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Ever since the MAGA movement engulfed the U.S. Republican Party, it has harbored two competing foreign-policy tendencies—a muscular internationalism and a neo-isolationist reluctance to intervene. That tension has played out on a number of issues, and it surfaced again over how to navigate Cuba policy—whether to take a more hard-line approach that would aim to topple the regime or settle for a less aggressive set of punitive actions without dramatically escalating sanctions. Judging by a statement of policy that President Donald Trump issued at the end of June, he appears to be siding with the pragmatists who want to keep Cuba on the back burner for now.

Just before departing for the Florida Everglades to open “Alligator Alcatraz,” his new detention camp for undocumented immigrants, Trump unveiled the fifth National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-5) of his second term—a comprehensive statement of his policy toward Cuba.

Ever since the MAGA movement engulfed the U.S. Republican Party, it has harbored two competing foreign-policy tendencies—a muscular internationalism and a neo-isolationist reluctance to intervene. That tension has played out on a number of issues, and it surfaced again over how to navigate Cuba policy—whether to take a more hard-line approach that would aim to topple the regime or settle for a less aggressive set of punitive actions without dramatically escalating sanctions. Judging by a statement of policy that President Donald Trump issued at the end of June, he appears to be siding with the pragmatists who want to keep Cuba on the back burner for now.

Just before departing for the Florida Everglades to open “Alligator Alcatraz,” his new detention camp for undocumented immigrants, Trump unveiled the fifth National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-5) of his second term—a comprehensive statement of his policy toward Cuba.

During his first few months in office, Trump took a number of piecemeal measures foreshadowing a hard line. On his first day in office, he reversed steps to relax sanctions that former President Joe Biden had taken just a few weeks earlier. Since then, the State Department has stepped up diplomatic pressure to force countries hosting Cuban doctors to close those programs. It stopped issuing visas for Cubans to visit family in the United States or participate in cultural and educational exchanges, and the Treasury Department began denying U.S. groups licenses to visit Cuba on those........

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