Global & US Headlines
Trump Administration Targets Cuba Regime Change by End-2026 After Venezuelan Raid
On 22 Jan 2026 the Wall Street Journal disclosed that, fresh from the 3 Jan seizure of Nicolás Maduro, U.S. officials have begun courting Cuban insiders to depose President Miguel Díaz-Canel and dismantle 67-year Communist rule before 31 Dec 2026.
Focusing Facts
- WSJ report (22 Jan 2026) says the White House wants a deal with Havana officials to end Communist governance "by the end of the year," despite admitting it has "no concrete plan."
- Trump’s 11 Jan 2026 Truth Social post: “THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA – ZERO! … make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”
- U.S. raid on Caracas, 3 Jan 2026, that captured Maduro reportedly killed 32 Cuban operatives, signalling a readiness to use force.
Context
Washington’s determination to flip Cuba reprises a long arc of U.S. attempts to shape the island’s politics—from the 1898 occupation and the 1901 Platt Amendment, to the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961. Each effort reflected the same structural logic: protecting U.S. hemispheric primacy under the Monroe Doctrine while exploiting moments of perceived Cuban vulnerability (post-Spanish empire, post-Soviet subsidies, now post-Venezuelan oil). The new gambit leans on economic strangulation and insider defections rather than overt invasion, echoing the late-1980s collapse of Soviet satellites where elite bargains, not battlefield victories, dissolved regimes. Yet Cuba has endured six decades of embargo, suggesting resilience that raw coercion may underestimate, while China’s 2026 $80 million aid package hints at counter-balancing forces. If successful, the move could redraw regional alignments and unleash migration waves; if it fails, it risks repeating 1961’s blowback and further normalising extra-territorial “snatch-and-grab” interventions. Either way, it underscores a century-long pattern: U.S. administrations cycling between engagement and coercion, rarely learning that Cuba’s politics often outlast the presidents who try to rewrite them.
Perspectives
Left-leaning / progressive media outlets
e.g., Crooks and Liars, Morning Star, ansarpress.com — They frame the White House plan as a reckless U.S.-engineered “regime-change” gambit that reprises past foreign meddling and risks creating a humanitarian crisis in Cuba. Their longstanding ideological hostility to Trump and sympathy for socialist governments leads them to foreground U.S. aggression while giving far less attention to Cuba’s internal economic failures or popular discontent.
Business-oriented / centrist news services
e.g., International Business Times, Investing.com, Newser — They treat the story chiefly as a strategic, market-relevant push in which Washington leverages Cuba’s economic free-fall and the recent Venezuela operation to broker an insider deal that could end 70 years of Communist rule. By focusing on economic indicators and policy ‘strategy,’ these outlets present the move as pragmatic and potentially stabilising, glossing over questions of legality, sovereignty, or civilian costs that could unsettle investors.
Alternative anti-establishment media
e.g., Zero Hedge, Firstpost — They warn that the post-Maduro bravado signals an expanding interventionist doctrine aimed at cementing U.S. dominance in the hemisphere and could saddle America with another costly nation-building quagmire. A deep scepticism of U.S. foreign policy and mainstream narratives sometimes pushes these outlets to accentuate worst-case scenarios and unverified casualty figures, reinforcing a ‘perpetual empire’ narrative that attracts their contrarian readership.