BRSL Weekly Brief
Your weekly brief on current events from the Berkeley Risk and Security Lab.
BRSL Weekly Brief
Cuba, and How Foreign Policy Strategy is Taking a Turn
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On this week's episode, BRSL Faculty Director Professor Andrew Reddie answers questions about Cuba, the Trump Administration's recent comments about a transition of power, and what this signals about the future of foreign policy.
Welcome to the Berkeley Risk and Security Lab's new podcast, the BRSL Weekly Brief, where we bring you the latest information on current events from our lab experts. Today, we're talking about Cuba and why the country has become the latest target of Trump's attempts to change leadership and control other nations. I'm the labs communications manager, Vivian Bossieux-Skinner, and I'm here with BRSL faculty director, Professor Andrew Reddie. So let's start with a bit of background on the situation. Can you explain the context?
Professor Andrew Reddie:Sure, it depends how far back you want to go, there's a lot, there's a lot that kind of underpins the the current crisis facing Cuba. And also, of course, it's worth noting that, per some of our past podcast episodes, there's also a lot going on in the world at the present from Iran, before that, Venezuela, et cetera. I think we'll probably talk about Venezuela later as well. But really, to kind of bring you up to the time of recording. So we're here on Thursday morning, California time. We have a significant energy crisis brought on by an economic blockade from the United States on the island of Cuba itself, and the fact that they haven't received foreign oil imports for the last three months. Historically, they relied on Venezuela for that, and then also, to a lesser extent, Mexico, for various reasons, right? Those spigots have been turned off. So Venezuela, by virtue of the capture of Maduro, and then Mexico, with political pressure from the Trump administration to arrest that flow of oil. Alongside that energy crisis, unsurprisingly, comes blackouts, which yield, again, unsurprisingly, protests, et cetera, and significant negotiations between the Cubans and the Americans around the future of the political regime there, which, of course, famously right is communist this comes from the 1959 revolution that put Fidel Castro in Power, that eventually led to his brother Raul Castro taking power, and led to the current Presidency of Miguel Diaz canal, who entered office in 2018 and is due to be in office for two more years. Of course, he's important, because he was the first non Castro to lead the country for 60 years. Now that doesn't mean that the Castro family doesn't still have all sorts of power. I think one kind of really interesting fact is that Raulito, which is Raul Castro's grandson, Raul Guermo Rodriguez Castro, to give the full name, is actually taking part in negotiations with the Americans about the future of the non Castro president. And certainly, one of the things that happened in the news a couple of days ago that precipitated our conversation. Here was the Trump administration's demand that Diaz Canal actually abdicate from his role as president, leading to yet another kind of regime change, if you will, against the backdrop of Venezuela and Iran as well.
Vivian Bossieux-Skinner:Yeah, and you were talking about Raulito. He is part of the military that's kind of currently controlling most of the economy there, right?
Professor Andrew Reddie:Yeah. I mean, this is the question, right? So how much power does the actual does the current president actually have over over Cuba as a political entity? I think that it's rather telling that effectively, Cuban negotiators have kind of put him on the table as something that they're willing to negotiate away. Certainly you can't imagine that ever happening with Fidel Castro, or indeed, Raul Castro, either. And really, I think the one of the things that they're searching for in the negotiations is something of a win for the Trump regime, where they can point to, hey, right, we've changed the leadership of a left leaning country in the Western Hemisphere, and that kind of assuages what the Trump administration's interests. But like Venezuela, this seems to be a situation more of regime compliance with the Trump administration's wishes, rather than about regime change. And so it's interesting, I think some of the same kind of pro democracy forces in Venezuela that have been left disappointed. You'll have the same situation with Cubans in exile in places like Florida, who, while they want to see an economic, economic opening of Cuba, they also want to see a political transition as well.
Vivian Bossieux-Skinner:Yeah, so how did the Trump administration's moves in Venezuela kind of set the scene for what's happening in Cuba now?
Professor Andrew Reddie:I think they're very much related. I think to some extent, the success of the operation in Venezuela led to some of the adventurism that you're seeing in the Trump foreign policy. Certainly, I think you can draw a through line between Venezuela Iran and even before the crisis in Iran, you had conversations about whether Cuba might be next. Indeed, Cuba might have made more sense for being next, given that it has some of the same obviously, it's the same geography in terms of staging military assets and what have you. And arguably there's more similaritys in that case, than with Iran. Indeed, the fact that Iran's all the way across the world, and there has an entirely different history, entirely different distribution of alliance relationships, et cetera, made it a very hard target in comparison to Cuba. But again, it's really going to be interesting, how, should we end up getting the regime change that I think some are expecting at this point, given where the negotiations stand between the Americans and the Cubans, whether that is enough to kind of will be enough to allow the Trump innovation to declare victory and kind of call it done. Because, of course, right, what they're kind of looking for is an opening of that trade relationship in a way that obviously hasn't been the case for years, although there was a loosening during the Obama administration too.
