TIM DONNER: Long National Nightmare For Cuba Almost Over

For as long as they have held power, the communists governing Cuba have been a nasty thorn in the side of the United States. The Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuban Missile Crisis under President John F. Kennedy threatened world peace and led to decades of tension between the two countries. The only temporary thaw came in 2014, when President Barack Obama restored diplomatic relations, reopened embassies, eased travel and trade restrictions, and removed Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

But in 2017, President Donald Trump put an end to Obama’s normalization, announcing, “I am canceling the last administration’s completely one-sided deal with Cuba … The previous administration’s easing of restrictions on travel and trade does not help the Cuban people. They only enrich the Cuban regime.”

The leadership in Havana has been on Trump’s hit list from the moment he descended that golden escalator, and now, 11 years later, the president says “something will happen with Cuba pretty quickly … Cuba’s a failed nation. Cuba also wants to make a deal. And I think we will pretty soon, or either make a deal, or do whatever we have to do.”

In another sign of his desperation and Trump’s near-total command of his fate, the Cuban president did something rarely seen over seven decades. He reached out to initiate negotiations with the American president. And after years of spouting vitriol against the United States, President Díaz-Canel made public remarks in recent days showing that, unlike the mullahs running Iran, he understands his country can no longer survive without help from the United States. “These talks have been aimed at finding solutions through dialogue to the ​bilateral differences we have between the two nations,” Díaz-Canel said in a strikingly dispassionate video aired on state ‌television.

The End Is Nigh

Make no mistake. The Cuban government is running on empty and can no longer survive unless it makes a deal with President Trump. This is not a hope but a reality. And as dealmaker-in-chief, the president will squeeze as much blood from the communist rock as possible. The golden goose will be a return to market capitalism and the repatriation of those among the estimated two million Cubans who have fled the country since the revolution and desire to return to their native land.