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By Tom O'Connor
Deputy Editor, National Security and Foreign Policy
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The Republican Party's midterm election setbacks may have an unlikely benefactor in the communist-led state President Donald Trump has teased taking over, sitting just 90 miles from the U.S. leader's political stronghold of Florida.
Both Trump and Vice President JD Vance have acknowledged that foreign policy woes, specifically the war on Iran and its domestic impact, were partially to be blamed for the poor showing that saw Democrats flip more than 400 seats nationwide—including 17 in Florida's state legislature—and assume majorities in both chambers of Congress.
In Cuba, also subject to a form of ramped-up U.S. blockade and threats of military intervention this year, the results are being interpreted as a popular repudiation of U.S. hawkish foreign policy at large.
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Supporting a 'Respectful Relationship'
"According to public information, it seems that electors in the U.S. were dissatisfied with government policies and rejected the aggressive international approach," Cuban Ambassador to the U.N. Ernesto Soberón Guzmán said in a statement shared with Newsweek. "At any rate, U.S. aggression against Cuba is criminal, has no justification and only serves the narrow interests of influential political groups."
"The majority of Americans would support a respectful relationship with Cuba and reject the economic blockade," the Cuban envoy added. "Collective punishment can never be acceptable. A military action against Cuba, of any sort, would be an international crime. Cuba is not a threat, nor is it a problem. U.S. hostility and the failure to recognize Cuba's sovereign rights are the problem and the threat."
Both the resolve of Havana's leadership and the shifting political tides in Washington may complicate the administration's plans.
But whether these obstacles prove enough to stave off efforts to impose the change so desired by Trump and his fervently anti-communist Cuban American top diplomat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, will mark one of the greatest tests of the decades-long feud since the Cold War.
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'I Wanna Get Cuba Done Before I Leave'
Publicly, Trump appears undeterred by his party's electoral letdown.
In fact, the president doubled down on Cuba in his most recent remarks, asserting that he would "certainly consider" the use of military force to achieve the goal before the end of his term in January 2029.
"I wanna get Cuba done before I leave. And we have a very good, talented guy for Cuba named Marco," Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday. "Because Marco Rubio, his parents are from Cuba, as you probably know, and he would love to do that."
"'So, we're watching it very closely. It's doing very poorly. It's essentially a failed place, nation, whatever you wanna call it. It's failed. And we're watching it," Trump continued. "I would like to be able to do it. I won the Cuban vote by 94 percent in Florida, and I think I'm more popular now than I was then. And, frankly, I'd love to be able to do it for the people, for the Cubans that came and were treated really badly and they came to America."
The Cuban government blames the undisputed deterioration of conditions nationwide on the U.S. decision to restrict foreign fuel shipments to the oil import-dependent island of more than nine million people.
Cuban officials view the move, taken just weeks after the U.S. military raid that seized the leader of Cuba's top energy ally, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, as the latest step in the long-running sanctions campaign dating back to the early years of the 1959 revolution that brought communist rule.
Trump's Tougher Line
From the White House's perspective, however, the island's suffering is attributed to an archaic, ineffective and oppressive system of governance that prioritizes supplies for the ruling elite.
U.S. officials have further alleged that the Cuban government was complicit in aiding Washington's top adversaries, China, Russia and Iran, as well as designated terrorist organizations, though they have not provided evidence to support the latter claim.
Trump's Cuba mission began nearly a decade ago. Roughly a year after President Barack Obama's historic visit to the island appeared to seal an unprecedented warming of ties, Trump announced a rollback of most normalization policies and pursued a tougher line.
In one of the final acts of his first administration, Trump placed Cuba back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. The status remained throughout President Joe Biden's presidency, only challenged in the last week before his own exit from office and promptly reinstated upon Trump's return.
Today, Trump once again finds himself facing the clock.
"Havana is certainly emboldened to see Trump weakened and his attention will likely be completely consumed dealing with Iran, Ukraine, and a host of domestic battles with the Democrats," Theodore Henken, professor at Baruch College's Weissman School of Arts and Sciences who specializes in Cuba studies, told Newsweek. "Cuba will be even less of a priority."
"However, an already unpredictable Trump could try to get an easy 'win' by attempting to do a military action against the Cuban leadership a la Venezuela and Maduro," Henken said. "Anything is possible with Trump, Rubio and [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth."
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In Search of a Solution
Cuba may not necessarily have been on the top of U.S. voters' concerns when they handed the Republicans a defeat earlier this month. But delivering an acceptable pretext for a new military adventure on top of an unpopular war in the Middle East may necessitate a recalibration on the part of the White House.
