By Tom Fowdy
The United States Department of Justice has indicted elderly former Cuban leader Raúl Castro on charges of murder. Castro, 94, is the younger brother of Fidel, who of course was one of the defining figures of the Cuban revolution. The charges are obviously stumped up and politically motivated, as they were likewise against Venezuela's former President Nicholas Maduro, and it speaks volumes the US administration can coordinate the legal system to prosecute people in conjunction with its foreign policy objectives despite claiming to have "the rule of law."
What the US has on the cards for Cuba is obvious: Trump, who's foreign policy is headed by Anti-regime Cuban American Marco Rubio, is seeking regime change for the island. The second Trump administration has built its foreign policy around a new Monroe Doctrine, which seeks to affirm absolute American hegemony in the Americas, described in official discourse as "Our hemisphere." As part of that effort, as noted above, the US launched a military incursion into Venezuela to capture Nicholas Maduro and take him prisoner, and since then the US has slowly dialled up the pressure on Cuba by enforcing a fuel embargo against the Communist island, leading to economic deterioration and an energy crisis.
What will happen next? First of all, the US won't undertake a military invasion of Cuba. Trump has just been politically bruised by a disastrous military campaign against Iran that failed to yield the result of toppling the Islamic Republic and causing a global economic fallout. US military campaigns, even successful ones, cost money, cost lives and create political backlash. Although Havana is a political bogeyman in the US that has been despised for decades, it is in no way a military threat to America or a geopolitical competitor, and an outright war would create a refugee influx which will be unpopular amongst its base.
Thus, while Trump is not seeking an outright war, we can absolutely assume that as per his foreign policy ethos in general, he is seeking to dominate and subjugate the regime: That means creating a Cuba which exists on America's strategic preferences, similar to what he done with Venezuela. Of course, Cuba is a much harder nut to crack than Venezuela, namely because while Venezuela was a left-leaning, Bolivarian state, Havana is a revolutionary Communist regime with hardcore ideological opposition to the United States, even if it is impoverished. This is why Trump has escalated pressure on the island to try and bring it to its knees. As with every deal or agreement he makes, he seeks unilateral capitulation to one-sided terms.
So, how might he achieve this? It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the US may again, like with Venezuela, pursue a limited military incursion into the island with the goal of capturing and prosecuting Raúl Castro. The fact he is a 94-year-old man does not seem to bother them at all. Symbolically, this matters because as with Maduro, the Trump administration recognises they can remove a politically significant figurehead and thus break the link with the revolutionary state and declare an end "to the Castro era", all while exhibiting a show of power and dominance over them. Given the US still leases Guantanamo Bay, and given its proximity to Florida, it is not hard after all for the US to undertake a limited operation without resorting to war. The CIA would also undoubtedly attempt to bribe key figures and officials to respond with non-resistance to it.
If the Trump administration succeeds in doing such a thing, or makes them capitulate by any other means, we should assume that Cuba, even when the regime is the same, will be made to follow American preferences in exchange for sanctions and economic relief and of course limit its relationships with China and Russia. We should also assume given the geography, and as it was with Venezuela, that neither Moscow nor Beijing will come to Havana's rescue even if they vocally condemn the sanctions, because there is nothing they can do about it and neither of them sees it as an acceptable risk or beneficial outcome in escalating to the level the USSR did with the Cuban missile crisis.
This is because while opposed to the US, as I set out yesterday, both Russia and China are pursuing a strategic outlook of "hedging" rather than vocal, overt opposition to America. Both of them may want a multipolar world to secure their own interests, but they are also vested in stabilizing their relationships with Washington too and avoiding direct confrontation, choosing instead to hedge their political space by securing "geopolitical options." China needs to prevent economic containment and Russia needs an acceptable outcome in Ukraine. The regime in Havana may be an old guard ally from the revolutionary days of times gone by, but in its current situation there is very little benefit they can extract when the US has decided to turn the screws on them.
Thus, the Trump administration will continue to turn the screws and seek a subjugated Cuba. This will be an outcome that comes with a whimper as opposed to a fight. Yet for an island that has spent the past 65 years under relentless American pressure on pursuit of regime change, don't expect them to give up so easily.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Tom Fowdy:
Opinion | The great hedging of bets, China-Russia and the USA
Opinion | The strange fall of Keir Starmer
Opinion | What will Donald Trump's visit to China bring?
Opinion | The end of the 'Northern Red Wall' and the rise of a polarized Britain
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