TLDR: Cuba’s Survival Was Never About Cuba — It Was About Venezuela
Three months after U.S. forces captured Nicolás Maduro in a January 3rd raid, the geopolitical aftershocks are still rippling across Latin America. The latest move? The Trump administration just lifted sanctions on Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez, tightening the leash on a puppet regime that now controls the oil spigot Cuba depended on for survival. The so-called “troika of tyranny” — Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua — is fracturing, and the domino that’s actually falling isn’t the one anyone expected. Cuba, not Nicaragua, is the regime closest to collapse, and the reason is simple: Venezuela was Cuba’s oxygen supply, and Washington just shut it off.
The Capture That Changed Everything
On January 3, 2026, U.S. Special Forces launched Operation Absolute Resolve, a precision raid that captured Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores in Caracas. The operation, months in the making under the broader Operation Southern Spear military buildup in the Caribbean, was swift and decisive. Within hours, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez was sworn in as interim president. Within days, she was signaling willingness to cooperate with Washington.
My dad always told me that Latin American dictatorships don’t fall because the people rise up. They fall because their sugar daddy stops paying. He saw it happen with the Soviet Union and Cuba in the ’90s — when Moscow’s checks stopped arriving, Castro’s island entered the “Special Period,” a decade of misery so deep that people were eating stray cats and riding bicycles because there was no gasoline. My dad’s family in Cuba survived on nothing. Literally nothing.
What’s happening now is the same movie, but with different actors. Venezuela under Chávez and Maduro replaced the USSR as Cuba’s economic lifeline. For nearly two decades, Caracas shipped subsidized oil to Havana — roughly 50,000 to 100,000 barrels per day at below-market rates, paid in Cuban doctors, intelligence advisors, and political consulting. It was the deal that kept the lights on in Havana. Literally. Without Venezuelan oil, Cuba’s already crumbling electrical grid has no fuel. The blackouts that were bad before are now catastrophic.
Delcy Rodríguez: Puppet, Pragmatist, or Pawn?
On April 1, the U.S. Treasury Department removed Delcy Rodríguez from its Specially Designated Nationals List — the sanctions blacklist she’d been on since 2018. According to Al Jazeera, Rodríguez hailed the decision, calling it “a significant step in the right direction.” She’s also opened Venezuela’s oil reserves to private investment and pushed mining legislation through her rubber-stamp legislature.
Let me be clear about what’s actually happening here. This isn’t a democratic transition. This is what War on the Rocks calls “regime co-optation” — the United States captured the head of state, left the authoritarian regime machinery intact, installed a more compliant figurehead, and now runs the country like a client state. Rodríguez still presides over a government that the United Nations says continues to commit human rights violations. Political prisoners are still in jail. The secret police are still operating. The only thing that changed is who signs the checks.
My mom’s family in Nicaragua knows this playbook. When Somoza was useful to Washington, he was “our bastard.” When he wasn’t, he was gone — replaced by another strongman who served different interests. The faces change. The repression doesn’t.
But here’s what matters for Cuba: Rodríguez, under American pressure, has severed Venezuela’s economic cooperation with Havana. The subsidized oil shipments have stopped. The Cuban military advisors who were embedded in Venezuelan security forces have been sent home. The intelligence-sharing agreements that kept both regimes informed about dissident movements are dead.
Cuba’s Breaking Point
Cuba’s economy was already in freefall before Maduro’s capture. The island was experiencing its worst economic crisis since the Special Period of the 1990s — power outages lasting 12-18 hours daily, food shortages, medicine scarcity, and a mass exodus of young Cubans fleeing by any means possible. The EL PAÍS analysis by Carlos F. Chamorro lays it out starkly: “With the capture of Maduro, the U.S. cut off Venezuela’s economic cooperation with Cuba and severed military and security ties. Under the U.S. oil embargo, Cuba has no economic way out.”
Now let me tell you what that means in human terms, because these aren’t just policy abstractions for my family.
When the Soviet subsidies collapsed in 1991, my father’s cousins in Cuba went from having a functioning — if modest — life to absolute desperation. The stories he’d tell me, passed down from phone calls with family, were gut-wrenching. No medicine. No food. People cooking whatever they could find — mango peels, roots, anything. Children with distended bellies from malnutrition. That’s what happens when a socialist regime loses its patron.
