This month, at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., you could hear South Florida wishes confronting Trump administration reality.
Republican Miami Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar pressed Secretary of State Marco Rubio about when Cuba’s communist dictatorship would fall — especially now that the U.S. has applied even tougher economic pressure on a country whose state-run economy was already in free fall.
“You’re sending the message that the game is over, that they need to open up the democratic game," said Salazar, a Cuban-American and hardline anti-communist.
"The question is: What’s delaying that process?”
READ MORE: The U.S. is expected to indict Raúl Castro. Is it a prelude to more serious U.S. action in Cuba?
Rubio, himself a Miami Cuban-American, asserted only that "there are clearly individuals within the apparatus of power in that country that understand that what they have now is not sustainable."
Otherwise, Rubio, who is heading U.S. negotiations with the Cuban regime — including Raúl Rodríguez (aka "El Cangrejo," The Crab), the grandson of 95-year-old de facto leader Raúl Castro — did not really have an answer for Salazar. Or for the Miami exile community that now has even higher expectations of regime change in Cuba. Or for the 9 million people in Cuba trapped in severe economic suffering.
That pain is the fault of their disastrous and repressive government — but also of the U.S. sanctions, like a de facto blockade of oil shipments, that President Donald Trump is pushing to get that government to cry uncle and submit to desperately needed democratic and capitalist reforms. On Monday, Envioscuba, an online platform Cuban-Americans use to send money, food and other goods to family on the island, said it was shutting down due to Trump's squeeze.
Last Friday, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel did announce economic changes, like giving Cuba’s private sector freer rein. But he conceded none of the political changes the U.S. is demanding, like free elections.
And as a result, as tropical summer heat descends on Cuba — making the island's chronic and protracted power outages even more oppressive — a waiting game has set in as well:
"What is the political objective? Regime change? Or regime concessions? That will determine the military operation — and that’s not entirely clear."Former U.S. Ambassador to the OAS Frank Mora
Will Trump, who recently sent the U.S. aircraft carrier Nimitz into the Caribbean as a show of force, pivot from negotiation with the Cuban regime to military action against it? And if it comes, how serious will it be?
“What is the political objective? Regime change? Is it to push the regime to make concessions? That will determine the military operation — and that’s not entirely clear,” said Frank Mora, who was the U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States under President Biden and the Defense Department’s point man for the western hemisphere under President Obama.
Even though U.S. commandos captured Venezuela dictator Nicolás Maduro in Caracas in January and flew him to New York to face drug-trafficking charges, Mora believes a similar arrest of Raúl Castro — whom the U.S. just indicted for murder in the fatal 1996 Cuban military shootdown of two small planes that killed four Cuban exiles — is unlikely.
And full-blown regime change, he points out, would probably require a full-blown U.S. military invasion of Cuba — which is politically risky for Trump at home, especially after his unpopular ongoing Iran war.
But, Mora acknowledged, "To get the [Cuban] regime to give Trump something so that he can declare victory, the possibility of some kind of military operation or bombing is increasingly likely, though not a certainty.
"I would give it a 40-to-50% chance.”
Drone stockpile
One bombing target may be Cuba’s reported stockpile of military drones. But some analysts believe Trump is also considering instead sending troops in to deliver the $100 million in emergency economic aid he’s offering Cuba.
“I’m almost certain a U.S. military humanitarian intervention is one of the plans being drawn up,” said Brian Fonseca, who directs the Gordon Institute for Public Policy at Florida International University and follows U.S. military policy in the hemisphere closely
Neither the Cuban government nor private charities like Catholic Relief Services can likely distribute aid on a $100 million scale. So Fonseca says Trump may see a twofer:
By helping alleviate Cubans’ suffering, the U.S. military can prevent a new mass exodus of Cubans to the U.S. At the same time, it can gain a foothold in Cuba that gives Trump more leverage to pressure regime reform.
“Having U.S. boots on the ground addressing the humanitarian crisis, especially during these summer months in Cuba, I think is incredibly reasonable at this stage we’re at," Fonseca said.
"And that gives the U.S. more equity in terms of the ability to assert further military action.”
Ricardo Herrero, a Miami Cuban-American who directs the nonprofit Cuba Study Group in Washington, D.C., also says humanitarian military action could be in the cards.
“But the question is," Herrero said, "do you do that with the support of the Cuban government? It’s kind of weird to imagine that that would happen by force.”
Either way, given Cuba’s collapse, Herrero feels the regime is making a mistake by refusing to offer any political reform that would lead the U.S. to give something in return. But he says after 67 years in power, it’s the only response Cuba’s bosses know.
“It seems they’re deep in the bunker," Herrero said.
"It is the core of their identity to see the United States as imperialist aggression — and they are there resisting, and one day they will win. They can’t let it go, otherwise they don’t know who they are.”
Even if U.S. soldiers enter Cuba just to deliver bread instead of bombs, the regime, and many Cubans, would nonetheless react to it as a U.S. invasion and occupation, said Carlos Alzugaray, a former Cuban diplomat in Havana who is also frustrated with the regime's unwillingness to reform.
“There are going to be people who are going to resist," Alzugaray warned.
"The force of nationalism can never be underestimated. And there are many people, like me, who don’t like to have an occupation of Cuba — even if it means replacing a government that I want replaced.”
Last week, Trump's Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, traveled to the U.S. naval station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to meet with U.S. troops.
"What happens with the future of Cuba is in the hands of the president of the United States and the leadership of Cuba," Hegseth told them. "No matter what, the Department of War is going to be prepared and postured for any possible contingency."
In the end, the temptation of achieving Cuban regime change — something that has defied U.S. presidents for almost seven decades — may be too tempting for Trump.
And that's a reality that prompts analysts like Mora to point out that Trump's recent Iran experience could actually play both ways in his decision on whether to go military on Cuba as well.
On the one hand, he may shy away from a strike in Cuba given how his incursion in Iran backfired, especially the disastrous closing of the Strait of Hormuz.
On the other hand, the triumphal overthrow of Cuba's dictatorship could help the world — and U.S. midterm voters — forget his failure to topple the mullahs in Tehran.
"The jury's still out on that," said Mora.
Either way, it promises to be a long hot summer of waiting for Trump to decide.
