Is Cuba Next? A Conversation With Michael J. Bustamante and Ricardo Zuniga

21:12Ricardo Zuniga:I think there was a brief blip of a recovery in 2022, 2023, but declined since then. You know, to their credit, in a certain sense, the Cuban state responded to the pandemic by sort of going deeper on economic reforms that I think many of us hoped they would have done during the Obama period. They announced that they were going to allow Cubans to run small businesses not out of a personal bank account, but actually as like an LLC, you know, a company that's legally recognized with up to 100 employees. They got rid of sort of the micromanagement of where you could operate in the Cuban economy in the private sector.

21:46Ricardo Zuniga:And they sort of, you know, liberalized the framework and opened private business to more folks. But they also implemented a currency devaluation, effectively, a unification of two dual currency system that was just disastrous in the implementation. And they did it at the absolute worst moment. The moment to do that very necessary reform to the Cuban economy would have been a moment of strength like 2016 at the height of all the excitement, right? So there's just been sort of a series of errors after errors that one can point to. And again, as much as U.S. policy is a big part of the story, it's not the only part.

22:20Ricardo Zuniga:And since January, since the removal of Maduro, this has all just gotten worse. Um, already the amount of oil that Venezuela was supplying to Cuba, uh, on subsidized terms had declined significantly in recent years as Venezuela's own economic situation had declined. And so, you know, uh, of the a hundred thousand barrels of oil or so that Cuba was, uh, sort of subsisting on, they lost, uh, something like 60 % of that overnight in, in January. They lost what was coming from Venezuela. They lost what was coming from Mexico. They were getting first from the López Obrador and then the Scheinbaum government.

22:56Ricardo Zuniga:Cuba produces about 40 ,000 barrels of oil a day from its own offshore oil assets. But that oil is of a very poor quality. So when it goes into power plants, it just mucks it up, makes maintenance problems worse. And so I think people used to hesitate a little bit about comparing this crisis with the special period of the 1990s as to which is worse or how to compare it. I don't think there's any comparison anymore. And in part, it's not even just about raw numbers and GDP. It's also about psychology and sort of about the new generation. The sort of reserves of legitimacy and connection that people feel of the Revolutionary Project, I'd venture to say they're as thin as they've ever been.

23:33Ricardo Zuniga:Has there been a continued flow of support and remittances from Cuban Americans and others in the United States that have softened the effects of that? Or is that overstating it? No, absolutely. I think one of the surprises for me, at least, is that one of the kind of traditional things in the toolbox for Washington in terms of clamping down or a more heartline approach would be to cap remittances, which the first Trump administration did and then Biden undid, or to cut down on flights, the ability of Cuban Americans to visit with lots of stuff and cash in their suitcases. None of that has gone away.

24:09Ricardo Zuniga:And so officially, there hasn't been any change into that. those remittances are a major lifeline. And the remittances now are being funneled through the Cuban private sector, which runs sort of like Amazon-like platforms where you can go online and buy your family stuff that then gets delivered to their homes. I mean, the operations are pretty sophisticated when you think about the context in which they're operating. But on the other hand, it's not enough to blunt the larger economic decline by any stretch. There are some good indications that the total number of remittances is probably down.

24:41Ricardo Zuniga:Part of that is because folks are more fearful now of getting on planes to go visit family if they have something like permanent residency because they're worried about the impacts of immigration enforcement when they get back. And there has been some discussion among policymakers about this notion that, well, you're here in the United States, you go to Cuba, weren't you a refugee, even if you never had formal refugee status? If you get back, what are you doing going to Cuba? Even though it's completely legal for people to do that, that's created a kind of a sort of a fear effect, right? So there's less people going, but the flights are still going and those remittances are absolutely crucial.

25:13Ricardo Zuniga:But not everybody has family on the outside. And so that also breeds inequality, which is a major source of tension in the society. And Mike, to the extent that you can understand the debates within the Cuban power structure, are there reformist voices? Are there figures within the government or the military elsewhere who are pushing reform in an ambitious way at this point? ambitious way no i i don't see ambition really anywhere to be blunt uh and that's one of the problems are there reformist voices period is also a difficult question to to answer um if you were to have asked me a few years ago it was pretty clear kind of who were some of the voices that were behind that private sector expansion that i mentioned in 2022 2023 but the economy minister who is largely responsible for implementing that has since been accused of corruption and espionage and is in a jail somewhere.

26:13Ricardo Zuniga:Other sort of kind of ministerial level people who were known to be kind of friendly to the private sector have in some cases been shuttled off to other government positions. You know, there are some voices like the new, relatively new minister of foreign investment and trade, Lopez Fraga, who's a relative, sort of married into the Castro family or a branch of it. A lot of attention about his sort of meteoric rise. He's the one who gave the announcement in recent months that suddenly Cuba's open to Cuban-American investment, even though they have yet to implement a legal framework that would actually make that workable.

