As Trump muses about ‘taking Cuba,’ what is the big picture? – Dallas News

After Venezuela and Iran, what’s another U.S. military incursion?

President Donald Trump said a few days ago that he will be “having the honor of taking Cuba” and that he can do “anything” he wants with it, as if Cuba were a property on a Monopoly board and not a sovereign nation.

The president of Cuba said such a scenario would be met with “an impregnable resistance.”

Trump has made good on earlier threats to escalate conflicts, and so his words might compel Cubans to make concessions. U.S. officials have been in talks with Cuban representatives for months to open up Cuba to American businesses, according to The New York Times.

We want a free and democratic Cuba. Trump is a transactional president, not one led by principles, but he might succeed in serving American interests while improving conditions in Cuba by sticking with diplomacy instead of intervening directly to topple the Cuban president.

According to The Times’ reporting, Trump wants to push out Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel. He’s considered a puppet of the Castro family, the communist hardliners who ruled Cuba for decades.

Cuba is in a particularly vulnerable position. Blackouts roil the island. The grid is powered by oil, but the country’s supply was choked off following the U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, an ally of the island’s communist regime, in January. Mexico also halted its oil exports to Cuba.

We suspect that Díaz-Canel’s removal would be celebrated by many Cubans, but they only have to look to Venezuela to see that a U.S.-led ouster alone doesn’t lead to regime change.

Maduro’s vice president and successor, Delcy Rodríguez, has cooperated with Trump. She has released hundreds of political prisoners. But the courts that are part of the country’s authoritarian machine remain, and Venezuelans question whether an “amnesty law” to protect dissidents is just optics. The economic situation, too, remains precarious.

Trump’s more forceful actions in Iran don’t inspire confidence, either. News reports indicate that the administration underestimated Iran’s capacity for retaliation after a U.S.-Israeli airstrike this month killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The problem with the Trump White House is that his administration is less interested in democracy than he is in pliable partners, whatever their crimes and abuses. We question the sustainability of the arrangement in Venezuela, and we are alarmed by what appears to be Trump’s lack of strategy in Iran, where the ayatollah’s hardliner son has taken the reins.

We wanted a White House that would be more invested in the fates of Latin American nations, and Trump has rightfully treated the region as a policy priority. But we worry that his approach is about short-term wins, like the decapitation of a regime, rather than meaningful, lasting changes in countries that have oppressed their citizens and sent them fleeing to the U.S.

For Cuba’s sake, and for our own, we hope the administration takes a different tack there.

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