With new American pressure, will Cuba fall?

If you were to listen to many of the commentators, experts and prognosticators, you would think that Cuba is about to collapse.

The socialist-leaning country, they keep telling us, is about to be taken off life-support and dispatched to the communist graveyard. Now that the Trump administration has effectively turned off the Venezuelan oil tap and browbeat Mexico into significantly reducing its petroleum exports to the island, they are convinced that the death-watch for Cuba has begun.

In a recent Politico article, one insider familiar with U.S. government thinking explained: “Energy is the chokehold to kill the regime.” Of course, official Washington would settle for “another Venezuela” and a Delcy Rodríguez-like figure to take charge in Cuba.

A lot of smart folks, however, have been talking about the Cuban government’s demise since the late 1980s — with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communist dictatorships in East Germany and Romania. Many a pundit clamoured: “Cuba is next.”

Then it was the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s and the onset of Cuba’s devastating “Special Period in Peacetime.” Surely the Cubans couldn’t survive without the Kremlin’s financial largesse and barter agreements — to say nothing of then-U.S. president George W. Bush’s infatuation with “regime change” in Cuba.

Yet the Cubans bent (and, yes, suffered horribly), but they never broke. Havana then went on to survive the first term of Donald Trump’s presidency. He threw everything but the proverbial kitchen sink at the Cuban government, reversing most of former U.S. president Barack Obama’s normalization efforts and commitment to co-existence, and the Cubans still held their ground.

Don’t get me wrong. Cuba is engulfed in a fundamental economic and humanitarian crisis. But it is not knocking on death’s door.

The one question, though, that does give me pause is: Where is Cuba going to get the petroleum products to run its electrical grid, tourism sector and what’s left of its manufacturing base? Or, for that matter, its jet fuel — shortages of that fuel have suspended many vacation flights into Cuba — halting a key cash generator for the country. One thing is for sure, oil-rich Canada, especially under the leadership of Prime Minister Mark Carney, is not going to come to Cuba’s rescue.

Will China, Russia or Iran pitch in with some oil to tide the Cubans over in the short term? It’s hard to say for sure. But I wouldn’t be overly optimistic.

Could they get some from Algeria, Brazil and Angola? It’s possible. But they would have to come up with the cash to pay for it.

Perhaps Mexico and Venezuela — once Trump is preoccupied with domestic political and affordability pressures — will be able to turn the spigot back on. But that’s also a big if.

So, Cuba now finds itself once again in the unenviable position of trying to survive in a world where its erstwhile friends have been scared off by threats of U.S. economic and military punishment. But that doesn’t mean the Cubans are not holding any cards.

For one thing, I don’t see Trump invading Cuba with U.S. ground forces any time soon. He could try to blockade Cuba à la the 1962 naval quarantine to stop any oil from reaching the island. But that would unquestionably be an act of war, a flagrant violation of international law and put him offside with America’s allies.

Moreover, Trump is eventually going to run the risk of overextending U.S. naval assets if he keeps going at his present pace. You can only deploy an aircraft carrier strike group to so many countries. Sooner or later, the financial and military-related consequences of these deployments will exceed the rewards.

It is possible Trump’s excessive pressure campaign could also be deterred by the expected flow of Cuban migrants to U.S. shores and by growing internal pressure to intervene militarily in Cuba. Those developments would certainly create a major political headache for Trump and Republican members of Congress. And if the Republicans did lose control of both the House and the Senate in the U.S. midterms, Cuba may just buy itself a little bit of breathing space.

Who knows? Maybe there’s a deal that the Cuban political leadership can make with Trump, different from the one with Venezuelan authorities, to loosen the oil embargo. But the Cubans are not going to relinquish their grip on power to get it.

The other thing that wishful thinkers often forget is that the Cuban people are the victims of their Cuba-collapsing best case scenario dispositions. They always say that they care about them. But what they really want is a pro-U.S. government in Havana, an unfettered market economy and a mindless exploitation of whatever Cuba has to offer.

No one should wish additional pain and suffering on the Cuban population. Yes, they have found a way to survive previous periods of extraordinary hardship and sacrifice.

Maybe this time around, though, their incredible knack for amazing improvisation, heartfelt sharing and a grit to make the best of a bad situation won’t be enough.

But I wouldn’t bet a few boxes of Cuba’s finest cigars on it.

Peter McKenna is professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.