Is Cuba Next?

Looking at whether Cuba will be next in line for the United States, Latin America Correspondent Jon Bonfiglio speaks to Kylie Morris and Latika Bourke for Global Roaming at the Australia Broadcasting Corporation. 

Transcript

Kylie Morris: 0:01

This episode, we're zeroing in on a relationship between two nations steeped in hostility and distrust. A standoff between them once brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Is the US about to go mono a mono with Cuba? I'm Kylie Morris. Welcome to our Crisis Which Crisis? Global Roaming episode. Well, sometimes before you look forward, you have to look back, we find here on Global Roaming, and that is very much true of Cuba.

John F. Kennedy: 1:02

Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.

Kylie Morris: 1:21

As you were hearing there, a bit of audio describing the Cuba missile crisis. That was the very tense moment, the 13-day standoff back in 1962, that almost triggered a nuclear war. Just as a refresher, American spy planes discovered Soviet nuclear missile sites in Cuba. President Kennedy then ordered a blockade and a removal of the sites, and the Russians kind of quietly acquiesced, or at least that's the shorthand version. Today, again, we're back to Cuba for this episode. And Latika, talk me through it. Why are we, you know, raking back through this history?

Latika Bourke: 2:03

Well, Cuba has been on the forefront ever since Trump's very daring and stunning raid on Venezuela a couple of weeks back, where he captured uh Nicolas Maduro in his pajamas, hoiked him off to New York to face a court. And as a very triumphant and jubilant Marco Rubio, the US Secretary of State, and Donald Trump were giving their post-mission press conference. One of the warnings fired across Havana's bow came from Marco Rubio, Kylie. You might remember he said, if I was a dictator in Cuba, I'd be very worried, i.e., Cuba, you're next. So everyone's been on a bit of high alert. And it's funny how you were saying crisis, which crisis, because these days I look at the word crisis and think, you know, which hemisphere is it today? Which country is the US looking that it might want to take over or invade or capture their leader? I mean, we are seriously at that point. And Cuba is, I guess, on a bit of a watch list ever since Venezuela.

Kylie Morris: 3:02

That's right. I mean, Donald Trump has made clear that he wants to take ownership of the Western hemisphere. Uh, Venezuela was, you know, an example of that, you know, writ large. But certainly for other neighbors, Cuba, for example, that's caused a great deal of nervousness. Now, of course, Cuba for many years has lived with a difficult relationship with the United States. It's been under embargo by the US, its economy is in a very fragile state, largely because of that. Uh, and Donald Trump made clear, as you say, you know, he's talked immediately after Venezuela about Cuba living for many years on large amounts of oil and money from Venezuela. And whether or not there's a direct uh attack or a direct engagement like we've seen in Venezuela, certainly the Americans have lots of economic controls that they can use to try and make life even more difficult in Cuba. So it's not only about, you know, whether he will act against Cuba, but if he does, how's he going to do it?

Latika Bourke: 4:08

I think this is really the big question. I sometimes wonder if the shock and awe military missions, such as we saw in Iran and now with Venezuela, are once-onlies and that actually they don't want to commit these missions too often. What they want to do is shock, scare, and threaten and say, this could come for you. But really, what they'd prefer to do is either economically strangle, dominate, or in the case of Venezuela, simply outright take their resources, as Trump has signalled he wants to do with Venezuelan oil. A really interesting dynamic here is the pressure point that puts on the already uh difficult humanitarian situation in Cuba. I mean, you have Cubans fleeing Cuba, a huge diaspora in Florida, which is a huge part of what's also driving US foreign policy, which is a whole nother element, Kylie. But I really wonder at what point Cuba can withstand whatever's coming next from the US and how it can do that.

Kylie Morris: 5:12

Of course, as we were hearing earlier, there is a lot of loaded history here, right? The Cubans have faced a great deal of pressure diplomatically, economically from the Americans before. It's geographically significant, it's been a great powers play thing before Russia and China. I think for Australians, you know, looking at our part of the world, at our hemisphere, you know, Taiwan is perhaps the closest comparison to Cuba. But now, you know, let's examine this question. Is Cuba next? And how might that impact all of us? To find out, we've invited back onto the show our favorite expert in all things Latin America, John Bonfiglio. He's actually based in Mexico. He keeps a close eye on the region from there, but he has a really deep interest and knowledge of Cuba. Here he is now. Jon, welcome to Global Roaming.

