Photo: Alamy | Analysis by Summer Lane
The Trump administration seems to be seriously looking at Cuba as its next potential conquest amid an increasingly expanding application of the Monroe Doctrine.
“No Republican has ever spoken to me about Cuba, which is a failed country and only heading in one direction – down!” the president observed in a statement posted to Truth Social this week.
He added, “Cuba is asking for help, and we are going to talk!!!”
The president has made no secret of his aspirations to roll into Cuba. “Cuba’s next, by the way, but pretend I didn’t say that,” the president joked in March, amid the U.S. war in the Middle East.
Even more bluntly, President Trump recently hinted at sending the U.S. Navy to the island as it returns from the Middle East. “Cuba, which we will be taking over almost immediately, on the way back from Iran, maybe the U.S. Abraham Lincoln, the biggest in the world, we will have that come in, stop about 100 yards offshore, and they will say thank you very much, we give up,” the president remarked.
The messaging around Cuba comes on the heels of two military operations: first, Operation Absolute Resolve in Venezuela, which resulted in the arrest and extraction of Nicolas Maduro and the subsequent U.S.-led installation of Delcy Rodriguez as the nation’s new president. Second, Operation Epic Fury, the United States’ full-scale war against Iran – a war that is currently deadlocked in a very fragile ceasefire.
The U.S. military operation in Venezuela in early January has plunged the small communist nation into economic chaos. This development was pointedly acknowledged by Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week.
“Here’s what’s happening with Cuba, okay?” he told the press. “Cuba used to get free oil from Venezuela…They would take like 60 percent of that oil and resell it for cash. It wouldn’t even go to benefit the people.”
Venezuela no longer provides such an oil supply to Cuba since the essential supervision of its oil reserves by the U.S. post-Operation Absolute Resolve. In other words, Cuba’s economic model all but disintegrated overnight when the United States struck Venezuela.
Rubio said that the United States has not been actively blockading the oil from going into Cuba, but rather, “the Venezuelans have decided ‘we’re not giving you free oil anymore.’”
Just last week, Rubio announced a slate of sanctions against Cuba. As reported by RSBN, the sanctions are aimed at the Grupo de Administracion Empresarial S.A., or GAESA.
GAESA is a Cuban conglomerate that the U.S. State Department says is controlled by the Cuban military and exercises tight authority over roughly 40 percent of the island’s economy and holds up to $20 billion in “illicit assets.”
A report from Axios this week noted that Cuba is under increasingly intense pressure as energy from Venezuela has been cut off. Cuba has blamed the United States for blockading oil and energy from the island, although Secretary Rubio denied such actions in his comments last week.
However, it must be noted that Cuba’s energy crisis comes at the behest of Venezuela’s supposed refusal to send the island oil – a phenomenon that arose only on the heels of the United States’ strike against Maduro in January. Therefore, it is certainly fair to say that the United States has at least facilitated, whether directly or indirectly, some of the conditions Cuba finds itself in right now.
Simply put, Cuba seems to be under siege, and the United States, under the Trump administration, stands to benefit.
“As the President stated, Cuba is a failing country. Within a short period of time they will fall, and we will be there to help them out,” a White House official allegedly told Axios.
To be clear, there is no directive or indication at this time that President Trump will take Cuba – only his own comments and the moves of his administration suggest that, at the very least, the White House is watching the island very closely.
