Drivers That Could Force a Moderation of Trump’s “Maximum Pressure” Policies
Fulton T. ARMSTRONG
Center for Latin American and Latino Studies
American University
Washington, DC
Thank you, Ambassador Cabañas and your team at CIPI, for inviting me again to this
important conversación.
The Trump Administration so far has faced little or no opposition to the continuation and
deepening of its “maximum pressure” policies to achieve “regime change” in Cuba. Indeed,
reactions have been subdued even as the Administration tightens its noose around the
neck of Venezuela in a major escalation of efforts to tear down Cuba as part of what former
National Security Advisor John Bolton, the original architect of the Administration’s current
Latin America policy, called the “Troika of Tyranny.” But U.S. economic problems,
competing foreign policy priorities, and other factors could mitigate those tactics.
Note, please, my use of the word could. It is a weak word in analysis, but I feel it would be
too risky to say will or even probably will at this juncture. That’s to some degree because
this is the most opaque, non-consultative Administration that I have seen in my lifetime,
which has included more than 30 years in an array of positions in the intelligence
community, State Department, White House, and Congressional staffs. We have no honest
information about its deliberations and are forced to analyze it from outside a high wall. The
noises that we occasionally hear about what passes for policy debate are muffled, self
censored, and usually manipulative. But we outsiders aren’t dummies, and it’s not hard to
see what the Administration has done, is doing, and intends to do.
From the outside, we can reliably say that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who occupies
the two top foreign policy positions, is the loudest of several voices on Latin America policy.
The words of “Special Missions Envoy” Richard Grenell and Deputy Secretary of State
Christopher Landau are audible through the wall at times, but it is Secretary Rubio – who
has built his political career on opposition to the government of Cuba and in recent years
Venezuela – who seems to have a strong head of steam.
• He is buttressed by a State Department bureaucracy that has been largely Monroe
ist for decades, and almost always careerist. Many functionaries cringed when Bill
Clinton apologized to Guatemala for U.S. excesses and Barack Obama declared the
Monroe Doctrine dead and said Latin America and the Caribbean weren’t our
“backyard” but rather our neighborhood of partners. Even the normalization process
launched by President Obama and President Raúl Castro – which for two years was
a bandwagon that many of our bureaucrats jumped on – was dropped like a hot
potato the minute that political winds in Washington shifted. Our bureaucrats take
good care of their careers.
• Rubio is also supported by the beneficiaries of the many “democracy promotion”
programs that he steered for years in the U.S. Senate. During my years as a senior
professional advisor to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senators
Menéndez and Rubio were briefed and given a say on many millions of dollars of
grants and contracts that we were told were “too sensitive” for the committee’s
Chairman, John Kerry, to be briefed on. Because of the clandestine and covert
nature of the regime-change programs, we can’t know who most of these
beneficiaries are and how many millions they have received – or even how much of
the cash ever leaves Miami, Madrid, Prague, or Oslo – but we see their power in the
use of “independent journalists” who flood us with information (real or fake) that
serves their benefactors’ agenda.
• The Administration also benefits from its essentially unchallenged domination of the
narrative on Cuba, including its allegations about the so-called “sonic attacks,”
“Chinese spy bases,” “human trafficking” in doctors, and other issues. That it
pushes these memes and tropes is natural; all governments try to do it. Much of the
Administration’s fake news is weak and verifiably wrong, but it is powerful because
few in the political community, the media, and academia are willing to challenge it.
Do a Google search of the names of Latin America experts who’ve challenged the
fake narratives, and you’ll see the problem. Even in what we call “small town
America,” these narratives are embedded in people’s minds – erasing the traditional
common-sense reactions of people who wonder why we still have a 63-year-old
embargo against a country that poses no threat. This is a big victory for the State
Department, where bureaucrats ridicule the specialists who don’t challenge them.
Another major plus for the Administration is that Cuba and Latin America rank low in U.S.
people’s priorities, freeing it from significant oversight. Look for the reactions, even among
our Latin America experts, about the Administration’s vigorous reassertion of the Monroe
Doctrine – or what the White House is calling its “Trump Corollary” – and you’ll see why the
Administration thinks it has a big green light to march on. Look at reactions to Washington’s
punishment of Lula for not stopping the Brazilian courts’ necessary criminal action against
Bolsonaro; its cash-on-the-barrelhead intervention in the Argentina elections; its sanctions
against Colombia; its threats against Honduras if Trump’s preferred candidate didn’t win;
its adulation of Bukele’s unconstitutional actions in El Salvador … and on and on goes the
list. The U.S. media, as if starved to show the Administration that there’s at least one Latin
American hero they love, have put a U.S.-nurtured political activist in Venezuela on a
pedestal so high that they seem ignorant of the mis- and disinformation she has spread
about cartels and “narcoterrorists” that don’t exist as well as the deep splits she has
caused with other activists who have deeper experience than she. They also seem ignorant
of the meaning for a Latin American politician to be urging U.S. military intervention in her
country.
