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regime change
Why Regime Change in Cuba Is Imminent and We Should Be Worried
Cuba looks set to see a repeat of the Venezuelan playbook, as President Donald Trump has said he will be "the one" to finally act on Cuba. The message from Washington is clear: Cuba is next.
May 28, 2026
The United States has indicted Cuba's former president Raúl Castro on murder charges, deployed a carrier strike group to the Caribbean, and issued explicit threats of military intervention. Is the US moving toward another regime change operation in the Western Hemisphere? The rhetoric coming out of Washington suggests very much so.
Cuba looks set to see a repeat of the Venezuelan playbook. President Donald Trump has said he will be "the one" to finally act on Cuba. The message from Washington is clear. Cuba is next.
Latin America is empire's favorite backyard, where the United States has consistently moved to remove governments that pursue independent foreign and economic policies not in line with American interests. From the ouster of Guatemala's Jacobo Árbenz in 1954 to the CIA-backed overthrow of Chile's Salvador Allende in 1973, the region bears a long scar map of US interference.
But Cuba is an interesting case. Since the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, the island has managed to stave off the empire. Fidel Castro faced over 600 assassination attempts by the CIA. Despite that, the island survived, 90 miles from Florida, outlasting every American president who tried to bring it down.
Trump's ratings have fallen considerably due to the interventionism in Venezuela and Iran. Further adventurism is only going to dent them further.
So why the sudden push for military action now? The US under Trump is following a ruthless foreign policy where the rules-based order, in whatever form it existed, has been buried. Just like Venezuela and Iran, the US believes it has the right to subdue Cuba by continuing the momentum it has built, as Cuba has always been a symbol of resistance to American imperialism.
Anti-Cuba narratives have served American presidents well when it comes to securing political capital. For Trump, this is an opportunity to reassert US power and influence in the region, as he has stated himself: "Other presidents have looked at this for 50, 60 years. It looks like I'll be the one that does it." And most importantly, the move speaks directly to his voter base in Florida, which has a large and politically powerful Cuban-American population.
More than Trump though is the role and influence of Marco Rubio. A Cuban-American born in Miami, Rubio has crafted his entire political identity around the promise of a free Cuba.
He opposed former President Barack Obama's 2014 decision to restore diplomatic relations with Havana more loudly than almost any other politician in Washington, swearing to do "everything possible" to obstruct and reverse that policy. He pushed successfully to reverse it under Trump's first term and has consistently lobbied for tighter sanctions, stricter travel restrictions, and maximum pressure on the island and in 2024 introduced legislation to ensure Cuba remained on the US State Sponsors of Terrorism list.
On Cuba's Independence Day, Rubio delivered a video message to the Cuban people blaming their suffering entirely on a military conglomerate called GAESA without once mentioning the fuel blockade his own administration imposed. It was a telling omission.
That blockade is producing real humanitarian crisis. Blackouts last up to 22 hours a day. The health system carries a backlog of over 96,000 surgeries including 11,000 for children. United Nations human rights experts have described the situation as "energy starvation" and said it violates international human rights law. Prolonged sanctions and economic pressure are deepening this crisis while doing little to produce meaningful political change.
Mr. Rubio should be reminded that it is not for the US to deliver freedom to the Cuban people, just as it is not for the US to deliver freedom to the people of Venezuela or Iran. Changing regimes under the guise of freedom and democracy is the old playbook of empire. It has nothing to do with the interests of ordinary people and everything to do with American vested interests.
The Cuban socialist regime may have a thousand flaws, just like the regimes in Venezuela or Iran. But that does not give any state the right to intervene and impose regime change.
The US should also be wary of its ambitions and remember that Cuba is not Venezuela. While it may not possess the ability to retaliate like Iran or block strategic choke points, the Cuban nation has a fighting spirit that should not be underestimated. Cuba's defense doctrine envisions the entire civilian population mobilized for resistance; every Cuban citizen receives military training. The country's official motto says it all: "Patria o muerte, venceremos." Homeland or death, we will prevail.