Vivian Bossieux-Skinner:So it sounds like the kind of pattern is to destabilize a country and then talk about how that country isn't stable, and then use that as an excuse to take control, either directly or kind of adjacently, in order to benefit the U.S. in some way. Is there more complexity than that?
Professor Andrew Reddie:I think it's interesting. Of the three countries that we've talked about, Venezuela, Iran and Cuba, you could argue that the instability is a little bit more endemic to the Cuban case. So they had massive protests in 2021 that led to a really significant crackdown by the security forces that you mentioned before, and then this latest round of blackouts have yielded yet more protests and also some American adventurism. There's a very small group from Florida that tried to land with a whole bunch of weapons because they thought the regime was ready to topple. And so you could argue that the instability is a little bit more endemic to the Cuban case than to to Venezuela or Iran. But certainly that is, that is the language that uses justification. I do think that there's something of a challenge in figuring out what U.S. objectives ultimately are, because you'll hear conflicting messaging from across the administration about whether, in the Cuban case, this is about democratic transition, whether it's about economic opening, whether it's about past bad behavior on the part of the leftist regime. And of course, those different answers yield different objectives, and also different means that you would go about achieving right regime compliance versus regime change. And of course, we have the same problem with Iran with regards to whether this is about the nuclear weapons, whether this is about, that is to say, the potential proliferation of nuclear weapons, or if this is about democratic transition, the treatment of protesters by the Iranian regime over the last couple of months. And so that uncertainty certainly doesn't help. Certainly doesn't help.
Vivian Bossieux-Skinner:Yeah, is there any indication of where would be next?
Professor Andrew Reddie:Oh, gosh. I mean, I did an Ask Me Anything for one of the news networks here in the Bay Area a few weeks ago. And in addition to the three countries that we've talked about today, obviously, with a focus on Cuba. The fourth one that was brought up was North Korea. I mean, I have to stress that one of the challenges that the U.S. military would face if they were actually I mean, I think the nice thing about Cuba is it appears that negotiations are going to yield the political outcome that the Trump administration seems to be looking for, rather than engaging in a military operation. So obviously, in Venezuela, it was a relatively small operation involving us, Delta Force. In Iran, you've got a much more significant military operation. The US really does struggle to be everywhere, you know, all at once. And so the fourth place that's discussed is North Korea, and it seems to me, in a possibility, at the same time that you're pulling assets out of the Indo Pacific theater, so we're sending THAAD batteries to the Middle East. We're redeploying Marines, right? We're moving forces from that region to another one that you would want to launch a major exercise against a country that actually has nuclear weapons. And that's the other really important difference for for North Korea, vis-a-vis all of these other countries, while they're all pariah states, they there are, they don't have nuclear weapons. And indeed, I think, unfortunately, one of the lessons that countries might take from these recent episodes is that having nuclear weapons is ultimately the deterrent to this type of thing happening to you. But I think a lot of us, you know, on the analyst side, hope that the adventurism is is, you know, over for now. And I can't, you know, stress the degree to which engaging in regime change is not a normal way of conducting U.S. foreign policy, at least since the end of the Cold War. Obviously, you've got a history of doing that in Latin America during the Cold War, and then also going back to Iran, actually, with the overthrow of Mosaddegh and the installation of the Shah. So it's not as if U.S. has never done regime change, but certainly it's not been the way that they've been doing foreign policy for. Over the last 30 years, and so, you know, no, here we are, but you're it's a good question. It's the right question to ask. But I think, you know, a lot of us are hoping that these are the end of the obvious candidates.
Vivian Bossieux-Skinner:You were talking a little bit about how the U.S. is changing, how it conducts foreign policy. What other ways is that happening, and what does that look like?
Professor Andrew Reddie:Oh, gosh, it's it's a very difficult time to be, to be a scholar for foreign policy or international relations right now. I mean, so much is changing the disposition of the United States government, Vivian, international organizations is entirely different under this administration than has been under any other indeed, there's a pretty good argument that the international organizations from the World Bank to the IMF, sorry, International Monetary Fund to the United Nations, are set up to effectively privilege the perspectives of Western liberal democracies. And of course, you've seen 60 international bodies be defunded by the U.S. administrations. And so certainly, there's a sense that the United States wants to kind of go it alone, or with a much smaller coalition of the willing, you know, via the things like the board of peace. That brings me to the alliance architectures. And so one of the things that we've seen in Iran is that traditional allies, our closest ally, arguably, the United Kingdom, is entirely uninterested in being involved in a major conflagration in the Middle East, which has left the United States and Israel entirely by themselves with with consequences for the potential of doing things like opening the Strait of Hormuz. And so the alliance relationships are also incredibly different. I would argue that they're at their lowest ebb. Certainly in my career, I can't remember NATO being more distrusting of a U.S. administration, and some of that's driven by, you know, the Trump administration's announcements, vis-a-vis Greenland and what have you, and also just difficulties in the broader Alliance relationship. So yeah, there's a lot changing, and a lot of the things that we think we know about international affairs, or are more or less changing in real time, which makes you know, our job interesting here at the lab, but, but also hopefully essential as well.
