ISeptember 2010The sickly Fidel Castro made a shocking confession. atlantic ocean‘s Jeffrey Goldberg asked him whether the Cuban model was still worth exporting. “The Cuban model no longer works for us,” Castro told him bluntly. Sixteen years later, Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, one of Cuba’s top diplomats, offered me a similar assessment of the state of the revolution nearly 70 years later. In an interview in Washington, D.C., Cossio said Cuba’s Soviet-inspired system of central planning and state control was “exhausted.” The world is changing, he said, and Cuba must change with it. He stressed that Havana is ready to work with Washington to pursue its transformation. But he argued that forced economic pressure would only make the task more difficult.
In fact, coercive pressure is the Trump administration’s strategy. Since President Trump returned to the White House last year, his administration has imposed economic pressure on Havana, including sanctions and restrictions on fuel shipments, contributing to severe shortages and prolonged power outages on the island.
President Trump’s approach to Cuba reflects a mix of ideological conflicts, national security concerns, and economic opportunism. Some in the administration oppose collaboration between Havana and U.S. adversaries such as Russia, China and Iran. (Mr. Cossio claimed that Iran’s presence in Havana consists of just one Persian restaurant.) The administration also notes Cuba’s failure to cooperate with U.S. law enforcement on immigration issues. This year, both governments signaled a willingness to address some of these issues and acknowledged direct contact. However, as Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla said: He told reporters in Havana. Earlier this month, it became clear that neither negotiations nor an agenda for future talks had been established, despite the Havana side’s intention to remain in contact.
Since the U.S. military ousted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in January, President Trump has repeatedly warned that Cuba could be next. In May, CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Havana to convey President Trump’s message that Washington was prepared to address economic and security issues, but only if Cuba made “fundamental changes.” A few days later, the commander of U.S. Southern Command met with Cuban military officials near Guantanamo Bay.
In a written response to my questions, a White House official echoed President Trump’s view that Cuba “has been badly managed for years” and said the United States is “ready to open a new chapter in our relationship.” The official added: “The only people standing in the way of a better future are those who control Cuba for their own personal gain at the expense of the Cuban people.”
Mr. Cossio and other Cuban government officials have sought to prove that Cuba can change for the better on its own. But the gap between what Havana considers meaningful reforms and what the Trump administration says needs to happen remains wide. Washington is demanding major changes, and Havana is open to economic modernization but insists its political system is non-negotiable. Prolonged power outages have disrupted daily life, and deteriorating water and sanitation systems are contributing to the surge in disease cases. Hospitals are facing fuel shortages and power outages, affecting the freezing of medicines and vaccines. In eastern Cuba, UNICEF reported Earlier this year, 481,000 people were dependent on water tankers, and some households were forced to use unsafe water as fuel shortages limited pumping and other essential services.
Against this background, Cuba has been pursuing its own economic reforms. In June, the government approved 176 measures to expand private participation in private business, foreign investment and banking, as well as give investors a greater role in state-owned enterprises. The government also began allowing Cubans living abroad to own and invest in private businesses on the island. Subsequent measures eased bureaucratic restrictions on private enterprises and opened further space for foreign investment, including in the tourism sector.
When Cossio and I discussed relations between Washington and Havana, although Cossio was careful to call it “bilateral contact” rather than negotiations, he explained what Cuba’s economic changes would look like. He said the country needs to move toward an economy that is “more dependent on financial instruments and a market economy, with a greater role for the private sector,” while leaving the state as a participant. He said the ongoing transformation is the “most important social and economic transformation” in Cuba in the past 60 years.
The is usa I’m currently applying The extraordinary pressure on Cuba was such that Cuban officials accused Washington of trying to force political change. “They openly talk about military aggression and subject the Cuban people to a relentless war,” Cossio told me.
The deputy foreign minister did not call for new diplomatic initiatives or large-scale U.S. aid to alleviate Cuba’s plight. He said Trump has the ability to steer relations in the right direction by lifting restrictions on Americans traveling to the island. He would also restore the ability for Americans to “do business in Cuba, trade with Cuba, and invest in Cuba if they wish.”
“We’re not looking for grants,” Cossio said. “We are not asking for gifts or favors. We want the United States to stop punishing Cuba’s economy and trade relations with the rest of the world.” This year, for example, Mexico’s state oil company Pemex suspended oil exports to Cuba after the U.S. took control of Maduro’s government. The Trump administration also supported a lawsuit brought by a private U.S. pier owner against a major cruise line for using a pier in Havana that was confiscated by the Cuban government in 1960. Cruise companies insist their travel operations to Cuba are legal.
The Trump administration says its goal is not just to open Cuba’s economy, but to pressure the Cuban government to make broader political changes. Its policies seek to expand Cuba’s freedom, democracy, human rights, and free enterprise, while maintaining U.S. economic embargoes and trade restrictions that benefit Cuba’s military and security establishment. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the first person of Cuban descent to hold the job, has repeatedly portrayed the Cuban government as a threat to U.S. national security and argued that the country’s ruling elite maintains control of the economy.
This month, as Cuba rolls out further measures to boost private investment, Rubio announced additional sanctions on Cuba’s state-run financial, mining and energy entities, saying the measures were aimed at those who uphold the regime. Cossio emphasized that American companies could expand into Cuba despite the changes if the U.S. government eases regulations. “The United States could take advantage of that and become an important business partner for Cuba,” Cossio said. “They can invest. They can build better relationships with Cuba’s emerging private sector. They can benefit from it as a business opportunity.”
Keeping in mind that President Trump is always seeking new victories in relations with other countries, Cossio put it in terms that the American president would understand. “They could even claim victory,” he said.
IIt’s hard to imagine Castro The proposition is exactly that. Mr. Goldberg’s interview with Fidel Castro took place at a time when Mr. Fidel’s brother Raúl was beginning to loosen the state’s grip on the economy, allowing more small businesses to operate and opening the way for limited foreign investment. At the time, even though U.S. policy prevented Americans from participating in experiments, Cuba was beginning to adopt some of the economic ideas that the U.S. government had long demanded. The new measures significantly loosen the economic system built around state control. However, Cuba remains a one-party state.
This may not sit well with the Trump administration, which insists it cannot fundamentally change Cuba’s economic model without changing its governance system. Critics of Cuba in the United States point to the Cuban regime’s record of detaining political prisoners. Although the government announced it would release 2,010 prisoners this year, Human Rights Watch said in April, citing local advocacy groups, that some 700 political prisoners remained behind bars. Hundreds more faced house arrest and other restrictions.
“The only thing worse than communists is incompetent communists, so their system of government has to change, because without that change there can never be economic development,” Rubio said in March. “Economic transformation is important. Giving people economic and political freedom is important, but they are closely related and they unite.”
Cossio said Cuba had been considering changes since at least 2011, but wanted to carry them out in less punitive conditions. After the Obama administration opened up, Havana believed it might finally be able to move forward after the two countries restored diplomatic relations and the United States eased travel and some trade restrictions. That calculus then changed as President Trump’s first term rolled back most of the Obama-era policies, followed by more limited engagement under President Biden.
Cossio said he concluded that Cuba could not wait. “The country has changed. The demographics have changed. The human resources have changed. The world has changed,” he told me. “This year, we nevertheless came to the conclusion that the changes that must be introduced in Cuba cannot be delayed any longer.”
Sixteen years after Mr. Castro acknowledged that the Cuban model no longer worked, Havana is openly trying to evolve—and Mr. Cossio is telling Washington that it can either force change from the outside or join in from within. But U.S. administrations, past and present, have long been skeptical that a system that has resisted change for decades can be meaningfully transformed without radical change at the top.