After the decapitation of two longstanding American foes in Venezuela and Iran, Donald Trump promised that “Cuba is next”.
The US President has suggested this would be a “friendly takeover” that could be achieved without military force. But mixed messages from Trump’s White House, secretive negotiations across the Florida Straits and a militant community of Cuban expats in the US paint a murkier and more chaotic picture of US intentions.
Trump could be in line for a personal windfall if business interests he has long pursued in Cuba, including hotels and golf courses, come to fruition under his presidency. The US President has previously faced criticism over links between his policies and apparent personal interests, such as his promotion of cryptocurrency and receiving a private jet from Qatar.
Cuba has been suffering through a severe economic crisis after three months without oil supplies, according to President Miguel Díaz-Canel, until a shipment from Russia arrived this week. An already-weakened and ageing power grid has been collapsing under the strain, with several nationwide blackouts in recent weeks. Hospitals report patients are dying because of a lack of fuel for machinery.
After the capture of Venezuela’s former president Nicolás Maduro in January, the US cut off critical oil supplies from that country and threatened other suppliers with sanctions, tightening the blockade of Cuba that was installed after Fidel Castro’s Communist revolutionaries took power in 1959.
Miladys Thoma Tamayo, a Cuban educator visiting the UK as a guest of the National Education Union, told The i Paper of 36-hour blackouts, medicine shortages, disrupted water supplies, and the shutdown of public transport.
A Cuban rides his bike during a nationwide blackout in Havana on 21 March (Photo: Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty)She described it as “the hardest moment since the revolution” – eclipsing the “Special Period” that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, which also plunged the island into economic crisis.
But quiet talks between Havana and Washington have been accompanied by some limited concessions on both sides, with US officials suggesting a larger deal could be imminent.
The White House is said to be channelling communications through Raul Rodríguez Castro, grandson of Fidel’s brother Raúl, including a secret meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban emigres and a central figure in Trump’s policy toward the island.
The most visible US concession has come in the shape of the Anatoly Kolodkin, a Russian tanker carrying 730,000 barrels of oil that docked in Cuba on Tuesday. Trump declined to block the shipment and said he had “no problem” with other countries supplying oil to Cuba.
People spend the night in the dark on the Malecon ocean road in Havana (Photo: Ramon Espinosa/AP)The US has reportedly proposed a “month-by-month” policy that would see a gradual easing of the blockade in exchange for economic reforms that would see Havana give greater leeway to the private sector and foreign investors, moving away from its communist model.
But Rubio said last week that for Cuba to flourish, “you need to change the people in charge, you need to change the system that runs the country”. The New York Times reported that White House sees Diaz-Canel as an “obstacle” and is demanding that he step down.
The US position appears unclear and inconsistent, said William LeoGrande, a professor of government at the American University in Washington DC, who has served as an adviser on Latin American issues to several US administrations.
“The question is, does the US insist on the removal of at least some of Cuba’s political leaders as part of a deal, or would it settle for a fairly dramatic opening up of the Cuban economy, particularly to US investors?” he said.
The confusion is partly due to differences between Rubio’s “ideologically motivated policy” and Trump’s “transactional” approach, said LeoGrande.
Activists carrying humanitarian aid arrive in Cuba on 24 March (Photo: Norlys Perez/Reuters)The US President has a longstanding interest in the island. The Trump Organisation holds registered trademarks in Cuba for casinos, golf courses and hotels, and has reportedly sent staff to research locations. Trump said in 2016 that the country could be “an opportunity for us” at a time of Obama-era liberalisation in US policy towards Cuba.
Those interests could yet be revived, suggests LeoGrande. “It comes down to, is the economics enough? Is it enough for Cuba to open up the hotel industry for investment from foreign companies, such as the Trump Organisation?
“He sent representatives to Cuba twice before he became president the first time, to investigate the possibility of business opportunities in hotels and golf courses in Cuba. He has a long-term interest in that.”
Havana has signalled openness to compromise, recently announcing measures to enable expats to own businesses in Cuba and the release of 51 political prisoners.
Pressure has been growing within the country for economic reforms following a prolonged fall in living standards that predate the US escalation of the blockade, with an estimated 1.5 million Cubans fleeing the island since the Covid-19 pandemic.
In a recent article, veteran Cuban diplomat Carlos Alzugaray Treto argued that the country should emulate the market-led reforms of other avowedly Communist countries, China and Vietnam.
“In both countries, reformist factions within their respective communist parties successfully implemented transformations that opened their economies to market forces,” he wrote. “The evidence of the success of their reforms is clear.”
A Cuban woman with her daughter selling pastries in Havana (Photo: Ramon Espinosa/AP)Cuba’s ambassador to the UK, Ismara Vargas Walter, told The i Paper that the Government was willing to “put many issues on the table, with one single and absolute exception: our independence, our sovereignty.”
Leadership changes demanded by Washington are a red line, she said.
Alberto Fernandez, a Cuban-American former US diplomat, said Trump’s suggestion of a “friendly takeover” could be preparing the ground for a Venezuela-style deal, leaving elements of the regime in place that are willing to work with the White House.
“The Americans prefer an easy solution – gradual change through some willing Cuban proxy, willing to play along and be helpful – rather than run the country themselves and engage in direct and expensive nation building,” he said.
But that would require “finessing” the community of Cuban expats in the US that are demanding comprehensive regime change, he said. The community is largely concentrated in Florida, where Rubio served as a Senator and makes up an important constituency for Trump.
Expat groups have been vocal in opposing a partial deal that leaves any element of Communist rule intact. Armando Labrador, a Miami plastic surgeon and head of the political movement Cuba Primero, has called for the US to send in the Marines instead.
Some members of the community appear to have taken matters into their own hands. Four emigres were reportedly killed in a recent shootout with Cuban soldiers in a speedboat off the coast of the island.
A Free Cuba rally of expats in Florida on 24 March (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty)Trump has not ruled out military action if no deal is agreed. “It wouldn’t be a very tough operation,” he said last month.
Cuba is also preparing for that possibility, announcing steps to increase military readiness.
Vargas Walter said the country’s armed forces are “training rigorously at present in anticipation of the possibility of military aggression. We would be naive if, given the current international situation, we did not.”
Cuba’s communist government has defied predictions for its imminent demise many times before, said LeoGrande.
He attributes its survival to the lack of organised opposition in the country and also a residual support for the revolutionary project and its promise of free education and healthcare, guaranteed work and housing.
But the current economic and political crisis has left it “probably more vulnerable today than ever before,” the professor said.
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