26:52Ricardo Zuniga:Nevermind the US sanctions that would probably block it at this stage. But it's really difficult. And that's, I think there's a real question now in this sort of collective leadership model that seems to exist, but with the shadow of Raul Castro still there kind of offstage, who's going to stick their neck out and articulate a vision of where things are going to go? It's clear that things need to change. It's clear that Cuba needs to implement changes regardless of what the United States is doing, but also in this moment because of what the United States is doing. So I just don't see that ambitious reform agenda.

27:19Ricardo Zuniga:And on the other hand, you know, one has to acknowledge that when facing this kind of economic squeezing from the outside, you know, they're playing whack-a-mole, too, on a day-to-day basis to figure out just how to keep the lights on to the minimal degree. So it's not a propitious environment to sort of think in a strategic way about a long-term vision either. But they need to do it. And they're not right now. We'll return to my conversation with Ricardo Zuniga and Mike Bustamante after a short break.

27:55Michael J. Bustamante:What if you could explore places in the news like a reporter does? I'm Nicholas Wood, a former journalist with the New York Times and BBC.

28:04Ricardo Zuniga:And 16 years ago, I created the travel company Political Tours. Our small groups are led by top correspondents around the world.

28:12Michael J. Bustamante:In the next few months, we're off to Mexico, followed by South Africa, Japan and the French presidential elections. Come and join us. Go to politicaltours.com. That's politicaltours.com.

28:25Ricardo Zuniga:This September, Independent 20th Century presents more than 130 artists at the legendary Broyu building at 945 Madison Avenue.

28:34Michael J. Bustamante:The show will fill four floors of the modernist landmark on Museum Mile. See why Art News Magazine calls Independent 20th Century a staple of the season and experience historic modern art from around the world and one of New York's most iconic spaces. September 24th to 27th. To learn more, visit independenthq.com. This July, save$10 on an all-access subscription to Foreign Affairs. Get exclusive access to thought-provoking analysis by the world's leading policymakers, scholars, and thinkers. Join the global conversation on the issues that matter most. Visit foreignaffairs.com slash July to subscribe.

29:12Michael J. Bustamante:That's foreignaffairs.com slash J-U-L-Y.

29:22Ricardo Zuniga:Ricardo, this may be a harder question than trying to understand debates within an opaque communist system. What is the Trump policy right now? How do you understand the currents of thinking within the administration? And to the extent you can try to construct a coherent policy that represents those, what would that be?

29:41Michael J. Bustamante:Look, I think there's been a certain evolution, and it started with triumphalism after the operation in Venezuela. And I started hearing, others started hearing from people in and around the government that this was the year that Castro, that the Cuban government came down, that we had regime change in Havana. And I even wrote it somewhere. And they would say, we're going to do it. We just don't have a plan yet. And I thought, well, okay. Then Venezuela became kind of the template. and they're going to find the Cuban Delci. And there were many people who were observing that there is no Cuban Delci.

30:18Michael J. Bustamante:The actual links between the governments had been frayed so significantly that there was very, very little contact, very little understanding of who was who. Regime dynamics are just not known. They were always hard. They were always difficult. They're much harder now, not just COVID, but because of all the drawdown at the embassy because of the sonic attack issue. So they started really from almost scratch trying to identify people who might fit that category you mentioned, reformists and so forth. And, you know, I mean, the truth is that if you lift your hand as a reformist in Cuba, the tradition is that you are at some point sacrificed when the tide turns, and that happened regularly.

30:57Michael J. Bustamante:So we don't know. We don't know who the Cuban reformers are. And to do it under sort of the threat of war, that drumbeat began to increase. There were some mixed messages. At the Munich Security Summit, Secretary Rubio said, look, this doesn't need to be a transition right away. This can be like, we just see some economic reforms, you know, things will, things will, um, go better in the relationship and we can work from there. A couple of weeks later, they announced some reforms that they really should have undertaken 10 years ago, but okay, they're doing it. They were, they were not completely unimportant.

31:29Michael J. Bustamante:They were, it was the right direction. And then a week later there's, you know, the president's talking about having the honor of taking Cuba. And so from there, from the perspective of the Cuban side, They're completely confused by a policy that I suspect is somewhat confused on the Trump administration side. This is a really tough thing to do. This is not an easy thing to do. I am always sympathetic to a policymaker who has to contend with this mix of overwhelming sanctions that constrain what the executive can do combined with the difficulty of dealing with the Cuban side and under these circumstances.