Vivian Bossieux-Skinner:Yeah, going back to Cuba. What do you see happening next there? And do you think that this kind of Trump's push for regime change will be successful in some way?
Professor Andrew Reddie:I think that, you know, like we mentioned before, I think that you're going to see something more akin to what happened in Venezuela. So less regime change, more regime compliance. So who is the leader that's going to take over Cuba that's going to be pliant to U.S. interests, whether they're economic or political, and it appears that the Cubans are willing to at least entertain negotiating some of that stuff away, particularly given the blockade that they're under from the United States. I think, you know, given what's happening in Iran, I think we all have to hope that they're not going to and there's not going to be, have to be military involvement in what the Trump administration wants to do. We'll see the Cubans appear to be a little bit more pliant. But you know, ultimately, that regime is also in danger of being toppled from within if it's viewed to be kowtowing to to Washington. And so the trick with all of these conflicts is trying to find the appropriate outcome where you've got face saving on all sides. And so that's what you're that that will be the conversation over the coming, you know, four or five days into next week. And, you know, hopefully we don't have to have a podcast on Cuba next week, but it's not outside the realm of the possible.
Vivian Bossieux-Skinner:Yeah, so you're talking a little bit earlier about the risk of being spread too thin in terms of the military involvement across the world. And obviously, Cuba is quite far from Iran. So where do you see that going? Is there a risk that the U.S. would kind of just start too many things that can't be involved in?
Professor Andrew Reddie:as soon smaller That's my that's my fear. So the U.S. disposition of forces is effectively ready to fight on in like one and a half theaters at any given moment. I think the military services would hope that they were able to fight in two, and that is, of course, because they were postured to deal with Russia and Europe and China in the Indo Pacific, and that was kind of how we attempt to right size our forces. Because, of course, you have to bear in mind, right, that ultimately, you've got a pie of taxpayer dollars, and then you have to figure out what slice of that pie you're going to spend on defense versus all of the other things, right, energy, education, et cetera. And so you want to try to do as much as you possibly can with as little as you possibly can. Interestingly, the Caribbean effectively had no military assets permanently stationed inside of it in the Biden administration, and that's the major shift in U.S. national security policy with the incoming Trump administration, the western hemisphere has been number one, right? They're talking about Trump corollaries to the Monroe doctrine. So. And so there are now forces that are staged in the Caribbean that were pulled from other theaters. Ironically, some were pulled from the Middle Eastern theater for Venezuela. And now we're sending much more forces to the Mediterranean and then also the Arabian Sea for that operation in Iran, in addition to having all of the military bases that were already in CENTCOM, just by virtue of our legacy of Iraq, Afghanistan, and then continued U.S. involvement, doing training in places like Syria, etc, and so. So, yeah, it is certainly but also medicine and what have you. But it's, it's unclear to something you worry about in terms of spreading, spreading things too thin. And that's particularly if there's the sense that, you know, the the Trump administration wants to me that that bargain would be enough to assuage the security start anything in the Indo Pacific. Because, of course, one of the things you have to bear in mind is that it takes forces a long time to position. So this is what's what has caught out the Brits. So Cyprus was actually attacked relatively early in the by the by an Iranian rocket, and that's where the Brits have a significant naval base, and it turned out that they didn't actually have any ships in the in the vicinity, and so their ships will be just about getting there now with a conflict that started 18 days ago. And so there is, like, a logistics piece to all of this that, you know, we tend to not talk about because it's boring, but that really matters. And so, yeah, I'd absolutely worry about, you know, spreading our forces too thin. challenges that that you're talking about here. So I think, yeah, there's a lot of worry about the future of that regime, and again, more than, more than enough to keep us busy with here the lab.
Vivian Bossieux-Skinner:Yeah, definitely. Is there anything else that you want to mention?
Professor Andrew Reddie:Well, maybe see you next week, and we'll see what we're talking about, whether it's Iran again, or Cuba or who knows what else.
Vivian Bossieux-Skinner:Yeah, it always seems to be a surprise. Great. Well, thank you for chatting with me and thanks for listening. And as always, you can find all of our podcasts on App. On Spotify and wherever you listen,
Professor Andrew Reddie:Perfect. Thanks, Vivian.