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An America First Case for Ending the Cuban Embargo
Foreign Affairs
An America First Case for Ending the Cuban Embargo
The time is ripe for engagement with Havana.
Mission accomplished in Venezuela. After months of escalating pressure that culminated in the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro, Donald Trump has declared victory.
Now the president’s attention has shifted to Cuba. Trump has suggested that without Venezuelan oil, Cuba is teetering on the brink, and on January 11, he urged its government to “make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”
It’s a warning Cuban leaders should take seriously. But the collapse of the island’s economy would not be a problem exclusively for Havana.
For decades, Washington’s economic war on Cuba has weakened a government that has arguably been our most reliable security partner in the Caribbean.
Instead of increasing America’s leverage, tougher sanctions have made Cuba less stable—and the United States less secure—by destabilizing the island’s economy, accelerating unprecedented migration to the U.S. border, undermining counternarcotics efforts, hurting U.S. companies, and incentivizing closer relations with Russia and China. A truly failed Cuban state just 90 miles from our coast would probably generate even greater blowback.
Current Cuba policy is rooted not in our core national interests, but in Cold War nostalgia and Florida politics. These have stymied the recalibration explicitly called for in the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS):
We will reward and encourage the region’s governments, political parties, and movements broadly aligned with our principles and strategy. But we must not overlook governments with different outlooks with whom we nonetheless share interests and who want to work with us.
The NSS lays out four concrete security concerns in the Western Hemisphere: stopping migration to the United States; treating drug cartels as national security threats; blocking Chinese and Russian influence; and securing U.S. access to supply chains, strategic locations, and resources.
Addressing these four concerns is described as the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, or as Trump has called it, the “Donroe Doctrine.”
Championing the Monroe Doctrine is not new for a Trump presidency. In 2019, then–National Security Advisor John Bolton pronounced the Monroe Doctrine “alive and well.” The rhetoric may be the same in Trump’s second term, but Bolton’s interpretation and the 2025 NSS’s framing reflect two entirely different approaches. Bolton used the term to argue for a Cold War-style, anti-socialist campaign targeting Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. The policy articulated in the NSS is driven by a different logic.
The NSS represents a shift from a neoconservative doctrine obsessed with communism to a “flexible realism” that sees “nothing inconsistent or hypocritical… in maintaining good relations with countries whose governing systems and societies differ from ours.”
But when it comes to Cuba, the Trump administration’s approach is neither flexible nor realistic. Overseen by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a neoconservative ideologue who declared himself the “architect” of the maximum pressure sanctions initiated during Trump’s first term, current Cuba policy undercuts the very goals and principles at the heart of the NSS.
A 180-degree shift toward engagement is not a concession or a gamble—it is the most coherent way to bring U.S. policy toward Cuba into alignment with the administration’s strategic vision for the hemisphere.
Nowhere is the current incoherence more striking than in counternarcotics.
For all the talk in Washington about narco-trafficking as a national security threat, U.S. policy toward Cuba ignores one inconvenient truth: Cuba is the U.S. government’s top security partner in the Caribbean.
According to the State Department’s 2024 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, drug traffickers steer clear of the island due to the Cuban government’s “robust and aggressive security presence,” which stops transnational criminal organizations from gaining a foothold. The same cannot be said for U.S. allies such as the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, and the Bahamas, which are major transit points for cocaine due to corruption, weak law enforcement, and porous borders. In contrast, Cuba is widely recognized as a “bright spot” in the fight against the illegal drug trade in Latin America, working closely with the U.S. Coast Guard and other U.S. agencies to track drug traffickers, share intelligence, and disrupt smuggling routes moving through the region.
“The most efficient partner of the United States in security terms in Latin America is Cuba,” said Hal Klepak, a military historian and former strategic analyst at NATO. “There are gains in key security areas for the United States from cooperation with Cuba that frankly there aren’t with any other Latin American country.”
Those gains will likely be unfulfilled without a change in policy. Under the supervision of Rubio, whose brother-in-law was convicted of trafficking cocaine into the United States in the 1980s, the State Department completely excised Cuba from its 2025 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report. No explanation was given as to why. Meanwhile, under Rubio’s guidance, the Trump administration has smeared the island with labels detached from reality. For example, the State Department’s designation of Cuba as a “State Sponsor of Terrorism” flies in the face of the consensus position in the U.S. intelligence community. There is no credible evidence that the island sponsors terrorism, and it has even been a victim of terrorist attacks carried out and financed by individuals in the United States.