32:05Michael J. Bustamante:So this is not to cast aspersions, but I don't see a plan. And I think that there have been many different efforts at establishing. And as I say in the article, I think the important thing here is to have some kind of communication where the people who are known to be running Cuba, and those people are known, are getting direct messaging from people who can speak authoritatively for the United States on what it is the United States wants. Because I think that's the part that's missing. Articulation of what they're asking the Cuban side to do, really. not just turn themselves in, not turn over Raul Castro for, you know, for prosecution in the United States.

32:39Michael J. Bustamante:Those are not things that are going to be realistically responded to on the Cuban side. What do they want to see in a concrete way? Was what was announced not good enough? Okay, fine. Then what's going to, what's going to work? They are always going to continue to hate against that rock on the Cuban side, which is they don't want to talk about the nature of their government. They don't want to talk about the fact that their model has really failed. But you don't have to, that doesn't have to be the first conversation. There's a dynamic here that you create, again, not trust, but confidence that the other side is doing what they say they're going to do and going to respond to what you, what they're asking you to do in some concrete and defined way.

33:17Michael J. Bustamante:It's diplomacy. It's hard diplomacy. And I just think, like, for me, the real bottom line is they should just take the military threat off the table. There's no point at this stage in doing it. There's not a single military strike that's going to be effective. The United States is not going to occupy Cuba. And I think that's another important thing that I've heard consistently from people around this on the U.S. government side is there's no interest. And you've seen in media, no one has talked about the occupation of Cuba because that's just not in the political cards. And I suspect that that's what it would really take.

33:50Michael J. Bustamante:If they really want to have rapid regime change, effectively it would take the invasion of Cuba and the removal of a state that's pretty firmly encrusted on the island.

33:59Ricardo Zuniga:Ricardo, you note in the piece that one of the policy interests the United States has is, I think you say, preventing Cuba's use by geopolitical rivals, especially China and Russia in this case. What is the degree of Chinese and Russian presence, both military and intel, and I suppose economic as well, in Cuba? And as you think about what would be reasonable goals from a U.S. perspective, what should we be looking for there?

34:24Michael J. Bustamante:Well, look, I would say, first of all, Cuba's not that important for China. China cares a lot more about Venezuela, where they're trying to maneuver around the current situation. Panama was more important to China than Cuba has been. You see how aggressively they've maneuvered over the whole issue of who owns facilities around the canal. I do think that they've got a relatively valuable intelligence presence there. What you see from U.S. government officials is expressing concern. There was a story that they shared with journalists that there's been this massive expansion of the Chinese presence since 2023.

35:02Michael J. Bustamante:That actually dates back to the first Trump administration. Yes, I mean, I think that China has grown its role. How important it is compared to other tools that China has, I don't think it's that valuable. You don't see them fighting for Cuba, really. They, they, but their most important thing is they're, they're contributing solar panels to the energy sector in Cuba and is a minor player for them. Russia is different. Russia has obviously a much longer history in Cuba and not a good one from the perspective of Cuban citizens who felt abandoned by the Soviet union. And that's true of people who are in the Cuban government as well, but it's been a reliable partner and of course a source of, of oil at times.

35:45So I think Russia has more of an interest in using Cuba as sort of leverage with the United States in some way, just almost more of a tweak.

35:54Michael J. Bustamante:Neither China nor Russia is going to fight to defend Cuba.

36:00Ricardo Zuniga:And even if all of this regime would not be a major strategic blow to the interests of either in the Western Hemisphere, as you see it?

36:06Michael J. Bustamante:not not really no i mean unless they for some reason at the last at this last moment made a dedicated effort to try to prop it up and and then lost then that would be like a temporary hitch but but they both have much much more important topics that they want to talk about with the united states much more like cuba is not an important item on their list mike do you have any sense of

36:30Ricardo Zuniga:what decision makers within the human government think u.s policy is because they try to understand signals they're getting from different actors around the president. The CIA director, John Ratcliffe, was there several weeks ago. How are they understanding U.S. policy? It's hard to say, not knowing exactly what some of those direct communications have been like. And so that's the question I have, picking up on a little bit of what Ricardo was discussing. There has been a lot of stick in the U.S., the Trump administration's approach to Cuba, obviously over the last six months, not clear what the carrots are, not clear if the terms of a sort of a tit for tat have been made more clearly in some of those direct contacts, whether with Raul Castro's grandson, which is a whole other side of this we could talk about, sort of his odd appearance here, or particularly in the visit by the CIA director and the recent visit of the head of South Com to Guantanamo, of all places, which I thought was quite significant.