Jon Bonfiglio: 6:09

Hello, uh, good evening, good morning, whatever the time difference is.

Kylie Morris: 6:12

Listen, I know you've got a deep understanding of Cuba and your own context there, and I'm really interested in the pressure Havana is now under, and indeed was already under, even before Trump's removal of Maduro. But there's a lot of bluster from Washington right now. Do people inside Cuba feel like they're newly under threat from the US?

Jon Bonfiglio: 6:34

I think that's a really fascinating question because I think uh people can hold in their minds two truths at once. They are very used to these external threats. Uh, they have lived with them for generations, but at one and the same time, this does feel different. And it feels different entirely because of what took place in Venezuela at the beginning of January earlier on this year. Implicitly, Venezuela is a domino which necessarily leads to Cuba, and that's what everybody was aware of when it happened. And it's also how uh the Cuban Communist Party in Cuba has reacted in in the last week with all these public demonstrations, the mass state funeral, which is very rare in Cuba, which was held to receive the return of uh the remains of the fallen soldiers. They've been at pains to make a very public display of the fact that the Cuban Revolution is still intact. But of course, the more that they display that, the more that everyone is aware that there is a void, a vacuum inside that exterior shell.

Kylie Morris: 7:38

In practical terms, when Cubans consider how the ground has shifted under their feet, what leverage does the US have over them and over their nation now?

Jon Bonfiglio: 7:50

The leverage that the US has now over Cuba hasn't really changed significantly over time. What has changed, of course, is the external situation, but the economic blockade which has been in place around the island of Cuba for decades now continues to be a crippling factor. Notwithstanding, I think it is important to sort of go back in in history a little bit because nothing is normal in Cuba now, nothing has been normal in Cuba again for the last couple of generations, because on the one hand, you've seen the US sort of beating Cuba around the head with a stick, and at the same time, you saw the Soviet Union, the USSR, and then subsequently Russia being desperate to feed it oxygen. It'd be difficult to find an international example which is as small and as broadly internationally significant as Cuba in terms of what it means to broader superpowers?

Kylie Morris: 8:47

Maybe Taiwan over in our neck of the woods. But I do, you know, wonder how these countries with such an enormously fraught history, as you reference, how does that play into these days? You know, does the echo of the Cuban missile crisis, for example, still ring in the ears of not only Washington and Havana, but but Moscow too?

Jon Bonfiglio: 9:09

Yeah, I mean, of course, despite the fact that the Cuban Revolution now is 60 odd years long, almost every adult living in Cuba today, all that they remember, is being a pawn in this game between broader superpowers, being at the whim of these huge geopolitical decisions and actually having very little local autonomy uh in order to be able to actually affect your own fate. And I think it is this um the the the the the length of this of this project and the lack of memory that this project has, which has actually led uh even more so than the economic uh disaster disasters that Cuba has suffered in the last sort of 10, 15 years. It's even more the lack of memory than the economy, which has driven record numbers of Cubans outside of the island in the last four or five years.

Kylie Morris: 9:58

The country, as you reference, is in a bad state economically. Could external pressure by the US force its collapse?

Jon Bonfiglio: 10:06

The oil coming out of Venezuela was its last card as regards an economic wherewithal. Everything else that it had in its favor has since been lost. And so the the expectation from the United States, actually, which is an argument to sort of sort of suggest that there won't be, at least in the short term, any kind of um significant military intervention into Cuba is that it's going to fall in and of itself. That it doesn't need a push, if you like. Economically, clearly President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela was at the heart of the economic implosion in that country. I think it's pretty fair to say that actually the significant factors in and around uh Cuba's fundamental bankruptcy aren't actually something you can necessarily lay at the hands of the Cuban uh Communist Party, but are all externally driven and are actually also um sort of essential uh intrinsic factors that go back in history. Cuba produces very little, again, outside of sugar, nickel, uh tobacco, but those account for less than 10% of exports. Beyond that, it's actually got very little at all that it can export. And once the sort of tourism collapsed during COVID, then again, that was one of the last crutches alongside oil. So this overdependency that these territories have on individual sources of income have gradually been removed up until the point now where it really has nothing to sort of to pin its economic model to.

