US President Donald Trump has said he would “certainly consider” using military force against Cuba and hopes to settle the matter before he leaves office in 2029. He made the remarks in a phone interview on Thursday with Hugh Hewitt, a conservative radio host on Salem News Channel, after being asked whether he was weighing a military intervention to free the island.
Trump said his administration was following the situation “very closely” and described Cuba as essentially a failed place, nation or whatever label one prefers. According to a published report, it was the first time he had attached a timeline to a possible operation.
Trump’s comments on Rubio and Cuban voters
Trump said Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose parents are from Cuba, would be eager to carry out such an operation. Trump said he would like to act on behalf of Cubans who had reached America after being treated harshly, adding that he had won the Cuban vote in Florida by a wide margin.
The comments follow a series of threats. On Monday, Trump said Cuba “will fall fairly soon” and that Washington would help the island “on a humanitarian basis”. In March, he said he expected to have “the honour of taking Cuba” at a time when the island’s power grid had collapsed.
Oil blockade, sanctions and stalled talks
Trump placed Cuba under a de facto oil blockade in January, after the US seized Venezuela’s president, Nicolas Maduro, and cut off Venezuelan oil supplies to the island. He signed an executive order calling Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the US and threatened tariffs on any country that supplied it with fuel.
The blockade has caused repeated nationwide blackouts, shortages of fuel and food, and a humanitarian crisis. Cuban officials have described it as “collective punishment”. Washington has also expanded sanctions, targeting Cuba’s state oil company, President Miguel Diaz-Canel and relatives of former President Raul Castro, and this month announced a new round aimed at 10 people and entities linked to the government, military and oil industry.
The US has issued an arrest warrant for Castro. Officials from both sides have held talks on the blockade, but Cuba’s foreign minister said in June there had been “no progress”.
Military signals from Washington and Havana
In March, the head of US Southern Command told senators that American troops were not rehearsing for an invasion of Cuba. Cuban officials responded that the island was ready for any attack.
