Washington Pursues Regime Change in Havana By Year’s End

MIAMI - The U.S. government is eyeing regime change in Havana, Cuba, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal, and is “actively” seeking to achieve it by the end of the year, sources say.

The administration in Washington, reports The Journal, is “emboldened” by the recent removal of the former Venezuelan dictator, Nicolás Maduro, resulting from a daring incursion by U.S. special forces into Caracas in early January, killing dozens.

Officials from the White House also believe that the regime in Havana is severely underwater and struggling to stay afloat after steady flows of subsidized Venezuelan oil have halted following a U.S. embargo along the Venezuelan coast, interdicting a fleet of oil tankers transporting Venezuelan crude to U.S. adversaries in Cuba and Iran.

Socialist hawks in Trump’s administration, like Secretary of State Marco Rubio, are confident that the Cuban government is facing an imminent collapse. With poverty rates at record highs, hyperinflation strangling the Cuban population, dilution of the government treasury, chronic fuel shortages, and a weakened regime, all suggest to the administration in Washington that now is the optimal moment to “identify insiders” who could be sympathetic in helping the Cuban government transition away from Communist rule.

However, there is hesitancy on the part of officials in Washington who point out that the road to democracy and representative government in Havana may be more complicated than prospects in Venezuela following the ouster of Maduro.

Cuba does not have a formidable opposition base, like in Venezuela, which has sustained a consistent political resistance, however weak, to the Bolivarian revolution since the reign of Chávez.

Cuba is also without a notable civil society base, where administrators are answerable to public demand and citizen constraints, and where citizens are able to occupy positions of institutional governance.

In Cuba, for decades, since the ’59 Revolution, Cubans have been wholly detached from the functioning of daily government, where strict party loyalty is a prerequisite for even the most mundane administrative positions.

The Journal has also reported that officials in the Trump White House acknowledge that a potential regime collapse can trigger a humanitarian crisis, with over 85% of residents living in conditions of extreme poverty, and potentially exacerbating domestic instability.