After the US deposed Maduro and installed Delcy Rodriguez in Caracas, Venezuela stopped shipping oil to Cuba. That oil, heavily subsidized in exchange for Cuban doctors, teachers, and security advisors since the Chávez era, was the foundation of the Cuban economy. The last Russian tanker arrived in March. Now there’s no replacement coming and Cubans are living through 22-hour-a-day blackouts.
This isn’t a humanitarian story dressed up as geopolitics. The USS Nimitz strike group is parked under Southern Command. Trump’s DOJ just indicted 94-year-old Raul Castro for the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shootdown, 30 years after the fact, and conveniently right as the vice tightens. The administration is offering $100 million in food aid, but only through the Catholic Church.
Why now? Cuba imports 70% of its food, has no fuel, no electricity, no Soviet patron, and a regime that depends on Venezuelan oil it can no longer get. Meanwhile, the presence of Russian, Chinese, and Iranian military and intelligence assets on Cuban soil a mere 90 miles from US territory has raised the administration’s hackles. So the question isn’t whether something happens. It’s what: civil collapse, a quiet Castro exit, a Maduro-style “tyrant change,” or something messier.
We work through the historical parallels (yes, Bay of Pigs comes up), the strategic logic of squeezing Havana now, and why we’re skeptical about US troops on the ground, even if the indictment hints otherwise.