At the same time, Trump's ratings have fallen considerably due to the interventionism in Venezuela and Iran. Further adventurism is only going to dent them further, particularly if an attack on Cuba triggers a refugee crisis on Florida's doorstep.
If Rubio is genuinely concerned about the Cuban people, lifting the fuel blockade would be a meaningful first step, one that would ease humanitarian suffering and open space for de-escalation. Another US-driven regime change in the hemisphere would not liberate Cubans. It would likely deepen instability across the Caribbean and Latin America at a moment when the region can least afford it.
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Alex Saab and the Fragility of the Venezuela Solidarity Movement
It’s difficult not to see the renewed imprisonment of Alex Saab as a disappointing capitulation to US coercion after so many of us fought for his freedom, but we cannot forget the task at hand.
May 24, 2026
The recent deportation of Alex Saab from Caracas to the US on May 18, 2026 has generated shock, confusion, anger, and intense debate across sectors of the international solidarity movement and many Venezuelans themselves.
Alex Saab, a Colombian businessman who became closely associated with the Venezuelan government during the years of heavy US sanctions, is seen by many Venezuelans as someone who helped the country bypass sanctions, obtain fuel and food, open financial channels, and resist economic collapse under blockade conditions.
The US accuses Saab of corruption and money laundering connected to Venezuelan state contracts, but for many people in Venezuela and across the international left, Saab came to represent something larger than an individual businessman: the broader struggle over sanctions, sovereignty, and Venezuela’s ability to survive under extraordinary economic and geopolitical pressure.
The Venezuelan revolution did not survive the last decade of US economic warfare without contradictions. It survived through improvisation, exhaustion, loyalty, fear, sanctions, migration, stubbornness, and an almost unbearable national fatigue that few outside the country truly understand.
Reducing every painful decision to betrayal while ignoring the enormous machinery of coercion surrounding Venezuela risks reproducing the very fragmentation that external aggression was designed to create in the first place.
The United States did not merely sanction Venezuela. It attempted to break it. It froze national assets, it openly pursued regime change, backed parallel governments, economically strangled the country, and ultimately launched a military operation to kidnap President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores from Venezuelan soil.
To understand why Saab became such a powerful figure, one must first understand what Venezuela became under sanctions: a country forced into survival mode.
And now, after the deportation of Saab to the United States and the growing accusations against Delcy Rodríguez, I watch many people speak with the confidence of hindsight. As if everything had always been obvious. As if Venezuelans navigating one of the most aggressive campaigns of economic warfare, destabilization, and military coercion in modern Latin American history had the luxury of moral purity.
As a Venezuelan American, I am struggling too to understand and process this moment. I stood there too. I called for Alex Saab’s freedom when he was detained in Cape Verde during the height of the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign against Venezuela. At the time, the reality that existed for many of us was that Saab was a Venezuelan diplomat helping the country navigate sanctions.
Recently, Venezuelan National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez publicly stated that Alex Saab has maintained relationships with US agencies since 2019. These revelations, combined with Saab’s deportation, have generated painful questions for many people who spent years defending him publicly.
What did we actually know?
What kinds of compromises were going on inside a country trying to survive under siege?
These are painful questions. And at this moment, there are still far more questions than answers.
Maybe painful compromises were made.
Maybe Saab was never what many believed him to be.
Maybe serious betrayals occurred.
Maybe the deportation was justified.
Maybe realities existed behind closed doors that ordinary Venezuelans never had access to. Or maybe decisions were made inside an impossible reality where preventing wider war, deeper collapse, and even greater harm for ordinary Venezuelans became more urgent.
Because since the kidnapping of Maduro, Venezuela has not been operating in an atmosphere of freedom. It is operating under threat.
And it is easy to demand uncompromising heroism from a country under attack when you are not the one responsible for preventing millions of people from falling into even greater catastrophe.
People who defended Saab for years are now confronting the possibility that parts of the story may have been hidden from them. Others are immediately translating uncertainty into accusations of betrayal against Delcy Rodríguez and the entire Bolivarian process.
But I think there is something dangerous about how quickly so many people are rushing toward absolute conclusions while fragments of information, accusations, leaks, and political narratives are still colliding in real time.
