Cuba’s Collapse Is Coming: Apply Leverage That Ends the Regime

Blackouts plunged Havana into darkness last summer for days on end. Streets filled with smoke from burning barricades. Families scavenged for food while regime forces moved in with batons and mass arrests. Boats overloaded with exiles pushed out toward Florida, only to be intercepted and returned by the U.S. Coast Guard under standing policy. The island convulses under self-inflicted economic ruin, yet the communist leadership clings to power, exporting repression and begging for relief from the “blockade” they blame for every failure.

The dominant narrative frames U.S. policy as cruel and outdated. Diplomats, academics, and remnants of prior administrations push normalization as enlightened engagement. They sell gradual reform through travel, trade, and dialogue. That framing benefits the regime’s enablers. It casts sustained pressure as vindictive theater, insulating Havana from accountability while concealing how every concession has only bought the dictatorship more time to entrench.

Responsibility lies with chains of command that softened the line. The Obama thaw reopened embassies and eased restrictions without extracting meaningful concessions. Biden-era drift saw inconsistent enforcement and muted response to regime repression. The first Trump term tightened sanctions and redesignated Cuba a state sponsor of terror, but the second term inherits a hemisphere where prior ambiguity allowed Havana to deepen ties with Russia, China, and Iran.

Reality in hard terms: Cuba is not a misunderstood socialist project. It is a criminal regime that has commanded parallel authority through repression for 65 years. It exports revolution, hosts Russian intelligence outposts, shelters U.S. fugitives, and propped up Maduro’s narcostate until its collapse. Governance voids sustain it. Corrupt military conglomerates control 60 percent of the economy. Economic controls launder survival. The leadership treats the island as a strategic platform, aligning with every major U.S. adversary to project menace 90 miles from American shores.

Consequences mount. Cuban repression fuels migration surges that strain U.S. borders and overwhelm enforcement capacity. Regime alliances deepen Chinese leverage through port deals, infrastructure swaps, and influence operations. Russian energy plays gain a foothold. American security erodes as Havana exports instability to Nicaragua, Venezuela remnants, and beyond. The Cuban people pay the heaviest price: blackouts, shortages, crushed dissent. The regime diverts scarce resources to sustain its network of repression and external alignment.

Trump administration clarity forced Maduro’s removal through indictments, border enforcement, sustained pressure, and tariff threats that shifted the regional calculus. Apply the same logic to Cuba. Expand tariffs on nations supplying oil to choke the regime’s remaining lifeline. Freeze assets of GAESA and other military conglomerates. Pursue indictments against Diaz-Canel and senior repressors under existing authorities. Seek insiders willing to break with Russia, China, and Iran in exchange for transitional relief. Condition any embargo easing on verifiable, irreversible steps: release all political prisoners, legalize genuine opposition parties, hold free and fair elections monitored internationally. Use Helms-Burton Title III to enforce accountability on foreign entities profiting from stolen property.

No more episodic sanctions praised as progress while the regime adapts and survives. No normalization without capitulation.

Otherwise the protests become routine and the boats keep coming.

A sovereign state does not tolerate a predator regime 90 miles offshore exporting revolution and aligning with adversaries. It applies leverage that makes survival unbearable. That is the minimum standard of seriousness.