FACT SHEET: The Dictatorship Next Door: Cuba and the Fight for the Western Hemisphere

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Cuba is not simply a failing communist state; it is an ACTIVE national security THREAT ONLY 90 miles from THE AMERICAN HOMELAND.

Cuba sits just 90 miles from Florida at a strategic crossroads in the Caribbean. As the island enters its most precarious period in decades, Havana has deepened its dependence on China, Russia, Iran, and other regimes hostile to the United States who are working to undermine U.S. interests, expand authoritarian influence in the Western Hemisphere, and threaten American national security.

For Washington, the threats are clear:

• What happens in Cuba does not stay in Cuba. Instability on the island carries direct consequences for U.S. border security, maritime security, mass illegal immigration, narcotics trafficking, intelligence collection, and regional stability.
• Havana has spent decades targeting American interests. Cuba has supported anti-American governments and revolutionary movements, exported intelligence and security assistance to America’s adversaries, conducted espionage and influence operations inside the United States, and facilitated criminal networks that threaten Americans.
• Cuba serves as a force multiplier for America's adversaries. Havana has provided governments seeking to challenge American power with a foothold in the Caribbean and opportunities to collect intelligence, deepen military and security cooperation, and operate close to the United States.
• Restore American dominance in the Caribbean and protect the homeland. Strengthen the military, intelligence, counterintelligence, maritime, law-enforcement, and regional capabilities necessary to secure America's approaches, counter Cuban threats, disrupt illicit activity, and prevent hostile powers from expanding their presence near the United States.
• Deny America’s adversaries a foothold in Cuba. Ending Havana’s military, intelligence, cyber, surveillance, and security cooperation with China, Russia, Iran, and other hostile powers—and its support for anti-American actors abroad—should be a central objective of U.S. policy. This incorporates both removing foreign adversary activity inside Cuba and ending Cuba's security operations supporting hostile regimes elsewhere.
• Use the full weight of American leverage against the regime and the networks that sustain it. Economic, financial, diplomatic, intelligence, law-enforcement, and other lawful tools should constrain the Communist Party's resources, disrupt the foreign networks that keep it in power, and increase leverage for fundamental political and economic reform.
• Set clear conditions for Cuba’s return to the free nations of the Americas. Normalization should require verifiable democratic and free-market reforms, accountability for the regime's abuses, an end to hostile foreign security cooperation and regional subversion, and Cuba's emergence as a responsible partner in a U.S.-led regional security framework.

AN AMERICA FIRST STRATEGY FOR CUBA

The objective of an America First Cuba policy is straightforward: protect the American homeland, force America’s adversaries out of Cuba, break the Communist Party’s grip on the island, and ensure that Cuba can never again be used as a platform to threaten the United States.
All U.S. foreign policy should be judged by a very simple standard: does it make America safer, stronger and more prosperous? A free, stable, and prosperous Cuba 90 miles from our shores would advance all three—and help restore U.S. strategic primacy in the Western Hemisphere.