‘The truth is Cuba has already fallen’: the United States’ strategy to subdue the island

Sandro Castro, Fidel’s influencer grandson who runs several Havana nightclubs, was asked a question on Instagram a few days ago that was seen by his more than 165,000 followers. “When will change come to Cuba?” The young Castro posted a photo of himself with a Cuban flag draped over his back while gazing at Havana’s cracked skyline from afar: “Cuba is already changing, or haven’t you noticed?” he replied. Certainly, the country that existed in January is not the same nine months later: most people still watch life slip away amid shortages and long power outages, but a new private class is taking on roles that used to belong to the state — supplying pharmacies, importing and distributing diesel, and ensuring food sales.

That was unthinkable in the Cuba that Castroism designed. But since the start of the year, under pressure in the form of restrictions imposed by Washington, the country began to change in ways that are not obvious. Cubans who wake up and go to bed amid continuous blackouts, or mothers who have stopped sending their children to school because there is no breakfast, no uniforms, or even no teachers, do not perceive it. But Cuba’s new rich understand it, the Castro family understands it, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged it a few days ago when asked, as he has been for months: “Is Cuba about to fall? Is Cuba next?”

Rubio gave an answer that, until now, no one had dared to say so directly: “Well, the truth is Cuba has already fallen,” he told Fox News. He meant that the country now has a more dysfunctional economy than before, remains governed by a leadership that has its hands tied, and today is a territory much more dependent on Washington.

This, however, was not the change that some Cubans and Cuban Americans who have advocated for the definitive end of Castroism expected. At first, after removing Nicolás Maduro from the political map in Venezuela, President Donald Trump assured he would take care of Cuba. People thought they would witness in Havana the same operation the U.S. forces had carried out in Caracas, but that did not happen. Later, when the first negotiations with Cubans became public, the White House agenda had already prioritized its interests in the Middle East.

Between visits to the island by senior CIA officials, talks with the Castro family and sanctions, the U.S. government has never made its plan for the island clear. Initially Trump spoke of “taking Cuba,” but Rubio first suggested economic changes, then political ones. Later Rubio himself — who knows firsthand the interests of the Miami Cuban-American lobby — subtly shifted his rhetoric and now says that political transformation cannot be postponed.

“The president says anything and Marco Rubio finds himself in a very difficult position to react to what he says,” says Andy Gómez, the former director of the Cuban and Cuban American Studies Institute at the University of Miami, who helped shape a policy proposal for U.S.-Cuba relations in the Obama era. “The scene is like a soap opera, a soap opera lived every day in Miami and in Cuba. There is a major global problem with the war with Iran, for which no solution is in sight; so Cuba has had to wait.”

At times Trump has suggested he will accelerate the promised change in Cuba once the war with Iran is settled. At a recent Summit of the Shield of the Americas in New York, he joked that upon his return from the Middle East, he would leave his secretary of state “in the middle of Cuba.” “We’re gonna have one of those big, beautiful air craft carriers fly him in, drop him off, and he’ll figure out the rest. He always does,” he said.

For the past nine months the narrative around the island has been impossible to decipher: there has been talk of drones flying over Havana’s skies; of aircraft carriers near Cuban waters; of negotiations proposing a peaceful route; and frequent leaks that contradict the information coming from the White House. These days, despite Trump saying that they would reach an agreement with Cuba or that he did not believe military action on the island would be necessary, CBS News reported that the U.S. Army Reserve was evaluating the possibility of providing Southcom with police forces, medical personnel and other types of support that could presumably be used in a future attack on the island.

Beyond the rhetoric, what Washington has maintained since the start of the year is a cordon that has cornered Havana’s government with a battery of sanctions. Rubio has described them as “the strongest sanctions in the history” of bilateral relations. Except for the shipment transported to the island in March by the Russian tanker Anatoly Kolodkin, no more oil has arrived from any of Cuba’s allies. Now it is the private sector that is in charge of importing the fuel from the United States that circulates on the island. According to economists’ estimates, between January and June some 799,704 barrels of diesel and 127,698 barrels of gasoline were imported. Almost every month, moreover, the White House announces banking and financial restrictions, or measures that shut doors to the Cuban government.

Amid this picture, Cuba has become increasingly isolated in the small Cold War it is waging in the Caribbean Sea: it no longer has the help of Venezuela, until January its main supplier, and no other country has tried to challenge Washington’s sanctions policy.

The result is plain to see: by the end of 2026, Cuba is a country far more dependent on the United States. Imports of fuel, food and consumer goods have reached record figures. According to studies by the economist Ricardo Torres, a former researcher at the Center for the Study of the Cuban Economy and a professor at American University in Washington, relief-item exports this year are at $126.6 million, frozen chicken products entering the island total about $118 million, petroleum derivatives another $117.1 million, and the vehicles seen on Havana’s streets amount to about $34.9 million. If last year exports from the United States reached just over $416.5 million, this year they approached nearly $700 million, an increase of 61%. Added to this are sectors such as remittances, which for years have been an injection into Cuba’s weakened economy coming from the diaspora.

According to Torres, Cuba’s dependence on a country only 90 miles away is not new, but it is undeniable that “now it is being done very directly, with full intent.”

“Some measures are being taken that are creating new dependencies,” he says. “The sectors where this is most visible are fuel imports after the oil embargo, and the case of the company Sherritt, which withdrew from Cuba because of the sanctions, after which U.S. investors began to be seen negotiating with the U.S. government to have a stake in Cuba. The idea is that once the foreign companies leave, that vacancy can be used to position U.S. firms.”

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