The irony is hard to miss. At a moment when the administration is emphasizing the need to ensure the safety of U.S. borders by combatting cartel violence and transnational crime, U.S. policy is undermining cooperation with one of the few governments in the region that consistently delivers.
The costs of this approach are not limited to counternarcotics.
For years, Washington has warned that Russia and China are expanding their footprints in the hemisphere. The National Security Strategy treats this as a central threat, noting that non-hemispheric competitors are exploiting openings created by economic pressure and political neglect.
Cuba is Exhibit A.
Seven years ago, the island was moving—slowly but unmistakably—back into the American sphere of influence. Diplomatic relations had been normalized, the embargo had been softened, and trade between the two countries was increasing. For the first time since the Cold War, the United States was positioned to shape Cuba’s economic future through engagement rather than punishment.
U.S. cruise ships arrived daily in Havana. U.S. airlines restored regular service. Google, Netflix, AT&T, Marriott, Airbnb, Carnival, Caterpillar, and General Electric, among others, were in Cuba striking deals or exploring business opportunities.
That opening was abruptly shut down when Trump first handed Cuba policy to Rubio in 2017. The “maximum pressure” strategy, pushed by Rubio during Trump’s first term and embraced by President Joe Biden, cut Cuba off from the United States.
American companies abandoned the island, and some were sued in federal court in Miami by Cuban Americans claiming—often dubiously—that the companies had trafficked in their confiscated property. Those suits were made possible when Trump activated Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, a long-dormant and controversial law, at the urging of Rubio and his fellow South Florida hardliners, who had received campaign donations from some of the claimants.
The result was predictable: Washington created a vacuum that Russia and China moved to fill.
Moscow has offered investment, tourism, and oil, while Russian warships replaced American cruise ships in Havana’s harbor. Chinese firms have expanded their role in infrastructure, telecommunications, and energy. These relationships are not rooted in ideological affinity, but in necessity.
There is no indication that Cuba prefers alignment with Russia or China over closer ties with the United States. On the contrary, recent history suggests the opposite. When engagement with Washington was possible, Havana pursued it. When engagement was replaced with hostility, the Cuban government turned elsewhere.
Yet neoconservative hardliners continue to treat the Russian and Chinese presence in Cuba as if it were a provocation rather than an outcome their policy helped bring about. Rubio and his Florida allies have propagated myths of “spy bases” and other far-fetched threats to justify ever harsher measures that deepen Cuba’s dependency on America’s adversaries.
This is the paradox at the heart of the administration’s Cuba policy: By weakening the Cuban state and excluding U.S. companies, Washington has reduced its own influence while amplifying that of its rivals.
In 1958, the United States supplied about 70 percent of Cuba’s total imports (86 percent of its agricultural imports), and took 67 percent of Cuba’s total exports (88 percent of its agricultural exports). Today, Cuba imports more from China, which is halfway around the world, than from the United States, which is 90 miles away. According to the United States Agriculture Coalition for Cuba, the U.S. holds a 15 percent market share of food exports to Cuba, which could rise to 60 percent if trade restrictions were lifted.
The embargo not only restricts Cuban purchases of U.S. goods; it also prevents U.S. firms from operating in Cuba or partnering with Cuban entities. Earlier this year, Cuba leased land to a foreign business for the first time since its 1959 revolution, allowing a Vietnamese company to grow rice on more than 7,000 acres.
Meanwhile, the Cuban government is considering new liberalization measures to attract even more investment, allowing foreign firms to operate in U.S. dollars and hire workers directly. The announcement was made at the Havana International Fair, which hosted 715 companies from 52 countries. Needless to say, the presence of American companies was negligible.
In addition, our current Cuba policy forecloses any possibility of gaining access to Cuba’s critical minerals. Cuba has the fourth-largest cobalt reserves in the world and significant quantities of nickel. The foreign mining company extracting both minerals from the island is Canadian.
Meanwhile, a recent assessment by the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that there are an undiscovered 4 billion barrels of oil off the coast of northern Cuba. Companies from Russia, China, India, Great Britain, France, Angola, Spain, Venezuela, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Canada have obtained exploration rights.
While the NSS calls for making the United States the “partner of first choice,” our policy ensures the opposite. By excluding itself from the Cuban market, the United States forfeits economic influence, weakens its competitive position, cedes critical resources to foreign competitors, and undermines its own national security objectives.
It has also imposed a heavy burden on the American taxpayer.
The NSS makes clear that the American public is no longer willing to fund permanent foreign-policy projects that have no connection to core national interests. U.S. policy toward Cuba violates that principle at every level.
