MIAMI — At Café Versailles in Miami, the word spread quickly on Monday that the U.S. would allow Russian oil to arrive in Cuba, effectively giving its historic adversary permission to violate its own blockade.
The blockade brought the fuel-starved communist island to its knees, and, as some exiles had hoped, closer toward regime change.
U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Florida, and Miami-Dade Commissioner Rene Garcia believe the Trump administration is trying to thread a needle.
“How do you stop a humanitarian crisis while still increasing pressure?” asked Diaz-Balart. “I am pretty confident that the days are numbered for that regime.”
“You see right now that the United States holds all the cards,” added Garcia. “They can allow or not allow petroleum coming to the island.”
Foreign policy analyst Adam Ratzlaff, the founder and CEO of Pan-American Strategic Advisors, is also a consultant in inter-American affairs for Florida International University.
“The allowance of oil into Cuba form Russia comes right after Cuba allowed the United States to import oil for the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, there was a challenge in cutting off oil while maintaining an embassy,” he said. “I think it is important to look at what is going on in Cuba, not just in the context of Cuba, but within the broader geo-political map. A lot of the objectives of the Trump administration have overlapping and intersecting challenges with them, that leads to challenges for them in each specific context.”
Ratzlaff believes the change in course could be the result of an administration trying to thread a delicate needle between multiple policy objectives that don’t always align.
“I am not sure if we would call it a course reversal, I think it has to do with these competing interests,” he said. “There is a lot of back and forth between what they have to do in order to make sure one objective doesn’t undermine another.”
This is playing out on the island, where the administration is squeezing the island with an oil blockade to force concessions, while also trying to avoid a humanitarian crisis that could trigger a mass migration surge to the U.S., which would be at friction with the administration’s other immigration policies ― which include ending humanitarian relief programs and increasing Cuban deportations.
“A specific example here is the Trump administration’s objectives of countering immigration, taking a hardline on immigration while at the same time pushing for regime change,” said Ratzlaff. “We don’t want to see the Cuban people suffer, but at the same time, you see a real push to embargo oil into the country.”
Ratzlaff also said there are inconsistencies within the broader context of global geopolitics.
“Mexico (is a) clear example on this in general,” he said. “Mexico has taken the brunt of a lot of the Trump administration’s push on a lot of different issues, whether or not they are willing to allow oil is a different question.”
The administration has lifted sanctions it imposed on Russian oil stemming from the Russia-Ukraine conflict in order to get oil to markets to ease the upward pressure on gas prices in the wake of the ongoing Iran conflict.
“So right now we are seeing several different hot spots on the frontier for the Trump administration,” said Ratzlaff. “There is the Russia-Ukraine invasion, what is going on in Iran, Venezuela is still ongoing and of course Cuba and the push for regime change.”
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