37:33Ricardo Zuniga:There is ostensibly the terms of a deal, as Ricardo Arrero and I argued in a recent piece for you all, that one could envision in which some of those tit-for-tats are imagined. Ricardo, your piece articulates a similar thing. But we just don't know. And so what the Cuban government seems to be responding to, at least publicly, is the threat language. They're not responding as if there are serious incentives that have been put on the table to try to find an off-ramp. But I think for me, it also raises the question of given the unpredictability of the U.S. administration, the fact that maybe they can't read what Washington is up to, but knowing that they are, and their citizens above all, are experiencing inordinate amount of economic pain because of this policy.

38:17Ricardo Zuniga:At what point is it incumbent on the Cuban authorities to actually be the ones who initiate the terms of that tit for tat, right? Rather than waiting, right? So this is the trouble with this relationship. You know, each side waits for the others to be the one that blinks first and in the middle of the Cuban people. So I don't have a great sense of how the Cuban government is interpreting U.S. actions. Part of one thing I wonder, though, is, and it's sort of the elephant in the room here, is the Rubio factor here. You know, it's one thing to deal with the Trump administration from Havana's point of view that is wielding, you know, these sanctions and the oil blockade and all the rest of it and the same rhetoric.

38:55Ricardo Zuniga:I wonder to what extent is it another to have to deal with it coming from somebody who's a Cuban-American, who for so long has been a hawk on the Cuba issue and a thorn in the side of Pavana. Is there something about dealing with the Secretary of State in particular that is making this particularly hard for this Cuban leadership to sort of contend with just the imbalance strategically that they're facing? I don't see a way out of this that doesn't involve the Cuban government coming to the table and ceding on some things that they never wanted to cede on before. That may be a Hail Mary on my part, but I worry about the consequences if they don't, because either it's just complete continued immiseration for the Cuban people, or you're going to create the kind of social decomposition, if you extend this out another six months, a year, et cetera, that may force Washington's hand to intervene in a way that maybe it doesn't want to.

39:44Ricardo Zuniga:And that, I think, would be really damaging for long-term prospects of the Cuban people to rebuild their own future. Let's linger on the Rubio factor for a moment. there's been considerable speculation, I think probably reasonable speculation, that some of this is about Rubio maneuvering ahead of the 2028 presidential election, which he is thought to want to run in. From a political perspective in South Florida especially, would he need to kind of truly get regime change in the formal sense in order to get political credit for this? Or would something less than that kind of be something he could claim as a victory?

40:22Ricardo Zuniga:Well, I think both things can be true in a way. I mean, certainly he would prefer the former. He'd prefer to sort of be able to deliver a win to his community and use that as a platform for selling his foreign policy credentials on the national stage. But the irony is that if there is any U.S. official that is capable at this stage of selling some kind of a negotiated outcome that falls short of sort of the panacea that some people hope for, it's probably him. There's a real question here. You know, imagine that there is some kind of negotiated deal that doesn't mean the immediate dethroning of the Cuban government as we know it.

41:03Ricardo Zuniga:are Cuban-American Republicans in Congress, are local officials going to suddenly break from Donald Trump and the Republican Party? If they do, they risk being cast into the political wilderness in a state that is largely a red state and may not need Cuban-American votes to the degree as a kind of a swing factor that they once had. So it's a little bit of a game of chicken, too, between not just Washington and Havana, but Washington and Miami here. And that, I think, is interesting. But make no mistake, I mean, Marco Rubio, I think, has a lot on the line politically in terms of just his long-term credibility in South Florida.

41:37Ricardo Zuniga:He's taken a big swing here. And somehow, while the Venezuelan diaspora in South Florida has been fairly quiet in the wake of what's happened there, and certainly big question marks around what part of the future of Venezuela involved democratization that many would like to see, I think it'd be harder to get the Cuban community to stay quite as quiet. But again, if anybody could make the case, it's probably him. I want to get to off ramps and the prescriptions that two of you have offered in our pages. But before that, I want to linger on the risk of real military action and protracted conflict in some scenarios.

42:16Ricardo Zuniga:Ricardo, you warn in your piece today, even as you make the case that there is another way out, you do warn that there is probably a higher risk of real military action and conflict than some people might allow. As you, you know, without getting overly lured here, as you imagine those scenarios, what worries you and how would Cubans respond if there is use of military force by the United States?

42:38Michael J. Bustamante:Well, I mean, look, I think the real risk is the communication issue where what Mike sketched out is an inability of the Cuban government to undertake reforms they should be doing anyway, and eventually frustrating the Trump administration, which responds by trying to loosen them up with some sort of aerial attack, for instance. And I've said in other forums and other places, there's not much left to wreck in Cuba. The infrastructure is already in horrific shape. The armed forces are also in pretty horrific shape compared to where they were even 10 years ago. There's not much left to destroy. You could wreck it.

