A new wave of sanctions and escalated threats against the beleaguered people suggest that Trump will not be satisfied until the existing Cuban government is dismantled. A Venezuela-style ‘take-over’ looks impossible.

A new wave of US sanctions has spelled chaos for Cuba’s economy in recent months, calling into question the future of its decades-long Revolution and raising fears of possible military intervention. Tensions have escalated between the two countries since the beginning of the year, when the US bombardment of Venezuela froze the flow of oil from Cuba’s primary supplier, which was followed by the imposition of a total fossil fuel blockade in February.

The increasing wave of sanctions has targeted both individuals and entities related to the various arms of the Cuban state. The US ultimatum is brutal: surrender to our demands with immediate effect – or resist and pay the price.

Nothing about these attacks is new for Cubans. The island nation has been under a US trade embargo since 1962, when rising fears in Washington about its alliance with the Soviet Union culminated in the Cuban Missile Crisis. The long-term economic effects of the island’s ensuing isolation have been significant: even before Trump’s current wave of attacks, the country was weighed down by a heavy debt burden, enfeebled tourism sector, and the recent decimation of its workforce via the largest wave of emigration since the 1959 Revolution.

But something in the air has changed. Whilst Cuba was once a peripheral, if persistent, thorn in the sides of various US presidents, it now finds itself at the epicentre of the Trump administration’s attention. As attempts at regime change in Iran threaten to turn into yet another one of the ‘forever wars’ Trump vowed to end, it is the Caribbean island nation, only 140 kilometres away from the shores of Florida, that is now bearing the brunt of the FIFA Peace Prize winner’s relentless attacks.

In Cuba, as in Iran, the Trump administration has learned that regime change can be an elusive goal. Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have, however, refused to give this up. On May 1, President Trump issued Executive Order 14404, aimed at ‘those responsible for repression in Cuba and for threats to United States national security and foreign policy’. The sanctions target various sectors of the Cuban economy, including energy, defence, and financial services, as well as ‘persons who support the Cuban regime’s security apparatus and those responsible for repression in Cuba and threats to US national security’. On June 11, Rubio also announced the sanctioning of Cuba’s state-owned oil and gas company, Unión Cuba-Petróleo, citing the Cuban government’s ‘weaponiza[tion]’ of energy trade ‘as a tool of both repression and self-serving regime kleptocracy.’

The same Executive Order gives the US Treasury and State Departments immediate power to impose secondary sanctions on foreign companies doing business with Cuban state enterprises, leading longtime foreign investors like mining company Sherritt International, shipping giant Hapag Lloyd and the Meliá hotel chain to abandon the island. Despite considerable pressure from previous US policies, professor of Cuban-American Studies Michael Bustamente explains, ‘foreign investors and operators in Cuba have never [before] been threatened outright with losing their access to the US financial system.’

GAESA the key target

But the key to the US’s recent attacks might well be GAESA, the Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. Set up and owned by the Cuban military since the economic crisis of the 1990s known as the ‘Special Period’, the mega-conglomerate wields considerable influence over the most profitable sectors of the Cuban economy, accounting for around 37 per cent of the country’s GDP. Established to steady the waters of one of the most turbulent periods in Cuba’s recent history, GAESA maintains a monopolistic position over Cuba’s economic landscape, generally operating without competition as it controls prices, rakes in high profits, and dominates access to foreign currency. Any attack on GAESA is an attack on the Cuban economy at large, not to mention the considerable power of the armed forces in Cuban society.

It is no wonder, then, that attacks on GAESA have been so relentless. In June, the Department of State designated three entities connected to GAESA’s revenue generation network, alongside two entities involved in Cuba’s mining sector. This came just after sanctions were placed on ‘Cuban actors responsible for subversive Anti-American activities’, which included Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel and the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba (MINFAR).

On July 23, Rubio announced further sanctions targeted at the Cuban government and its financial backers with the designation of ‘nine entities and two individuals whose activities perpetuate the regime’s control over Cuba’s energy, financial, and exploitative overseas medical labor sectors’: four of these were reportedly linked to GAESA’s attempts at corporate restructuring and use of third-party intermediaries. Then, on August 6, Rubio announced further sanctions against thirteen targets ‘involved in the procurement of military equipment from abroad for the Cuban regime’s Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR) and security forces.’ This included the Cuban military attachés to Russia and China, as well as five enterprises linked to the import and repair of weapons and military equipment.

If any hope the US might have of achieving its twin aims of opening Cuban markets to the private sector and ultimately ousting the Cuban Communist Party rests on neutralizing GAESA and its substantial economic heft, then it makes sense for the conglomerate to be its prime target. The language used by the US State Department has been relentlessly conspiratorial, staking out an elusive yet magnanimous bogeyman that needs to be taken down for the common good of the Cuban people. But when Cuba is a nationalised economy, is it at all surprising that a government enterprise holds hegemonic economic sway within the country? Or that the Cuban security forces, isolated by the US as they face an increasingly hostile landscape where even NATO allies are not safe (remember the attempted invasion of Greenland?), can only turn to a diminishing selection of allies, as they attempt to upgrade a military arsenal overwhelmingly comprised of relics from the Soviet Union?

