Robert Gates, former CIA director, warned this Friday that the greatest national security risk Cuba poses to the United States is not a military threat, but the possibility of a regime collapse that could trigger a mass migration comparable to the Mariel exodus of 1980.
Gates said this in an interview on the Face the Nation program by CBS, hosted by Margaret Brennan, on the same day that the current CIA director, John Ratcliffe, made a historic visit to Havana.
"The greatest risk is that we end up with another Mariel-type evacuation from Cuba, with tens of thousands of Cubans heading to the United States out of desperation," Gates stated.
Ratcliffe met in Havana with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, known as "El Cangrejo" and grandson of Raúl Castro, with the Minister of the Interior Lázaro Álvarez Casas and the head of the Intelligence Directorate of MININT, Ramón Romero Curbelo.
The visit of the CIA director to Havana was requested by Washington and approved by the so-called "Revolutionary Directorate," as confirmed by the regime itself in an official statement from the Communist Party of Cuba.
Ratcliffe delivered a conditional message: the United States would be willing to engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes "fundamental changes," and the island is no longer a safe haven for adversaries in the Western Hemisphere.
Gates acknowledged that Cuba has historically played a role in regional security, particularly through its security forces deployed in Venezuela, where they formed the personal protective detail for Nicolás Maduro.
"I didn't trust his own people," Gates said about Maduro, explaining why the then-Venezuelan president turned to Cuban troops for his personal security.
The former official admitted that Cuba "has been involved in ways that have impacted our national security and our interests in its participation in other countries for a long time," but dismissed the notion that this constitutes a direct and imminent threat to the United States.
"Are they an imminent threat to the United States? Aside from these, let's say, peripheral forms, I believe the main threat is, frankly, the collapse," Gates stated.
When Brennan pointed out that the Trump administration claims to be trying to prevent exactly that collapse, Gates did not question that stance.
The historical reference invoked by Gates is the Mariel exodus: between April and October of 1980, more than 125,000 Cubans crossed to the United States in boats from the port of Mariel, following the opening declared by Fidel Castro.
Gates' warning carries particular weight given the scale of the current Cuban exodus: since 2022, more than 850,000 Cubans have left the island, marking the largest migration cycle in the country's recent history.
In 2025, applications for asylum from Cubans in Brazil surpassed 41,900, an increase of 88% compared to the previous year, making Cubans the largest nationality submitting asylum requests in that country, according to the Migration Observatory.
Gates' interview comes at a time when the Trump administration is maintaining a policy of maximum pressure on the Cuban regime while exploring channels for direct negotiation through the CIA, a combination that analysts describe as unusual in the history of relations between the two countries.
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