Cuba Libre: Why it is Time for a Strategic Rapprochement with Havana
At a time when great power competition with China and Russia is putting the United States’ international relationships under intense scrutiny, the U.S. faces an inconsistency problem in how it deals with communist regimes. Nowhere is this clearer than 90 miles off the coast of Florida, in Cuba.
The United States has normalized relations and developed a strategic partnership with Vietnam, a communist country, but it continues to fight against Cuba’s communist regime. This U.S. policy alienates key regional allies, namely Mexico and Brazil, while driving Cuba deeper into the embrace of U.S. adversaries. As Cuba continues to routinely host Russian warships and provide grounds for Chinese military and intelligence facilities, it serves as a strategic regional foothold for U.S. rivals. The relationship with Vietnam illustrates that the strategic and security interests of the United States can take precedence over ideology when policy makers can set aside ideological grievances and make the strategically sound decision. Cuba should be considered in the same category.
Food rationing, electricity blackouts, and water shortages are all part of everyday reality for many people living in Cuba. The island is experiencing what could be considered the worst socio-economic crisis since the “Special Period,” a severe economic crisis following the collapse of the Soviet Union. These challenges include not only those accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic and long-term structural economic inefficiencies, such as corruption and extensive bureaucracy, but also devastating hurricanes, tightened U.S. sanctions, and the crisis in Venezuela, Cuba’s closest Latin American ally and trade partner.
Across the Straits of Florida, the United States has shifted its foreign policy towards great power competition with China and Russia. This shift makes Cuba once again, following the Cuban Missile Crisis and broader Cold War contention, a significant strategic concern for the United States due to its proximity, relationship with U.S. adversaries, and the straining effect that the U.S.-Cuban relationship has on the region. Though the U.S. embargo has been failing to achieve its primary objective—to bring down the Cuban regime—for the last 62 years, it provides, alongside the severe economic crisis in Cuba, U.S. policymakers an opportunity to restart rapprochement with the island, which would have a potential to bring humanitarian, economic, and geopolitical advantages to both countries.
Struggling Within and Without
Exacerbated by recent nationwide blackouts, Cuba is experiencing the largest emigration wave in its history, with shortages of practically all essential commodities, including water, food, fuel, electricity, and cash among the most significant factors fueling the exodus from the island. The Cuban government in July acknowledged that Cuba’s population decreased by more than 10 percent since 2020. Most Cubans fleeing the country are migrating to the United States, where U.S. Customs and Border Protection registered more than 610,000 encounters with Cubans since 2022.
Many U.S. experts see the U.S. policy toward the island, most notably the embargo, as helping to fuel the U.S. migration crisis by devastating Cuba’s economy and leaving Cubans no choice but to flee. The COVID-19 pandemic hit Cuba particularly hard, and its majority service-based economy heavily reliant on tourism never fully recovered.
Tourist arrivals in 2022 struggled to reach even 40 percent of pre-pandemic levels. The island is also suffering from fuel shortages, as Venezuela, Cuba’s key regional partner and supplier of oil, has reduced its oil shipments to Cuba by over 50 percent in 2024 compared to the previous year. U.S. sanctions continue to limit the island’s trade and investment opportunities, making economic recovery more difficult.
The antagonistic nature of the Cuban-U.S. dynamic is a result of ideological competition, mutual distrust, and self-perpetuating ideological disputes. The U.S. embargo’s purpose was to weaken the Cuban regime, discredit the Cuban economic model, contain communism, and impose high costs on Soviet support of the island.
Congress in 1996 passed the Helms-Burton Act, codifying Cold War-era policies towards Cuba with a stated purpose to “increase pressure for peaceful democratic change in Cuba.” This policy, however, achieved little more than continuing mutual U.S.-Cuban antagonism. Even the CIA as late as 1982 concluded that U.S. sanctions did not meet U.S. objectives, and neither assassination attempts nor embargos have brought down the communist regime. While the Obama administration loosened many sanctions and restrictions, charting a path towards normalization of relations, President Trump reversed many of these changes and further tightened the embargo, with most of these restrictions remaining in place today.
The Choice Between A United or Divided Neighborhood
The U.S. comprehensive strategy for great power competition with China and Russia cannot afford to ignore Cuba nor can it rely on the hope that the embargo will eventually bring down the communist rule of the island. The Cuban regime has repeatedly proven its ability to survive economic crises and other coercive measures, underscoring the need for revision of the U.S. strategy. U.S. policy toward Cuba has long been a divisive issue in Latin America, and the ongoing sanctions and restrictions risk alienating key U.S. partners and allies in the region.
This dynamic comes at a pivotal time, as China is aggressively expanding its influence and even has surpassed the U.S. as South America’s largest trading partner. This division reflects the problem of the enduring perception of U.S. policy in Latin America as a crusade against communism. U.S. policy towards Cuba is vastly different from the pragmatic approach it takes with other repressive, including communist, countries elsewhere in the world. This selective approach is costing the U.S. an ability to improve partnerships and influence in its neighborhood while giving China and Russia room to expand.
