Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Situation Report. It’s been a busy week in the world of national security, and we’ve got a lot to discuss.
Here’s what’s on tap for the day: the Trump administration’s increasing focus on Cuba, Ukraine’s rocky staffing shake-up, and the seemingly endless escalation ladder in the Iran war.
The Trump administration is ramping up efforts to portray Cuba as a danger to the United States, raising speculation that the White House is attempting to lay the groundwork for military action against the island as its strategy of economic strangulation fails to bring about regime change in Havana.
On Thursday, the State Department announced new sanctions targeting the Cuban regime and its backers. In a statement on the sanctions, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the “Communist Cuban regime continues to pose a deep multifaceted threat to U.S. national security and hemispheric stability.”
This comes just days after the State Department released a 100-page report portraying Cuba as “the center of a vast hemispheric network” seeking to subvert the United States (which our colleague Sam Skove wrote about). The report sought to link Cuba to left-wing causes and groups in the United States, including the Democratic Socialists of America.
