Regime change in Cuba now

OPINION:

Communist Cuba is in its death throes. It is collapsing, and we should help it collapse.

Cuba produces nothing. Its economy is paralyzed, its infrastructure in tatters. It has no agriculture, no livestock or poultry industries, no fisheries, no potable water, no health services, no electricity and no way out.

Gone are the days of Russian and Venezuelan subsidies that kept the country afloat from one economic crisis to another.

Today’s Cuba is a Castro family kleptocracy. Its rigid Marxism stifles economic activity.

Once-verdant fields lie fallow, coastal waters are off-limits to fishermen, and health services are exported for hard currency. Private agricultural cultivation is illegal, and electric power is almost nonexistent.

A nighttime satellite photo of Cuba resembles one of North Korea: total darkness surrounded by the lights of more prosperous neighbors.

Communist elites relied on foreign capital from tourism, exile community remittances, export of medical professionals, a few export minerals, money laundering, drug trafficking and, previously, oil from Venezuela.

Those funds provided for the importation and distribution of foods and services as a method of population control.

Cuba invested heavily in tourism, especially resort hotels for Canadian and European visitors. Tourism numbers peaked in the 2017-2019 period but have since declined by nearly 70%. There was massive hotel construction, but no new visitors.

Overseas relatives sent billions of dollars to needy friends and relatives on the island to offset Cuba’s harsh daily conditions. These remittances, which once accounted for more than 8% of gross domestic product, have sharply declined.

Cuba’s export of medical professionals also has suffered. Foreign governments pay Havana premium per-doctor dollars for contracted medical services. Cuba then keeps most of those dollars while paying its deployed personnel small stipends amounting to modern slavery.

This billion-dollar industry has taken economic hits as countries cancel or decline to renew these lucrative contracts. Recent terminations include Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Antigua and St. Lucia.

Cuba is a beggar and deadbeat state with no credit rating. The District of Columbia’s GDP is larger than Cuba’s national GDP. China donates rice; Mexico sends beans and foodstuffs; Colombia sends eggs; Uruguay sends powdered milk; and Belarus sends medicines. Russia sends very limited oil. Blackouts are routine.

Imported consumer products are diverted to well-stocked dollar stores operated by the military. Reports note that the military conglomerate GAESA has amassed as much as $18 billion in overseas banks from these sales while the country crumbles and people starve.

The regime encouraged migration to relieve social tensions, but it has instead created a demographic crisis. Cuba has a falling and failing population. Since 2021, more than 1 million Cubans — mostly productive young people — have fled.

While Cuba’s armed forces are in shambles, the police and intelligence forces that sustain the ruling communist oligarchy seem to prosper. With more than 1,200 political prisoners, Cuba leads the Western Hemisphere in systemic human rights abuses.

Since 1959, communist Cuba has been at the center of all political instability in the Americas, with anti-Americanism in its DNA. Havana has organized insurgencies, conducted drug trafficking operations into the United States, protected wanted terrorists, killed U.S. nationals, conducted espionage against the United States and spearheaded our most recent migrant border crisis.

Cuba’s only way out is to radically change its economic model, and that can happen only with radical political change.

Democracy cannot be rebuilt by reforming communism. Communist elites cannot stay; they must go. Grift and graft are too entrenched. Inefficiencies and mismanagement are endemic. Political repression is pervasive. The Venezuelan model of removing one dictator only to keep the system in place is a nonstarter.

Yet Cuban leaders have successfully navigated relations with every U.S. administration since President Eisenhower. Castro Inc. is buying time, willing to negotiate but offering nothing. They hope that after the November midterm elections, a supportive Democratic Party will retake Congress.

With their friends and supporters on Capitol Hill, they will muddle through this economic crisis without enacting a single reform or ceding power.

President Trump’s reinvigorated Cuba policy is achieving results. All state sectors are in decline. His May 1 additional sanctions list will continue to pressure the regime and its enablers.

Communist Cuba is on the ropes. The U.S. has it cornered and must now push for radical regime change. Nothing less will work. The revolution is dead; let’s help the Cuban people bury it.

• Emilio T. Gonzalez is a retired U.S. intelligence officer who has served in senior positions in the U.S. Army, on the National Security Council and in the Department of Homeland Security.