43:19Michael J. Bustamante:But here's the thing. If you do a series of aerial attacks to make a point, to try to soften them up, they may lose every military asset they have. They may lose control of the skies and they may still do nothing. Because at that point, going forward and doing the right thing implies potentially putting themselves against the wall, quite literally, in their minds, right? That may not be what actually happens, but there are plenty of people who are talking about an end to either imprisonment or some other bad end for folks who've been in leadership positions in the revolutionary government. And if under those circumstances, if your choices are just sit and wait things out and basically come and get us if you want us, and we essentially throw down the gauntlet that way, then, you know, I suspect that what the end result will be an extended period of additional misery for the Cuban population and a continued rapid decline of social conditions on the island.

44:25Michael J. Bustamante:I think that's what I see as, unfortunately, a more probable outcome than a successful military operation that somehow yields a new Cuban government or anything more extensive. So I'm afraid that, to me, that's sort of my baseline scenario.

44:43Ricardo Zuniga:Can you imagine an insurgency in response to American use of force? I mean, we're in a period where there have been lots of developments that would have been unimaginable, you know, a couple of years ago that we're now seeing play out. What's the perhaps low probability but still plausible scenario that we could see, you know, 100 miles from Florida? All right.

45:04Michael J. Bustamante:So, I mean, look, if the U.S. occupied Cuba, then potentially there would be some sort of, you know, after an invasion like that, there would potentially be some sort of insurgency. As I say in the paper, it's hard to imagine the Cuban population being very into it at this stage, given where they are, if they see conditions improving. There's no guarantee conditions would improve in a circumstance like that. We have, you know, we have a mixed track record on that front. But, you know, it's possible. I don't see, again, I don't see a ground assault as very much being in the card, so I give that a very low probability.

45:36Michael J. Bustamante:I think a much greater probability, if you start seeing social breakdown, is that other actors show up. Organized crime, for me, has been one of the biggest concerns. I actually was almost as concerned about having an evolution like we saw in Venezuela, where you had wealth in the revolutionary class and, you know, beginning to align with criminal actors. who saw the geographic opportunities and a weak banking system. I mean, look, Cuba's beaches represent one of the biggest potential money laundering operations in the planet over the next decade if the wrong people have control of Cuba's future.

46:15Michael J. Bustamante:And so I think that's a risk as well, regardless of what happens. You know, the urgency, I feel, is number one for the Cuban population. And that's where they would be the primary victims of any kind of military operation, which is why I come out so forcefully against it in the paper. But also our interests, U.S. interests, like U.S. American interests are much better served by an organized, orderly move towards a more open environment leading to a more successful Cuba, essentially. And I think a military assault lowers the possibility of that good outcome, positive outcome for the United States.

46:52Ricardo Zuniga:One of the most prominent kinds of developments in the last year and a half has been U.S. adversaries who, in the Trumpian framework, don't have the cards finding forms of leverage that the administration did not imagine. You can think of China with critical mineral supply. You can think of Iran and the Strait of Hormuz. Obviously, there are lots of people in the U.S. government and the intelligence community and State Department and elsewhere who would have been warning of those things, but they did seem to surprise the leadership of the administration. Does Cuba have some option there, whether it's, I don't know, sparking a migration crisis or some other form of asymmetrical leverage that if you're sitting in Havana planning right now, you're thinking about deploying?

47:34Michael J. Bustamante:So short answer is no, not deliberate. I think that they wouldn't have to trigger a migration crisis. There's very little the Cuban government would have to do at this stage to make that possible. I mean, look, a lot of people have left. The people with fewer resources are going to have a harder time leaving, especially with air routes being cut off every day. A mass migration to the Yucatan certainly is a possibility, but that would also be logistically hard. You know, I think that the card they have, their best card is to do nothing and essentially invite the United States to, hey, if you want to change this regime, come and do it.

48:16Michael J. Bustamante:Otherwise, we're just going to sit here. And there is a perverse element there that I know that part of the administration has essentially tried to encourage sort of an uprising or civil disobedience and so forth on the Cuban side. But if what you're hearing are messages that the United States is coming, well, how would you lift a finger if you think the 82nd Airborne is going to solve your problem? I mean, that's the other piece here is that you have to also think about what's the population here and how they're interpreting the possibility of change.

48:42Ricardo Zuniga:Mike, do you have any sense of how the Cuban population is processing these questions? I know that's hard to answer from outside of Cuba, but to the extent that you're able to, how do you see those dynamics? And then how do you see support for the regime? To what extent is there still a base of support among the population that, for reasons of kind of historical attachment to the revolution or whatever else, still does support at least Raul and the Castro family and would have some attachment to that structure? Yeah, we obviously don't have great polling in Cuba, though there have been some interesting efforts recently on the part of Cuban civil society organizations from outside the island to try to sort of conduct effectively kind of a self-selecting participatory survey, right?

