Welcome to Monday’s edition of Washington Secrets. We’ll be with you all the way through August, even as the rest of the city slows down. Today, we dive into the Trump administration’s thinking on Cuba with someone who knows what they are talking about.Cuba may have dropped out of the headlines as Washington plots a course to end the war in Iran and officials worry about dwindling missile stockpiles. But it hasn’t gone away.President Donald Trump has not ruled out military intervention. And the communist state’s economy is in freefall, crushed by Washington sanctions and its own government’s mismanagement.
Last week, the United States stepped up the pressure, adding sanctions on five Cuban entities and eight individuals who help Cuba secure weapons and maintain relationships with foreign militaries. And it emerged that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has his own personal history with the island, was modeling the approach on the successful raid on Venezuela, casting around for current or former Cuban officials who could take over as leader if the government collapses, or is made to collapse.So what’s going on?Carrie Filipetti is the executive director at The Vandenberg Coalition, a nonpartisan network of foreign policy scholars. Before that, she was the deputy assistant secretary for Cuba and Venezuela at the State Department in Trump’s first administration. Who better to answer our questions about how Team Trump sees Cuba today?Secrets: Six months into a fuel blockade on Cuba, what does everyday life look like in Havana?Filipetti: The suffering of the Cuban people has not been only for six months. Arbitrary detention, systematic repression, political imprisonment, religious persecution, torture, and chronic rationing have defined life in Cuba for decades and only continues. While there have been reports of thousands of prisoners released, only a handful of those are political prisoners. Around 1,200 political prisoners remain jailed, while deaths from poor medical care, malnutrition, and torture continue. The repression is so extreme that between 2022 and 2023, far before sanctions enforcement, well over 10% of the Cuban population fled the island.