Furthermore, the opacity of GAESA’s finances (it refuses to publish detailed financial reports to the public) have led to various English-language news sources like the Miami Herald to allege its involvement in a vast stockpiling of wealth amidst the neglect of Cuba’s basic public services. However, the certainty of these figures is questionable: a recent investigation revealed that the Herald’s claims appear to be backed up by nothing more than a blurry screenshot and an apparent confusion of Cuban pesos with US dollars, making the alleged $18 billion USD of GAESA’s wealth – larger than the reserves of Costa Rica or Uruguay – closer to $746 million (around 1/24 of the Herald’s initial count). The only thing that’s certain is the US political and media establishment’s commitment to fostering public consent for a continuedly unfriendly position towards Cuba – whatever the cost.

Caracas 2.0?

These attacks have been followed by the recent indictment of former Cuban First Secretary, Raúl Castro. The 96-year-old, who succeeded his brother Fidel in 2008, was charged on May 20 with destruction of aircraft, conspiracy to kill US nationals, and four individual counts of murder. The charges, which were filed in secret by a US grand jury in April, refer to the 1996 downing of two planes belonging to the Cuban-American group Brothers to the Rescue by Cuban armed forces – at that time headed by Castro. The aircraft, which were intended to distributed flyers over the island, were allegedly targeted without warning whilst still outside of Cuban territory, resulting in the deaths of US nationals Armando Alejandre Jr, Carlos Alberto Costa, Mario Manuel de la Peña, and Pablo Morales.

The indictment, which was accompanied by the arrival of the US Navy’s aircraft carrier USS Nimitz into the Caribbean Sea on the same day, was rejected by Cuban president Miguel Díaz Canel as an attempt ‘to justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba’. It is reasonable to believe that these are far from empty threats. Under the George W. Bush administration, Panamanian President Manuel Ortega was indicted by several grand juries on drug-related charges; a year later, he was forcibly extradited following the US invasion of Panama, whose bombardment of Panama City led to the displacement of an estimated 20,000 Panamanians. More recently, the US government’s indictment of Nicolás Maduro on charges that included narco-terrorism conspiracy served as the pretext for his eventual seizure from his compound in Caracas. It is easy to see how a similar fate might be planned for Castro.

The charges against Castro, alongside the unending attacks on GAESA and intentional starving of the Cuban economy, point to a rising threat to Cuba’s independence that has not been seen for decades. Still, there are some significant differences between Cuba and its former Venezuelan allies. Unlike the latter, whose government technically adopts a representative, republican and federal form of democratic government, Cuba has long been governed by a consortium of officials from various power centres, bound under the singular banner of the Cuban Communist Party.

These include the Communist Party Politburo, the presidency, the armed forces, the Ministry of the Interior, and administrators of state and state-affiliated companies, alongside provincial leaders. Any potential US deal with an unreconstructed Cuban government would require collaboration from each and every one of these political actors.

A ‘Friendly’ Takeover?

This means that Cuba lacks an obvious candidate to take on the role allocated to Venezuelan interim president Delcy Rodríguez in bowing to US demands. In the absence of any such pliable figure, a Caracas-style approach where Raúl Castro or Miguel Díaz-Canel are magicked out of Havana and a subservient administration left in place seems unlikely to work in the long-term.

Even so, it may well be that the web sustaining Cuba’s political status quo crumbles from the pressure of Trump’s unrelenting sanctions. Former US Foreign Service Officer Ricardo Zúñiga, who helped lead secret negotiations with Cuba in 2013, speculated in an interview with the New York Times that Trump’s government was ‘trying to create a condition of extraordinary stress, similar to a war,’ in order to ‘shake loose offers out of the Cuban government side… But’, he added ‘the Cubans have no vision for a plan that cuts them out of power.’ By debilitating GAESA, however, the US government is making good on its promise to cripple the Cuban establishment’s grip not only on the country’s economy, but on its political apparatus, too.

Despite an insistence that the president’s preference has always been peaceful negotiation, Rubio has repeatedly reiterated his lack of faith in a diplomatic solution. The Cuban government’s offers to renew cooperation with the US on issues such as counterterrorism, anti-money laundering, and drug trafficking prevention have proved useless.

Instead, the US government has consistently framed Cuba as a ‘national security threat’ – an allegation that Cuban Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez has emphatically denied. In a previous executive order released in January, President Trump accused Cuba of continually ‘try[ing] to thwart efforts to address threats to the US posed by hostile countries, transnational terrorist groups, and malign actors’, denouncing it as a supporter of ‘terrorism’ whose ‘policies, practices, and actions […] are designed to harm the United States’.

It might be hard to view the small island nation, whose reliance on Soviet-era weapons and comparably tiny military makes it not even a fraction of the size of its US counterpart, as a genuine security threat to its neighbours on the same level of, say, Iran or North Korea. In a 100-page document entitled ‘Cuba: The Capital of 21^st Century Communism’, the Department of State acknowledged that Havana’s military might has never had the capacity to defeat the US in conventional armed conflict.

