In recent days, a debate has gone viral in Miami involving two veteran Cuban-American businessmen.
One speaks of steering Cuba’s immediate future through a vision in the vein of Barack Obama — that is, achieving economic liberalization as a means to eventually arrive at a politically free Cuba. On the other side, the prevailing idea (one I share) is that one cannot speak of prosperity under a dictatorship; the priority must be freedom — establishing a constitutional order — and then Cubans will rebuild the country.
Although debates regarding the island’s future continue to linger in the political atmosphere of South Florida, there is one point on which the exile community in the United States appears united.
Seventy-nine percent of Cubans and Cuban-Americans in South Florida would support a U.S. military intervention against the Castro regime. This is one of the key findings from an April poll of 800 people, conducted by Bendixen & Amandi International and The Tarrance Group.
At the same time, 78% disapprove of any agreement with the socialist tyranny that would keep the current nomenclature in power — even in exchange for significant economic reforms.
Conducted across Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, and Monroe counties, the survey included a majority of respondents who were Cuban-born and over the age of 50. Among registered voters, 57% identified as Republican, 17% as Democratic, and 22% as Independent.
“What the community is saying here is that it is giving the Trump administration the green light to intervene militarily in Cuba and do whatever is necessary to remove the regime,” Fernand Amandi, president of Bendixen & Amandi International, told the Miami Herald.
Midway through this month, dictator Miguel Díaz-Canel acknowledged that the regime is facing an "extremely challenging" moment, and that among the "serious threats" looming over it is "military aggression" from the United States.
A day earlier, USA Today warned that the likelihood of an intervention occurring has increased. Although I do not believe the Trump administration will embark on a military action as massive as the one discussed in the U.S. press, certainly — playing that card — carries significant deterrent power. Especially following the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela this past January 3rd.
In this context, Díaz-Canel urged Cubans to "be ready" to fight in the face of an “invasion” and to prepare for war. “We do not want it, but it is our duty to prepare to prevent it and, should it prove inevitable, to win it,” he asserted. Cuba, he stated—“make no mistake” — is a State that will prevail."
However, the vast majority of Cuba’s military hardware has languished without updates for at least three decades. It stems largely from the era of Soviet cooperation, when the Cuban military became the fourth-largest army on the planet — and an aggressive neighbor to other nations in the Americas — exporting the Revolution and its ideology through blood and fire.
As I noted a few months ago on The Tony Perkins Show, the Cuban regime today is nothing more than a paper tiger.
Militarily, it is a mere shadow of that swaggering Caribbean neighbor of old — the one that massacred Bahamian sailors or scrambled its MiG jets at supersonic speeds, sowing panic over cities in the Dominican Republic.
Despite all this, Trump will not land troops on the shores of Cuba, because the soul of his administration does not believe in “boots on the ground” or endless wars. Secretary Marco Rubio, Secretary Pete Hegseth, Vice President J.D. Vance, and the president have long criticized those scenarios.
However, the Trump administration must guard against something else.
Castroism maintains an efficient intelligence apparatus that has infiltrated — among other sectors — U.S. diplomacy, academia, and the security establishment. And what currently serves the interests of Havana—and that network of collaborators—is buying time.
This is precisely what the Deputy Assistant Secretaries of State, who recently held discussions in Havana with the Castroist Deputy Foreign Minister, as confirmed by the official press, must remain vigilant about.
The Castro regime is stalling to gain the time it needs — hoping, perhaps, that a more sympathetic Democratic contingent will win the midterm elections and thereby stymie the pressure emanating from Washington, D.C. The time necessary for Raúl Castro to pull another rabbit out of his old hat, for the socialist system to continue fueling his family’s wealth atop the malnourished and battered bodies of millions of Cubans.
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