Cuba Doesn’t Have to Be Next

By Christopher Sabatini and Katrin Hansing

Dr. Sabatini is an expert on Latin America. Dr. Hansing, an anthropologist, has spent the past three decades conducting research on race, migration and inequality in Cuba.

In the wake of the Trump administration’s removal of President Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela and amid the U.S. bombing campaign in Iran, it may soon be Cuba’s turn.

Less than two months after imposing a brutal oil blockade on the island in order to maximize pressure on the government, President Trump is now bragging that the Cuban regime is on the verge of collapse and that its leaders want to “make a deal.”

As may have been the case in Iran, Mr. Trump’s focus on Cuba appears to be driven by the perceived ease of the Venezuela operation, in which the capture of Mr. Maduro led to the quick emergence of a more accommodating partner, Delcy Rodríguez. But the president seems to lack a clear vision for a Cuba intervention: He has recently floated options including a friendly takeover, a “liberation,” or, according to recent reporting, economic liberalization without full regime change.

Any resolution forged in the current standoff between Washington and Havana risks being a hollow victory, offering only a temporary reprieve for Cubans and a fleeting achievement for an administration that has yet to define what lasting success in Cuba looks like. A continued squeeze on the island aimed at the destruction of the state could bring chaos and perhaps even a new refugee crisis. A deal limited to managed economic liberalization could offer a brief diplomatic win, but it would most likely close off the chance of a real political opening.

Still, catastrophe in Cuba is not a foregone conclusion. It also presents an opportunity — a chance for broader international engagement that could head off impending disaster.

For more than half a century, the United States has maintained an embargo on Cuba. Though its theory of political change for the island nation was never clear, the approach was presumably intended to either force Cuba’s Communist government to surrender or to spark a massive popular uprising that would overthrow it. But as the cases of Iran, Venezuela and Cuba all demonstrate, sanctions rarely topple entrenched authoritarian systems, which use external threats to justify internal repression and consolidate their grip on dwindling resources.

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