Kylie Morris: 11:33

John, the Cuban American Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has made a pretty strong connection, hasn't he, between the U.S. operation against Maduro and what comes next for Cuba?

Marco Rubio: 11:42

I mean, they basically it's amazing. This poor island took over Venezuela in some cases. One of the biggest problems that Venezuelans have is they have to declare independence from Cuba. They tried to basically colonize it from a security standpoint. So yeah, look, if I lived in Havana and I was in the government, I'd be concerned.

Kylie Morris: 11:56

I mean, how important, though, is it to acknowledge that the audience for that kind of rhetoric is not only in Cuba, but in Florida, right? How much of this is about keeping a key group of Trump backers, the Cuban diaspora, on side?

Jon Bonfiglio: 12:12

So I was at the um during the last US presidential election, I actually was in Miami, in amongst Cuban Americans. And what was fascinating about that was they are absolutely motivated, they are absolutely organized, uh, and of course, they vote again um Republican. But amongst that gathering, there was not a single Make America Great Again hat. They are also very aware of the fact that at the same uh point in time that actually they they support the Republican Party because of the the historic resistance to Cuba that that uh demonstrates, but that also that Trump is uh very potentially a threat to them because of his view on on migration. Uh uh Marco Rubio is um, I mean, his story, his the story of his parents is a little contentious in terms of what he says was true and when they came over and uh and the like. But he is he has found I mean, I think it's fair to say that actually one of the reasons why he now kowtows goes quietly alongside uh Donald Trump and has U-turned completely in that regard, is because he has found a natural bedfellow in which he can actually be the sort of the the point, the the arrowhead, if you like, into the regime change in Cuba, which he, his parents, and his entire community have been looking for uh for again generations.

Kylie Morris: 13:36

Once again, China is probably watching all these developments closely. It's a it's a a power broker in this region that we're very aware of. I mean, what do we know about their interests in Cuba and across Latin America and how they'll be processing all of this?

Jon Bonfiglio: 13:54

It's complex for China. So on the one hand, uh China has had a significant and growing presence uh economically initially, but of course, that subsequently moves into sort of political patronage right across um the region, to the extent that uh it is now a one of the biggest funders of major infrastructure uh projects across the region and a huge uh holder of um of loans um also. Uh at the same time, um so this is this sort of this this enforced removal of of China under this sort of supposed new Monroe doctrine, the so-called Donro Doctrine, is going to forcibly is going to push China's hand in that uh regard. And of course, it also holds significant uh contracts towards Venezuelan oilfields, which have now sort of gone up in smoke. So on that on the one hand, it's worried about uh its influence in the region in that regard. On the other hand, it's also rubbing its hands uh with glee because these actions that are taking place in the Western hemisphere also necessarily are permissive towards Chinese influence and actions in its own region.

Kylie Morris: 15:04

Aaron Powell Stepping back from Cuba, how destabilizing is it for other neighboring nations, you know, Colombia, Mexico, for the US to be behaving this way in the Western Hemisphere? Is there a strong enough sense of connection between those states for them to be sharing their concerns?

Jon Bonfiglio: 15:24

It's hugely destabilizing. Now bear in mind that Latin America is not the most stable, historically the most stable of regions, but I've certainly never known it to feel this um this nervous about what might come next. And actually, one of the things which has um been achieved very successfully by the Trump administration is that it's not just the threat of potential actions that has been evidenced and is sort of reverberating around the region, but it's also the intervention in a number of elections. Of course, we uh we can look at the the bailout just prior to the Javier Millet midterms in Argentina, which swung uh arguably that election by between five and ten percent in Malay's favor, and also the the recent election in Honduras, uh, where Nasritito Asfura, uh Trump's favored candidate, has now won. So, where there was previously perhaps a sort of a collective framework of potential resistance as Latin Americans first and nations um secondary to the USA, that's now been been broken apart. It's also interesting, actually, that Gustavo Petro in Colombia, one of his main points of pushback has been to continually use language uh that it that does not speak of Colombians, it does not speak of Venezuelans, it speaks of a Latin American identity and needing to come together to identify as that unit in order to be able to sort of push back against these uh hyper-aggressive uh neo-imperialist moves?

