In the aftermath of the Trump administration’s startling (and illegal) removal of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president, most global attention began to focus on Donald Trump’s follow-up threats to take control of Greenland, regardless of the implications for NATO’s possible reaction and future, and his drug-related belligerence toward Colombia.
However, Cuba is the country most obviously imperiled by what Trump vaingloriously termed the “Donroe Doctrine” and the “Trump Corollary,” proudly recalling US declarations of 1823 (by James Monroe) and 1904 (by Teddy Roosevelt), which framed US policy toward the Latin American “backyard” until the 1930s.
Ever since the days of Thomas Jefferson, Cuba has figured large in US attitudes to (and actions in) the Caribbean and Central America. However, the Maduro episode brought a new dimension to US policy in the region: as the first open military incursion in the South American mainland, it suggests that there are now no limits to US activism in the Americas. That seems to have put Cuba firmly in the firing line for future US intervention. Or has it?
At one level, all of the above truths seem self-evident, given the unpredictability of Trump’s actions. He followed up his Greenland threats by suggesting that Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, might do well to change his policies if he wanted to avoid Maduro’s fate.
Cuba is the country most obviously imperiled by what Trump vaingloriously termed the ‘Donroe Doctrine’ and the ‘Trump Corollary.’
Furthermore, we should remember that the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who is a second-generation Cuban American, has long advocated a more aggressive use of sanctions on Cuba — which are still very much in place and have been repeatedly tightened in recent decades — and even a more interventionist approach to finally end the Cuban political system. Indeed, one can possibly see his influence in Trump’s latest executive order on January…
Auteur: Antoni Kapcia
