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As the U.S. appears poised to announce criminal charges against 94-year-old former Cuban president Raul Castro, analysts say it’s likely a symbolic move designed to increase psychological pressure on the small island nation.
They don’t rule out, however, that it could be a pretext for violence.
Reuters and The Associated Press reported last week that U.S. Justice Department officials said the Trump administration plans to seek an indictment against Castro over a 1996 incident in which Cuban jets shot down two planes operated by the Miami-based, Cuban-American group Brothers to the Rescue. Reuters said the indictment could happen Wednesday.
This comes amid an ongoing fuel blockade as the U.S. continues to ramp up pressure to force a change in government.
Trump ‘needs some kind of win’
Mark Entwistle, who served as Canada’s ambassador to Cuba in 1996 and was in Havana when the shoot-down happened, says his gut feeling is that the indictment is more of a “political management tool” than a set-up for a military operation akin to the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro in January.
But, he says, under U.S. President Donald Trump, “you never know.”
“The president needs some kind of win on Cuba. Iran’s not going well,” Entwistle said.
The U.S. Justice Department is reportedly readying an indictment of former Cuban leader Raúl Castro, the brother of Fidel Castro. The CIA director is currently visiting Cuba as a U.S. energy blockade causes a fuel crisis on the island.
He says the U.S. has, in a way, misread the Cubans in the same way they misread the Iranians before launching war with Israel on the Middle Eastern country in February.
“The standard American intelligence narrative is that Cuba is so weakened it’s just going to collapse, and it’s going to fall apart, etc. And it hasn’t,” he said. “They’re remarkably resilient.”
In lieu of regime change, Entwistle says the indictment might be a way to placate some “hardline” elements of the Cuban American community, for whom the Brothers to the Rescue shoot-down is a “cause celebre.”
Brothers to the Rescue had flown planes over Havana on multiple occasions leading up to the incident, dropping anti-Cuban government leaflets on the city.
The Cuban government considered Brothers to the Rescue to be a paramilitary terrorist organization and a national security threat, and it warned the group and the U.S. government to stop the incursions into its airspace or risk escalation.
In 1996, Cuba shot down two of the planes over international waters. Raul Castro led Cuba’s military at the time.
‘Death by a thousand cuts’
John Kirk, a former Latin American studies professor at Dalhousie University who has written numerous books on Cuba, says Castro’s indictment is a continuation of the Trump administration’s policy of “death by a thousand cuts,” following a fuel blockade and other sanctions.
Residents are suffering from rolling blackouts, sometimes lasting more than 20 hours at a time, and are left without transportation to get to work. He says the power outages are also leading to thousands of delayed surgeries and other medical procedures.
The country’s energy minister announced last week that Cuba had run out of diesel and fuel oil.
Kirk says these “psychological operations” are meant to wear down popular resistance and incite an overthrow of the Cuban government.
“All these things are building in a crescendo,” he said. “I think the U.S. is looking for a grab bag of things it can throw at Cuba to try to make the country feel more uncertain.”
Kirk says Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, whose parents immigrated from Cuba and whose “entire political career has revolved” around anti-Castro messaging, is driving the desire for regime change.
He says Trump is more interested for reasons of ego, wanting to “burnish his crown” by claiming to accomplish what no other U.S. president could and “bring about the end of the Cuban revolutionary process.”
Trump has also not been coy about wanting American commercial interests to move in.
‘America is back’
Alejandro Magos, a lecturer of political science at the University of Toronto, says indicting Fidel Castro’s brother is mainly a “symbolic” move.
“This is almost as if the whole regime has been indicted,” Magos said.
“They cannot bring Fidel Castro back from the grave, but they can put in a courtroom his brother as a final victory – a victory that has proven very, very elusive for the U.S.A.”
Magos says Trump needs to “show something to his voters” to signal a victory in Cuba, especially as the November U.S. midterm elections inch closer.
Pointing to a meeting between CIA director John Ratcliffe and Cuban officials in Havana last week, he says the indictment is “one more tool” of many being used against Cuba’s communist government.
“You have the legal avenue, you have the political avenue, the diplomatic avenue, and all that is trying to build more and more pressure on Havana,” he said.
U.S. President Donald Trump called Cuba a ‘failing nation’ and suggested that the U.S. might ‘stop by’ after the U.S. and Israel war with Iran ends.
Magos says Cuba still represents a sort of “romantic” anti-imperial, anti-capitalist and anti-globalist struggle to a lot of people in the Americas.
He says Trump ultimately wants to send a message that the “moment of the revolutionary leftist guerrillas is closed for good,” and any notion of the U.S. ignoring what is happening in the rest of the Americas “has come to an end.”
“It’s like saying, you know, America is back.”
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