U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that he believes that “Cuba sees the end” and, as such, he will have “the honor of taking Cuba”.
The American leader was likely referring to an “end” of Cuba’s current communist system, which has historically been at odds with the U.S.
“I mean, whether I free it, take it. Think I can do anything I want with it. You want to know the truth”, the president added.
Trump’s comments coincided with a total collapse of the Cuban electrical grid on Monday which left millions without power. The U.S. blockade of foreign oil supplies — which has meant that no oil shipment has reached Cuba in three months — to the island has left Cubans facing chronic electricity shortages and frequent power outages.
The Cuban national energy provider — La Unión Eléctrica de Cuba — posted on X that it had restored power to several “micro systems” in the provinces and that power was gradually being restored municipality by municipality.
Read More: Crippling blackouts leave millions in darkness in crisis-ridden Cuba
Responding to Trump’s predictions of Cuba’s imminent collapse, the Cuban Consul General in Italy José Luis Darias Suarez told Latin America Reports that he was unaware of Trump’s latest comments, but that “in 67 years of revolution, a United States president has never been able to do what [he] wants with Cuba.”
“On the contrary, they have implemented different measures, especially measures of economic pressure, to topple the Cuban Revolution, a revolution that remains in power because of [the] popular support … of the people who stand with the revolution, of which there are indisputably many”.
However, the current economic crisis has contributed to a growth in political opposition to the Cuban government. Protests, once a rarity in Cuba, have gradually increased in intensity and scope.
In the central city of Morón demonstrators even ransacked a local office of the ruling Cuban Communist Party (PCC) in a sign of growing discontent towards the island’s leadership.
Trump’s warnings to Cuba contrast the conciliatory tone struck by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel last Friday, who revealed that the Cuban and American governments were engaged in official negotiations that sought to find “a potential solution to … bilateral differences” between the two traditional adversaries.
However, those negotiations may require Cuba to make comprehensive political changes in exchange for the United States easing its economic sanctions against the island; the New York Times and The Miami Herald report that the U.S. government sees removing Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel from power as a key element of any future negotiation.
The New York Times revealed that, if Cuba complied, the U.S. would then likely allow Cubans to choose their next leader, as opposed to having a U.S.-backed figure installed.
However, Trump’s most recent comments imply that a negotiated solution remains anything but guaranteed. The Trump administration’s actions in Venezuela to capture President Nicolás Maduro and their killing of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei serve as a reminder that the U.S. is willing to use force to remove heads of state, such as Miguel Díaz-Canel, that it perceives to be hostile.
Featured Image: Trump with military officers at MacDill Air Force Base in 2017.
Image Credit: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff via Wikimedia CommonsLicense: Creative Commons Licenses
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