Calling Donald Trump a hypocrite doesn’t do much good, but let’s briefly recall December 2016. He had just won his first presidential election on a promise not to repeat George W. Bush’s Iraq War, which he called “a huge, fat mistake.” He underlined his anti-interventionist course at an event before he took office: “We will stop overthrowing foreign regimes that we know nothing about and in which we should not interfere,” said Trump. He spoke out against “nation-building” and declared: “We must build our own nation.”
Ten years later, now in his second term, Trump has put three countries on his hit list: Venezuela, Iran and Cuba. On January 3, the US bombed Caracas. A special squad arrested the country’s ruler, Nicolás Maduro – he is now awaiting trial in New York City. Trump brushed aside Venezuela’s opposition and negotiated an oil deal with Maduro’s former vice president Delcy Rodríguez. Satisfied with this, he turned to Iran at the end of February and had its Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei killed in air strikes. Since then, wave of attacks have followed waves of attacks; the Strait of Hormuz is closed; Oil and fertilizers are in short supply; and the regime still stands, now led by Ali Khamenei’s son.
“Cuba is next,” Trump announced to an audience of Miami investors in late March. “All my life I’ve been hearing about the United States and Cuba,” he said at another event in the Oval Office. “When will the United States do it? I think I will have the honor of taking Cuba. … I think I can do what I want with it. They are a very weakened nation.”
Destruction instead of construction
In some ways, Trump has kept his word. There are currently no ground troops stationed in any of its target countries; “Nation building” is not happening. Trump’s strategy relies on destruction and dominance. He commits atrocities without apology. He threatens and carries out attacks on civilian infrastructure. He believes that the rule of law and humanitarian principles have held the United States back, and that the world must be reordered through force: overwhelming, brutal force, followed not by a helping hand but by a business opportunity – offered under coercive conditions to a single winner. What does this mean for Cuba?
No bombs have yet fallen on Cuba, but US attacks on the island’s civilian infrastructure have been ongoing for more than 60 years. The economic embargo imposed by the United States shortly after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 restricts trade and travel and harms the economy. Cuba, like most island nations, is unable to maintain an industrial economy without foreign trade. The Soviet Union supported the country during the Cold War. The 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, were marked by dire hardship. In the 2000s, oil-rich Venezuela took over the Soviet Union’s old role. But since January, Cuba no longer has a protecting power. Trump has used tariff threats to pressure Mexico to stop oil deliveries.
“THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY FLOWING TO CUBA – ZERO!” Trump posted in January. “I strongly advise making a deal BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.”
Cuba on the verge of collapse
As a result of US pressure, an already dilapidated power grid, whose economy is dysfunctional for both internal and external reasons, is on the verge of collapse. There are power outages all over the island. Cuba simply does not receive enough oil to meet daily needs. Economic activity is restricted and supply shortages are worse than ever. The much-vaunted state health system has well-trained doctors, but little in the way of medicines and supplies – if people can even get to a clinic or hospital when they need it. The Trump administration reportedly hopes the pressure will force Miguel Díaz-Canel to resign – the first non-Castro leader since the revolution – in order to open the island, like Venezuela, to US investment under a new ruler, an intact regime and a new form of semi-sovereignty.
Most ordinary Cubans would like to stop being a pawn in the geopolitical game between their government and the United States. The last time Cubans could collectively look to the future with a sense of hope was about ten years ago, when Barack Obama launched a normalization plan. Although he couldn’t fully lift the embargo without congressional approval, Obama eased travel and export restrictions – arguing that after 50 years of failed policies, it was time to try something different. Obama became more popular in Cuba than any living Cuban politician.
