China, Overdoses, and Monroe 2.0

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The Trump administration is overturning U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America and building up a U.S. military presence in the Caribbean. Analysts are variously calling it the Monroe Doctrine 2.0, or the Donroe Doctrine after President Donald Trump.

The most recent U.S. move is a blockade of sanctioned oil tankers that seek to enter or exit Venezuelan waters. The justification is that Venezuela stole U.S. energy infrastructure in the country, and there is no good reason that the United States should let it have it for free. Additionally, the tankers are sanctioned for secretly servicing rogue regimes as part of a global “shadow fleet.”

A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter interdicted one oil tanker off Venezuela on Dec. 20. Trump says that the United States will sell or keep the oil inside. The interdictions put pressure on Venezuela, but also on China, Cuba, and other countries that import Venezuelan oil. Approximately 76 percent of Venezuelan oil is exported to China.

Venezuela is getting attention as the likely target of the U.S. military buildup. After all, it has the world’s largest oil reserves. But Cuba is on the Pentagon’s radar as well due to its proximity to Florida and openness to U.S. adversaries like the former Soviet Union, which attempted to place nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles in the country in 1962. This brought the United States to the brink of nuclear war and forced the removal of U.S. nuclear weapons from Turkey.

Now, China is likely operating four electronic intelligence collection sites from Cuba that are aimed at the United States. Washington should never have allowed these sites to be established. Leaving them alone might lead Beijing to believe it can expand them into ballistic missile sites without the risk of war.

Cuba is a far smaller country than Venezuela, with fewer people and mountains. Cuba has a population of 11 million compared to Venezuela’s 29 million. It already has a U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay. Both Cuba and Venezuela are losing population due to people voting with their feet, which is the only vote they get. Cuba and Venezuela’s loss is a U.S. gain, but in illegal, not legal, immigrants. Fixing the governance problems in both countries could significantly decrease illegal immigration to the United States.

A U.S. invasion of either country seems unlikely, but the communist revolutionaries in Havana must be getting nervous. In 1959, they overthrew the Cuban government and stole $1.8 billion of U.S. assets. Three years later, the United States imposed a trade embargo on Cuba. Due to Cuba’s support for revolutionaries in Africa and Latin America, the U.S. State Department designated the country a state sponsor of terrorism in 1982. That made it more difficult for Cuba to engage in international trade and depressed the country’s economy. The Soviets kept Cuba solvent with $3 billion in annual foreign aid, but that ended in 1991 with the Soviet collapse.

Now, Cuba is out on a limb. The combination of communism and sanctions has hurt the Cuban people, with 70 percent so poor that they must skip one meal a day. One-third of the country’s 11 million citizens are affected by mosquito-borne disease. In some parts of the country, blackouts last 18 hours a day. In 2021, large anti-government protests led to many arrests and the strengthening of U.S. sanctions on the country. Stealing $1.8 billion from your biggest customer wasn’t the brightest idea in the world. But the sanctions and protests are hardly large enough to overthrow the regime.

The sanctions do, however, help deter other countries from turning to communism and stealing yet more U.S. property. So do the interdictions of Venezuelan oil. So they are likely here to stay until Venezuela and Cuba turn toward a market democracy status, or at least return stolen U.S. goods.

Cheap Venezuelan oil was a meager lifeline for Cuba that looks about to end. In exchange for it, Cuba sent personnel, including intelligence officers, to buttress the Venezuelan regime. That will likely continue as Havana wants regime stability in Caracas. If Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro is overthrown, then Cubans might get ideas and overthrow their own communist masters.

Cuba’s authoritarian influence in Venezuela is a direct attack on the country’s democracy, but also an indirect attack on the United States. As is now well known, thanks to the Trump administration’s targeting of Venezuelan drug boats, the country traffics much of the cocaine that kills thousands of Americans every year.

Given Cuba’s support for Venezuela, it was reasonable that in January, the Trump administration redesignated the former as a “state sponsor of terrorism.” Perhaps revenues from U.S. Coast Guard and naval interdictions of Venezuelan oil headed for Cuba could go for more effective drug interdictions throughout Latin America, including against fentanyl production in Mexico.

Washington’s new approach to defeating the global shadow fleet, narco-terrorists, and drug boats is strategically sound in that it cuts their funding while saving lives.