Cuba Stands at a Critical Inflection Point

For twenty-five years, the Cuba Study Group has advocated for pragmatic solutions that advance a free, sovereign, inclusive, and prosperous Cuba, and for people-centered U.S. policies that create conditions for transformative change on the island. We have championed market reform and entrepreneurship, convinced that Cuba’s economic future should be anchored in local private enterprise. We have called for respect for human rights and political reforms that allow the Cuban nation to move peacefully toward an era of greater openness and reconciliation.

Today, the political foundation for advancing this vision is more fragile than ever. Great powers appear to be pivoting away from a global system of rules and returning to one where might makes right. In Washington, senior officials once again speak of the Western Hemisphere as the United States’ “backyard” and openly call for accelerating regime collapse in Cuba. In all of this, the future of Cuban sovereignty hangs in the balance with significant repercussions for future generations.

Yet Cuba’s dire vulnerability to these tectonic forces is no less due to the revolutionary government’s stubborn resistance to change and persistent dismissal of the needs and aspirations of the Cuban people at home and abroad.

More than thirty-five years after the Cold War ended, Cuban authorities continue to prioritize continuity and external lifelines over internal changes that would endow Cuban sovereignty with renewed meaning. Havana has obstinately preserved a repressive police state and centrally planned economy while using exile and mass migration as pressure valves. Its leaders insist on consorting with U.S. adversaries and aligning against Washington on every major geopolitical challenge. U.S. sanctions have undeniably compounded Cuba’s economic difficulties, but their impact is worse precisely because of Cuba’s refusal to embrace market opening. This is despite an economy in its worst crisis in three decades, an energy grid in disrepair, the hemisphere’s oldest population, historic outward migration, and repeated calls for reform from friends and foes. Today, no external power will bail the island out. A Revolution running on empty is finally out of gas.

In these circumstances, old formulas will not avert catastrophe. To prevent greater disaster, Cuban authorities must take steps they have never taken before. Havana should engage in direct dialogue that brings together voices from across the political spectrum on the island and in the diaspora to chart a shared path forward. Its leaders should propose a bold restructuring that advances the rule of law, democratic norms, and a market economy while preserving a social safety net. And they should make unmistakable gestures—such as unconditionally freeing political prisoners—that demonstrate genuine commitment to turning the page.

The Cuban system today is one that no other country has chosen to replicate—and one that its own citizens overwhelmingly reject. We will always advocate for peaceful paths forward. However, absent credible paths to homegrown change, no one should be surprised that many Cubans today appear to prefer the risks of foreign intervention to the stasis of the status quo.

For its part, the United States should resist the pull toward violence and vengeance and be willing to explore peaceful solutions with competent island counterparts. Washington should ensure that any additional pressure is narrowly targeted to avoid imposing further suffering on the Cuban population. But for Cuban officials, the window to forge a new future made and controlled by Cubans is closing. The time to act is now, not as a concession, but as a belated sign of political maturity.