Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez addresses a meeting of the BRICS 2025 plenary session on July 6, 2025, in Rio de Janeiro. US sanctions pressure on Cuba could lead to a collapse of the government and a multitude of problems for the US near its borders. (Shutterstock/A.Paes)

The US Should Be Careful What It Wishes for in Cuba

Share this link on Facebook

Share this page on X (Twitter)

Share this link on LinkedIn

Share this page on Reddit

Email a link to this page

Despite the Trump administration’s withering depictions of the Cuban government, Havana remains the best bet for Caribbean security.

In a congressional hearing on June 3, Secretary of State Marco Rubio characterized Cuba as “a failed state, which poses a threat to the United States” to justify the Trump administration’s tightening of sanctions, a near-total fuel blockade, and repeated threats of military action against the island. 

This claim flies in the face of some three decades of assessments made by the Pentagon and by SouthCom. As of the mid-1990s, congressional requests to the Department of Defense regarding the extent to which Cuba constituted a threat to the national security of the United States received, in the clearest form, an assessment of the island as in no way such a threat, except if disorder prevailed and caused a mass exodus to the United States and the wider region.

Since then, security cooperation with the island has proven the point, with active collaboration on illegal narcotics interdiction, illegal migration control, natural disaster relief, and even toxic waste disposal. The DOD joined other departments in welcoming the idea of opening up to Cuba under President Barack Obama, and cooperation grew until the first Trump administration.

Whatever one may say about the domestic policies of the one-party state, there is little evidence that Secretary Rubio’s assertion has much truth to it at present. In contrast, if US policy continues down its current path, a national security threat may yet materialize. The collapse of state power in Cuba could create a black hole for law enforcement, a mere 90 miles from US shores.

In a region plagued by criminal networks and narcotics trafficking,........

© The National Interest