Pictures of a handcuffed Nicolás Maduro being escorted to a Brooklyn detention heart will come as uncomfortable viewing for political leaders in Havana.
“Cuba is going to be something we’ll end up talking about,” mentioned President Donald Trump simply hours after the Jan. 3, 2026, operation to grasp the Venezuelan president. Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed Trump’s caution: “If I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I’d be concerned.”
As a historian of america and Cuba, I consider that Washington’s members of the family with Havana have entered a brand new section beneath the Trump management. Long past is Barack Obama’s “Cuban Thaw” and Joe Biden’s less-restrictive sanctions. Of their puts, the Trump management has it sounds as if followed a coverage of regime exchange via most power.
If the management has its means, 2026 would be the ultimate yr of communist rule in Cuba – and it intends to succeed in this with out intervention by means of U.S. military.
“I don’t think we need (to take) any action,” Trump mentioned on Jan. 4, including: “Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall.”
Cuba’s pal with advantages
Trump could have some degree. Maduro’s seize has successfully taken away Cuba’s closest best friend.
Maduro’s predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chávez, was once an avowed admirer of Cuban progressive chief Fidel Castro.
In a while after assuming energy in 1999, Chávez’s executive started supplying oil on favorable phrases to Cuba in trade for docs and, ultimately, the learning of Venezuela’s safety forces. It was once no twist of fate that 32 of the safety officials killed as they defended Maduro from coming near American forces had been Cuban.
Maduro succeeded Chavez as president in 2013 and persisted the rustic’s improve for Cuba. In 2022, a member of the Venezuelan opposition claimed that Caracas contributed US$60 billion to the Cuban financial system between 2002 and 2022.
Cubans acquire in improve of Venezuelan chief Nicolas Maduro in Havana on Jan. 3, 2026.
Adalberto Roque/AFP by the use of Getty Photographs
Maduro’s largesse proved unsustainable. Starting within the early 2010s, Venezuela entered a critical financial disaster provoked by means of financial mismanagement, an overreliance on petroleum and U.S. sanctions.
Venezuela’s improve of Cuba slowed to a trickle by means of 2016. Maduro’s executive has nonetheless persisted to provide Cuba with oil in secret, whilst evading U.S. sanctions, at quantities a ways beneath Cuba’s wishes.
Laborious instances in Cuba
Venezuela’s penury and U.S. power imply Cubans are actually experiencing deprivation on a degree no longer noticed because the nation’s “special period” of financial disaster from 1991 to 1995, caused by means of the cave in of the Soviet Union and the top of the bloc’s beneficiant subsidies.
Since 2020, Cuba’s GDP has contracted by means of 11%, whilst the price of the Cuban peso continues to fall.
Cubans not have dependable electrical energy or get entry to to water. Mosquito-borne sicknesses, as soon as uncommon, are actually rampant since the executive can not come up with the money for to spray insecticides.
The scientific gadget supplies simplest essentially the most rudimentary care, and hospitals have little to no medication.
In the meantime, business and agricultural manufacturing have sharply declined, as have meals imports.
And whilst famine has no longer but emerged, meals lack of confidence has larger, with maximum Cubans consuming a restricted vitamin and skipping foods. Side road crime has additionally develop into not unusual on Cuba’s once-safe streets.
Cubans stand in line to shop for meals all over an influence outage in Havana on Dec. 3, 2025.
Yamil Lage/AFP by the use of Getty Photographs
Since seizing Maduro, the U.S. management has defined insurance policies that seem aimed toward expanding financial power on Cuba’s financial system and inspiring regime exchange. For instance, the U.S. has made it transparent it’ll not allow Venezuela to provide oil to Cuba.
It seems that, the management hopes that with out oil, the Cuban executive will merely cave in. Or in all probability Trump expects that Cubans, as annoyed as they’re, will overthrow their communist masters with out assist from the U.S.
A regime with out standard improve
Both means, there’s a doable flaw with the management’s reasoning: Cuba’s communists have survived crises comparable to those for greater than 60 years. But, there may be proof that as Cuba’s financial system declines, so too does improve for the regime.
Since 2020, greater than 1 million Cubans have left the rustic, mainly for the U.S. and Spanish-speaking international locations. A Cuban colleague of mine with get entry to to executive analysis not too long ago advised me the quantity is nearer to two million.
Those that stayed are not more happy.
In a 2024 public opinion ballot, an vast majority of Cubans expressed profound dissatisfaction with the Cuban Communist Birthday party and the management of President Miguel Díaz-Canel.
Cubans have additionally taken their lawsuits to the streets. In July 2021, protests erupted throughout Cuba, tough extra freedom and a greater way of life. The federal government temporarily jailed protesters and sentenced them to lengthy jail phrases.
Sporadic protests have persisted nonetheless, frequently temporarily and with out caution, drawing harsh repression. Specifically, the San Isidro motion, shaped in 2018 to protest restrictions on inventive expression, has sturdy improve amongst more youthful Cubans.
Converting attitudes towards The united states
As Cubans have became in opposition to their executive, they have got develop into extra receptive to the U.S.
All the way through my first talk over with in 1996, Cubans blamed the U.S. embargo in position because the early Nineteen Sixties for the privations they suffered all over the Particular Duration.
Previously decade, alternatively, I’ve heard Cubans – a minimum of the ones beneath 50 – specific extra anger with their executive than with the U.S. embargo.
A tricycle used as a taxi is adorned with the U.S. flag in Havana.
Yamil Lage/AFP by the use of Getty Photographs
Make no mistake: Cubans need the U.S. embargo to finish. However they not consider their executive’s try to blame Washington for all of Cuba’s financial and political issues.
Welcome liberators?
Since Maduro’s seize, I’ve messaged pals in Cuba to gauge sentiment. All however one of the most six Cuban pals I controlled to succeed in advised me they had been receptive to U.S. intervention in Cuba, only if it got rid of the regime making their lives depressing.
One pal mentioned: “If the Yankees showed up today, most of us would probably greet them as liberators.”
