Cuba, Trump, Marco Rubio, and the Expansion of American Fascism

Bogged down in the war against Iran, where the biological solution—that of assassinating or kidnapping leaders—has apparently not yielded the expected results, US President Donald Trump launched yet another of his bellicose pronouncements against Cuba.

“I put together these great Armed Forces. I said, ‘You’ll never have to use them,’ but sometimes you have to,” he stated during his speech at the FII Priority Summit held in Miami, adding, “And Cuba is next, by the way, but pretend I didn’t say that… media, please ignore that statement. Thank you very much. Cuba is next.”

The press, incidentally, has associated this latest threat with recent statements by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who reaffirmed his country’s willingness to engage in dialogue with the United States on a collective basis and emphasized that, in any rapprochement process, the Cuban political system and the sovereign decisions of its people are not up for grabs or negotiable in the face of external pressure.

But without a doubt, Trump’s reasons for threatening Cuba go much deeper. First, the war against Iran, which the Pentagon planned to end in a few days, is not only plunging the world into an economic crisis, but is also dragging on and, according to experts, could become another Vietnam for the United States.

The United States people has been one of the first to suffer the economic consequences of its president's hegemonic delusions. A Pew Research Center poll published this Wednesday reveals that 59% believe attacking Iran was a mistake and disapprove of the US president's handling of the conflict. Specifically, 61% disapprove of Donald Trump's management, and 59% believe the United States made the wrong decision in resorting to military force.

But since one of the three essential laws of business taught to him by his mentor, the mobster lawyer Roy Cohn, is to never accept defeat, the president persists in his victorious nonsense about the war in Iran. Furthermore, as he recently stated in a speech at the Saudi-backed FII Priority investment forum, his MAGA movement sought "strength" and "victory," similar to what happened with the kidnapping of President Maduro in Venezuela.

More than Cuba, which, by the way, the president doesn't even know where on the map is—just a few days ago he claimed that the island was fortunately not in a hurricane zone, so they wouldn't ask him for money for it—Trump is interested in winning the Latino vote in the upcoming midterm elections, where a defeat could cost him the impeachment. Whether for economic reasons or because of the racist crackdown unleashed by his administration against migrants, according to recent polls, many of the Latinos who voted for Trump would not do so again, and the president seems to have no other option but to cling to the vote controlled by the anti-Cuban mafia that governs Florida.

As forthe anti-Cuban mafia in Florida, almost at the same time as Trump's threats regarding Cuba, Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained to the press in Paris, after a meeting of G7 foreign ministers, his reasons for why a change of government in Cuba was necessary.

According to Trump's Latin America strategist, "Cuba's economy needs to change, and it can't change unless its system of government changes. It's that simple."

"Who's going to invest billions of dollars in a communist country run by incompetent communists?" he asked, adding that under the current leadership, "the Cuban people are suffering" and the country is unable to "integrate into the 21st century."

Since the Secretary of State apparently considers French journalists to be stupid, he shamelessly ignored 67 years of history: the Lester Mallory Memorandum, the Torricelli and Helms-Burton Acts, the unjust inclusion of Cuba on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, the more than 30 votes against the US embargo in the UN General Assembly, the relentless persecution he leads against Cuban medical missions around the world, as well as the times he has boasted of being the principal architect of the sanctions against the Cuban people imposed during the previous Trump administration, in addition to the recent Executive Order of January 29.

One should ask Marco Rubio what his parents were looking for in the United States in 1956. Was it that the tyrant Batista was an incompetent communist, or did they simply go north to visit the Statue of Liberty?

But the current Secretary of State was right about one thing. Cuba remains, and will never be, ready to integrate into a 21st century designed by figures like Stephen Miller, Marco Rubio, and Trump, where the goal is to impose on the world the dominant power of an expanding fascism generated by the current decline of the American empire.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff