Donald Trump went to Davos to settle the Greenland issue, as Duane wrote earlier this morning, but also to emphasize his priority in foreign policy and national security. After eighty years of prioritizing Europe, Trump made it clear that he has made the Western Hemisphere the main focus of his administration's security policies. The "Donroe Doctrine" has already unfolded in Venezuela, and even before that, on the southern border of the US itself.
What will be the next focus of the Donroe Doctrine? Look no further than Havana, the Wall Street Journal reports this morning. The Trump administration wants to find allies for a soft regime change in Cuba in order to dismantle the Castroite communists and put an end to nearly seven decades of hostility and oppression:
Emboldened by the U.S. ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Trump administration is searching for Cuban government insiders who can help cut a deal to push out the Communist regime by the end of the year, people familiar with the matter said.
The Trump administration has assessed Cuba’s economy as being close to collapse and that the government has never been this fragile after losing a vital benefactor in Maduro, these people said. Officials don’t have a concrete plan to end the Communist government that has held power on the Caribbean island for almost seven decades, but they see Maduro’s capture and subsequent concessions from his allies left behind as a blueprint and a warning for Cuba, senior U.S. officials said.
“I strongly suggest they make a deal. BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,” President Trump stated in a Jan. 11 social-media post in which he said “NO MORE OIL OR MONEY” would be going to Cuba.
Hardest hit? All of the Fidelitos in the US. That includes Karen Bass, who literally belonged to the Venceremos Brigade, both in the US and in Cuba, part of Fidel Castro's recruitment efforts for useful idiots in the West. Part of that mission required Bass to spread Castroite propaganda in the US and "further the cause of Communism within the United States." Bass went to Cuba seven times, and later eulogized Fidel as the "Comandante in Jefe," before attempting to distance herself from it all when Joe Biden put her on his running mate short list.
Bass would hardly be alone in that discreditation. While other socialist Democrats may not have signed up to the Venceremos Brigade literally, they are pushing its same propaganda. Whether that comes from the more explicit declarations from Zohran Mamdani and Brandon Johnson, or the somewhat more nuanced approaches from Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or any number of progressive radicals in the Democrat Party, the collapse of another socialist regime will serve to remind everyone of the wretched failures their ideologies create. At some point, the "true socialism has never been tried" line will become cliché to everyone, and not just among those outside the BlueSky bubble as it has been for decades now.
However, let's not get ahead of ourselves. First, the regime has to collapse, and only then will the true scale and scope of its oppression get exposed and discredit its cheerleaders in the US. How likely is that? It looks grim for the regime in Havana at the moment. They have spread their tentacles everywhere in the past 60-plus years, but the lights may literally go out in the next few weeks. Cuba got cheap-to-free oil for decades from Venezuela in exchange for security partnerships with the Castros, but Nicolas Maduro is gone and Delcy Rodriguez is desperately attempting to avoid joining him in a New York jail. Trump has cut off that oil supply and is still seizing black-market tankers that might still have supplied Havana with enough crude to prop up its energy grid.
The White House is quietly targeting other lifelines for the Castros too, attempting to cut off sources of hard currency:
The administration is also taking aim at Cuba’s overseas medical missions, Havana’s most important source of hard currency, including through visa bans targeting Cuban and foreign officials accused of facilitating the program.
On paper, the regime may only have the literal and figurative energy to last a few weeks. However, they have plenty of arms, and generations of indoctrination that will harden the regime for a long while. That indoctrination also plays against the strategy laid out by the WSJ; it will be difficult to find insiders in Havana willing to overturn the Castro junta, even in its present extremity. All of the insiders are part of the same ideology and insanity. Perhaps a Delcy Rodriguez might emerge who values his/her own skin more than the party line, but the internal repression and scrutiny has lasted far longer in Cuba than in Venezuela, and Cuba didn't even bother with elections, not even the same elections Maduro and Hugo Chavez ran for a modicum of international credibility.
A soft regime change will take a lot longer than it will to turn the lights out in Havana. And it will likely be a lot messier than the Maduro grab in Venezuela has been. That doesn't mean that the effort is either futile or unworthy; the liberation of Cuba would be a signal event in Western Hemisphere history and likely would put an end to communist/socialist movements in the region. Just don't expect it to be quick or cost-free.
