, word leaked out that the Trump administration was planning something far more aggressive than simply cutting off Venezuelan oil shipments. The U.S. charge d’affaires in Havana, Mike Hammer, told staff to pack up, expecting a break in relations. “Cubans have been complaining about the ‘blockade’ for years. But now there will be a real blockade. Nothing will come in. No more oil,” he said. Politico quoted a person familiar with the U.S. plan as saying, “Energy is the stranglehold that kills the regime.”
Instead of a naval blockade, Trump has turned to his favorite, universal economic weapon: tariffs. He declared a national emergency on January 29, claiming that Cuba posed an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States, allowing him to impose tariffs on any country that supplies oil to Cuba. The threat of tariffs is intended to deter Havana’s oil-producing friends — including Mexico, Brazil, Angola and Algeria — from making up for the loss of Venezuelan oil.
Since issuing the executive order, Trump has repeatedly called on Cuban leaders to reach an agreement, while administration officials have revealed anonymously that Washington is seeking regime change on the island by the end of the year. Multiple sources say the administration is seeking someone high enough in the Cuban government to play the role of Delcy Rodriguez, someone who could take over and who would be willing to submit to American hegemony in exchange for easing sanctions.
But finding such a person may prove much more difficult than Trump and Rubio think. The Cuban regime no longer depends on the charismatic authority of Fidel or Raúl Castro. It has evolved into a collective leadership made up of the state bureaucracy, the Communist Party apparatus, and the armed forces, a leadership that has shown remarkable cohesion in the face of American threats. A “decapitation” strategy along the lines of Venezuela’s will not work in Cuba.
A Cuban version of Rodriguez would need to have the support of the military and the loyalty of the government and the Communist Party to run the country. Even identifying such a person would be nearly impossible. The inner workings of the Cuban regime, especially the armed forces, are largely opaque to American policymakers, according to former U.S. ambassador Jeffrey DeLaurentis, who served three terms in Havana.
A more productive strategy would be to open a dialogue with the current Cuban government, which has always been willing to negotiate with the United States, although rarely willing to make major concessions. However, in the current circumstances, when Cuba has very few options, the scope for a possible agreement may be broader than before.
Cuba’s economic crisis, which began before Trump, was already serious and worsening even before the cutoff of Venezuelan oil supplies. A complete energy blockade, if Washington were to impose it, would push the Cuban economy to the breaking point, reducing the Cuban people to “mere survival,” according to economist Ricardo Torres. That gives Cuban negotiators a strong incentive to agree to a deal.
Trump’s priorities in Venezuela are to secure American access to commercial opportunities and push back against American rivals Russia and China, while maintaining stability on the ground to limit migration and avoid another Iraq-like chaos. If those same priorities are applied to Cuba, a deal might be possible.
Cubans would welcome American trade engagement. The main obstacle is the US embargo. But current conditions on the island make Cuba unattractive for doing business. Havana could agree to take steps to improve the business environment for US trade and investment in exchange for sanctions relief. Cuba has significant deposits of nickel and cobalt, which would be attractive to the Trump administration, given its priority in securing access to strategic minerals.
Cuba also has a large tourism sector that is currently collapsing due to a lack of visitors and resources. Trump clearly recognizes this opportunity. Before he was first elected in 2016, he sent representatives to Cuba on several occasions to explore business opportunities in hotels and golf courses.
Cuba's close ties with Russia and China have long been a security concern for the United States. These ties are primarily commercial, but military and intelligence cooperation have gradually expanded. Cuba insists that it does not host any foreign military bases, which could be a starting point for dialogue about limiting Cuban military cooperation with powers outside the hemisphere if the threat from the United States wanes. On the commercial front, neither China nor Russia can compete with the United States as a source of trade and investment.
There would no doubt be other long-standing issues on the table, including claims for expropriated property by U.S. investors and Cuban Americans. Trump recently said he wanted Cuban Americans to be “taken care of,” as they were his loyal supporters. While Cuba currently does not have the money to pay reparations, there are various models and historical experiences that could be drawn upon if both sides have the political will to resolve the issue.
Washington has long demanded the return of elderly political fugitives from the 1970s who were granted political asylum in Cuba. While their return is unlikely, formal protocols for the extradition of common criminals, which Cuba already does on an ad hoc basis, are quite possible. The release of political prisoners is also a constant item on the US negotiating agenda, and when bilateral relations improve, Cuba has shown a willingness to respond.