Maybe there will come a moment for deeper criticism of Delcy Rodríguez and others within the Bolivarian process. Maybe new information will eventually clarify realities that today remain obscured by contradiction, secrecy, pressure, and war.
But I think there is a certain political myopia in discussing Venezuela's internal contradictions while removing the broader reality of US pressure and coercion from the story entirely.
Because regardless of what may eventually be revealed about Alex Saab, the larger reality remains unchanged: Venezuela was subjected to years of sanctions, destabilization, economic strangulation, coup attempts, international isolation, and eventually direct military intervention.
The aggressor has not disappeared from the story.
And reducing every painful decision to betrayal while ignoring the enormous machinery of coercion surrounding Venezuela risks reproducing the very fragmentation that external aggression was designed to create in the first place.
It’s difficult not to see the renewed imprisonment of Alex Saab as a disappointing capitulation to US coercion after so many of us fought for his freedom, but we cannot forget the task at hand. If we are serious about ending US aggression toward Venezuela, we cannot allow our solidarity with the Venezuelan people to be deterred. They have shown us how to sustain a revolution amid contradictions, and that is what we must do.
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Venezuela Buys Time to Rebuild While Under Siege
The current fraught détente with Washington is a window of opportunity to recover an economy operating at roughly 30% of its pre-sanctions level.
May 03, 2026
Although progressives are rightly concerned about US-coerced compromises and concessions, it is equally important to understand the resilience and continuing successes of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution. Focusing only on the half-empty aspect of the proverbial glass obscures the strength of the resistance and conceals the vulnerabilities of the imperial juggernaut.
On a delegation to Venezuela, the constant refrain from both high-ranking government officials and grassroots Chavistas—supporters of the movement led by former President Hugo Chávez—was that they were urgently “buying time.”
A quarter-century of US hybrid war on Venezuela, especially the unilateral coercive measures (sanctions), has had a corrosive effect. The current fraught détente with Washington is a window of opportunity to recover an economy operating at roughly 30% of its pre-sanctions level.
President Maduro’s kidnapping
The kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores by US special forces on January 3 was “the one scenario we didn’t expect,” according to former Venezuelan Deputy Foreign minister Carlos Ron.
The kidnapping was a military success for the US. But politically Washington had no viable alternative to the Chavistas retaining power.
Abducting a lawful head of state—an egregious violation of international law—is not, however, unprecedented. In 2004, the US flew Haiti’s Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the Central African Republic in what Washington claimed was a voluntary decision, but which Aristide called a kidnapping. In 1990, following a bloody invasion, the US extradited Panama’s Manuel Noriega.
Leading up to January 3, Washington had incrementally tightened its stranglehold over Venezuela. Initial sanctions imposed in 2015 evolved from targeted measures to broad sectoral restrictions, especially on oil and finance. “Secondary sanctions” followed, penalizing non-US actors engaged with Venezuela. By December an outright military “total and complete blockade” piratically seized oil tankers.
US President Donald Trump also designated the so-called Cartel de los Soles as a terrorist organization, allegedly headed by Maduro. A $25-million bounty on Maduro under former US President Joe Biden was doubled in August. The following month, the US commenced extrajudicial murders of alleged drug runners in small boats in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific. By October, Trump suspended all communication with the Maduro government.
Resilience and Continuity
Despite post-kidnapping concessions, it is instructive to consider what hasn’t happened. The political leadership did not splinter, and the country did not descend into chaos. The US-directed fate of Libya in 2011 was not to be repeated in Venezuela.
Venezuela maintained constitutional continuity. Shortly after the strike, then Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as acting president. Other top leaders—National Assembly President Jorge Rodríguez, Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López—remained in place and unified. The civic-military unity held fast.
Under intense US pressure, high-ranking militants have been replaced. Padrino, who was swapped for Gustavo González López, another committed Chavista, remains influential in his new cabinet position heading the critical agricultural ministry. In this whack-a-mole scenario, the major exception to the government’s strategy of yielding in form to US pressure but maintaining a Chavista essence is the new Vice Foreign Minister for North America and Europe, Oliver Blanco, who is from the opposition.