"Trump's plunging popularity and the unresolved war with Iran have scrambled he and Rubio's Cuba strategy," Henken said. "The Cuban government has been intransigent and refuses to make any 'deal' at the behest of Washington—especially one that involves any kind of regime change or political opening on the island."
"Then, the humanitarian crisis (partially provoked by the U.S. oil blockade) and historic exodus only continue," he added. "Now after the tremendous loss experienced by the GOP largely over anger with Trump, his pressure campaign against Cuba has even less chance of working."
Where Henken believes the administration may have sought to find an opening to advance its objectives is by capitalizing on some form of domestic unrest, though the prospect of such a development appears to be waning.
"I think they were hoping the summer heat would lead to an uprising and that could have been used as a pretext for some kind of military action," Henken said.
Comparisons With Iran
It's not the first time Trump has been left looking for a revolution that never arrived. When Trump issued his first address upon launching the war against Iran with support from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in February, he called upon the Iranian people to "take over" their government, calling it potentially their "only chance for generations."
Iranian citizens had risen en masse a month before. Their insurrection, the violence of which Iranian officials blame on foreign infiltration, was met with a brutal crackdown, leading to the deaths of thousands, most of them civilians.
Andres Sebastian Pertierra, a historian of Latin America at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in Cuba, argued that the country, much like Trump himself, was a "wildcard" in that there was little precedent in the nation's post-revolution history for the kind of mass bloodshed witnessed in Iran.
"Nobody knows how the Cuban military and security forces would respond to a mass casualty event against protesters," Pertierra told Newsweek. "Remember, this isn’t Iran, where they mow down protesters like someone mows the lawn. Cuba has not had such an incident under the current regime, and I don’t think anyone knows what would happen if it did."
But there are some apparent parallels to the situation in the Islamic Republic under U.S. fire thousands of miles away.
Pertierra said that "fear and despair" remain the primary motivators keeping people from taking to the streets, even if the ruling Cuban Communist Party was "weaker and more vulnerable than probably at any time since 1959, with discontent at an all time high."
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Cuba Digs In
Even in the face of especially dire circumstances, past predictions of Cuba's collapse have proved premature. The so-called "Special Period" of the 1990s following the collapse of Cuba's top sponsor, the Soviet Union, prompted a mass restructuring of the island's economic model, now in the midst of yet another transformation favoring more breathing room for private businesses.
Solutions are emerging today as well in the form of a surge of solar panels from China, and, somewhat ironically, a growing stream of quiet fuel shipments from the U.S.
And while Cuba may not enjoy the natural resources, geographic advantages and conventional military might that have bolstered Iran's defense against U.S. intervention, the island's leadership has managed to foster a similar sense of unity among its ruling party.
"The Trump administration has been a godsend for regime unity," Pertierra said. "You have a Cuba policy designed and run by Marco Rubio, a Cuban American for whom it is personal, and if the Cuban government falls, this has obvious negative implications for the many military, intelligence, and administrative personnel."
"They see themselves as defending their country and its sovereignty against a neighboring aggressor, not unlike how Ukrainians feel about Russia," he added. "They see surrender as catastrophic for their identity, for their country, and for themselves and their families."
Unlike in Venezuela, where Trump has acknowledged having established contact with Maduro's deputy, now Acting President Delcy Rodríguez, ahead of the brazen operation, "no amount of pressure has caused the elite divisions necessary for a takeover of Cuba as a sort of Venezuela 2.0 operation," Pertierra said.
This only raises the risks for the White House, as "further intervention in Cuba also heightens Trump’s responsibility (and possible unpopularity) if it becomes a quagmire like Iran has been."
Meanwhile, the international community gets a say in the matter, as Henken pointed out. Regional countries subject to their own U.S. pressure campaigns in line with Trump's Western Hemisphere-focused "Donroe Doctrine" could view the midterm fallout as a means of pushing back.
"With a weakened Trump, nations sympathetic to Cuba's leadership like Brazil and Mexico might be emboldened to provide assistance and thumb their noses at Trump and the U.S. oil blockade," Henken said.
Waiting it out may be the most Havana's leadership could hope for, he argued, predicting few realistic alternatives.
"The best they could do would be to open up the economy and political system on their own," Henken said, "but that's like waiting for snow in Havana."
Contact Newsweek editor on this story: Edward Pearcey.
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