On June 9, 2026, the Inter-American Dialogue hosted an event entitled Cuba’s Next Chapter, which brought together experts to assess the island’s economic, political, and humanitarian crisis and the evolving role of the United States. The conversation was moderated by Eric Jacobstein, senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue.
Jacobstein opened by framing Cuba as a country at a genuine inflection point. He argued that long-brewing crisis combined with the Trump administration’s stated intent to facilitate a transition, whether through diplomacy, sanctions or by force, make the moment unique. While Cuba clearly needs change, he cautioned that Washington must be strategic and mindful of the human cost of measures that could deepen the country’s humanitarian crisis.
Ricardo Torres, research fellow at the Center for Latino and Latin American Studies at American University and editor of the Cuba Economic Review, described a Cuba far poorer than the one he knew in the 1980s, when a rigid state system still upheld a social contract of basic services. That contract broke down after the Soviet collapse, he said, leaving a stagnant economy, decaying services, and rising inequality, with the present marked by chronic blackouts and scarcity. What troubles him most is the government’s failure to respond, still solely blaming the U.S. trade embargo rather than acknowledging the system’s own failure.
On the path forward, Torres said that the crisis is not solely the product of sixty-seven years of sanctions, and that centralized economies do not work, as even China and Vietnam concluded. He warned that excessive pressure from a superpower ninety miles away risks full collapse and immense suffering, and called for an honest diagnosis at home, framing it as a pending negotiation between the Cuban government and its own people.
José R. Cárdenas, principal at the Cormac Group and a former official at the National Security Council, State Department, and USAID, urged the audience to abandon old assumptions. The Cuban Revolution as an idea is dead, he said, leaving a struggle for survival both among Cubans and within a regime whose officials now fear for their own futures. He noted that the administration is methodically severing the regime’s traditional lifelines, while social media has shown ordinary Cubans they are not alone.
Cárdenas predicted a focus on tools short of military action, including U.S. cyber and psychological operations to demoralize the leadership and persuade officials they can have a life after the Cuban Revolution. He described the regime as paralyzed and terrified of change, and, while not opposing diplomacy, insisted that a credible threat of punitive action is also essential, since the Cubans will negotiate only under duress.
Emily Mendrala, senior advisor for Dinámica Americas and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, detailed the humanitarian situation. She cited February 2026 estimates of up to eighty-nine percent of Cubans in extreme poverty, roughly 96,000 pending surgeries reported by the UN in April, and the out-migration of as many as 2.5 million Cubans between 2020 and 2024. Blackouts, she noted, spoil food, close schools, and cut clean water, while the structure of Cuba’s Communist Party makes Venezuela-style dissension more difficult.
On objectives, Mendrala said the answer depends on whom one asks: for President Trump, Cuba is partly a legacy issue; for Secretary of State Marco Rubio, it is personal. She argued that a deal may be available with a transactional U.S. administration, with diplomacy built on mutual concessions such as releasing political prisoners and reducing the Russian and Chinese presence in exchange for sanctions relief, citing a recent Foreign Affairs essay by Ricardo Zúñiga.
The Q&A focused on who could legitimately speak for the Cuban people, with Torres rejecting any single figure and calling for a multi-layered process that includes civic and political groups, treats Cubans on and off the island as one people, and pushes a divided diaspora toward concrete goals. Cárdenas noted that recent U.S. actions, including the sanctions on Raúl Castro and the armed forces, have upended his assumptions about any future interlocutor. Mendrala recalled the Obama opening as a deliberate effort to expand the flow of information and people, which Fidel Castro denounced as a Trojan horse, and also said she expects Washington to stay fixated on Cuba’s activities abroad.
Some in the audience pressed the case for mediated dialogue with trusted third parties such as the European Union, Canada, certain Latin American countries or the Vatican. In closing, the panelists agreed the status quo is unsustainable: Mendrala stressed that sanctions codified in the Helms-Burton Act make Congress central to any durable deal and leave Washington’s loss of patience as a real breaking point, while Cárdenas noted that the severing of economic lifelines is only now constraining the regime’s ability to reward the security forces that sustain it.
WATCH THE EVENT RECORDING HERE:
