Center for a Free Cuba

Center for a Free Cuba analysis and policy recommendations Cuba at a Crossroads: Options for Supporting Democratic Transition Amid Economic Collapse and National Security Challenges March 2026 Cuba has now endured sixty-seven years of a communist regime imposed through deceit and systematic terror on Cubans. Shortly after seizing power in 1959, the Castro brothers eliminated any checks on their authority. Within twenty-three months, they dismantled Cuba’s independent judiciary and the rule of law that had existed for decades. In 1976, they enshrined a Stalinist constitution that referenced the Soviet Union by name. That document required formal amendment in 1992 following the collapse of the USSR to remove the name. Non-violent dissidents who pursued reforms through the Varela Project in 2002 were sentenced to decades in prison in 2003, and extrajudicially executed in 2012. The nationwide mass uprisings of July 2021—the largest since the revolution itself—were crushed with lethal force, as regime security forces fired on unarmed civilians. The dictatorship’s constitution prohibits every political party except the Cuban Communist Party. Its penal code criminalizes dissent and imposes “pre-criminal” penalties on citizens based solely on associations or social status. Additionally, the regime functions as an unaccountable kleptocracy. While a narrow elite controls an estimated $18 billion in cash reserves in foreign banks, 89 percent of Cubans live in extreme poverty. This internal humanitarian catastrophe is inseparable from Cuba’s external behavior, which poses direct threats to U.S. and hemispheric security. In this statement, the Center for a Free Cuba outlines both crises and provides recommendations for those seeking sustainable change. The International Context The regime portrays itself as anti-imperialist, yet it has supplied military, diplomatic, and moral backing to Moscow’s imperial campaigns in Czechoslovakia (1968), Ethiopia (1977), Afghanistan (1988), and Ukraine since 2022. More than 20,000 Cuban mercenaries have fought alongside Russian forces in Ukraine since the full-scale invasion of February 24, 2022. Havana has also formalized military cooperation agreements with Belarus under Alexander Lukashenko, Putin’s key partner in aggression against Ukraine. Cuban officials continue to deny involvement in Ukraine. They have done so to preserve plausible deniability for European financial support. That strategy was exposed when President Miguel Díaz-Canel publicly endorsed Russia’s illegal war during his May 9, 2024 meeting with Vladimir Putin in Moscow: “We wish you success and the Russian Federation in carrying out the special military operation,” as reported by Sputnik Africa. This statement fractured long-standing European Union consensus on the appropriate policy toward Cuba. Consequently, Europe’s 2025 vote at the United Nations on Havana’s annual resolution titled “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba” ended in division for the first time since 1993. (The annual vote began in 1992). This is an important diplomatic setback. More recently Costa Rica and Ecuador severed diplomatic relations with Havana. Belgium closed its embassy in Havana earlier. The United States’ January 3, 2026 Operation Absolute Resolve exposed Cuba’s neo-imperial footprint in Venezuela: thirty-two Cuban military and intelligence officers were killed while serving as Nicolás Maduro’s personal praetorian guard. Dictatorships in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela maintain extensive ties to Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, transnational terrorist networks, and drug trafficking cartels, forming a network that endangers regional stability. Trump Administration National Security Strategy and Threat Assessment of Cuba The 2025 National Security Strategy, released by the Trump Administration in December 2025, sets a clear strategic objective for the Western Hemisphere: “We want to ensure that the Western Hemisphere remains reasonably stable and well-governed enough to prevent and discourage mass migration to the United States; we want a Hemisphere whose governments cooperate with us against narco-terrorists, cartels, and other transnational criminal organizations; we want a Hemisphere that remains free of hostile foreign incursion or ownership of key assets, and that supports critical supply chains; and we want to ensure our continued access to key strategic locations. In other words, we will assert and enforce a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine.” On January 29, 2026, President Trump signed Executive Order “Addressing Threats to the United States by the Government of Cuba.” The order finds that Cuban policies “constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat… to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” It catalogues specific dangers: Havana’s alignment with Russia, the People’s Republic of China, Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah; the presence of Russia’s largest overseas signals intelligence facility in Cuba; deepening intelligence and defense ties with Beijing; and the granting of safe haven to transnational terrorist groups that seek to destabilize the region and the United States. Cuba’s repeated efforts to undermine U.S. and international sanctions are also cited as direct threats. Current U.S.-Cuba Dialogue and Available Leverage The Trump Administration is engaged in dialogue with the Cuban dictatorship. In the aftermath of Nicolás Maduro’s capture during Operation Absolute Resolve, President Trump imposed tariffs on any country that directly or indirectly supplies oil to Cuba. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced on March 4, 2026 the reopening of a criminal investigation into Raúl Castro for the February 24, 1996 shoot-down of two unarmed civilian rescue planes in international airspace, which killed three American citizens and one permanent resident. On March 6, 2026, The Washington Post reported that the Justice Department had formed a working group to examine possible federal charges against Cuban officials for crimes related to immigration, economics, and more. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz confirmed on March 17, 2026 that intensified probes into Florida-based Medicare and Medicaid fraud schemes—long suspected of regime orchestration—remain active. These investigations build on the 2011 Department of Health and Human Services list of top Medicare fraud fugitives, seven of whom had direct ties to Cuba. The Department of Defense’s 2026 National Defense Strategy, released January 26, 2026, leaves no ambiguity about consequences if dialogue fails: “Where [neighbors] do not respect and do their part to defend our shared interests… we will stand ready to take focused, decisive action… This is the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, and America’s military stands ready to enforce it with speed, power, and precision, as the world saw in Operation ABSOLUTE RESOLVE.” U.S. law itself provides explicit conditions for any suspension or lifting of sanctions. Codified on March 12, 1996 in direct response to the Brothers to the Rescue murders, these requirements include: release of all political prisoners and access for international human rights organizations; legalization of all political activity and dissolution of the Department of State Security (G-2); commitment to free and fair elections within eighteen months; exclusion of the Castro family from government; respect for basic civil liberties including freedom of speech and press; and recognition of independent labor unions and internationally recognized human rights. These statutory benchmarks constitute powerful leverage in ongoing negotiations. Humanitarian Realities and the Kleptocracy Problem Since 2000, the United States has served as one of Cuba’s primary suppliers of food and agricultural products. In 2025 alone, Cuba purchased over $800 million in U.S. imports, primarily poultry and staples from Alabama and Mississippi. Cuba imports approximately 80 percent of its basic food needs because of the inherent failures of communist central planning. U.S. policy permits commercial sales that reach the Cuban people. The dictatorship systematically diverts humanitarian assistance. Over 1,200 political prisoners remain incarcerated, including farmers jailed for selling produce in informal markets. European, Canadian, and Mexican aid channeled through the United Nations routinely flows via government-controlled non-governmental organizations (GONGOs) such as the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution and the state-aligned Cuban Red Cross. Documented cases include Russian cooking oil resold in hard-currency stores in 2021 and Mexican aid diverted to MLC shops inaccessible to ordinary citizens. In stark contrast, U.S. assistance routed through the Catholic Church’s Caritas network has been independently verified to reach those in genuine need. The World Food Programme’s partnerships with Cuban government ministries since 2018 have produced documented oversight failures. Its own August 2025 internal audit highlighted deficiencies in monitoring and risk management. Former Defense Intelligence Agency officer Christopher Simmons testified before Congress in 2012 that Cuba operates “as a violent criminal organization masquerading as a government,” with its intelligence services existing solely to ensure regime survival. A Miami Herald investigation by Nora Gamez Torres on August 6, 2025 confirmed that the Cuban military’s bank accounts hold up to $18 billion—larger than the international reserves of Costa Rica, Uruguay, or Panama. Policy Recommendations I. Humanitarian assistance must reach Cubans in need, not the dictatorship. The Center for a Free Cuba