Obama’s thesis was that a more open Cuba would strengthen the reform-oriented forces within the government against the hardliners and create space for change. Raúl Castro, Fidel’s younger brother and president from 2008 to 2018, recognized this and warned against accepting the agreement. (At 94, Castro is still considered the country’s most powerful political figure.) Cubans in Miami were also skeptical of this – although for different reasons: They want the Castro regime swept away, not relations with it improved. Trump, as much a creature of reactionary Florida politics as he is of New York’s outer boroughs, reversed Obama’s opening during his first term. Then Covid-19 hit tourism with full force – a source of income that Cuba relies on for foreign currency. The government responded harshly to protests in 2021 and 2024, and the Biden administration, cowed by Republican gains in Florida, showed little interest in restoring Obama’s policies.
Emigration of a generation
Many Cubans have responded to this impasse by emigrating. Although exact figures are not available, between one and two million people have probably left the country since 2020 – around ten to twenty percent of the population. Those who go are predominantly young, so Cuba has the highest average age of any country in the Americas. Many elders have seen their children leave with no hope of their return. Some of the emigrants might have formed the core of a political “opposition” – but they are gone.
Like any people, Cubans are divided in their opinion of their government. Older generations, who still remember how their lives improved after the revolution or the comparatively good years of the 1970s, used to defend the regime’s legacy against those who grumbled. Criticism of the Castros was once muted and never public. Only in recent years has praise for the regime been met with public ridicule. Fidel Castro once called on the Cuban people to commit great acts of sacrifice. But you can’t sacrifice forever.
And so now Cubans suffer hunger and disease while Trump’s fiery gaze is on them. Some – more in the diaspora than among those living through it – will welcome the pressure as the only way out of an untenable present. But Cuba is a revolutionary regime. Its people fought hard for sovereignty. The economy remains state-controlled: groups linked to the military manage foreign investments and ensure that profits go to those loyal to the regime. If Trump gets Díaz-Canel to resign and negotiates some kind of business deal, it could end up strengthening the regime. Furthermore, the fact that many Cubans are ready for change does not mean that they want to see it brought about through humiliation. In a CNN interview, Sandro Castro, Fidel’s influential grandson and a certified jerk, insisted that most Cubans prefer capitalism to communism. But even he said it had to be sovereign capitalism.
The irony of history
It is a historical irony that it is precisely this imperialist behavior by the United States that gave rise to today’s regimes in Iran and Cuba. In 1953 and 1954, the CIA worked to overthrow the governments of Iran and Guatemala. Both had nationalist presidents who nationalized a foreign oil company and a banana company in their efforts to secure new conditions for their populations. Both operations were “successful” for the CIA—in the limited sense that the undesirable governments were removed and more compliant regimes were installed.
But both had long-term consequences: civil war and genocide in the case of Guatemala, and the anti-American nature of the 1979 Iranian Revolution that overthrew the Shah whom the United States had installed after the coup. One lesson the CIA learned from Guatemala and Iran was that it knew how to overthrow a government. One lesson that Che Guevara (who was in Guatemala at the time of the coup) took from this was that the US had to be driven out by force. This conclusion shaped the course of the Cuban Revolution when it triumphed in 1959. Meanwhile, the CIA’s hubris was a factor in the failure of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion attempt and in the consolidation of Fidel Castro’s power in a communist Cuba.
Trump, fast-forwarding history, believed that tactical success in Venezuela meant Iran and Cuba would soon follow. Now he is stuck in a spiral of escalation in Iran while Cuba sweats. Ten years ago, it was understandable that some heard Trump’s skepticism about nation-building and derived from this a commitment to principled anti-interventionism. But it never was.
Goliath against the Cuban people
In a strange way, both Donald Trump and Fidel Castro are political leaders who have managed to convince more people than one would expect that their personal glory is inextricably linked to the glory of the nation. Castro’s ego fed on resistance; he was the David who fought Goliath and won – no matter what it cost others. Trump’s ego demands that he be Goliath and win – no matter what it costs others. Cubans pay the price. You deserve better.
Patrick Iber is a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a focus on 20th century Latin America and U.S. foreign relations. His most recent book, “Poverty of the Imagination: The Cold War and the Social Science of Development in Latin America,” will be published later this year.
