WASHINGTON — The Trump administration’s hardline strategy to destabilize Cuba has increasingly mirrored the pressure campaign that led to the ouster of Venezuela’s former leader Nicolás Maduro, featuring an escalating oil blockade, expanded U.S. military presence in the Caribbean, federal criminal charges against top Cuban officials, and repeated public threats of direct military intervention. But regional policy experts warn that copying the Venezuela playbook does not guarantee a similar outcome, even as President Donald Trump has repeatedly insisted that “Cuba is next” on his list of regional regime changes.
Brian Finucane, a senior adviser at the International Crisis Group and former State Department legal advisor, noted that Trump views the successful removal of Maduro as a major policy win and has attempted to replicate that model across adversarial regimes, including Iran. “But obviously, Cuba, like Iran, is a very different country than Venezuela,” Finucane emphasized. Unlike Venezuela, where the U.S. was able to install a compliant successor after capturing Maduro in January, Finucane says there is no obvious alternative Cuban leader willing to cooperate with the Trump administration. Unnamed Cuban officials, speaking on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on public commentary, echoed this assessment, bluntly stating “there is no Delcy in Cuba” — a reference to Maduro’s former second-in-command Delcy Rodríguez, who assumed power with U.S. backing after Maduro’s ouster.
Finucane also pointed to key differences in U.S. military posture between the two campaigns. In the months leading up to Maduro’s removal, the U.S. assembled a massive, threatening naval buildup off Venezuela’s coast. By contrast, current U.S. military force levels in the Caribbean are far smaller and less intimidating. Additionally, while criminal charges against sitting Venezuelan president Maduro provided a legal justification for his capture, an indictment against 94-year-old former Cuban leader Raúl Castro — who stepped down from daily leadership years ago — carries far less practical impact for the current Cuban government.
To understand the gaps between the two pressure campaigns, it is necessary to break down their core similarities and divergent dynamics:
### Repeated Escalating Threats of Military Action
Months before launching the operation that removed Maduro from power, Trump steadily laid groundwork for intervention through a cascade of public threats, a pattern he has now repeated for Cuba. He has pressured Caribbean regional governments to align with U.S. policy or face consequences, and just weeks before the special operation that captured Maduro, Trump issued a final public warning to the Venezuelan leader from Florida, alongside his top national security team. “If he wants to do something, if he plays tough, it’ll be the last time he’ll ever be able to play tough,” Trump told reporters in December.
Within days of Maduro being transported to the U.S. to face trial, Trump shifted his focus to Cuba, identifying the island as his next target. “Cuba is ready to fall. Cuba looks like it’s ready to fall. I don’t know if they’re going to hold out,” he told reporters on January 5. He followed this by threatening to impose tariffs on any country that supplies oil to Cuba, and claimed the U.S. might “have the honor of taking Cuba” after concluding operations in Venezuela and Iran. He repeated these threats last Thursday, dismissing Cuba as “a failed country” and claiming he will be the first U.S. president to resolve the decades-long standoff over the island’s governance.
### Divergent Goals Behind Linked Oil Embargoes
The U.S. oil embargoes imposed on both Cuba and Venezuela share the core objective of squeezing ruling elites to force political change, but they target opposite sides of the oil trade to achieve this. For Venezuela, the Trump administration originally targeted the country’s oil exports to cut off revenue for the Maduro government. After Maduro’s ouster, the focus shifted to blocking unapproved Venezuelan oil exports to Cuba — which for years received crude in non-cash barter arrangements — while forcing Venezuela’s new government to comply with U.S. terms for oil shipments. Today, most of Venezuela’s crude output is routed to U.S. refineries.
For Cuba, the embargo is designed to cut off the energy-import dependent island from critical oil supplies. While the U.S. has allowed a small number of limited shipments to proceed, Cuba recently publicly confirmed it has exhausted its stored oil reserves. The current embargo is an expansion of the broader U.S. trade blockade on Cuba that has been in place for decades, and it has already severely strained the Cuban government’s ability to provide consistent electricity and gasoline to civilian residents.
Finucane warned that this pressure could spiral into unintended consequences for the U.S. If the embargo destabilizes Cuba enough, it could trigger a new wave of mass migration to Florida, similar to the refugee crisis that unfolded in the 1990s when thousands of Cubans crossed the 90-mile stretch of ocean in makeshift vessels. “President Trump especially cares about immigration. And if they push too hard on Cuba and destabilize the island, there’s the possibility of some kind of a refugee crisis,” he said.
### Criminal Charges Carry Different Strategic Weight
During Trump’s first term in 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice charged Maduro with narco-terrorism conspiracy and multiple other criminal counts. That indictment was later used as legal justification for his capture, and Maduro now remains in New York awaiting trial, where he has pleaded not guilty to all charges. The removal of Maduro upended decades of U.S.-Venezuela relations, opening the door for U.S. companies to purchase previously sanctioned Venezuelan oil and allowing Venezuelan crude to re-enter global markets — a massive shift from years of near-total restrictions on dealings with Venezuela’s government and oil sector.
For Cuba, the indictment against Raúl Castro stems from the 1996 shootdown of two civilian planes flown by Miami-based Cuban exiles, and includes charges of murder and aircraft destruction. William LeoGrande, a professor specializing in Latin American politics at American University in Washington, said the charges are primarily a tactical step to escalate the Trump administration’s pressure campaign, rather than a precursor to immediate policy change. Even if the U.S. were to detain Castro, LeoGrande argued it would not alter the day-to-day operations of Cuba’s current government. “Castro still has influence and the leadership seeks his opinion on major decisions, but he is not running the government on a day-to-day basis,” LeoGrande explained.
### Modest Military Buildup Versus a Massive Regional Deployment
In the months leading up to Maduro’s capture, the U.S. deployed a large fleet of warships to waters off Venezuela, marking one of the largest U.S. military buildups in Latin America in modern history. The U.S. Navy’s most advanced carrier at the time, the USS Gerald R. Ford, was rerouted from European deployments to join the operation, while three amphibious assault ships carried a Marine expeditionary unit, attack helicopters, and Osprey tiltrotor aircraft. U.S. forces carried out months of anti-smuggling operations targeting drug trafficking vessels in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, while fighter jets conducted regular patrols over the Gulf of Venezuela. The final mission to capture Maduro involved more than 150 aircraft deployed across the Western Hemisphere.
Today, the U.S. maintains a much smaller military contingent in the Caribbean, consisting of two amphibious assault ships with Marine detachments onboard. This week, coinciding with the announcement of charges against Raúl Castro, the U.S. military publicized the arrival of the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier and its accompanying escort warships in the region. However, the Nimitz is on its final deployment before being decommissioned, and is only participating in routine maritime exercises. For experts, this scaled-back presence underscores the gap between the two campaigns. “They’re very different situations, and it’s very difficult to see similar outcomes,” Finucane said. “A snatch-and-grab raid against Raúl Castro or someone who’s actually in a leadership position doesn’t seem like it’s going to have the same outcome in Cuba as in Venezuela.”
Associated Press writer Andrea Rodríguez in Havana contributed reporting to this article.