11 Jan Opinion – Cubans would welcome a U.S. military intervention
By,
Julio Shiling, contributor
For more than six decades, U.S. policy toward Cuba has generally oscillated between containment, engagement, sanctions, and rhetorical support for democratic aspirations. What has remained virtually unchanged is the assumption, shared by many well-intentioned observers, that peaceful civic resistance, international pressure, and gradual liberalization could ultimately bring about regime change. History has proven otherwise. In totalitarian systems, particularly in Marxist-Leninist regimes inspired by Castroist state doctrine, nonviolent strategies alone do not dismantle power. They simply coexist with it.
The Trump administration’s renewed emphasis on reversing communist advances in Latin America reflects a strategic recalibration that should have taken place long ago. Naval presence in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, combined with decisive action against socialist strongholds in Venezuela and potentially elsewhere in the hemisphere, signals recognition of a fundamental reality. Force, when applied legitimately and intelligently, remains the only proven mechanism for toppling entrenched totalitarian regimes.
Pacifist regime-change strategies have succeeded primarily in democratic or semi-democratic systems. These are states in which those in power are constrained by law, public opinion, or institutional accountability. Nonviolent movements can force concessions in such environments because governments fear electoral defeat, reputational damage, or judicial consequences. Totalitarian regimes fear none of these things. They fear only the loss of coercive control.
Cuba is not an authoritarian system in transition, but a mature totalitarian state. Its intelligence services, internal security forces, military hierarchy, and political institutions are unified under a single party whose legitimacy rests not on consent, but on ideological permanence and repression. The regime survived the collapse of the Soviet Union, decades of economic isolation, mass emigration, and recurrent social unrest precisely because it is structurally immune to citizen pressure. The use of alternative schemes to finance its operations after the fall of the USSR, such as Venezuelan oil, drug-trafficking revenues, the rental of neo-slave labor, and intelligence trafficking, has demonstrated that Castro-communism can be ingenious when it comes to looting in order to survive.
For this reason, nonviolent resistance in Cuba, though morally admirable and politically necessary, has never brought about the collapse of the regime. Protest movements, from dissident intellectuals to the island-wide demonstrations of July 2021, have exposed the regime’s fragility and brutality, but have not overthrown it. Instead, they have faced arrests, exile, increased surveillance, and expanded repression. In totalitarian contexts, protest campaigns do not compel concessions. They simply test the limits of repression.
This does not render nonviolent action useless. On the contrary, it plays a critical preparatory role. Civic resistance delegitimizes the regime, fractures elite consensus, weakens ideological cohesion, and signals popular will for change. But these effects become decisive only when combined with a coercive catalyst, whether internal military defection or external force. No communist dictatorship has fallen solely because citizens protested peacefully.
Historical precedents confirm this. From Eastern Europe to Central America, totalitarian systems collapse when force, explicit or implicit, enters the equation. The Reagan Doctrine aggressively challenged Soviet communism. Military action against global Marxism was waged with firmness and determination. The fall of the Berlin Wall was no accident. U.S. military interventions in Grenada and Panama dismantled Marxist and kleptocratic regimes that diplomacy failed to overthrow. In each case, civic resistance mattered, but it was not the final decisive factor.
Cuba today presents particularly favorable conditions for a limited, intelligence-driven U.S. operation. The regime faces severe economic exhaustion, demographic decline, energy shortages, and declining ideological loyalty among younger generations. Its international patrons are depleted, distracted, or unreliable. Unlike during the Cold War, Havana no longer enjoys the security guarantee of a superpower. What remains is a fragile coercive apparatus holding together a collapsing state.
It is essential to note that modern military operations need not resemble Cold War-era invasions or prolonged occupations. Advances in intelligence gathering, cyber capabilities, precision force, and information warfare allow for selective interventions aimed at decapitating regime leadership, neutralizing security command structures, and enabling rapid internal transition. The objective is not occupation, but destabilization, creating a power vacuum that previously suppressed internal democratic forces can fill. In other words, the stage is set for Cuba’s liberation.
With U.S. naval assets already positioned in the Gulf, a precision incursion, targeting key leaders such as Miguel Díaz-Canel, would exploit internal fractures. Cubans, both on and off the island, who have long yearned for freedom, would welcome the liberators. Intelligence reveals the regime’s vulnerabilities: economic collapse, youth disillusionment, and military defections. Technology ensures low-risk execution: cyberattacks to paralyze defenses and special operations to secure Havana. Cuba is the true measure of the success of the Trump Doctrine.
Opponents of such action argue that military intervention carries risks of instability or backlash. Yet instability already defines Cuba’s trajectory. A controlled disruption, followed by a transition framework with international support, is less dangerous than indefinite stagnation under a collapsing totalitarian state. Moreover, substantial evidence suggests that a decisive intervention would be welcomed by broad segments of the Cuban population, including elements within the military whose loyalty is transactional rather than ideological.
A U.S. operation against the Cuban communist regime would not be an act of imperialism, but a strategic intervention aligned with hemispheric stability and democratic norms. It would signal that totalitarian entrenchment in the Americas is no longer tolerated and that regimes sustained by repression rather than consent cannot indefinitely rely on diplomatic paralysis. The successful detention of the communist Cuba’s puppet dictator, Nicolás Maduro, and the apparent takeover of the Chavista regime confirm the viability of affirmative U.S. action.
The lesson is clear: pacifism alone does not bring down communism. It prepares the ground, exposes injustice, and mobilizes conscience. However, the definitive rupture of totalitarian power requires force. If the United States is serious about reversing socialist regimes in the Western Hemisphere, neutralizing a key ally of domestic U.S. terrorism, and promoting peace in the region, Castro-communism must disappear. Cuba must not be the exception and remain outside this bold U.S. foreign policy and moral initiative. Cuba is the paradigmatic case.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Miami Strategic Intelligence Institute (MSI²).