The director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), John Ratcliffe, traveled to Havana last Thursday to meet with senior Cuban security and intelligence officials, while blackouts hit the island, protesters took to the streets of the capital and the Government recognized that it had no “reserves” to supply fuel to power plants.
The surprise appearance by the top head of U.S. intelligence services, a visit Cuba says was requested by the U.S., came as the White House has stepped up pressure on Cuba’s communist government.
President Donald Trump has said Cuba is “next on the list” as soon as it ends its war with Iran, although his government has not publicly declared its intention to use military force to bring about regime change in Havana. Instead, it has adopted a policy of economic strangulation to try to expel the current leadership from power. The US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, declared last Wednesday that his country seeks a change in Cuba’s economic policies, while recognizing the goal of a political transition: “I don’t think we can change the trajectory of Cuba while these people are in charge of that regime.”
U.S. government officials had already outlined a possible solution similar to the one imposed in Venezuela, where the existing administration has remained in power after the dismissal of dictator Nicolás Maduro last January, in a Washington military operation. However, unlike Maduro, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel is considered a figurehead at the head of a highly organized Communist Party and a military infrastructure that controls all aspects of national power.
Trump has progressively toughened sanctions against Cuba, in addition to the economic embargo imposed more than six decades ago, including an executive order declaring a national emergency due to the threat that, according to him, it represents to the national security of the United States, a naval blockade that prevents the passage of ships that transport oil to the Island and the threat of secondary sanctions against any other country or entity that trades with the Cuban Government or with designated persons or companies. Following Cuba’s announcement of Ratcliffe’s visit, the CIA distributed a statement to the media stating that it had met with Raúl Rodríguez Castro, grandson of former President Raúl Castro and leader of the Cuban Communist Party, along with the Minister of the Interior, Lázaro Álvarez Casas, and the head of Cuban Intelligence.
According to the CIA statement, Ratcliffe’s mission was to “personally transmit Trump’s message that the US andAccording to the statement, the talks included “cooperation on intelligence, economic stability and security issues, all in the context that Cuba can no longer be a safe haven for Western Hemisphere adversaries.” But other regional experts and analysts saw an even more immediate message in Ratcliffe’s visit.
“The CIA director shows up unannounced. He’s not supposed to give a history lesson and smoke a cigar,” said one diplomat familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to comment on sensitive issues. “There is a general feeling here that Díaz-Canel cannot remain in office much longer.” The Cuban statement stated that the meeting “allowed us to categorically demonstrate that Cuba does not constitute a threat for US national security, nor are there legitimate reasons to include it on the list of countries that allegedly sponsor terrorism.
The country’s designation as a terrorist organization, first imposed in 1982, was removed by the Obama administration in 2015, reinstated by Trump during his first term, and withdrawn by the Biden administration upon leaving office, only to be reinstated by Trump in one of the first acts of his second presidency. In a post on social media before leaving for China last Tuesday, Trump said that Cuba “is a failed country and is only going in one direction: down! Cuba is asking for help, and we are going to talk!” Tom Shannon, a former senior State Department official with extensive experience in Latin America, said: “The fact that we are conducting talks through our security services highlights that our purpose is not regime change, but regime management.”
Ratcliffe’s visit to Cuba was the first known trip to the island by a CIA chief since CIA Director John Brennan made a secret trip in 2015, after the historic normalization of relations between the United States and the Caribbean nation announced by President Barack Obama and the Havana government. The US government has never publicly acknowledged Brennan’s trip. Although Rubio, who accompanied Trump on his visit to Beijing, He stated that the US does not see a future for Cuba with the current regime, He has also moderated his bombastic rhetoric about human rights and democracy, choosing instead to criticize Havana’s economic incompetence.
“It is a broken and inoperative economy, impossible to change. I wish it were different,” he declared. “We’ll give them a chance, but I don’t think it’s going to happen,” he said in an interview with Fox News. At a press conference in Havana on Wednesday, the Minister of Energy and Mines, Vicente de la O Levy, stated that the worsening of the blackouts was mainly due to the strict energy blockade they are suffering. The only oil delivered since December — a tanker from Russia that was allowed through the U.S. blockade in early April — has already run out, he added.
With rising temperatures and the arrival of summer, he said, Cuba is “without reserves,” and the situation is likely to get worse. According to reports, Havana residents took to the streets to bang pots and set fire to mountains of garbage that have not been collected due to lack of fuel. One solution to Cuba’s economic problems, Rubio said, would be the return of Cuban expatriates to the island as residents, investors or both, particularly the 1.3 million people of Cuban descent in the U.S.
“Look, Cuba has important mineral deposits… and some of the rare earth minerals, some of the best in the world,” he said. “Obviously, they have an incredible opportunity with tourism, with agriculture, very fertile farmland. So Cuba should not be a poor country.” Rubio noted that the United States sent $6 million in humanitarian aid to Cuba earlier this year, on the condition that it be distributed by the Catholic Church. “We have offered to distribute US$100 million” also through the Church, but “the regime has rejected it,” he stated.
Díaz-Canel declared on Thursday that “if the US government is truly willing to provide aid in the quantities it has announced, and in full compliance with universally recognized practices for humanitarian aid, it will encounter neither obstacles nor ingratitude on the part of Cuba.”