Cuba’s revolution is dying. What comes next is unclear

Uncertainty is the prevailing mood in Cuba. Donald Trump has been clear about intervening in the country. Will the US president repeat his ‘successful’ intervention in Venezuela, or has he envisioned a different model for Cuba? There are many questions and one certainty: the revolutionary government is in decline.

The US Department of Justice last month indicted 95-year-old former president Raúl Castro, the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, over the 1996 shootdown of two light aircraft belonging to Brothers to the Rescue, a group formed by Cuban dissidents in Miami that carried out several incursions into Cuban airspace during the 1990s. Four people died in the shootdown, three of them US citizens.

Castro’s murder indictment suggests that Washington is attempting to replicate the strategy it applied against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who is currently detained in New York. Maduro was kidnapped by US military forces in January this year, in an operation that left between 70 and 100 people dead, after the US Justice Department issued an indictment against him in 2020, during Trump’s first term.

This time, though, the US faces less transgression of international law: Castro, unlike Maduro, does not enjoy the immunity of a head of state – he is a deputy of Cuba’s National Assembly of People's Power and an army general with an honorary rank. Neither position confers international immunity.

Trump has said that he wants to change the leadership in Havana and that he would be delighted to invade Cuba . He has also intensified the economic embargo against the island, imposing new and sweeping sanctions and an oil blockade that hampers even the delivery of humanitarian aid by the UN.

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, told journalists that Cuba has represented a national security threat for years and that Trump is determined to address this problem. While his message expressed a preference for a diplomatic solution, he observed that “the likelihood of that happening… is not high.”

At the same time, US news website Axios, citing classified information, reported that Cuba possessed 300 drones capable of striking US targets such as the military base at Guantánamo Bay, and possibly Key West in Florida, or warships deployed in the area. Beyond those 300 drones, the military superiority of the US over Cuba is not in doubt. The drones could cause damage, but could not prevent or win a war.

There are, however, no guarantees about the outcome of an intervention similar to that in Venezuela. It is likely, therefore, that a negotiation will be attempted first, while military action would be only a last resort – though the effects of the war against Iran may convince Washington that it is not a wise course of action.

Cuba's internal situation is chaotic. One could argue that the decline of the Revolution has been slow and prolonged. The country is experiencing a long economic contraction, mass emigration, infrastructure collapse, diminished state capacity and widespread social discontent stemming from shortages of electricity, food and medicine, which are compounded by the stranglehold imposed by Trump.

Cuba is living through a process of exhaustion driven by four interrelated dynamics: economic deterioration, ideological decline, generational transition and institutional fragmentation.

The revolutionary narrative has lost its mobilising power. The state is focused on surveillance, coercion, information control, repression and human rights violations. It has transformed into a coercive institution that delivers no rights and provides no social goods. On the contrary, it disdains rights and concentrates social goods for a privileged few. Despite all of this, the regime maintains a capillary control over the population and has a loyal militant base that would respond to any external aggression.

The Communist Party dominates the political institutions, the media and the security bodies. The military-linked business conglomerate, the Business Administration Group, which expanded its commercial and financial reach following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, is a strategic instrument that controls Cuba's most dynamic sectors , from hotels and retail stores to customs and ports.

Does this situation mean we are witnessing the disappearance of the Revolution in Cuba? Probably. A negotiated transition is possible, with the participation of some sectors of the Cuban armed forces, opposition groups from exile and perhaps some local leaders.

It is very difficult to predict how societies react in times of change. It is even more complex when there is no civil society on the island free to express itself, and no political, social or economic rights.

The fear is that Cuba will fail to establish a democratic regime. This would be a failure for the island, for the Latin American region and for the United States. The Trump administration and Rubio will likely deploy all political, economic and military resources to avoid…