Cuba’s Old Economic Model Is “Exhausted”

I n September 2010 , an ailing Fidel Castro made a striking admission.

The Atlantic ’s Jeffrey Goldberg had asked him whether the Cuban model was still worth exporting.

“The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore,” Castro bluntly told him .

Sixteen years later, Carlos Fernández de Cossío, one of Cuba’s top diplomats, offered me a similar assessment of the state of the revolution, nearly seven decades on.

In an interview in Washington, D.C., Cossío told me that Cuba’s Soviet-influenced system of central planning and state control “is exhausted.” The world, he said, has changed, and Cuba has to change with it.

He stressed that Havana is open to pursuing that transformation in partnership with Washington.

But coercive economic pressure, he argued, will make the task only more difficult.

Coercive pressure is, in fact, the Trump administration’s strategy.

Since President Trump returned to the White House last year, his administration has put an economic squeeze on Havana, including sanctions and fuel shipment restrictions that have contributed to severe shortages and prolonged blackouts on the island.

Trump’s approach to Cuba reflects a mix of ideological opposition, national-security concerns, and economic opportunism.

Some within his administration object to Havana’s partnerships with U.S. adversaries, including Russia, China, and Iran. (Cossío claimed that Iran’s presence in Havana consisted of one Persian restaurant.) The administration has also cited Cuba’s failure to cooperate with U.S. law enforcement on migration concerns.

This year, the two governments appeared open to working out some of these issues and acknowledged having direct contact.

But Cuba’s foreign minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla told reporters in Havana earlier this month that neither negotiations nor an agenda for future talks has been established, despite Havana’s willingness to stay in touch.

Since the U.S. military ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, Trump has repeatedly warned that Cuba could be next.