The Trump administration is talking to the Cuban government about a diplomatic deal. But Florida politics could persuade the president to use force instead.
Can Cuba come in from the cold?
Cuba confirmed on Monday that a delegation from the US state department was in Havana last week for talks with senior political figures about a possible diplomatic solution to bilateral tensions. It was the first time a US government plane landed on the island since Barack Obama’s visit in 2016, apart from flights to the American military base and its notorious prison camp at Guantánamo Bay.
Donald Trump has had his sights on Cuba since the abduction of former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro in January. Earlier this month, he suggested that an attack on the island could be Washington’s next military action after the war in Iran.
“We may stop by Cuba after we’re finished with this, but Cuba is a nation that has been horribly run for many years by Castro,” he said.
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Cuba is just 145km from the coast of Florida, so any attack could be conducted from bases in the US without the kind of naval build-up in the Caribbean that preceded the operation in Venezuela. But the US has not yet announced any criminal investigations into Cuban leaders similar to those used against Maduro and his wife as a pretext for using military force to abduct them.
If the Trump administration is not preparing for an immediate attack, it has been turning the screw on the island and its people by starving them of energy supplies, a move that has pushed Cuba into a humanitarian crisis. Washington has blocked shipments from Venezuela and Mexico, who were its biggest oil suppliers, and allowed just one Russian oil tanker to deliver a few days’ supply of oil to the island at the end of March.
The decision to allow the Russian tanker to dock reflected an apparent easing of tensions that also saw Cuba release more than 2,000 political prisoners following mediation by the Vatican. The authorities in Havana have announced sweeping economic reforms in recent weeks, allowing the creation of public-private partnerships and opening the way for Cuban-Americans to own and invest in businesses on the island without living there.
The Cuban government said that Alejandro Garcia del Toro, deputy director general in charge of US affairs at the foreign ministry, met state department officials including assistant secretaries of state. Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, the grandson of former Cuban president Raúl Castro, who is known as Raulito and has been involved in backchannel talks with Washington, met separately with members of the US delegation.
US media reports said that in return for lifting its embargo on the island, Washington is demanding economic changes that will enable American firms to exploit opportunities in tourism and other industries. The US also wants Cuba to compensate American residents and companies whose assets were confiscated after the 1959 revolution that overthrew Washington-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Compensation claims certified by the US government are estimated at more than $9 billion, a sum the Cuban government cannot afford, particularly in the current, dire economic conditions. But it is a central demand of Cuban exiles in Florida, an influential political constituency with a powerful ally in secretary of state Marco Rubio.
Cuba’s president Miguel Díaz-Canel has made clear he wants the US to be part of what he calls Cuba’s economic transformation but Washington may still insist that he should step down as part of any deal. And transforming the Cuban economy, offering sweetheart deals to American corporations and compensating those who were dispossessed by the revolution might not be enough for Cuban-Americans.
A Miami Herald poll last week found that 79 per cent of Cubans and Cuban-Americans in south Florida favoured a military intervention in Cuba, while 78 per cent said they opposed a deal that would leave the current government in power in return for economic reforms.
I’ll be away for the next couple of weeks but Global Briefing will continue to arrive in your inbox every day from Monday to Thursday, coming from other Irish Times correspondents around the world. On Monday, you’ll hear from Washington Correspondent Keith Duggan.