49:31Ricardo Zuniga:which isn't representative or anything. But nonetheless, the results have been quite revealing. And they at least show the following, that there is a significant subset of the Cuban population that is quite open to the prospect of U.S. military action. I don't think that means they've necessarily thought through all the consequences of it. But it goes to Ricardo's point, that if you're hearing this chatter of, you know, we'll take Cuba or this, that, and the other, it breeds a kind of a fatalism. And what I've heard from folks that I know in Cuba is, well, if they're going to come, why haven't they come already?

50:06Ricardo Zuniga:Because, you know, just get it over with. And so that, from my point of view, that's quite a tragic outcome in terms of the long history of Cuban nationalism and the search for among Cubans since the 19th century for a productive but autonomous relationship with the United States, right? This notion that people will just sort of trust their fate, whatever it is, or be at the very least resigned to the fact that the only solution is going to come from the outside, which, again, is going to work against any efforts on the part of the Trump administration to try to encourage people to rise up. As to support for the Cuban government itself, again, numbers are near impossible, but I feel quite confident in saying that it's at an all-time low.

50:51Ricardo Zuniga:I think the reserves of legitimacy are at an all-time low. They're lower than they were in the special period. People are hanging on, particularly those linked to the sort of security apparatus of the state because they have something to lose and perceived sense of insulation and protection and perhaps some benefits like housing and other kinds of benefits that they want to hang on to. But I don't think that in the low probability scenario of an outright U.S. military assault, I don't think that there would be widespread resistance. I think that it's just as possible, while there may be pockets of loyalists to the government, it's just as possible that many would just fold.

51:35Ricardo Zuniga:That doesn't mean, however, that most people in Cuba are prepared, that everybody in Cuba is prepared to accept change at any cost. And so, you know, the counterpoint to what I heard from some folks, which is, you know, why haven't they invaded already, is change needs to happen. This government has been a disaster, but your policy is making it worse. And I am not willing to sort of sell out the hope of an independent nation or sovereignty to some kind of, you know, U.S. takeover, whether by force or by commerce. And I think there are people who really hold their own government up to a microscope in a very serious way on human rights issues, political issues, and certainly economic issues.

52:16Ricardo Zuniga:But we're also looking at some of these developments that are coming out in recent weeks cynically and with concern. Sherit, the Canadian mining company, announces it's pulling out of Cuba because of the secondary sanctions threat. suddenly they're not because they're going to sell a majority of shares to someone who's linked to the Trump world somehow. So, you know, there's also this chatter about, you know, the way that the secondary sanctions is just setting the table for, you know, an eventual insertion of U.S. commercial interests that I think some of those who have those long-term goals of sovereignty and wanting to build an economy from the ground up, even if they want the Cuban government to disappear, they're going to be concerned about what that means for them.

52:54Ricardo Zuniga:And I imagine the Venezuela experience over the last six months reinforces those concerns if you're one of those Cubans. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, again, multiple things can be true. You can think Nicolás Maduro was a disaster, and you can also think that the way in which the United States is remotely managing Venezuela's economy is an insult to aspirations of independence and sovereignty and international law, right? But again, the fatalism that I hear from a lot of folks on the ground to is really quite striking. One only has to look at sort of WhatsApp change and the kind of AI images that are circulating of a triumphant Trump and Rubio driving down the Malacón in a vintage Chevy in some putative day after moment, as if snap your fingers and it's all over.

53:40Ricardo Zuniga:So I think people are going to cling to the hope of change wherever it comes from. But that, again, as Ricardo pointed out, I think breeds a kind of an inertia internally, as sort of the waiting for someone else to do it. Ricardo, Mike has laid out the way he thinks the Cuban government should approach this moment and the kind of deal they should be pursuing. If you were back to running U.S.-Latin America policy in the White House, what would you be doing right now given where things stand?

54:08Michael J. Bustamante:I'd be doing, I think, two things. One, I'd be developing a roadmap that the Cubans could ultimately, at least some interlocutors on the Cuban side could ultimately adopt as their own or part of their own. I would not publicize that. And the less we know, I think on the front end of these, the better. And in a situation like this, where questions of sovereignty and revolutionary identity are at the core of this, it's better if those conversations are not public. As a diplomat, you want to come out with a concrete result, an outcome. It's not about scoring points. But it's also a situation where you know that they are not going to come up with a plan on their own.