Kylie Morris: 16:55

For what it's worth, President Trump has said on Truth Social that Cuba should make a deal, right? This is his typical of his language. I mean, President Miguel Diaz-Conel has denied there are any talks going on. Instead, he insists that Cuba will defend itself to the last drop of blood. I mean, how likely is it in these days, do you think, that there might be back channel diplomacy going on? And who would be doing that?

Jon Bonfiglio: 17:20

So Claudia Sheinbaum, President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico, has positioned herself as being, and she said, if assuming that both parties are in agree in agreement, she's positioned herself as being a potential broker of conversations between the two, uh, between the two countries. As far as I understand at the moment, there are no actual conversations that um that take place, which in a way is no surprise given the historic antagonism that the two nations have historically uh undertaken and experienced. Notwithstanding, uh clearly there are uh connections, ongoing connections between the Cuban-American community in Florida, in Miami, and the Cuban community on the island. And those communities are uh clearly going to be uh having ongoing conversations, which at some point you would expect to filter up towards uh brokers in power.

Kylie Morris: 18:13

John, finally, to come full circle, do you believe that the Trump administration could or would actually go to the length of carrying out a Venezuela-esque kind of special operation in Cuba? And if they did that, how effective might it be?

Jon Bonfiglio: 18:29

Whichever way you look at it, the Trump administration is undertaking uh a seismic shift in US foreign policy, which you could call hemispherism or resource uh imperialism or the Donro Doctrine, of course, referencing the 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine, which asserted, which was asserted by President James Monroe in 1823, and which established that the Americas was the backyard of the USA, and they're to be in service of the United States and the United States alone. So this significant winner takes all might is right period of expansionism. I mean, firstly, I'd say it's utterly unprecedented in recent history, even taking into account the recent actions of Russia and China, as although there's been aggression there, neither of these is threatening traditional allies. But with the point is that with this dial shifted to such an extent, there is very little international bandwidth uh left to push back to threats against the likes of Cuba, which is isolated, which is an outlier state and has very few allies. Is it going to happen overnight? No. Uh, is the the eye of Donald Trump going to return to Cuba at some point in the future? Um, I think that's pretty clear that that is the case. And I would say that what's potentially, even a few weeks ago, would have been unfathomable, uh, which is that before the end of the Trump um term, you could see a Cuba which not only falls to the Communist Project and the Cuban Revolution, but actually enters into some kind of US protectorate, is um I wouldn't say it's likely, but it's definitely possible.

Kylie Morris: 19:56

This is a uh a high risk world when it comes to making protection. Predictions, John, but I I'm interested. Did you see this coming? Are you surprised that we're here with the US intervening so deliberately and overtly in the business of the Western Hemisphere and really directly engaging with and threatening Latin American states?

Jon Bonfiglio: 20:21

The signs were there from uh the summer of 2025 that the US was undertaking this significant shift in into this sort of hemisphere is hemispherism uh strategy. Um I expected an intervention in Venezuela. I did not expect the extraction of Nicolas Maduro in the way that that took place, and I think very few people did, and that uh clearly is now a Rubicon moment for what may take place elsewhere in the region, not just in Latin America, but right across uh the Americas, and given the state of play, which is likely to take place. I think even though Latin America is used to uh sort of a US and American imperialist outlook, what took place on January the 3rd, 2026 was comp was nakedly um ambitious, and the fact that it's not even disguised in protocol but has openly been spoken about as regards sort of the grabbing of resources means that the the landscape is is fundamentally and potentially irrevocably changed.