Maintaining the embargo is not cost-free. It requires a sprawling enforcement apparatus to police travel, financial transactions, shipping, and trade—often targeting American citizens and companies rather than adversaries. Millions of taxpayer dollars are spent each year freezing assets, investigating minor violations, and levying fines that do nothing to improve U.S. security.
Taxpayers are also bankrolling an extensive ecosystem of nonprofit groups, media outlets, and quasi-intelligence initiatives under the banner of “democracy promotion.” For decades, the federal government has frittered away hundreds of millions of dollars with little impact beyond subsidizing Miami-based pork barrel projects and enriching the allies of Cuban-American politicians such as Rubio, Bob Menendez, and Mario Díaz-Balart.
These programs are not only not mandated by the National Security Strategy; they are in direct contradiction to it. Neither democracy nor human rights are mentioned once in the NSS in relation to our hemispheric security interests.
The Trump administration has overseen a historic overhaul of the international assistance bureaucracy, cutting billions of dollars in foreign aid programs in an effort to redirect resources toward core national interests and reduce inefficient spending.
But Rubio has protected so-called “democracy promotion” aimed at Cuba. Miami hardliners still enjoy cushy salaries bankrolled by American taxpayers and a direct line to Rubio and other Cuban-American politicians in Washington.
A policy of engagement that normalizes U.S.–Cuba relations would render both the sanctions enforcement machinery and the “democracy promotion” industry unnecessary, directly advancing the NSS’s stated goal of reducing the welfare-regulatory-administrative state and the foreign-aid complex.
Americans are paying for Cuba policy not only with their taxes, but with their freedoms as well.
The NSS stresses that the federal government’s first duty is to safeguard the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens. Yet our Cuba policy violates those rights by restricting travel, not due to a national emergency or public-safety concern, but to pursue regime change fantasies concocted by neoconservatives like Rubio, who, needless to say, has never stepped foot on the island.
Cuba welcomes American travelers, who face fewer safety risks there than in other countries in Latin America. Ironically, the Cuban government allows U.S. visitors to freely go to the island, while our own government prevents its citizens from traveling in exercise of their constitutional rights.
Americans may travel to Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and even Iran without a federal licensing process dictating the purpose and content of their activities. But U.S. law makes it illegal to travel to Cuba as a tourist and imposes criminal penalties of up to ten years in prison and $250,000 in fines.
A decade ago, when travel restrictions were loosened, hundreds of thousands of Americans were visiting the island. Now, Cuba’s beach resorts receive far more Russian tourists than Americans.
By infringing on our right to travel, our current Cuba policy limits the potential for the United States to exert “soft power” to further our interests, which is one of the stated goals of the NSS. A policy that prohibits Americans from exercising the fundamental freedoms that project U.S. soft power is fundamentally irreconcilable with our strategy of countering foreign influence in the hemisphere.
“Fifty years is enough—the concept of opening with Cuba is fine. I think we should have made a stronger deal,” Trump said in a September 2015 interview with The Daily Caller. He finally has a chance to make that deal and his NSS lays out exactly how it should look: transactional, interest-based, and grounded not in ideology but in reality.
For its part, the Cuban government has shown a consistent willingness to come to the negotiating table. Cuba wants stability, a strong bilateral relationship, and an end to sanctions. There is only one red line it will not cross: its sovereignty. This non-negotiable is consistent with Trump’s NSS, which encourages other countries to prioritize their own interests and makes clear that the U.S. “stand[s] for the sovereign rights of nations.”
Unfortunately, Cuba policy remains trapped in a failed regime-change logic that predates the end of the Cold War. That logic has been kept alive not by strategic necessity, but through a policy captured by a handful of Cuban-American hardliners who have spent decades insisting that the only acceptable outcome is total surrender.
That is not dealmaking. It is a recipe for failure. Any negotiation driven by ideological demands for political rupture or democratic transition is unlikely to get far.
The choice is not between pressure and engagement. Pressure has already been applied. The choice now is whether that pressure leads to a deal—or to collapse.
Collapse could mean mass migration, the deeper entrenchment of foreign rivals, an opening for drug traffickers, and a failed state just 90 miles from Florida. That scenario may serve the political ambitions of ideologues in Miami and Washington, but it would damage the interests of the United States.
If Trump wants the best deal, he will need to sideline the regime-change fantasies that have sabotaged U.S. policy for decades. Cuba is weakened, but it is not desperate. It will not trade its sovereignty for survival.
The United States has leverage. It also has something to lose. The only outcome that serves U.S. interests is the one that keeps Cuba standing—and brings it to the table as a partner, not a prize.
The post An America First Case for Ending the Cuban Embargo appeared first on The American Conservative.
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