54:51Michael J. Bustamante:They're not going to be forthcoming. They're not going to be the ones that come out with this. That's just not going to happen. That's one piece. And then the other thing I would be doing would be an inventory internally of if, let's say, that reform was moving forward, what's going to happen? How can we respond? What can we provide to enable that to make it successful? Cuba is such a heavily sanctioned country. There's roadblocks at every turn. And so a lot of the traditional tools we would use in a situation like this are just not available. And to Mike's point, I mean, I think it does create a condition where the tool is essentially authorizing American companies to vacuum up parts of the Cuban economy.

55:32Michael J. Bustamante:And that's going to send the exact wrong message to Cubans. Like this is really about unlocking sanctions. And so I think they need to prepare because I actually think the biggest impediment after the Cuban government to reform in Cuba is our own sanction structure. and if you're not ready to do the hard work of unlocking that piece and talking to congress to give yourself the flexibility then you know that because always libertad was an idea and it was a symbol and it was a it was like this is this is the kind of the flag of cuban freedom and opposition to the regime but in concrete terms man it matters what's in statute and what's you know when the where the president has whatever authority and where where he doesn't that's going to be the difference maker for the future of Cuba.

56:16Ricardo Zuniga:Libertad is the legislation that formalizes much of the sanction structure, is that right?

56:20Michael J. Bustamante:Yeah, that's right.

56:21Ricardo Zuniga:As you look forward, Ricardo, what's the, if you're an optimistic friend of mine, what's a plausible scenario of where things are in five years, say?

56:30Michael J. Bustamante:Look, I actually do think that things will be better five years from now. The fact that the model is dead on its back with the legs sticking up is obvious to everyone. This is done. There's no Venezuela coming. There's no China coming. There's nobody's coming. Like, this is it. We are now in a situation where the Cuban government has to provide for the Cuban population in some way, whether through policy change, whether you're accepting pressure from the United States, whatever, all of that's going to happen. And if you make resources available, if you give, if you essentially go beyond the steps they've taken on the private sector and you truly open it up now, like without waiting for the United States, without, I mean, essentially accepting that the market is going, that the market economy is going to be a part of the Cuban economy and that the old centralized model is gone.

57:15Michael J. Bustamante:If they accept that and make changes that are within their capacity to undertake now, I think you have a quick rebound of improved conditions where people are solving their own problems at a very expensive way at the beginning. But the fact is there will be a perception of progress as more goods are available, as people get more jobs, as people use the resources that are flowing in. And that's where it's so important for the United States to be ready to kind of help open those spigots and get out of the way. really it's really it's getting us out of the way the same way that in the in the obama administration we had no idea that we were blocking the ability of cubans to download apps from the app store we had to get that out of the way those little things make a huge difference and there is so much energy on on like pent-up demand for improved conditions i do believe that you're we are going to see people living better lives five years from now i do believe that

58:05Ricardo Zuniga:Mike, what's your optimistic plausible scenario? I have a harder time summoning optimism than Ricardo, I think. An optimistic scenario is that we see some movement in the short term that begins to kind of unlock this stasis that we're in and just continue to miseration. um you know the havana could start by doing something seemingly simple and but symbolically very resonant um they could release finally a significant number of people detained from these mass protests that occurred in 2021 at the depths of the pandemic which we we haven't talked about but which then became an obstacle for the biden administration politically to to go back to obama's policy um they could do that and then challenge the united states to respond and sort of maybe perhaps start a kind of a tit for tat.

59:02Ricardo Zuniga:I also think in five years from now, Castro's not going to be around. He just turned 95. I mean, actuarial tables being what they are, I mean, never say never. And I wonder if in that circumstance, perhaps some of those reformists that you were asking about could perhaps show themselves a bit more. I also hope that in five years, the Cuban American community is more prepared to talk about the future of Cuba less in terms of political point scoring, which I don't want to overgeneralize, of course, but also thinks about seriously a path toward de-escalation and reconciliation. There's a lot of talk these days about sort of, again, the sticks, the punishment, the seeking of justice for historical wrongs, for more recent wrongs, all of which is understandable and rational.

59:51Ricardo Zuniga:But there's got to be a path to rebuilding a national pact. And that kind of moral leadership coming from Cubans themselves is sorely lacking in this moment from my point of view. And it's something that I hope in five years we'll see more of. Mercado, let me get it closed by zooming out a bit to the region. You noted that even in the Obama years, there was a sense that the rest of Latin America, much of the rest of Latin America cared enough about Cuba that U.S. policy was a drag on some of those other interests and relationships. Has that changed? I mean, are there still important parts of Latin America that do are symbolically or otherwise invested in the Cuba issue?

1:00:33Ricardo Zuniga:And as you look at the changes regionally under Trump, especially in some ways as a part as a result of Trump policy, but mostly not, does that really change the way that Cuba fits into the regional picture?

