The emeritus professor of Anthropology at Florida International University (FIU) and former director of the Institute of Cuban Research, Jorge Duany, warned this Monday that a potential U.S. military intervention in Cuba could face prolonged asymmetrical resistance, quite different from the lightning operation that overthrew Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, according to his analysis shared during a CiberCuba interview where he discussed the meeting of Southern Command with the FAR at the Guantanamo Naval Base.
Duany's analysis begins with an article published in El Nuevo Herald that describes the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) as a force that is "very weak on paper, with outdated equipment and little training." However, the academic warns that this diagnosis does not tell the whole story.
"The doctrine of the so-called war of all the people certainly allows for the visualization of a prolonged situation of urban and rural guerrillas and asymmetric resistance," Duany pointed out, referring to the Cuban military doctrine that combines the Armed Forces with territorial militias and civil mobilization.
That doctrine, reaffirmed in January 2026 when the Cuban National Defense Council approved "plans for the transition to a State of War," makes Cuba a radically different scenario from Venezuela.
"This once again does not bode well for a U.S. military intervention in Cuba similar to the one that took place in Venezuela, which happened quickly and practically resulted in no loss of life for the United States," the professor emphasized.
To illustrate the risks of underestimating resistance, Tania Costa, a journalist from CiberCuba, referred to the case of Iran: "We thought it was just a matter of removing Khamenei and the story would be over, and here we are still facing the situation two months later; we are still dealing with the Iran problem."
The academic himself clarified his position: "I find it hard to believe that there will be resistance; I’m not saying it will happen overnight," he acknowledged, although he insisted that scenarios of prolonged conflict cannot be ruled out.
The host Tania Costa introduced another determining factor: migration risk. "The terrible fear is of a migratory wave: with a war in Cuba plus the shortages due to increasing blackouts, it cannot stop a migratory wave, meaning people have to fight to survive," she stated.
Duany confirmed that this scenario has concrete precedents. "The largest migration wave in Cuba since the beginning of the Revolution has already occurred, indeed in all of history, in the last five or six years following COVID, where perhaps more than a million people have left through all means," he stated.
The main exit route, the Nicaragua-Mexico route, is currently closed. According to Duany, Cuban migration is now being redistributed towards South America, Central America, or Europe.
The debate over a possible military intervention gained momentum after the meeting on May 29 between the head of Southern Command, General Francis L. Donovan, and General Roberto Legrá Sotolongo, First Deputy Minister of the FAR, held within the perimeter of the Guantanamo Naval Base.
U.S. Southern Command has publicly acknowledged having contingency plans in place for a potential new crisis of Cuban refugees, which reinforces the migratory dimension as a central strategic variable in any calculations regarding the future of the island.
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