One possibility that US officials – including Trump – have floated is that new leadership could take over in Havana. <\/p>\n
This playbook, experts have noted, could be similar to Maduro’s replacement with Delcy Rodriguez in Venezuela, which left the government largely intact, albeit dealing directly with the Trump administration. <\/p>\n
Trump has repeatedly said he is already dealing with figures inside Cuba who hope for US help amid worsening economic woes. <\/p>\n
“Cuba is asking for help, and we are going to talk,” he wrote on Truth Social on 12 May. <\/p>\n
Days later, CIA Director John Ratcliffe met Cuban officials, including Castro’s grandson, Ra\u00fal Guillermo Rodr\u00edguez Castro, and Interior Minister L\u00e1zaro \u00c1lvarez Casas. <\/p>\n
“We’ll engage with the Cubans… at the end of the day they need to make a decision. Their system just doesn’t work,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in Florida on Thursday, adding that the administration’s preference is a “negotiated agreement”. <\/p>\n
The changes that the US wants could include a pledge to open up the economy, invite more foreign investment and involvement by Cuban exile groups, as well as a commitment to end the presence of Russian or Chinese intelligence agencies on the island.<\/p>\n
Importantly, these changes could leave Cuba’s government largely intact. <\/p>\n
“Just like they wanted to avoid instability in Venezuela, they want to avoid instability in Cuba,” said Michael Shifter, a professor of Latin American studies at Georgetown University and the former head of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank. <\/p>\n
“Forcing a regime change would be too risky for that,” he added. <\/p>\n
Several experts contacted by the BBC said that the challenge for the Trump administration is that there is no immediately obvious figure waiting in the wings inside Cuba. <\/p>\n
“I don’t think there’s an obvious Delcy Rodriguez in Cuba, and power works differently in Cuba than in Venezuela,” Shifter said. “It’s hard to find what they’re looking for, but I do think they’re looking for some sort of governing structure.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One possibility that US officials – including Trump – have floated is that new leadership could take over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":596831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-596830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/596831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}