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The Trump administration is prepared to be “helpful” in a transition in Cuba if the current government takes “a golden opportunity” to make political and economic changes to improve the lives of Cubans on the island, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday.
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“Cuba has a golden opportunity to place itself on an irreversible path towards a better future, and we are prepared to be helpful in that regard if they’re open to it,” he told reporters in New York City, where he is attending meetings related to the United Nations General Assembly. “That path involves both political and economic freedom, no doubt about it. And so we’ll remain engaged in that portfolio.”
He said the administration is “open to measures, moving forward, that begin that process of change” and warned that that process “will not be easy.
“We’ve seen these transitions happen historically throughout the world,” he said. “They don’t happen overnight. They don’t happen immediately. You don’t reverse 60-something years of mismanagement, corruption, and incompetence in six months.”
Rubio said he hopes Cuban leaders will take the opportunity, though he was not confident they will do so, noting that the people speaking on behalf of the government in Havana remain “recalcitrant. But the reality of their situation is that things are not going to get better in Cuba without them making very substantial changes.”
Rubio said that there are people within the Cuban system who understand that the Cuban revolution “failed,” and that the Trump administration is open to working with them.
“Obviously, there are some individuals in that regime with whom we can never work because their hands are stained in blood, but there are people there that I believe that you can work with, if they are willing to put the country on a path towards political and economic freedom,” he said.
Rubio has led back-channel talks with Raúl Castro’s grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, but Cuban officials say talks with the administration are at a stalemate.
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In his speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, President Donald Trump said that his administration is pursuing “fundamental change” in Cuba and that “freedom” is coming to the island. He later joked in an afternoon meeting with Latin American leaders who are members of the Shield of the Americas, a group fighting narco-trafficking in the region, that he might “drop” Rubio off in the middle of Cuba.
“We’re going to, someday in the near future, drop him off in the middle of Cuba, just on the way back from Iran,” he said. “We’re gonna have one of those big, beautiful aircraft carriers fly him in, drop them off, and he’ll figure out the rest. He always does.”
But asked whether he would rule out a military action against Cuba, Rubio stressed the administration would prefer a political solution.
“If there is a threat to the national security of the United States, the president has both the power and the obligation to address it,” he said. “That’s just my general statement, not just Cuba specific. That said, our preference always is to deal with these things …in a negotiated way, in a political way, in a way in which progress is made through substantial changes to a country that don’t involve the use of military force. So I’m not going to speculate beyond that, and I’m certainly not going to threaten anything.”
Reporters also asked if Rubio has seen business proposals to invest in Cuba by American companies. American investors are currently bidding to take over Canadian firm Sherritt International’s mining business in Cuba, a joint venture with the Cuban government, after the company left the Cuban market due to U.S. sanctions.
Rubio said American companies and the Cuban diaspora can play an important role in a future Cuba, but pointed to restrictions in the U.S. embargo, codified into law in the 1996 Helms-Burton Act. But he said that the main obstacle is the lack of trust in the Cuban government and guarantees to investors.
“I’m aware that there are some companies and individuals and others that would love to be involved in Cuba’s economic future,” he said. “Right now, that’s not possible. It’s not feasible because of Helms-Burton, and also because of the lack of certainty about its future. No one is going to invest in Cuba under their current governance model. It’s not just about political freedom, which is incredibly important, but it is about having a governance model on that island that gives the private sector confidence that if they invest, they’re going to make their money back with a profit and not have it taken from them and never get paid back.”
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