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Two prominent Cuban-American academics published an analysis in Foreign Affairs warning that time is running out for the Cuban regime and the only viable solution is a negotiated agreement with the Trump administration before the accumulated pressure leads to a humanitarian collapse or a U.S. military intervention.
The article, titled "Cuba's Only Choice" and authored by Michael J. Bustamante, holder of the Emilio Bacardí Moreau Chair in Cuban and Cuban American Studies at the University of Miami, and Ricardo Herrero, executive director of the Cuba Study Group in Washington D.C., describes an unprecedented spiral of pressures on the island.
The authors note that the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by American commandos in January 2026 cut off the subsidized Venezuelan oil supply that sustained Cuba, and that the de facto oil blockade maintained by Trump during the last five months—allowing only one Russian tanker to pass—has driven the country to the brink.
The result is a catastrophic energy crisis: daily and unpredictable blackouts, paralyzed basic services, and a population on the brink of its endurance.
Bustamante and Herrero outline a high-stakes diplomatic and military escalation that the regime has underestimated.
In mid-May, the director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, made a surprise visit to Havana—just one day after the Cuban Minister of Energy publicly admitted that the island had no oil reserves—and issued an ultimatum: Cuba must sever its security ties with China and Russia, close its listening stations on Cuban territory, reform the economy, and release political prisoners.
The CIA delegation that accompanied Ratcliffe included the leader of the operation to capture Maduro, a symbolic message that was impossible to overlook.
On May 20, the Department of Justice declassified a federal indictment against Raúl Castro for ordering the shooting down of two planes belonging to Brothers to the Rescue in 1996, which resulted in the deaths of four individuals. On the same day, the carrier strike group of the USS Nimitz entered the Caribbean.
According to a report from Politico last Wednesday, the Pentagon has been positioning troops and equipment in the region for months and is just waiting for Trump's approval to act.
A day later, Axios revealed that the administration internally describes its strategy as "accelerationism" and that it has already conducted military simulation exercises for intervention scenarios in Cuba, believing that the regime could collapse this summer.
Faced with this pressure, Havana has responded with gestures that Washington considers insufficient: the release of some political prisoners, a decree granting clemency to 2,000 common prisoners, and a willingness to open up to Cuban-American investments.
The regime bet that the United States' war with Iran would distract the Trump administration and that the midterm elections in November would change the political landscape. Bustamante and Herrero describe that bet as a fatal strategic error.
The authors acknowledge the moral dimension of U.S. economic coercion, but they are emphatic: "The responsibility to avert catastrophe now rests with Havana."
On May 1, Trump signed an executive order granting the Treasury and the State Department immediate authority to impose secondary sanctions on foreign companies operating with Cuban state-owned enterprises in strategic sectors such as mining, energy, and finance, with a deadline of June 5.
Several companies, including shipping companies CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd, as well as the Canadian mining company Sherritt International, have already suspended operations on the island.
Marco Rubio admitted on May 21 that "there is not much progress" in the negotiations with the regime, and warned that "Cuba will not be able to keep buying time or wait for us to give in."
Bustamante and Herrero believe that the best outcome is a negotiated agreement in which Havana makes sufficient concessions for Trump to present it as a victory, thus avoiding a humanitarian collapse and the risk of military intervention just 90 miles from Florida.
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