00:00Is Raul Castro the next Nicolas Maduro? Can the U.S. do in Cuba what it did in Venezuela?
00:07And I guess the other big question, just listening to you talking there,
00:11is the U.S. looking to gain more authority in the Western Hemisphere?
00:16Well, I think to your latter point, this is certainly, again, part of the Trump administration's
00:23push toward having greater predominance over the Western Hemisphere. It goes back to the
00:29Monroe Doctrine, as well as the Roosevelt Corollary, which both, by the way, have been renamed.
00:35So now it's the Donroe Doctrine for Donald Trump and the Trump Corollary. And the national security
00:41strategy points this out pretty clearly, that Western Hemispheric security, in other words,
00:47U.S. predominance over the region, is paramount to the United States, not East Asia, not Europe,
00:53not any other region of the world. So yes, I agree with you on that. And when it comes to
00:58Raul's
00:59specifically, and could we see a Maduro repeat, I think we absolutely can. Now, there is another
01:06point here that I think is important, which is Raul Castro is not the actual leader of Cuba anymore.
01:11You have Miguel Diaz-Canal, who is the current sitting president of Cuba. And so if the Trump
01:18administration is really interested in regime change or decapitating the regime by removing the
01:25top leader, as we did in Venezuela with Maduro, it would have to be Diaz-Canal, most likely not Raul
01:30Castro. If it turns out being Castro, then that's, again, you know, very political, very symbolic,
01:36because he is tied, of course, to the Castro family and to Fidel Castro himself, and all of the historical
01:42baggage that I mentioned. And the Cuban American people who live mostly in Florida are going to be
01:50very happy if Raul Castro is brought to justice, no doubt. But again, does this actually help the
01:56situation in dealing with Cuba? I would suspect not.
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