Another triumph is that a highly divided population did not erupt into civil conflict. Instead, the attack produced a rally-around-the-flag effect, with some moderate opposition figures showing a new openness to the ruling party.
Nor was Noble Prize winner and far-rightist María Corina Machado imposed as president. She had signaled that if she took power there would be a retaliatory bloodbath against Chavistas. Meanwhile, the US effectively abandoned the bogus claim that Maduro headed the Cartel de los Soles.
Diplomatic Thaw and Economic Openings
On March 7, Washington formally recognized the Venezuelan government led by Rodríguez, marking a reversal of its policy since 2019. Trump even informally referred to her as “president-elect,” though the return of Maduro from US imprisonment as the rightful chief remains Venezuela’s national priority. On April 27, the US modified sanctions to allow the Venezuelan government to pay Maduro’s defense lawyers.
Financial easing is proceeding. In the late 1990s-early 2000s, the US bought more than half of Venezuela’s oil exports. Oil sales have again resumed under a highly restructured and controlled system, while the US has also taken steps to shield Venezuelan state assets from creditor seizure. The Rodríguez government is in the process of regaining control of Citgo Petroleum, the “crown jewel” of Venezuela's foreign assets, which the US had seized.
What has been achieved is not a lifting of sanctions, but a controlled reentry into international finance under US licensing and oversight.
Washington has authorized transactions with Venezuela’s central bank and major state banks, reversing the 2019 measures that had effectively cut them off from the global financial system. This policy change allows dollar-denominated transactions and access to US financial channels.
For the first time in years, Venezuela’s core financial institutions can operate in international banking channels. What makes this significant is that it allows oil revenues from US transactions to enter the domestic economy. That in turn helps stabilize liquidity, reducing the need for monetary expansion that had fueled inflation.
On April 16, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) resumed engagement with Venezuela. Previously, the US-dominated IMF had cut Venezuela off from its $5-million “special drawing rights” (SDR). Rodríguez said she will only access its rightful SDR account to be used for social programs and not apply for loans.
Still, the core US sanctions framework remains in place, with most transactions subject to case-by-case authorization. Full unrestricted access to global capital markets has not been restored. What has been achieved is not a lifting of sanctions, but a controlled reentry into international finance under US licensing and oversight.
Prospects
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) continues its consecutive 20-quarter expansion. New and long-considered legislative reforms for hydrocarbons and minerals encourage needed foreign investment vital for economic recovery. Although the changes involved some bitter pills, the rationale is that it is better to compromise than to keep these resources in the ground where they generate no income.
Rodríguez lauded a new amnesty law, creating a “new historical moment… of national reunification.” The long-polarized Venezuelan people yearn for domestic tranquility, according to Jesús Rodríguez-Espinoza, editor of the Caracas-based Orinoco Tribune.
Venezuela has so far escaped the severity of the economic strangulation that Cuba is now suffering or the military pummeling on the scale of Iran. The US-Israeli war in the Middle East may even be creating a temporary opening for Venezuela, as Trump needs the prospect of freely available Venezuelan oil to help calm jittery oil markets.
Trump may have also calculated that engagement with the Chavistas offered greater strategic benefits than assassination or a large-scale invasion, while using the kidnapping to placate domestic hawks pushing for full regime change. Significantly for US imperial objectives, Venezuela’s connections with other counter-hegemonic countries were curtailed.
Washington’s strategy since January 3 has focused on Venezuela’s stabilization and economic recovery. Their deferred third phase, “political transition,” is another word for regime change. Rodríguez has made clear that “free and fair” elections can be held only if the blackmail of US sanctions is removed. Thousands marched in a national “Pilgrimage for a Venezuela Without Sanctions and Peace.”
The kidnapping was a military success for the US. But politically Washington had no viable alternative to the Chavistas retaining power, given their strength, according to former Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Areaza. The only other option for the invader was to face a Vietnam-style guerilla war. The Bolivarian Revolution has persisted and is still fighting. On balance, the glass is decisively more than half full.
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