The Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated this Tuesday that Cuba is an unavoidable priority for the foreign policy of the United States due to its geographical proximity, declaring in an interview with Fox News that the Island is "literally 90 miles from Key West, just over 100 miles from Mar-a-Lago."
Rubio was categorical in describing the Cuban regime as "economically incompetent" and unable to implement the reforms that the Island needs. He specified that the problem is not only economic but also political: without a change in the system and the people in charge, no reform is viable.
"Serious economic reforms are impossible with these individuals in charge. It cannot happen," declared the Secretary of State, who added that the regime has not only failed economically but has also "rolled out the welcome mat" for adversaries of the United States to operate in Cuban territory against U.S. national interests with impunity.
The reference points directly to Russia and China, powers that maintain intelligence and espionage facilities on the island. The Pentagon has indicated that Cuba is one of the strongest intelligence adversaries in the history of the United States, with the ability to infiltrate U.S. institutions and allied governments.
Rubio was emphatic in drawing a red line: "We are not going to have a foreign military, intelligence, or security apparatus operating with impunity 90 miles off the coast of the United States. That will not happen under President Trump."
The secretary described Cuba as a failed state with no real economy, where the population lives in extreme poverty, facing chronic energy crises, rampant inflation, and a lack of political freedoms, all as a result of the failure of Marxism and the incompetence of its leaders.
"Who is going to invest billions of dollars in a communist country run by incompetent communists?" Rubio asked in previous statements on March 27.
The statements made this Tuesday are part of a maximum pressure strategy that the Trump administration has intensified since the beginning of the year. On January 30, Trump signed a national emergency declaration that imposes tariffs on countries that supply oil to Cuba, as part of an energy suffocation plan aimed at accelerating the collapse of the regime.
Rubio has also explicitly conditioned the lifting of the embargo: "The lifting of the sanctions and the embargo will only happen once a regime change occurs," he stated before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January. In that same vein, he has insisted that the Cuban government system must change as a prerequisite for any normalization.
In parallel to the pressure, the administration has maintained discreet channels with Havana. Trump publicly suggested in February the possibility of a "friendly takeover" of Cuba and stated that the Cuban government "is talking to us. They have no money, they have nothing."
In April, he anticipated that he expected Cuba to fall soon and announced that there would be "more news soon."
The Cuban economy is projected to contract by 7.2% in 2026 and has accumulated a decline of 23% since 2019, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, which Rubio and Trump consider a window of opportunity to force a regime change.
The State Department published a clip today on its official account featuring Rubio's statements about Cuba with the message: "Things can improve in Cuba with serious economic reforms, but not with the people currently in charge. They are economically incompetent," as he noted in his recent statements on reforms in Cuba.
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