De­spite the dis­cus­sion of the Caribbean as a “Zone of Peace”, the 2026 cap­ture of Nicholas Maduro by the US Delta Force was more in keep­ing with an ac­tion movie than an idyl­lic sea­side va­ca­tion. In­stead of va­ca­tion­ers’ yachts, the turquoise wa­ters of the Caribbean were cov­ered in the sil­hou­ettes of Black Hawk he­li­copters through­out 2026 as the US Marines, Army and Air Force con­duct­ed reg­u­lar ma­noeu­vres.

Our re­gion is no stranger to mil­i­tary in­ter­ven­tions. Trinidad and To­ba­go it­self was in­vad­ed in 1797 by 18 British ships un­der the lead­er­ship of Gen­er­al Sir Ralph Aber­crom­by. Cu­ba, by con­trast, has a his­to­ry of three wars of Cuban In­de­pen­dence be­tween 1868 and 1898. The Cuban Rev­o­lu­tion of 1953-1959 in­stalled the Com­mu­nist regime of Fi­del Cas­tro and aligned Cu­ba with the So­vi­et Union against US in­ter­ests.

A US mil­i­tary C17 Globe­mas­ter land­ed at Pi­ar­co Air­port on June 2, and de­part­ed bound to­wards Bar­ba­dos at 4 pm. The pur­pose of its vis­it is un­known, but its pres­ence in the re­gion along­side the US air­craft su­per­car­ri­er Nimitz rais­es the ques­tion: is there a wider mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion un­der­way?

We have to un­der­stand the pol­i­tics to grasp the tim­ing of these moves. On No­vem­ber 3, all 435 seats in the US House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives will be con­test­ed at the polls along­side 35 of the 100 US Sen­ate seats. This will like­ly re­sult in the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty tak­ing the House and the Sen­ate, al­low­ing an end to the Trump Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s hold on both the House and the Sen­ate.

The Trump Ad­min­is­tra­tion there­fore has a win­dow of time that clos­es in No­vem­ber to con­duct its op­er­a­tions be­fore fac­ing far more push­back in the House and Sen­ate.

In an­tic­i­pa­tion of this elec­tion, the Trump Ad­min­is­tra­tion may fast-track its threats against the Cuban regime. Cu­ba and the USA have had a trou­bled his­to­ry, from the 1961 failed Bay of Pigs in­va­sion to the 1962 Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis, when a So­vi­et mis­sile base was un­der con­struc­tion in Cu­ba.

In 2026, Trump or­dered an en­er­gy block­ade en­forced by the US Navy, caus­ing black­outs and food short­ages. As of June 5, tar­get­ed sanc­tions have been is­sued against Cuban Pres­i­dent Miguel Di­az-Canel.

In re­sponse, Pres­i­dent Miguel Di­az-Canel has an­nounced sweep­ing eco­nom­ic re­forms, per­haps to bring Cu­ba in line with a mixed cap­i­tal­ist-com­mu­nist mod­el like Chi­na that is open to for­eign in­vestors.

The As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­port­ed on June 12 as fol­lows.:

“Cuban Pres­i­dent Miguel Díaz-Canel on Fri­day an­nounced a pack­age of eco­nom­ic re­forms aimed at at­tract­ing in­vest­ment, ex­pand­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion by Cubans liv­ing abroad in the econ­o­my and de­cen­tral­is­ing parts of the coun­try’s ad­min­is­tra­tion. The pres­i­dent did not pro­vide de­tails about the mea­sures or a timetable for their im­ple­men­ta­tion but said dur­ing re­marks to state me­dia that it is now “time to change” and that the coun­try “sim­ply can­not con­tin­ue on its cur­rent course.”

“Every op­por­tu­ni­ty in the midst of a cri­sis must be seized as a mo­ment for take­off, as a mo­ment for growth,” Díaz-Canel said, ac­cord­ing to a state­ment from the pres­i­den­cy that was re­pub­lished by state-run me­dia. “We have es­tab­lished a group of pri­or­i­ties to con­front this sit­u­a­tion,” he added with­out of­fer­ing specifics.

The an­nounce­ment comes as Cubans have strug­gled with fu­el short­ages as a re­sult of the US oil block­ade and food in­se­cu­ri­ty. In Jan­u­ary, the Unit­ed States tight­ened re­stric­tions on Cu­ba’s oil sup­plies in an ef­fort to pres­sure the is­land’s gov­ern­ment to change its po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic mod­el, ex­ac­er­bat­ing chal­lenges that have per­sist­ed for about five years.

Díaz-Canel said of­fi­cials are eval­u­at­ing mea­sures re­lat­ed to for­eign trade, ex­ports, sup­ply chains and lo­gis­tics. With­out elab­o­rat­ing, he sug­gest­ed the gov­ern­ment could elim­i­nate manda­to­ry state in­ter­me­di­aries in im­port and ex­port op­er­a­tions and grant tar­iff ben­e­fits to those who bring raw ma­te­ri­als in­to the coun­try for pro­duc­tion.

This re­cent eco­nom­ic move may hint to Trump that Cu­ba is will­ing to sub­mit to some of his de­mands; how­ev­er, I be­lieve the war hawks in the Trump Cab­i­net will not be sat­is­fied by the lat­est news.

In all, three air­craft car­ri­ers, the Nimitz, the Iwo Ji­ma and the Kearsarge, are close to the Caribbean and can be de­ployed to con­duct op­er­a­tions against Cu­ba.

The Trump Ad­min­is­tra­tion’s Sec­re­tary of State, Mar­co Ru­bio, is of Cuban de­scent, and as a staunch Catholic, Ru­bio would re­mem­ber the Com­mu­nist regime of Cu­ba seiz­ing all church prop­er­ty and ex­il­ing hun­dreds of priests back in 1961.

Giv­en this back­ground, it is not sur­pris­ing that Ru­bio has open­ly called Cu­ba a “Na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty threat” to the USA. While Cu­ba does not present a mil­i­tary threat to the USA at present, the ge­o­graph­ic lo­ca­tion of Cu­ba and the past his­to­ry of the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis mean that Ru­bio and the Re­pub­li­can Par­ty will not be com­plete­ly sat­is­fied un­til Cu­ba be­comes a vas­sal state with no ties to the USA’s ri­vals like Chi­na and Rus­sia.

In my view, the Cuban gov­ern­ment will have to re­sign in the com­ing months, or else risk be­ing cap­tured at gun­point like Maduro was in the dead of night.