Several factors, however, may begin to force the Administration to temper, or at least
conceal, some of its zeal. These include major distractions at home and abroad.
• I leave economic predictions to economists, but it’s not hard to see that the U.S.
economy is not performing as the Administration claims it is. Biden’s inflation is now
Trump’s. The lagging employment and income figures are Trump’s, as is the growing
unhappiness about the gap between rich and poor. Biden’s trade policies may not
have been brilliant, but Trump’s tariffs are now hitting home – so hard that he’s just
authorized a $12 billion payout to farmers suffering from Chinese countermeasures.
He has no response to the looming surge in healthcare costs. His answer on these
matters has been to try to cook the data and commandeer the Federal Reserve, but
that’s not going to increase productivity and put food on the table. At some point,
he’ll be asked how much it costs for him to park the U.S. Navy off the coast of
Venezuela for months on end. (Some estimates are $10 million per day.) And at
some point, he’s going to have to face the music in the voting booth. The mid-term
elections next year could (I repeat the word with embarrassment) clip his wings.
• The Administration’s foreign policies aren’t doing too well either, which I believe in
this case argues for greater caution rather than greater distraction. Efforts to muscle
China on trade; find a lasting peace in Ukraine; enforce a ceasefire in Gaza and
block Israel’s absorption of the West Bank; and coerce Western Europe to move in
an authoritarian direction have so far failed. He boasted about bringing peace to the
Cambodia-Thailand border, which is as tense as ever. He faces the same failure in
the Rwanda-Congo conflict. Who knows what’s going to happen in Venezuela, but
Trump has so far failed politically to calm the MAGA base concerned about another
“forever war” and the fury over military decisions to kill survivors of missile attacks
in the Caribbean. The investigations into those apparent war crimes are going to
continue — and U.S. allies are going to move farther and farther away from us.
Failure is often the driver of further distraction, but the low probability of success in
Venezuela and, by extension, in Cuba suggests he’ll be careful (as long as he’s not
seen as “TACO” – Trump Always Chickens Out). The most likely casualty would be
Marco Rubio, who is the architect of the implementation of John Bolton’s “Troika of
Tyranny” project.
• The probability that Democratic, progressive, or liberal voices – whatever you want
to call them – will surge and hold sway on issues like Cuba is low. It’s ironic that
MAGA has demanded more accountability than they have so far. But if attacks on
the current narratives do rise, they will reawaken common sense among previous
supporters of normalization and trigger questioning of the “maximum pressure”
policies. Democrats can’t agree on the time of day, let alone important policies, and
many in the party establishment are compromised by the same donors as those
influencing the Republicans. Indeed, where I grew up we would say the progressives
“talk the talk but don’t walk the walk.” They urge policy shifts, but (as I assert above)
they are loath to challenge the narratives upon which current policy is based. As I
say, I don’t see such a reawakening as likely, but there’s at least a significant chance
that, as the Administration’s promises fade, good journalists will tire of the fake
news and demand of progressives a counterbalancing perspective.
I would be remiss if I didn’t add that, while Cuba is indeed the object of the “maximum
pressure” policies and is understandably preoccupied with efforts to maintain production
and services that they target, the government probably could also better challenge the
narratives that paralyze Washington debate.
• One thing I observed over many years in Washington is that rightwing groups in the
United States paralyze government deliberations on Cuba by chanting that “regime
collapse” in Havana is imminent. They know that even clear-thinking policymakers
are afraid to take up a politically challenging issue like Cuba when someone’s yelling
in their ear that the “ripe fruit” is about to fall from the tree. Cuba’s problems with
food, energy, and other basic services are feeding the Administration’s perception
that its “maximum pressure” policies will succeed. (They did during the Biden
Administration too, which tried to argue that the protests in July 2021 were some
sort of watershed and that the song Patria y Vida would be the anthem of a new era.)
• The playing field is not level – the U.S. is spending between $50 million and
$60 million a year to run sophisticated social media and other campaigns pushing
its narratives – but those of us who’ve watched Cuba in action for decades know
that Cuba will accept the challenges. And we know that as Cuba overcomes its
challenges, it can and will change the narrative.
The drivers behind the Trump Administration’s “maximum pressure” and “regime change”
policies are strong – we can’t deny it – but none of them is irreversible.