Kylie Morris: 21:33

John Bonfiglio, thank you so much.

Jon Bonfiglio: 21:35

No problem, take care.

Kylie Morris: 21:43

So Latika, that's Jon Bonfiglio, who, you know, as you can hear has decades of experience watching closely Latin America. Um he spends a lot of time in Mexico, but also, of course, travels regularly around the region. Um what was it about his comments? We covered a wide range of things, I know, but what really stood out for you?

Latika Bourke: 22:06

I I mean, he was just an encyclopedia, wasn't he? The depth of knowledge that he had. And I think for Australians too, Kylie, this would be a bit of a gap, Latin America, don't you think? It's not really a region we see covered in the news so much. I thought the human story was really interesting. Um, I really wonder at what point the threshold between endurance and the resilience of the long-suffering Cuban people and the economic blockade on them and this new pressure that the Trump administration is bringing upon uh the regime, but also ultimately the people, how long they can really survive this. But also compare that with the remarkable story of resilience and resistance in Cuba to any efforts to oust the regime. It's it's really extraordinary. So I found that conflict between that balance really fascinating.

Kylie Morris: 22:57

I mean, Jon was really interesting, I thought, on the fact that of course Cuba has faced pressures from the US for a long time, and it's something that the people are very used to. But as he said, you know, the they've got Venezuela playing out, they've got front row seats to what's happened in Venezuela and the return of those bodies of the bodyguards, you know, these 32 soldiers coming back and that being a big kind of public event in Cuba must really, it must really hit home. I mean, I was interested in how he talked about the the region and the regional implications of Trump's policies now and how unsettling that is for the leaders and governments, you know, from Mexico to Colombia to Honduras to Cuba. You know, having to game what Trump might do next when actually it's hard to know what he's being guided by, apart from a kind of you know, neo-imperialism in the region, he's exercising power, you get the sense, largely because he can. And another thing I'm interested to hear what you think about this, the diaspora, right? The importance of, in particular, that Cuban-American diaspora in Florida, the kind of Marco Rubio community, and the influence that they're having on the kinds of steps that the Trump administration's taking.

Latika Bourke: 24:18

Yeah, because you don't see that in too many body politics, do you? I mean, it's quite unique in America that this has been such a driving force, but not just driving force, successful. I mean, Rubio is the one that convinced Trump to do this operation. He pulls it off and now looks a bit like Trump is punch drunk as a result of the success of that raid on Maduro's uh compound. And where does it all lead to? But yeah, I also found that diaspora element really interesting. Kylie, the other thing I found super, super fascinating was this relationship between them all and Russia and China and the big glaring question of, well, where is China? It takes the oil, but where is it when it came to the security of Venezuela? Where is it now on Cuba? And of course, the Russian history is equally fascinating. But it is a question to be asked. There's a great report, actually, I think it was the Wall Street Journal, that said the Russians began evacuating their embassy in Venezuela just at the end of December. So clearly they had some sort of forewarning or knowledge of what was going to happen, but the Chinese didn't. And so the implication was that maybe the Russians were told or got a heads up, but whatever they knew to inform their decision to start evacuating their embassy in Venezuela in Caracas, that wasn't passed on to the Chinese. And I I'm really interested in just how nuanced and textured these relationships between China, Russia, Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba all turn out to be when they're put under a bit of testing.

Kylie Morris: 25:54

Yeah, and as Jon says, actually, it's the Chinese who are far more present and far more active, at least as far as Cuba's concerned, these days than Russia is. Yeah, it was really fascinating, worth doing. And I think this is a, I mean, there are so there's so much to watch at the moment, right? But Central America, Latin America generally is now very much, you know, um standing, you know, at the ready, really, for what President Trump might do next.

Latika Bourke: 26:22

And might not do next, Kylie. I mean, this is equally part of the ingredients or recipe that makes up the alchemy of Donald Trump is that sometimes he goes around and threatens and then ends up as a taco, is the word that goes around. Trump always chickens out. So far, we haven't seen any new movement really on Cuba yet, have we? And he's turned now his attentions to Greenland.