The issue of democracy, however, will be a stumbling block. Ever since 1961, when Che Guevara told Richard Goodwin, an advisor to President John F. Kennedy, that Cuba would never talk about “renouncing the type of society” for which they had led the revolution, Cuba has been unwilling to compromise on its political or economic system. Yet democracy is not high on Trump’s agenda, as demonstrated by his marginalization of opposition leader Maria Corina Machado in Venezuela. Promoting democracy smacks of “nation-building” and risks destabilizing existing institutions, which could lead to chaos, according to the administration’s thinking. Just as the trauma of Vietnam produced the “Vietnam syndrome,” Trump and his MAGA base have the “Iraq syndrome”—an aversion to “endless wars” waged to spread democracy by force.
In short, a deal is possible. According to Trump, Washington has already opened a dialogue with someone on the Cuban side. “We are talking to people in Cuba, to people at the highest levels in Cuba,” he told reporters at Mar-a-Lago on February 1. “We are pretty close. We are talking to Cuban leaders right now,” he said the next day from the Oval Office.
Trump's comments have sparked a flurry of speculation about what's going on behind the scenes. Reports have focused on Mexico, where Speaker Claudia Sheinbaum has repeatedly offered to mediate. Mexico has a long history of mediating secret talks between Washington and Havana, from the Jimmy Carter administration to the Obama administration. In 2014, Mexico hosted at least one of the secret meetings between senior White House advisers and a Cuban delegation led by General Alejandro Castro Espin, the son of then-President Raul Castro, that led to Obama's opening to Cuba.
Reports are circulating that Castro Espinosa's recent trip to Mexico included several days of secret talks with US officials about a possible agreement that would satisfy US security and economic interests while preserving the existing power structure in Cuba.
Politico reported that “several Cuban dissident media outlets reported that Castro Espin traveled to Mexico City to meet with U.S. officials and propose an exit strategy for the regime.” In an interview with reporters in Havana this week, Cuba’s deputy foreign minister, Carlos Fernandez de Cosio, admitted: “We have exchanged messages, we have embassies, we have communication, but we cannot say that we have sat down at the negotiating table.”
Failure to reach an agreement would be disastrous, but not just for Cuba. Cutting off oil supplies to Cuba is a risky strategy. The goal is to push the economy to the brink of collapse, to inflict so much pain that either the regime capitulates or a faction within it seizes power and accedes to American demands, as the remnants of the Chavista regime in Venezuela have done. “We have no interest in a destabilized Cuba,” Rubio said at a meeting with oil executives at the White House. But if the oil blockade causes economic and social collapse, the consequences for the United States will be serious.
Washington has already faced this risk, during what Cuba called the “Special Period” after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s main ally and patron. In August 1993, the CIA compiled a secret National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that could have been written today. “The impact on the population has already been devastating,” the report said, citing shortages of basic goods and power outages lasting from 10 to 16 hours a day. “Food shortages and distribution problems have led to malnutrition and disease, and the difficulties of mere survival will increase,” it added.
U.S. officials recognized that a “failed state” in Cuba posed a national security threat. The emergence of “serious instability in Cuba would have an immediate impact on the United States,” the intelligence community concluded, citing mass uncontrolled migration, unrest in the refugee community in Miami, and increased “calls for U.S. or international military intervention”—all likely consequences even today.
The defiant Fidel Castro once said that Cuba would never negotiate “with a knife to its throat,” but that knife, resharpened, is now digging deeper than ever into the Cuban fabric. In public, Cuban leaders continue to chant, “Patria o muerte!” (“Fatherland or death!”). But given the suffering the Cuban people are enduring and what lies ahead, it makes sense to explore whether a deal with the Trump administration that preserves Cuban sovereignty is possible, even at the cost of compromising on other policies.
During the first half of the 20th century, the United States had a degree of dominance over Cuba that the Trump administration is now trying to restore — the power to dictate who runs the island and almost complete control over its economy. “The American ambassador was the second most important man in Cuba. Sometimes even more important than the president,” said Earl E.T. Smith, a former U.S. ambassador. The nationalist anger that such a vassal position provoked exploded in the 1959 revolution, while Smith was in Havana. The result has been more than half a century of hostility that has served neither country’s interests. Washington would be wise to avoid repeating that sad history.
prepared by: S. STRUGAR
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