And now it’s happening again. Cuba’s electrical grid runs on Venezuelan fuel. No fuel means no electricity. No electricity means no refrigeration for food. No lights for hospitals. No power for water treatment. The regime of Miguel Díaz-Canel is facing the same impossible equation that Fidel Castro faced in 1991, but this time there’s no Chávez waiting in the wings to save them. There’s no China rushing in with billions. There’s no Russia with a spare oil well.
The “Troika of Tyranny” Fractures
John Bolton coined the phrase “troika of tyranny” in 2018 to describe Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. The label was always a simplification — as the EL PAÍS analysis correctly notes, these were never homogeneous regimes. But the phrase captured something real: these three dictatorships propped each other up, shared intelligence, coordinated repression, and created a mutual defense network that made them harder to dislodge individually.
Now that network is unraveling. Here’s how each regime stands as of April 2026:
| Factor | Cuba | Venezuela | Nicaragua |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regime Status | Díaz-Canel still in power, but isolated | Delcy Rodríguez as U.S.-supervised interim president | Ortega-Murillo “co-dictatorship” intact but paranoid |
| Economic Lifeline | Venezuelan oil shipments CUT | Oil sector opened to U.S. investment | Remittances from U.S. migrants (50%+ of economy) |
| U.S. Pressure Level | Maximum — blockade + no patrons | Managed — sanctions easing in exchange for compliance | Escalating — “on the agenda” but no direct action yet |
| V-Dem Democracy Rank | Among bottom 20 globally | Among bottom 15 globally | 5th worst autocracy worldwide (below Venezuela and Cuba) |
| Collapse Risk | HIGH — no economic way out | MEDIUM — regime intact, vassal state model | LOW-MEDIUM — economic stability buffers political repression |
The irony is savage. Nicaragua, the country ranked dead last in Latin American democracy — worse than both Cuba and Venezuela according to the V-Dem 2025 report — is actually the most stable of the three. Why? Because Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo don’t depend on Venezuelan oil. Their economy runs on remittances from the hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans who fled their regime and now send money home from the United States. It’s a perverse arrangement: the regime oppresses its people, the people flee, the people send money back, the regime uses that money to oppress more people.
Cuba doesn’t have that buffer. Cuba’s economy was designed — by Fidel Castro’s own hand — to depend on a foreign sugar daddy. First the Soviets. Then the Venezuelans. When the sugar daddy disappears, the sugar plantation collapses.
The Rubio Factor
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is the engine driving Cuba policy in this administration. A Cuban-American whose parents fled the Castro regime, Rubio has made Cuba’s liberation — or at least the collapse of its communist government — a personal crusade. According to the War on the Rocks analysis, the Cuba strategy isn’t a side effect of the Venezuela operation. It may be the whole point. “Instead of merely being complementary to larger goals in Venezuela, it might be the opposite: Regime co-optation in Venezuela is a means to dismantle Cuba’s regime.”
I understand Rubio’s fire on this. My dad carries it too. When you grow up hearing how your parents’ country was stolen by ideologues who promised equality and delivered misery, it gets into your blood. You don’t negotiate with the people who destroyed your family’s homeland. You want them gone.
But here’s where I diverge from the administration’s approach. What happened in Venezuela — capturing a head of state, installing a compliant puppet, running the country through threats — that’s not liberation. That’s colonialism with better PR. As Venezuelan journalist Luz Mely Reyes called it: “a kind of 21st-century colonialism.”
My father’s family didn’t flee one authoritarian system so they could be absorbed by another. Freedom means self-determination — messy, imperfect, sometimes producing leaders we don’t like. It doesn’t mean Washington picking your president and threatening to bomb you if you complain.
What Happens Next
The next 90 days are critical for Cuba. Here’s what I’m watching:
1. Social unrest. Cuba’s blackouts are getting worse. Summer is coming — no electricity means no air conditioning in 95-degree Caribbean heat. The July 2021 protests were a preview. The next wave will be bigger because the desperation is deeper.
2. The GAESA negotiations. Cuba’s military-business conglomerate GAESA — which controls an estimated 60% of the Cuban economy — is reportedly in early-stage negotiations with Secretary Rubio’s team. This is the real power center in Cuba, not Díaz-Canel. If the military decides it’s more profitable to cooperate with Washington than to go down with the communist ship, the regime could transform overnight. Not into democracy — into something like Venezuela’s current arrangement. A military-controlled state with a U.S.-approved face.
