No, Cuba Wasn’t “Propping Up” Maduro

Manufacturing a Security Crisis

For months, the Trump administration said its deadly boat strikes and military buildup in the Caribbean were aimed at fighting “narcoterrorism.” The Justice Department claimed Maduro was leading a drug trafficking organization called “Cartel de los Soles.”

But this week, the administration quietly dropped that claim in a revised indictment, acknowledging that Cartel de los Soles isn’t a real cartel — even as Maduro still faces narcoterrorism and cocaine trafficking charges in a federal court.

Concocting far-fetched accusations to legitimize hostility has been the U.S. government’s go-to playbook for decades when it comes to Venezuela and Cuba. For example, the island occupies multiple State Department blacklists, accused of carrying out human trafficking via its medical missions and even sponsoring terrorism despite consensus to the contrary in the U.S. intelligence community.

The close relationship between Cuba and Venezuela has also provided fodder for neoconservatives like Abrams and Bolton, who both have decades of experience scheming up ways of overthrowing governments around the world.

Abrams, convicted for “withholding information from Congress” during the Iran-Contra Affair, was “the crucial figure” in Washington during the bungled Venezuela coup d’état that briefly deposed President Hugo Chávez from power in 2002, according to The Guardian. (The New York Times on Wednesday released a 52-minute interview with Abrams to help their readers understand “what is actually happening in Venezuela.”)

Bolton, who once falsely claimed that Cuba was developing biological weapons, argued in 2019 that Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela form a “troika of tyranny” and a “triangle of terror” in the Western Hemisphere, reminiscent of the “axis of evil” rhetoric employed during the George W. Bush years.

Led by Bolton and Abrams, the Trump administration did not abandon the claim that Venezuela propped up Cuba; it simply doubled down on the reverse accusation. 

U.S. officials have toggled between portraying Caracas as Havana’s benefactor and Havana as Caracas’s puppet master — contradictory narratives that nonetheless converged on the same policy goal: sweeping “maximum pressure” sanctions on both countries, including measures aimed at cutting Venezuelan oil exports.

“Patently False” Claims

Security experts say U.S. government claims about Cuba’s influence in Venezuela are grossly exaggerated.

Ben Rhodes, a former U.S. deputy national security advisor who played a key role in negotiating the normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations during President Barack Obama’s second term, has disputed the claim that Cuban military personnel in Venezuela numbered in the tens of thousands.

“The only way you get to those numbers is to count doctors as security officials,” Rhodes said in an interview conducted in 2019.

“The number of Cuban security officials alleged by the U.S. government was patently false,” said Armstrong. “The vast majority are civilian doctors, teachers and coaches, and many are women.”

“We know that there were indeed Cubans in Maduro’s security detail, but perhaps now, we can also put to rest that the Cubans ‘ran’ Venezuela’s security plan because they apparently didn't have any indication of the attack until it was upon them,” he added.

Cuban-Venezuelan cooperation deepened after the 2002 coup, with the Cubans assisting in the creation of security services and military intelligence capacity in Venezuela, according to Klepak.

He added that Cuban officers posted within the Venezuelan armed forces’ command system have also long been connected to natural disaster relief efforts.

“The UN has often hailed Cuba's [disaster response] system as the best or one of the best in the world and a model for other countries. Venezuela is prone to natural disasters, but its forces had a dismal record for dealing with them. Thus, asking Cuba for assistance was obvious,” he said. “But the idea that this tiny military presence is in any way an occupying army or that it is anything like 1,000 people, never mind 25,000 people, is simply politically motivated.”

Cuba’s Long History of Resisting U.S. Intervention

It’s not surprising that Venezuela would turn to Cuba for help in defending itself from U.S. aggression.

The island has weathered a U.S.-backed invasion, acts of sabotage, repeated terrorist attacks and numerous assassination attempts on Fidel Castro. Cuba’s intelligence service is renowned, in particular for repeatedly outmaneuvering the CIA.

Decades ago, Cuba was also known for an internationalist military that punched above its weight, sending military contingents to face off against U.S.-backed forces in Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.

While Abrams was secretly arming right-wing paramilitaries to overthrow the left-wing Sandinista government in Nicaragua in the 1980s, Cuba sent their Marxist allies military advisors.

When the leftist New Jewel Movement came to power on the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada after it won independence from Britain, Cuba sent military personnel to support the fledgling government. The Reagan administration called Grenada a “Cuban-Soviet colony” in 1983 and invaded it.

Cuba’s most successful foreign military intervention was in Angola, where Cuban soldiers fought with the left-wing People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). From 1975 to 1991, Cuba deployed hundreds of thousands of troops to the country — by far the largest overseas military engagement ever conducted by a Latin American country. Cuba was also credited with helping bring about the fall of apartheid in South Africa.

“The Cuban internationalists have made a contribution to African independence, freedom and justice unparalleled for its principled and selfless character,” said Nelson Mandela during a visit to Cuba in 1991.

But when the Soviet Union disintegrated, Cuba’s economy went into a tailspin, and its military internationalism ended.

“The Cuban armed forces were cut massively from between 270,000–290,000 in the 1980s to between 55,000–60,000,” said Klepak, adding that Cuba’s military has been reduced to home defense with little to no capacity to project force beyond the island.

An Inconvenient Truth for Regime Changers

Over the years, Cuba has become one of the U.S. government’s most reliable security partners in the Caribbean.

Since the 1990s, Cuban and U.S. armed forces have collaborated closely on counternarcotics operations and efforts to stop illegal migration, according to Klepak. Cuba’s strategy, Klepak argues, has been “to create a body of people in the U.S. government who see Cuba as a natural and effective ally in security issues.”