On May 20, the Trump administration indicted retired 94-year-old Cuban leader Raúl Castro, the surviving brother of Fidel Castro, and five others on charges of murder and conspiracy. The indictment stems from the 1996 Cuban military’s shooting down of two small planes, killing four pilots of the Miami-based anti-Castro Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue, accused of violating Cuban airspace.
The 30-year-old indictment announced in Miami on Cuban Independence Day, came five months after the U.S. began enforcing a blockade to prevent oil deliveries to the island nation, triggering a humanitarian crisis. The lack of electricity has halted most commerce, hospital treatment, agriculture and transportation. This economic hardship comes on top of Washington’s 66-year-long economic embargo against Cuba.
One week before the U.S. indictment of Raúl Castro, President Trump’s CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Havana to meet with Cuban government officials. Reports on the May 14 meeting indicate Ratcliffe delivered an ultimatum that demanded Cuba’s communist government make “fundamental changes,” with the implicit threat of military action if they fail to comply. There’s speculation that the Trump regime may be contemplating an operation against Cuba similar to the Pentagon’s Jan. 3 kidnapping of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, claiming it was a law enforcement action. Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive. Here he talks about the Trump regime’s escalating pressure campaign against Cuba that could portend a U.S. military invasion.
PETER KORNBLUH: Well, this was a one-two punch in what is an escalating campaign of economic warfare and now military threats to attack Cuba, decapitate the leadership and basically terminate the Cuban Revolution. The one-two punch was one, CIA Director John Ratcliffe going to Cuba, meeting with Cuban intelligence officials and with the grandson of Raúl Castro, who’s known as Raúlito, Little Raúl. And this mission was an overt mission. I think many of your listeners know that the CIA is known for its many covert operations in Cuba going all the way back to the days of the Bay of Pigs and Operation Mongoose and ZR Rifle, the code name for all the assassination plots against the Castros. But now the CIA director was on an open trip essentially to basically tell the Cuban leadership, “Look, President Trump wants you to do certain things. If you don’t do them, then we’re coming after you.”
That was basically the bottom line of his message. As he was leaving Cuba, the administration leaked word that in the coming days thereafter they were going to indict Raúl Castro and that was the kind of two-punch of this double whammy. On the surface of it might not sound very threatening, but you have to remember that this was the modus operandi that the Trump administration used in Venezuela. They indicted Nicolás Maduro and then they sent a Delta Force team in to seize him, basically kidnap him. That operation took the lives of 32 Cuban security agents who were there to guard Nicholás Maduro from exactly that type of operation. They all lost their lives. So the kind of escalation of pressure was very dramatic over these last 10 days or so. And we’ve entered a period of great stress where there is high alert in Cuba that the United States may launch a military attack.
And I think growing fears throughout the United States, people who care about Cuba and care about peace and justice, that Trump might actually kind of take out his frustrations for not having a solid victory in Iran by swooping in and trying to claim Cuba as a vassal state of the United States of America.
SCOTT HARRIS: Peter, I wanted to get your speculation on what might be in the works for Cuba vis-à-vis the Trump regime and what they may be planning. How do you think the Cuban military will respond if the U.S. does conduct some operations inside Cuba? What do you think the response of the Cuban population would be after this horrible oil embargo creating a hellish life day to day as well as that’s on top of a 66-year-economic embargo that’s been in place?
PETER KORNBLUH: Well, the Cuban population is suffering and they are trying to get through every hour and every day with just enough food on the table and some degree of escaping the heat. The Cuban population are consumed with daily survival. They’re not really focusing on the idea of nationalism and then defending their country. There will be many Cubans who want change one way or the other at this point because the situation is so onerous and insufferable for them. The Cuban military is going to have a very difficult time. Cuban military is antiquated; does not have the resources. They don’t have access to oil either. The United States special operations teams, Delta Forces, etc., are extremely formidable as they showed in Caracas where not a single U.S. soldier was injured in that attack, which was very quick. The United States can conduct surgical strikes and swift incursions in Cuba in and out.
They don’t have to have boots on the ground to do considerable damage to the island, to the government, to the infrastructure, to the security divisions of the Cuban government, which will obviously be targeted first. But the real question is, What happens then? Does that necessarily lead to regime change? Even going in and kidnapping Raul Castro who’s about to turn 95 years old, that would not change anything in the Cuban leadership, to tell you the truth. He’s not president. He’s a figurehead leader. He’s a historical leader, but he is not really involved in the day-to-day governing of Cuba right now. And if we destroy Cuba, then basically it’s going to be up to the U.S. taxpayer to pick up all those pieces. We’re going to have to pay for it to be reconstructed. The alternative is that President Trump can come to a negotiated solution with the Cuban leadership, claim victory, maybe get his name slapped on a hotel in Veradero Beach and then just tell the American public, “Look, I did what my predecessors couldn’t do. I pushed the Cubans and they opened up and now it’s the end of communism, etc., etc.”
I mean, all that blarney and bluster would be fine if there’s a peaceful solution which makes far more sense for immediate short-term, medium-term and long-term U.S. interests in Cuba and the Caribbean.
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