3. The migration crisis. Cuba has already been hemorrhaging population. With conditions worsening, expect another wave of balseros — rafters — risking their lives on the Florida Straits. My dad’s family made that crossing. Some of them didn’t make it. Every time I see those images, it’s personal.
4. Nicaragua’s paranoid crackdown. Ortega and Murillo are terrified. They’ve increased surveillance, cracked down on potential opponents, and — in a move that should alarm everyone — quietly accepted over 10,000 deportees from the U.S. as part of their quiet cooperation with Trump’s immigration policies. They’re playing both sides, trying to buy time.
What This Means for Cuban-Americans
For those of us carrying the weight of family histories shaped by Latin American dictatorship, this moment is complicated. Part of me wants to celebrate — Maduro is captured, Cuba is finally running out of lifelines, the communist nightmare my dad’s family endured may be approaching its endgame. But another part of me is deeply uncomfortable with how we got here.
You don’t build democracy by kidnapping presidents. You don’t liberate people by installing puppets. You don’t end tyranny by creating a new kind of dependency.
My dad fled Cuba because he wanted freedom — real freedom, not freedom as defined by Washington or Havana or Moscow. If Cuba’s regime collapses tomorrow, I’ll feel relief for every Cuban who suffered under it. But I’ll also be watching carefully to see what replaces it. Because my family has seen this movie before. And it doesn’t always have a happy ending.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is Cuba so dependent on Venezuela?
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Cuba lost its primary economic patron and entered the devastating “Special Period.” Hugo Chávez, who admired Fidel Castro, stepped in as Venezuela’s president in 1999 and began a decades-long arrangement: Venezuela shipped subsidized oil to Cuba (roughly 50,000-100,000 barrels per day), and Cuba sent doctors, military advisors, and intelligence operatives to Venezuela. This arrangement became Cuba’s economic lifeline, replacing Soviet subsidies. When Maduro was captured in January 2026, that lifeline was severed.
What is “regime co-optation” and how is it different from regime change?
Regime co-optation, as described by analysts at War on the Rocks, means capturing or removing the leader while leaving the existing authoritarian power structure intact — installing a more compliant figurehead who does Washington’s bidding. Traditional regime change aims to replace the entire system. In Venezuela, the U.S. captured Maduro but left the Chavista government, military, and security apparatus in place, with Delcy Rodríguez now running things under American supervision.
Could Cuba actually collapse like the Soviet Union did?
It’s possible, but the mechanism would be different. The Soviet collapse was political — the system rotted from within. Cuba’s potential collapse would be economic — cut off from Venezuelan oil, under U.S. blockade, with no alternative patron. The regime has significant repressive capacity through its military and security services, so any collapse would likely be controlled by the armed forces (specifically GAESA) rather than a popular uprising. The most likely scenario is a managed transition where the military preserves its power while accepting U.S. terms.
Is Nicaragua next after Venezuela and Cuba?
Not immediately. According to political scientist Manuel Orozco of the Inter-American Dialogue, “There is no domino effect — after Venezuela and Cuba — but Nicaragua remains on the United States’ agenda.” Nicaragua’s economy is more autonomous than Cuba’s — it relies on remittances from the U.S. and private-sector exports rather than Venezuelan oil. However, Ortega and Murillo are clearly spooked by what happened to Maduro. The V-Dem 2025 report actually ranks Nicaragua as the least democratic country in Latin America and the fifth-worst autocracy globally.
What happened to María Corina Machado and Venezuela’s democratic opposition?
They’ve been sidelined. Despite Edmundo González’s landslide victory in the 2024 election and Machado’s Nobel Peace Prize nomination, Trump’s regime co-optation strategy excluded the democratic opposition entirely. The administration prefers the stability of a compliant authoritarian (Rodríguez) over the uncertainty of a democratic transition. Machado has reportedly been advised against returning to the country. This is perhaps the most troubling aspect of the entire operation — the Venezuelan people who fought for democracy have been told to sit down.
What should Cuban-Americans be watching for?
Three things: (1) Whether GAESA, Cuba’s military-business conglomerate, enters formal negotiations with Washington — that’s the real signal of a potential transition; (2) Whether social unrest erupts as summer blackouts worsen; (3) Whether a new migration wave starts as conditions deteriorate. For Cuban-Americans with family on the island, this is the most consequential moment since the fall of the Soviet Union.