Trump Could Finally Bring Cuba’s Regime To Its Knees This Year

And he should. Ever since President Trump’s uber successful capture of Venezuela’s narco-dictator Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, freedom lovers everywhere have been asking whether Cuba’s repressive Castro family-run communist regime will be next.

And increasingly, it seems the answer is yes. As Trump has said, “Cuba is ready to fall.”

To start with, the 65-year-old communist dictatorship in Cuba, which my family was forced to flee in 1962, was deeply invested in Venezuela. This is why 32 of its security forces were killed protecting Maduro. Cuba essentially still runs Venezuela’s security and intelligence apparatus.

Regime change in Havana has, for the last two decades, been intimately tied to regime change in Caracas.

And while the U.S. hasn’t explicitly threatened to use military force in Cuba, Trump officials privately say the brilliant raid that extracted Maduro should serve as an implicit threat to Havana.

Cuba was also almost wholly dependent on discounted Venezuelan oil for its socialism-ravaged, crumbling economy. With Trump’s strategy of controlling Venezuela’s oil, Cuba is now doomed to collapse, sooner or later.

But Trump isn’t waiting for later.

The Wall Street Journal reports that , in addition to cutting off Cuba’s oil supply:

The administration is targeting Cuba’s overseas medical missions, a key source of hard currency, through measures like visa bans for officials involved.

The Trump administration is [also] seeking Cuban government insiders to facilitate a regime change by year-end, following the ouster of Venezuelan autocrat Nicolás Maduro.

The Journal explains:

The Trump administration has assessed that Cuba’s economy is close to collapse and that the government has never been this fragile after losing a vital benefactor in Maduro, these people said. Officials don’t have a concrete plan to end the Communist government that has held power on the Caribbean island for almost seven decades, but they see Maduro’s capture and subsequent concessions from his allies left behind as a blueprint and a warning for Cuba, senior U.S. officials said.

“I strongly suggest they make a deal. BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE,” President Trump stated in a Jan. 11 social-media post in which he said “NO MORE OIL OR MONEY” would be going to Cuba.

In meetings with Cuban exiles and civic groups in Miami and Washington, administration officials have focused on identifying somebody inside the current government who will see the writing on the wall and want to cut a deal, one U.S. official said.

Whether this is a reasonable expectation is left to be seen. While Trump believes that ending the Castro era would cement his legacy and do what former President John F. Kennedy infamously failed to do in the early 1960s, his team may need to develop a more comprehensive and forceful strategy.

This must begin with the total removal of Cuban military and intelligence advisors, troops, and security forces from Venezuela. Chinese and Russians should be forced out as well.

Meanwhile, for decades, the Cuban regime and its allies worldwide have falsely referred to the extremely leaky U.S. embargo on Cuba as “el bloqueo,” the “blockade.”

We should now show them what a real bloqueo (blockade) looks like, using our significant naval air and military forces now arrayed in the Caribbean to fully isolate Cuba, making it totally dependent on the United States. Pressure could then be increased from there.

As seen from the aftermath of the Caracas raid, none of this would require American boots on the island.

The Trump team shouldn’t fear taking more forceful action against the horrible Cuban regime. The world has dramatically changed since Trump took office again in 2024.

Unlike in years past, the right is on the upswing in Latin America, and according to the latest polls, a majority of Latin Americans actually celebrated the U.S. military intervention to remove Maduro in Venezuela.

In this context, it is doubtful many will complain about Uncle Sam doing something similar in Cuba. Trump should make 2026 the year he removed a dictator from Venezuela, and the year he ended communist rule in Cuba.

History will remember him fondly for it.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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