1:00:46Michael J. Bustamante:So I think a huge difference between now and 10 years ago. One, Obama did take the air out of a lot of the regional support for Cuba, which was reluctant in a lot of cases and was only there over as a matter of sort of hold over a residual anti-imperialist sentiment during the Cold War, but also because there was a lot of frustration with what was happening to the Cuban citizens that was in media in Latin America more than the United States. but for the most part, people who were sort of pressuring me in those days in Latin America now tell me that Cubans blew it. And that essentially that's like, they had their chance, they screwed up.

1:01:29Michael J. Bustamante:But the other more important factor is that Latin America is more fragmented than any time I can ever recall. Very little multilateral activity, very little sort of regional effort to deal with problems. Like Cuba is just too far down the list. I think most of trying to either do very well in their relationship with the United States or escape scrutiny in their relationship with the United States. And so it's every country for itself right now. And very, very little coherent support for Cuba. There are sectors and mostly in far left parties around the region, but it's just not a core issue for the region.

1:02:08Ricardo Zuniga:Do you sense in response to Trump's fairly aggressive policy towards Latin America, the beginnings of a new kind of anti-imperialist or anti-American movement in parts of the region? People often point out that Che Guevara was sitting in Guatemala during the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz in 1954, which then manifests a few years later in the Cuban Revolution. Are there the kind of early glimmers of that or is that just gone entirely?

1:02:36Michael J. Bustamante:Oh, man, that's a huge question. My view is ideology matters much less now. And that other factors, social factors, economic factors, sort of culture war factors, but also real insecurity, like crime is a much bigger factor than ideology. I mean, the fact is the region has changed so dramatically that what's going to drive sentiment matters a lot. I also have to say the popularity or the positive views towards the United States have fallen off dramatically in the second Trump term. I'm in Brazil right now, and this is one of the countries where you've seen it just absolutely crater from 60 % plus to 40 % or below in terms of popular perceptions of the United States and who their partners are in the world.

1:03:25Michael J. Bustamante:And, you know, that's a different matter. We tend to overlook good news. And one of the pieces is that there are no real mass authoritarian movements that have a lot of backing in the region these days. that that's not a they're not major movers there's huge disappointment with the political class the same crisis of the west that we have in the united states exists in latin america it's absolutely a very similar phenomenon discussed in in repudiation of models that are democratic models that are not delivering for citizens that's that's absolutely the case but cuba's not seen as a solution the cuban model is not seen as a solution the authoritarian left is not seen as a solution authoritarian right is seen as more of a solution And so that's out there.

1:04:13Michael J. Bustamante:That's a real thing. And yeah, so Cuba's really almost disappeared from the scene as a factor in regional politics. And that, to me, is interesting in its own right.

1:04:25Ricardo Zuniga:Mike, as we imagine these various scenarios for the future of Cuba, which Latin American countries will be key players there? Is it Mexico and Brazil, or are there others that will have a significant role in scenarios going forward? Yeah, you would think that it'd be some of the bigger players. I mean, certainly Mexico has taken a position of trying to offer a sort of a kind of a mediating role between Washington and Havana, not with much success, obviously, in recent months. But there's also been controversies within Mexican politics about, you know, the oil shipments that were ongoing for the past several years in the terms of those deals.

1:05:01Ricardo Zuniga:I mean, I've been surprised by just how quiet Brazil has been in this circumstance. They've spoken out, criticized some of the Trump administration's actions and sent some aid, but not sort of standing up to the degree that I think many would expect. And in fact, one of the things I hear, you hear sometimes coming out of Cuban official circles is why is no one sticking their neck out more for us? But I think those countries are going to be important. I think Spain, I mean, it's not Latin America, but Spain will always be an important player. I mean, so many Cubans have also gone to Spain. Spain has significant investments in Cuba that are on the line right now because of the secondary sanctions threats.

1:05:44Ricardo Zuniga:But for historical and other reasons, I think they will continue to have a significant future in whatever happens in Cuba going forward. Well, I apologize to both of you for opening the door to about a dozen other fascinating conversations about the region to close. But thanks to you both for the great work you've done in foreign affairs over the past several months. I imagine we will have to continue the flow of those pieces in months ahead. And thanks a lot for doing this today. Thanks. Thank you.

1:06:19Ricardo Zuniga:Thank you for listening. You can find the articles that we discussed on today's show at foreignaffairs.com. This episode of the Foreign Affairs Interview was produced by Elise Burr and Connish Therroer. Our audio engineer is Christopher Cook. Original music is by Robin Hilton. Special thanks as well to Irina Hogan. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you like what you heard, please take a minute to rate and review it. We release a new show every Thursday. Thanks again for tuning in.

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