calls on the United Nations to dispatch an independent delegation immediately to examine conditions on the ground. Policymakers should establish a formal international humanitarian corridor for direct emergency aid that bypasses regime institutions entirely. Until such a corridor exists, donor nations should channel assistance exclusively through proven independent mechanisms such as Caritas or insist that Havana legalize genuine non-governmental organizations. Diplomats from donor countries should conduct unannounced spot checks on distribution points. The Center is circulating a petition demanding this humanitarian corridor and urges all people of good will to sign and amplify it. II. Maintain and expand targeted sanctions against the dictatorship and its repressive agents. Legislation introduced by Rep. James P. McGovern (H.R. 7521, February 12, 2026) and Sen. Ron Wyden (S. 136, January 16, 2025) would prematurely gut the sanctions regime at the precise moment when Havana has been exposed supporting Putin’s war in Ukraine and maintaining hidden military assets in Venezuela. These bills should be rejected. Instead, the United States should strengthen sanctions, apply Magnitsky-style measures against individual repressors, and condition any future relief on concrete actions: immediate withdrawal of all Cuban military and intelligence personnel from Venezuela, Ukraine, and Nicaragua; closure of Chinese signals intelligence facilities targeting the United States; return of terrorists and fugitives to face justice; release of all political prisoners; legalization of political parties; and commitment to internationally supervised free elections. III. Democratic political change will drive a genuine economic opening. Decades of European economic engagement, intensified under the 2016 Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement, produced no democratic reforms while allowing the regime to capture foreign capital through mandatory joint ventures with the military conglomerate GAESA. Foreign businesses face asset seizures, executive arrests, wage confiscation, and arbitrary contract changes without judicial recourse. The “China model” of economic liberalization without political reform has similarly failed, producing a modernized totalitarian state rather than democracy. Cuba’s foundational ideology remains profoundly hostile to the United States; any temporary concessions would likely be tactical maneuvers to survive until the current pressure subsides. True and lasting economic prosperity requires the rule of law and an independent judiciary—elements that exist only after political transition. As Karl Marx’s theory is inverted in practice, political structure and legal institutions define the economic system, not the reverse. IV. Establish greater unity between pro-democracy Cubans. Forming informal but effective working groups (via secure channels) that link internal opposition networks with exile organizations. These groups should coordinate non-violent civic actions inside Cuba with international advocacy, humanitarian aid delivery, and legal pressure abroad. Non-violent civic actions and the overall internal strategy must be decided by internal actors. Invite all Cubans who have not committed grave human rights violations to ensure inclusivity without compromising principles. Focus on Immediate Shared Objectives Demand the unconditional release of all political prisoners (currently over 1,200) and full amnesty. Demand the International Committee of the Red Cross be granted access to Cuban prisons. (Last visit granted was in 1989). Secure verified humanitarian assistance through independent channels (bypassing regime-controlled entities), consistent with a spirit of reconciliation. Prepare jointly for the Liberation phase: document repression, train citizens in nonviolent resistance and transitional governance, and safeguard evidence for future justice and truth commissions. Demand that the regime commit to free and fair elections within a specified timeline. Conclusion Cubans have struggled over sixty-seven years to restore freedom in Cuba. The convergence of global pressure, U.S. strategic resolve, and the regime’s exposed vulnerabilities creates a rare historic opening. By combining sustained targeted sanctions, creative humanitarian channels, and unwavering insistence on democratic benchmarks, policymakers can advance both U.S. national security and the cause of liberty in Cuba. The Center for a Free Cuba stands ready to provide expertise, and documentation to governments and organizations committed to this outcome. Non-violent civic actions and the overall internal strategy must be decided by internal actors. All Cubans who have not committed grave human rights violations should be invited to participate in achieving these objectives.  The goal should be to ensure inclusivity without compromising principles. cubacenter.org/publications/…