current, extreme isolation may be the work of President Donald Trump. It is his administration that has cut the island off from supplies of oil from Venezuela, Russia and other old friends, triggering power cuts that last most of the day. In just the past few weeks, Mr Trump has frightened away long- standing foreign investors with financial sanctions of unprecedented severity. It is Mr Trump, bent on asserting “American dominance” over his neighbourhood, who sent special forces to snatch Cuba’s close ally, President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, and who has since threatened Cuban leaders with their own “friendly takeover”. But Mr Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions build on an embargo that was decades in the making, as successive presidents and congressional leaders bowed to Cuban-American exiles. The diaspora has long had influence as a voter-bloc, notably in Florida, home to 1m-plus Cuban- Americans, among them Mr Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio. Votes are not the group’s only source of strength. After Fidel Castro led revolutionaries to power in 1959, Cuba became a front line between the free world and communism. Even after the Soviet Union fell, Cubans reaching America enjoyed immigration privileges as refugees from tyranny. In Miami, Orlando Gutiérrez-Boronat, secretary-general of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, declares Cuba’s regime closer to collapse than at any time in six decades. He was delighted by the Trump administration’s indictment of Raúl Castro, the former president and the younger brother of Fidel. Mr Castro, who turned 95 on June 3rd, is charged with authorising Cuba’s armed forces to shoot down two civilian aircraft in 1996, killing four Americans. “I hope he is snatched, I hope he is brought to justice,” says Mr Boronat. Even failing an American raid on Havana, Cuban security forces and leaders know there is no impunity for their crimes, he says. Predicting growing protests, he expects a model of regime change resembling that seen in Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1989, “with a little bit of Romania”, (a revolution that saw combat between regime security forces and a dictator’s death). Other prominent Cuban-Americans worry about a different model, when Mr Maduro’s capture in Venezuela was followed by the installation of his former deputy, Delcy Rodríguez, as a more pliant autocrat. Though Mr Trump praises Ms Rodríguez as a “terrific person”, the continued existence
of political prisoners in Venezuela and Mr Trump’s dismissal of Venezuela’s democratic opposition causes angst. “Venezuela is not a model that the community will accept for Cuba,” says Marcell Felipe, chairman of the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora. His “ideal scenario” is a split within Cuba’s leadership, allowing America to recruit a “white knight” to break the regime and bring about democracy. Ricardo Zúñiga, a former diplomat who helped lead President Barack Obama’s opening to Cuba, says Trump aides have not found a Cuban Delcy because “that is not how the regime works. It is a consortium of people with the guns and the will to retain power.” He predicts a stalemate for a while yet, possibly involving military strikes that do not change much. He says previous attempts at engagement were thwarted by the Cuban regime’s fear of reforms, but also by the modest carrots that presidents can offer, because by law only Congress can lift the embargo. There, Mr Trump, a man untroubled by legal niceties or by the will of Congress, has an edge. Joe Garcia, a former Democratic member of Congress from Florida, thinks Mr Trump is better placed than any previous president to end the embargo. Miami hardliners will not rebel, he says. “If Trump says, we are going to kill them with capitalism and Marco Rubio says, they are going to have elections in three years, Cuban-Americans will go for it.” In Congress, if some Republicans rebel, enough Democrats will vote with Mr Trump to lift the embargo for humanitarian reasons, he adds. The Trump approach lacks ideological certainties of the past. Former Trump officials report that the president does not care greatly about “Cuba as Cuba”, but would like “being the person who overturned the Castro government”. Unmoved by cold-war pieties, his immigration officials have deported Cubans in their thousands and want Cuba to accept many more. Some Cubans are ready for more pragmatism. In Hialeah, a blue-collar Miami suburb, recently arrived Cuban-Americans can be found queuing outside Cubamax, an online supermarket, travel and shipping company, to ship solar panels, rechargeable lamps, bicycles and dry food to relatives on the island. Mr Trump is less radical than Mr Rubio, says a former English teacher from Cuba, met sending rice and beans to his family. “Rubio wants regime change, but the way he wants it will lead to chaos,” he says.
It should be no surprise if some are ready to abandon ideological rigidities. Purity of disapproval did not finish the Castro regime, which has outlasted 12 American presidents. If dealmaking does the job, and the regime is capable of responding in kind, Mr Trump will deserve any peace prize he wants. ■ Subscribers to The Economist can sign up to our Opinion newsletter, which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays and reader correspondence. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//international/2026/06/02/donald-trump-could-be-the-man- to-save-cuba
Pakistan is battling two insurgencies The rise of One Nation is melting Australian politics America’s secretary of war pulls his punches on China Worries about migrants imperil South Korea’s shipbuilding boom Sex tourists fuel outrage about vice in Japan India’s republic of uncles
Pakistan is battling two insurgencies Problems mount at home as its leader plays peacemaker abroad June 4th 2026 TROUBLE AT HOME is bringing Asim Munir, Pakistan’s military chief and de facto ruler, down to earth with a thump. Lately he has been playing the globe-trotting peacemaker. On May 22nd he was in Tehran, Iran’s capital, for a second time in two months—visiting in an effort to help stop the conflict between America and Iran. Three days later he was in Beijing updating China’s president, Xi Jinping. Yet Field Marshal Munir’s arrival in China was marred by grim news at home. In Balochistan, a vast state in western Pakistan, a separatist group had blown up a commuter train, killing 47 people. The attack was mounted by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), which has also targeted Chinese infrastructure and people. The latest strike may have even been timed to
humiliate the field marshal in Beijing. To compound his troubles, the BLA’s campaign is only one of two insurgencies racking Pakistan. As he seeks to project strength abroad, militant violence in his country is the worst it has been in a decade (see chart). The train-bombing was the most daring in a series of attacks that the BLA, thought to have around 2,000 fighters, has carried out this year (the aftermath of an attack in 2025 is pictured). As well as murdering Pakistanis, the group has killed at least 20 Chinese nationals in the past five years, during attacks on energy and minerals projects that aim to discourage Chinese investment and embarrass the Pakistani government. “We promised [China] security and we failed,” says Mushahid Hussain, a retired senator and chairman of the Pakistan-China Institute, a think-tank in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. Though its campaign is execrable, the BLA is probably a lesser worry for officials in Islamabad than a second set of adversaries: the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Its 6,000 or so fighters dream of establishing their own godly emirate in north-western Pakistan. In slick videos on social media, available in Urdu, Pashto and English, fighters rail against the Pakistani state for being un-Islamic and enslaved by the IMF. A car-bomb that killed 21
police in a north-western province was just one of several attacks they carried out in May. The TTP was once poor and ill-disciplined. In the 2010s the group relied on press-ganging penniless youths. Its violence was indiscriminate: in 2014 it attacked a school in Peshawar in Pakistan, killing 132 children. These days it is better organised and financed, and only targets Pakistani soldiers and police. Lieutenant General Tariq Khan, who led counter-insurgency campaigns before retiring from the Pakistan army in 2014, says it pays jobless youngsters 50,000 rupees ($180) a month. “They get money, food, uniform and recognition; it’s a very attractive kind of thing.” It has snipers, thermal goggles and Chinese-made drones, says Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud, a Pakistani analyst. Pakistan has long accused the Afghan Taliban of sheltering and supporting the TTP. Fed up, it declared “open war” on Afghanistan in February, bombing training camps and munitions dumps. It had already been expelling Afghan refugees, and since October has blocked trade across the two countries’ border—depriving the Taliban of revenues worth around $300m per year, almost 10% of its annual budget. Pakistan has been hoping to press the Taliban to disarm the TTP or stop fighters crossing their shared frontier.