‘Instead,’ they posit, ‘the Cubans perfected a new model for a long war of attrition’, leading it to ‘serv[e] as the connective tissue of a broader anti-American coalition’. Whatever the case may be, Trump’s personal stake in the fight appears to be as primary motivator in such aggressive foreign policy. ‘Other presidents have looked at this for 50, 60 years doing something’, Trump remarked in an unrelated Oval Office event in May, ‘and it looks like I’ll be the one that does it, so I would be happy to do it.’

The question of a violent transition of power now hangs heavy in the air. After the bombardment of Caracas in January, Trump told Cuba to make a deal with the US before it was ‘too late’; on May 3, the US president even joked about sending US aircraft carrier the USS Abraham Lincolnto Cuban coastal waters to take Cuba ‘on the way back from Iran’.

Though ‘Cuba’s regime may not be as resilient as Iran’s,’ Zúñiga states, ‘its leaders are much more entrenched’ than Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. Rather than a ‘quick victory’, Zúñiga adds, any attempt to rid the island of its top officials would ‘open the door to a variety of dangerous possibilities, such as protracted, bloody insurgency or societal collapse.’ Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel has warned that US military intervention on the island would ‘cause a bloodbath with incalculable consequences’, whilst Cuba’s Civil Defense agency has reportedly circulated a ‘Family Guide for Protection Against Military Aggression’, a nine-page document which instructs citizens on how to survive a possible aerial bombardment. It certainly does not help that Cuba’s allies in the region have all but disappeared following the kidnapping of Maduro, not to mention the successes of US-aligned far-right presidential candidates like Peru’s Keiko Fujimori, Chile’s José Antonio Kast, and Colombia’s Abelardo De La Espriella in recent elections across Latin America.

What is clear is that the US and Cuba’s relationship is bound up, as ever, in its long and difficult history. In a speech on Cuba’s Independence Day, Rubio boldly refuted claims that the reason for Cuba’s electricity blackouts was due to a US oil ‘blockade’, instead, laying the blame on GAESA.

The military conglomerate, Rubio claimed, was what ‘controlled’ the island – a ‘state within a state’ that was ‘accountable to no one’ and that ‘hoards the profits from its businesses for the benefit of a small elite.’ The MAGA-like language that has been so successful for Trump and his imitators both domestic and international here conjures a view of the Revolution in ruins. The only solution, Rubio made very clear was ‘new relationship between the US and Cuba’ – one that undoubtedly leaves the Cuban Communist Party and its geriatric figurehead in the dust.

While Rubio sows the seeds of popular dissent amidst the decimation of an already-collapsing economy, a future happily bannered with the familiar faces of Fidel Castro and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara seems further away with each passing day. Washington wants what it has always wanted: the end to a Revolution that has lasted far longer than it ever thought possible.

Though most Americans appear to oppose a US military invasion of Cuba, an overwhelming majority would support the provision of military and/or humanitarian aid to Cubans attempting to overthrow the government from inside the island. If a Panama-style occupation of the island is indeed discarded, the idea that the United States might aim to foment a popular uprising is not unimaginable by any means.

Trump’s demands are simple: the dissolution of the one-party system that keeps the Communist Party in power, the scheduling of ‘free’, multi-party elections (backed, as recent elections in Argentina and Colombia can attest, by strongly persuasive American interests), the release of all political prisoners, and the unconditional opening of the Cuban economy to the private sector.

As the President’s AI-generated vision for a Gaza Strip Peace Plan illuminates the audacious vivacity of his imagination, it is easy to see how his vision for a similarly transformed Cuba might well involve another clumsily-rendered real estate ‘paradise’ for American businesses. One only has to look so far as Puerto Rico, a US dependency cluttered with skyrocketing property investment for a wealthy few and rolling blackouts for the many, to see where a total opening to the US’s private sector interests might lead. Doing so will likely spell the end for Castro’s Communist dream, very possibly ushering in a return to US dependency and a heavy symbolic blow to the Latin American Left.

As the island’s nearly 10 million inhabitants are forced to depend on an ageing electricity grid and pitiful domestic oil production, grinding basic services like hospitals, schools, and public transport to a halt, the question may well be not if, but when, the Cuban political establishment is shut out of power. ‘The longer Cuban leaders treat the path forward as a matter of revolutionary dignity rather than national survival,’ analyst and professor Michael Bustamante states, ‘the more certain it becomes that whatever follows will be worse.’ That much may be true. Though military intervention is forecast to end in a bloodbath, the violent impulsiveness of Trump and his cronies’ track record on foreign policy scarcely rules it out.

So, what is the alternative? The Cuban state has shown a willingness, at least in part, to concede to US demands, recently permitting the creation of public-private enterprises between state and non-state actors. But the dismantling of its long-cherished Revolution and Communist ethos is another story entirely. The real question may well be how long Cuba is willing or able to wait out the mounting pressure from the US, at least in its current form with the Trump administration: the fact that midterm elections are looming on the horizon might well signal some reprieve from Trump and Rubio’s machinations. But the sheer force with which the US is hammering home its attacks – and whether any move from the Cuban government will actually make much difference in securing its survival – leaves the island’s future as uncertain as ever.