Cuba’s commie thugs need a shove into the dustbin of history

“Cuba looks like it is ready to fall,” President Trump told reporters on Air Force One last Sunday.

As the free world basked in the news of the president’s ouster of former Venezuelan ruler Nicolás Maduro, reporters wondered where Trump might project American power next. Colombia, Mexico and Greenland were all mentioned.

Regarding Cuba, however, the president seemed ready to wait for the isolated island nation’s communist government, now deprived of Venezuelan oil to power its creaking electricity grid and ancient American cars, to collapse on its own.

But as Secretary of State Marco Rubio has hinted — musing that he would be “concerned” if he “lived in Havana” and “was in the government” there — the time has come to give Cuba’s communist thugs a final shove into the dustbin of history.

Cubans have suffered in poverty, despair and terror ever since Fidel Castro entered Havana 67 years ago last Thursday. Decades of American sanctions, the abrupt cut-off of Soviet aid in 1991 and extreme deprivation in recent years have not dislodged the regime, which holds a monopoly of force and relies on unfettered KGB-trained brutality to lord it over a fearful populace.

In a country that already routinely lacks electricity 18 hours a day, cutting off Venezuelan oil won’t make Cuba’s malevolent masters more likely to cede power — it will only make them more desperate to hold onto it.

“One should never underestimate the ability of a totalitarian regime to remain in power even under the most brutal economic conditions,” a former CIA station chief in Havana tells me. “Simply put, the regime has the guns; the people have empty hands and empty stomachs.” 

Recall how the commie relics reacted in July 2021, when the biggest Cuban protests in a generation poured into the streets to protest devastating shortages of food and medicine. Mass repression quickly followed, with hundreds of Cubans jailed after secret trials or simply made to “disappear.”

The only thing that really frightened the government, according to reports, was the prospect of American military intervention, an alternative that then-President Joe Biden — just a month away from his catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan — predictably failed to pursue.

For as long as Cuba’s hateful regime stands, it will continue its malevolent history of serving as the Western hemisphere’s major base for propagating Marxist revolutionary ideology and aiding and abetting America’s enemies, a vile tradition that began with its hosting Soviet nuclear missiles targeting our cities.

Officially classified as a state sponsor of terrorism by both Trump administrations, for decades Cuba has harbored violent fugitives, including American radicals convicted of murder and international terrorist operatives, and provided training to thousands of Marxist activists set loose upon the world, even in the United States.

After a period of post-Soviet neglect, Russia is back on the scene, with joint naval exercises and failed attempts to protect Venezuelan oil tankers bound for Cuba from American interdiction.

Last September, Beijing and Havana agreed to increased military cooperation and political coordination, an arrangement that China’s defense minister described as “a model of solidarity and cooperation among socialist countries.”

Few Americans other than New York City’s newly installed Democratic mayor Zohran Mamdani will find that comforting, but, according to commercially available satellite data analyzed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, China is operating four major signals intelligence installations aimed at Florida, the Gulf of America and our base at Guantanamo Bay.

Venezuela may have the world’s largest oil reserves, but failing to act against Cuba will leave our chief adversary with an eager ally and active military assets just 90 miles off our coast.

Indeed, with Venezuela neutralized under Maduro’s apparently compliant successors, Russia and China may come to rely on Cuba more, especially if we just leave it alone hoping it is a problem that will solve itself.

Venezuela, coincidentally, offered up proof of Cuba’s malevolent international role by integrating Cuban military and intelligence forces into its security services. After Maduro’s extraction, it was revealed that 32 Cubans — 80% of the fatalities in the strike — were killed in the American operation, while estimates suggest that thousands of Cuban soldiers and advisers may be present in the country.

The island’s military exports aid and assistance beyond Venezuela, with inroads across leftist-ruled countries in Latin America. Once deployed to support Marxist movements in sub-Saharan Africa, in recent years Cuban forces have been documented fighting for ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad in his country’s civil war. In Ukraine, they are fighting for Vladimir Putin, with reports suggesting Cuba may soon overtake North Korea as Russia’s top source of foreign mercenaries.

“The US could easily end Cuba’s support for insurgencies and narcoterrorism,” Michael Gfoeller, a retired US ambassador who advised David Petraeus, wrote me in the aftermath of Maduro’s arrest. Ending the communist regime in Havana would, in his opinion, “pave the way for democratic reforms and enhanced security for American interests.”

With momentum on his side and an international community that can do little more than whine in protest, President Trump should take down Cuba’s regime now and free its people from their decades-long nightmare.

Paul du Quenoy is president of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute.