Despite Trump’s pressure, Cuba may not turn out like Venezuela

UNITED States President Donald Trump’s administration has been stepping up pressure on Communist-controlled Cuba, after using the military in January to remove Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro.

However, Cuba may not be Venezuela 2.0, even though Caracas had been a key supporter of the island’s government.

In Venezuela, then vice-president Delcy Rodriguez took over as US forces seized Maduro in a lightning raid on Jan 3 and has served as acting president since.

Rodriguez was Maduro’s deputy, but there is no similar deputy to Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, or former president Raúl Castro, the 94-year-old former president the US indicted in a bid to increase pressure on Havana.

“The security apparatus in Cuba has dismantled, systematically dismantled, every alternative or potentially alternative power source,” said Orlando Pérez, an expert on US-Latin America relations at the University of North Texas in Dallas.

Venezuela also has a popular opposition leader, Nobel laureate María Corina Machado, who won elections in 2024 but was not allowed to take power and hopes to return to her home country this year for free elections.

Cuba has no similar figure.

Raúl Rodriguez Castro, grandson of the former president, met this month with Central Intelligence Agency director John Ratcliffe during a rare visit by a US spy chief to Havana, fuelling talk he might agree to work with Washington.

But the younger Castro has no formal position in the Cuban government and is not expected to betray his family.

Cuba has been a US antagonist for decades, since Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.

The Republican US president has made clear he wants to see change in Cuba.

In the past, Cuba was seen as a threatening Soviet satellite, an uncomfortably close 145km from Florida, and more recently as a potential site for Chinese influence in the Western Hemisphere.

But Russia’s attentions have shifted since the fall of the Soviet bloc, and Cuba’s economic problems have diminished its ability to confront the US.

Experts say instability in Cuba also threatens a migration crisis.

Its people have been living largely without power due to a US blockade and could opt to flee the island in case of war or chaos.

Cuba’s military is more ideologically entrenched and cohesive than Venezuela’s and more likely to put up a fight.

Dozens of Cuban agents were killed in Venezuela in January when they were providing security for Maduro, but survivors would have learnt from that raid how US forces operate.

Cuba is seen as more advanced in surveillance and intelligence, especially after years of cooperation with Russia and China.

Venezuela has natural resources, and US companies have been lining up to produce oil in the South American country, which has seen exports jump.

Cuba does not have any similar resource. Its state-run tourism industry was behind other Caribbean destinations in price and quality even before this year’s steep downturn, which has been exacerbated by shortages tied to Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign, the US blockade and threats of tariffs for countries that provide it with fuel.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, an outspoken Cuba hawk who is also national security adviser, is seen as the force behind the Trump administration’s Cuban policy.

Rubio, a Florida native and the son of Cuban immigrants, has run for president before and is expected to seek the office again.

A major change in Cuba could burnish his political ambitions, but a failure poses major risks at a time when the US faces huge budget deficits and is already waging a campaign in Iran that has been estimated to cost billions of dollars per day.

Washington’s ability to change relations with Cuba is limited by the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, which ties the lifting of a decades-long US embargo to specific political change such as the creation of a democratically elected government.

Trump changed US business relations with Venezuela by removing Maduro, leaving its government in place without even announcing plans for free elections.

In Cuba, he could not legally do so without a dramatic shift by Cuban officials, who have refused so far to cooperate.

Washington also justified the Venezuela raid by saying Maduro’s government was involved in “narco terrorism”.

Cuban officials have not faced such charges, and in fact its government says it has been cooperating with the US against drug trafficking.

The writer is from Reuters

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المصدر: New Straits Times