00:00Well, for more on this, we're joined now by Robert Huish, who is an associate professor in development studies at
00:07Dalhousie University in Halifax in Canada.
00:10First of all, welcome to the programme. Thank you so much for your time. We do appreciate it.
00:16Perhaps we can start. You know, what is Donald Trump's endgame? What is his aim here with this oil stranglehold?
00:24What kind of deal does he want from Cuba?
00:28Well, I think there's two folds of pressure on the US strategy on Cuba right now.
00:33And the first is for Donald Trump to try to flex as much as he can as having influence throughout
00:40the entire hemisphere.
00:42So in the Americas, we have seen repeated bellicosity by Donald Trump.
00:48If it's at Greenland, if it's at Canada, if it's now at Cuba or Mexico.
00:52So that's sort of keeping to the Trump script.
00:54But underneath Trump, we have Marco Rubio, who has been a longtime advocate of democratic change and regime change in
01:04Cuba.
01:04And I believe that Mr. Rubio's strategy here is to put breaking pressure on the Cuban government so that there's
01:11going to be some sort of forced transition within that country.
01:16And right now, the pressure that's being applied is by creating an already tense embargo on Cuba and making it
01:24a total stranglehold.
01:25And that capture of Nicolas Maduro and hereby taking control of Venezuela's exports is really putting that down to the
01:34mat right now.
01:36You know, what is the likelihood of that succeeding?
01:39I think Axios is reporting that Rubio is meeting or has met with the grandson of Raul Castro, the former
01:46leader of Cuba.
01:48That's just being reported.
01:49We can't confirm it.
01:51You know, how likely is this to work?
01:55I don't think there's much of a chance of this.
01:57And there's some serious short-sightedness within this plan.
02:02And the first one is that there is simply, if there was a push here to create democracy in Cuba
02:08or regime change, it would require some sort of functioning opposition to exist.
02:14And Cuba doesn't have that.
02:16There's no opposition and exile as it was in Venezuela.
02:20So there's no one to fill a power vacuum if this plan succeeded.
02:26Secondly, the Cuban government has been through this before.
02:29They have routinely been put up against economic measures and economic weaponry by Washington.
02:36And they have plans in place to get through it.
02:40In particular, in the 1990s, under Bill Clinton, the strengthening of the Cuban embargo tightened to its pretty much maximum
02:46capacity.
02:47And the country went ahead with it.
02:49But right now, the bigger issue for Rubio to think through is the demographics of Cuba.
02:56Almost 2 million people have left Cuba since the end of 2021.
03:02And now you have just a bit over 2 million exiles living in the U.S.
03:07And from Mr. Rubio's point of view, the idea is that if you were to break the Cuban government, then
03:12thereby you could probably win every county for the next election in Florida.
03:16But it doesn't get to the reality of how a power vacuum is filled or how a potential humanitarian crisis
03:23could be managed.
03:26Just you're talking there about the potential humanitarian crisis.
03:29We saw the Cuban foreign minister in Moscow today.
03:33What might Cuba expect from Russia or indeed any other outside powers?
03:40Any kind of intervention or help forthcoming from outside countries?
03:46Yeah, it would be very wise for many countries other than Russia to start bringing some assistance to Cuba.
03:54And not necessarily in terms of foreign aid, but in terms of opening up trade and keeping that alive.
04:00Mexico has done that.
04:02Canada, France, Italy have done that throughout the history of the Cuban embargo.
04:07But right now with Russia, the idea on the table is that more energy would be shipped from Russia to
04:15Cuba.
04:16Now, that would be very tricky to do because Russia has already lost quite a bit of its export market
04:21since the war in Ukraine.
04:22But also the dependence on their shadow fleet to try to traverse the Atlantic on heavily sanctioned vessels would be
04:30a very costly and difficult endeavor.
04:32So right now, Mexico has actually sent energy into Cuba a few shipments at a time.
04:38It's just barely keeping the lights on.
04:40Some estimates are to say that Cuba will be completely out of energy in about three months.
04:45Some of the embassies are even putting plans in for leaving their missions if it comes to that.
04:51And even the Cuban government is prepared for a transition into martial law if it really gets that severe.
04:57But we're seeing that there's other things that have been dropped off.
05:00Tourism trade is right down in Cuba.
05:04Many Canadian airlines, Canadians making one of the largest markets for tourism in Cuba, all flights have been suspended because
05:11of the lack of opportunity to refuel.
05:13Some European flights continue to come in, but they're going to be refueling in a third country like Mexico to
05:18get it there.
05:19And with the other factor here is the food production in Cuba is also in dire straits.
05:25As you mentioned, the waste disposal, that's a big problem.
05:29It's created tropical disease outbreaks like chikungunya or opucho virus.
05:34Those are absolutely surging.
05:36We've seen even in the last year, the infant mortality rate in Cuba has gone from about 5 to 1
05:43,000 live births in 2021 to almost 15 per thousand in late 2025.
05:48So you combine the lack of resources and also the lack of people, 2 million people having left Cuba, many
05:56of them educated professional class.
05:58You have a situation here where you do not have as much resilience to build and build back.
06:04And so it's going to require energy, it's going to require food, it's going to require medicine, and it's going
06:10to require continued and open trade to get Cuba's economy on some level plane again.
06:16Just you did talk a little there about previous administrations and the relationship with Cuba.
06:23And Barack Obama, I think in the second term, did try this rapprochement, which was then reversed after he left
06:30office in Trump's first term.
06:32Did that yield anything, brief as it was?
06:37Yes, I mean, those were sort of the golden moments in Cuba-U.S. relationships.
06:43In one shot, it brought more Americans to Cuba as tourists or as family visitors during that period.
06:53I think Cuba was banking on a lot more U.S. tourism to come into the country, kind of like
06:58how it works with resort tourism in Canada, but that didn't happen.
07:03But it also opened the opportunity for very important partnerships.
07:07It led to partnerships in healthcare research, also in sport.
07:13You know, there was deals made in the making between the Cuban government and Major League Baseball, for example.
07:20And by breaking down that stranglehold, it actually facilitated more natural relations between the two countries.
07:27Cuba's only 90 miles off the south of Florida, and there's a huge expatriate community there.
07:33Pretty much everyone in Cuba has a relative in Florida to some degree.
07:37So by opening that up made a lot of sense, and it also opened the opportunity for foreign investment to
07:44come in and create restaurants, paladares, as they call them.
07:48Even some merchant shops were on the table there.
07:53Interestingly enough, that did catch Donald Trump's attention when he came in for his first term, and he started making
07:59some noise about creating resorts in Veradero or creating golf courses in that way.
08:08But since Trump was in his first term, Mr. Biden didn't really reverse as much policy to go back to
08:16the Obama days.
08:17And now with Trump 2.0, we're seeing this total stranglehold on Cuba's economy, and that spiked off very, very
08:27serious inflation and also the lack of energy.
08:31The fact also is that there's been such an out-migration of Cubans leaving that companies who are in charge
08:40of energy production, mining, fixing the garbage trucks, if you will, there's no engineers left.
08:46They've all gone.
08:47They're in the U.S., they're in South America, or they've gone off to Spain.
08:51So this will be the first time when that professional class of Cubans won't be physically present to be there
08:59to handle this crisis.
09:01And as a result, Russia is seeing an opportunity to solidify that partnership, something they've already done the last couple
09:09of years,
09:09with some 5,000 Cubans actually signing up to be mercenaries to fight along Russian troops against Ukraine.
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