As Washington once again contemplates its approach to Cuba, familiar voices are calling for more aggressive policies to hasten the end of the Castro-era political system. This reflexive interventionism ignores both the lessons of history and the realities of contemporary geopolitics.
The fundamental problem with regime change as a policy goal in Cuba is that it conflates American preferences with American interests. Yes, Cuba’s authoritarian system is antithetical to democratic values.
But the question policymakers must answer is not whether we like Havana’s government, but whether we have vital national interests that justify the costs and risks of trying to overthrow it.
The track record should give us pause. Six decades of embargo and isolation have not produced the desired result. Instead, they’ve provided the Cuban government with a convenient external enemy to blame for economic failures while doing little to improve the lives of ordinary Cubans. The policy has been a textbook case of doubling down on failure.
Those advocating regime change often point to the successful transitions in Eastern Europe after 1989. But Cuba is not Poland or Czechoslovakia. It lacks the geographic proximity to Western Europe, the historical memory of democratic governance, and most importantly, it doesn’t face the same external pressures that Soviet satellites did. Historical analogies, however emotionally satisfying, are poor substitutes for clear-eyed analysis.
Moreover, the regime change playbook rests on dubious assumptions about what comes after. Iraq and Libya offer cautionary tales about the gap between removing a dictator and establishing stable, pro-American governance.
Do we have any reason to believe Cuba would be different? The island’s complex political landscape, economic challenges, and regional dynamics suggest that post-regime change scenarios could range from prolonged instability to the emergence of nationalist forces even less amenable to American interests than the current government.
There’s also the question of regional perception. Latin America has moved beyond the era when U.S.-backed regime change was grudgingly accepted as inevitable. Aggressive action against Cuba would likely strengthen anti-American sentiment across the hemisphere and undermine cooperation on issues where we do have concrete interests—migration, drug trafficking, and trade.
The more prudent approach is one of strategic patience combined with engagement. Sanctions should be calibrated to specific behaviors rather than used as blunt instruments of regime change.
Trade and cultural exchanges can create constituencies for reform within Cuba while reducing the government’s ability to blame external enemies for internal failures. This doesn’t mean abandoning support for human rights or democratic values, but it does mean recognizing that lecturing and isolating rarely produce the desired changes.
Critics will charge that this approach rewards bad behavior and abandons the Cuban people. But the question isn’t whether the Cuban government deserves reward—it doesn’t. The question is what policy actually serves American interests and, incidentally, what policy is most likely to improve conditions for ordinary Cubans over time. Sixty years of evidence suggests that regime change as a goal has failed on both counts.
The United States faces genuine challenges around the world—great power competition with China, instability in the Middle East, transnational threats that require international cooperation. Devoting resources and political capital to regime change in Cuba is a distraction from these priorities, driven more by domestic political considerations and ideological reflexes than by strategic calculation.
A mature foreign policy recognizes that not every authoritarian government represents a threat requiring regime change, and that American power, while considerable, is finite. Cuba today poses no meaningful threat to US security.
The obsession with regime change says more about American political culture than it does about Cuban realities. It’s time to move past Cold War thinking and develop a Cuba policy based on interests rather than ideology.
This article was originally published on Leon Hadar’s Global Zeitgeist and is republished with kind permission. Become a subscriber here.