President Trump designated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism as well as a country “not cooperating fully against terrorism,” reversing President Obama’s removal of Cuba from the state sponsor of terrorism list in 2015. The Trump administration mainly cited Cuba’s refusal to extradite commanders of the National Liberation Army, Colombia’s guerilla group, as the reasons why Cuba should be included on the list. While the Biden administration removed Cuba from the “not cooperating fully against terrorism list” in 2024 amidst resumed law enforcement cooperation and suspended arrest warrants on the Colombian guerillas, Cuba remains designated as a state sponsor of terrorism even though the original reasons for its inclusion are no longer valid.
Cuban President Diaz-Canel in his speech commemorating the 70th anniversary of the start of the communist revolution listed Cuba’s inclusion on the list of state sponsors of terror as one of his foremost grievances regarding U.S. policy, underscoring both the reputational and economic impacts of the designation. Unlike a codified law, the designation is managed by individual U.S. presidential administrations, making it one of the primary opportunities for future negotiations.
Two of Cuba’s most important regional supporters, Mexico and Brazil, are Latin America’s biggest economies, making up 55 percent of the whole region’s GDP combined. President Lula da Silva of Brazil in 2023 criticized the inclusion of Cuba on the list of state sponsors of terrorism and in the same statement called the U.S. embargo “illegal”. Former President Lopez Obrador of Mexico asserted in 2021 that it is Mexico’s sovereign decision to provide support to Cuba amidst the U.S. sanctions, an attitude that is unlikely to change after new Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum took office. Mexico has in recent months tied Venezuela as Cuba’s largest supplier of oil, despite possibly breaking the embargo. While a path towards normalization of relations with Cuba would not suddenly solve all of the United States’ problems in the region, it would eliminate a significant obstacle towards building stronger partnerships with several governments in the Western Hemisphere. Good relations with Latin American countries, especially Mexico and Brazil, are vital for the United States to enhance regional security, manage migration, strengthen counternarcotics cooperation, and foster economic and environmental collaboration, supporting broader stability and countering global rivals’ influence in Latin America.
The removal of Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and the loosening of the embargo could engender goodwill among Mexico and Brazil towards the United States, reduce domestic-driven immigration tension with Mexico, and demonstrate the U.S. intentions to shape its foreign policy in Latin America from a fact-based perspective aligned with U.S. interests versus relitigating the Cold War.
Vietnam as a Path Forward
U.S. contemporary relations with Vietnam illustrate what a pragmatic policy of normalization with Cuba could look like if the U.S. were to abandon its Cold War-era Cuba policy. The U.S. lifted its embargo against and normalized its relationship with Vietnam in 1995 despite Vietnam’s communist form of government and only marginally better human rights record than Cuba. Vietnam has since become one of the key partners for the U.S. in the competition against China across multiple administrations of both parties. In 2023, President Biden elevated U.S.-Vietnam relations to a strategic partnership, deepening trade, expanding economic cooperation, encouraging investment, and bolstering the security of Vietnam.
In a joint statement in 2023, leaders of both countries declared that the United States and Vietnam “overcome a difficult past to become trusted partners” to achieve shared goals of peace and security in the face of competition against China. The United States was able to put aside ideological differences and almost 60,000 U.S. casualties of a Vietnam War fought less than 50 years ago to forge a partnership that could advance U.S. security in the future. It should do the same with Cuba. The parallels between the cases of Cuba and Vietnam, including their important implications for great power competition, are clear.
The only tangible outcomes of the policy of maximum pressure on Cuba have been the impoverishment of the local population, a sharp increase in migration to the U.S., and the island’s continuous alignment with China and Russia. The current socio-economic challenges in Cuba present the U.S. with an opportunity to compel—rather than coerce—the regime to improve its human rights record, as well as its behavior in other areas critical to U.S. security and humanitarian interests.
The vicious cycle of U.S.-Cuba relations requires a proactive approach rather than fueling historical grievances and animosity. Both countries have more to gain from rapprochement than from maintaining the status quo. The restrictions on Cuba levied by the United States in their current form hurt U.S. domestic and international interests. The normalization process would have to begin with increased dialogue, giving the U.S. an opportunity to establish specific and achievable goalposts related to security, humanitarian, or economic concerns, as well as a gradual loosening of sanctions that disproportionately affect the local Cuban population.
The Obama-era changes provide a starting point for the rapprochement, but the process should be carried out further. It will eventually require legislative changes to the Helms-Burton Act, which restricts executive flexibility to normalize relations with Cuba without congressional approval.
U.S. policymakers must decide whether they seek strategic partnership—or at least improved relations—90 miles from Florida, greater economic prosperity and stability in the U.S. neighborhood, a curbing of Chinese regional influence, or more immigration waves, continued Chinese encroachment, and other security risks that will challenge the U.S. ability to focus on the Indo-Pacific. To hope for different outcomes without making meaningful changes to the policy is unrealistic and ultimately counterproductive. The U.S. government must reassess its approach to Cuba for its benefit.
Views expressed are the author’s own and do not represent the views of GSSR, Georgetown University, or any other entity. Image Credit: The Cuban History