The debate over Cuba’s future has morphed into a feverish scramble, taking place almost entirely abroad, while Cubans on the island bear the crisis with little say in what comes next. In Miami and Washington, a growing cast of investors, lobbyists, and Cuban-American groups with close ties to Trump and Rubio is already positioning itself for a post-communist Cuba—bidding on assets abandoned by departing foreign firms, drafting transition laws, even sketching an $8 billion plan to rebuild the island’s airports.
Yet the transition they are preparing for is not only uncertain; it seems increasingly distant with each passing month since January 3. In Havana, the regime holds firm, while Washington’s own posture has cooled. Rubio now warns that Cuba is “not a miniseries,” and officials talk about a pressure campaign that could run through the rest of Trump’s term. The president’s familiar Cuba talking points at the UN this week only reinforced the sense of a policy shifting into autopilot, while his embrace of Venezuela’s Delcy Rodríguez suggests any eventual deal with Havana may fall far short of expectations in South Florida.
Meanwhile, looking beyond the politics of the moment, other efforts are exploring what an eventual transition would actually require. Two new blueprints—the CSG-backed Cuba Transformación roadmap and a Harvard working group report—come to remarkably similar conclusions: a democratic state governed by the rule of law, a social market economy, and the recognition that recovery will require both deep changes inside Cuba and changes in U.S. policy. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Will Freeman raises a more immediate concern: that Cuba is deteriorating faster than its government, leaving any eventual transition to inherit hollowed-out institutions, a depleted population, and a country that is much harder to rebuild.
This edition of Cuba Review looks at both the mounting pressure on Cuba and the debate over what, if anything, comes after. When the fever eventually breaks, the question may be what is left of the country we all intend to save.
