Foreign Policy

Why Does Trump Keep Bringing Up Decades-Old Foreign Grievances?

Instead of making the case for war in Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba, the White House has been digging up conflicts from long ago.

Matthew Petti | 5.21.2026 4:49 PM

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The U.S. Department of Justice indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro on Wednesday for his 1996 order to shoot down two planes from Brothers to the Rescue, a Cuban-American organization involved in dropping anti-communist pamphlets over Havana.

Why reopen a 3-decade-old murder case now? The Trump administration has made no secret of the fact that it wants to overthrow the Cuban government—and is willing to go to war to do so. While President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio issue thinly veiled threats to Cuba, administration officials have been anonymously telling the press that yes, they mean military action.

The indictment was obviously meant to evoke the recent U.S. operation in Venezuela, in which U.S. special operations forces invaded Venezuela to serve a drug-trafficking warrant against dictator Nicolás Maduro. During the buildup to that operation, which involved U.S. forces seizing Venezuelan tankers, Trump and his advisers also claimed that they were going to avenge Venezuela's 2007........

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