Cuba’s Coming Reckoning and the Limits of Exile Power

 

Eduardo A Gamarra[1]

Department of Politics and International Relations

Jack D. Gordon Institute for Public Policy

Steve Green School of International and Public Affairs

Florida International University

 

The removal of Nicolás Maduro from power and the U.S.-imposed co-governing arrangement in Venezuela have reverberated far beyond Caracas. Nowhere are the consequences more acute than in Cuba. For more than two decades, Havana’s survival depended on a strategic exchange: Venezuelan oil for Cuban doctors, intelligence officers, and regime-preserving expertise. That relationship is now effectively over.

For Cuba, this is not just another economic shock. It is the loss of its last major external patron, occurring at a time when the island is already facing the deepest crisis in its modern history, marked by blackouts, food shortages, a currency collapse, and sustained mass migration. Yet amid renewed speculation about Cuba’s future, one assumption continues to surface with remarkable confidence: that the Cuban exile community in the United States, especially in Miami, will play a decisive role in Cuba’s transition and reconstruction.

This assumption deserves scrutiny. There is no doubt that the Cuban exile community is wealthy, influential, and emotionally invested in the island’s future. Some estimates suggest it could mobilize as much as $40 billion in investment for a post-authoritarian Cuba. Politically, the community has shaped U.S. policy for decades and today enjoys unprecedented access to power, particularly under a Republican administration emboldened by the Venezuela outcome.

The key irony of this situation is that the community most emotionally committed to Cuba’s future might be structurally unable to rebuild it without significant U.S. government involvement, which current politics makes unlikely.

To understand why, it is necessary to move beyond sentiment and examine comparative experience. First, the Cuban exile community is far from monolithic. It is deeply divided along generational and migratory lines. Earlier waves of exiles, particularly those who arrived before 2000, tend to be wealthier, more politically mobilized, and shaped by Cold War narratives of loss and restitution. More recent arrivals, many of whom fled economic collapse rather than ideological persecution, are less capitalized and often viewed as fundamentally different within the diaspora itself. This fragmentation matters. Large-scale reconstruction requires coordination, risk tolerance, and long-term horizons. By contrast, diaspora politics often reward symbolic positions over sustained collective investment.

Second, the record of post-authoritarian transitions is sobering. From Eastern Europe to Central America, exile communities have often played important roles, but almost always secondary ones. They contribute human capital, professional expertise, international networks, and targeted investment. As a rule, they do not finance national reconstruction.

That task has historically fallen to states and multilateral institutions. Germany after 1945, Eastern Europe after 1989, and even post-conflict Central America all required massive external public investment to rebuild infrastructure, stabilize currencies, and reconstruct state institutions. Private capital followed, but it did not lead.

Cuba’s needs, after 67 years of economic mismanagement and infrastructure decay, are likely to be even greater. The island would require a comprehensive rebuilding of its energy grid, ports, transportation networks, housing stock, water and sanitation systems, telecommunications infrastructure, and, perhaps most difficult of all, its governing institutions. This is not a $40 billion challenge. It is a Marshall Plan–scale undertaking.

Which brings us to the most uncomfortable question in today’s debate: is the United States politically prepared to underwrite such an effort?

The historical record suggests skepticism is warranted. Republican administrations have consistently favored pressure, sanctions, and regime collapse over long-term state-building projects. Even in regions of far greater strategic priority, sustained reconstruction efforts have proven politically fragile and electorally costly. In a polarized domestic environment where Cuba policy remains symbolic and emotionally charged, the prospect of committing tens or hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild the island appears remote.

This mismatch between expectations and capacity creates real risks. A rapid political transition without a credible reconstruction plan would not produce stability or democracy. It would likely generate institutional collapse, economic dislocation, and renewed migration pressures—many of which would be felt most directly in the United States.

Cuba, it bears emphasizing, is not Venezuela. It does not possess oil reserves that attract external intervention. It never evolved into a competitive authoritarian system with a mass opposition capable of electoral mobilization. Its internal opposition is fragmented, repressed, and largely exiled. There is no ready-made political alternative waiting in the wings, and no external patron prepared to absorb the costs of rebuilding the state.

The danger, then, is not that Cuba will collapse overnight. The regime has survived multiple “terminal crises” before through repression and emigration. The greater danger is that external pressure, unaccompanied by a serious reconstruction strategy, produces a prolonged gray-zone outcome: a weakened state, deeper poverty, continued outmigration, and chronic instability ninety miles from Florida.

The exile community will matter in whatever comes next. It can help reconnect Cuba to global markets, provide managerial expertise, and invest in specific sectors. But it cannot, on its own, rebuild a country hollowed out over six decades. That task, if it is to be undertaken at all, requires a level of U.S. state involvement and political consensus that currently does not exist.

Recognizing this reality is not an argument for preserving the status quo. It is an argument for realism. Without it, the liberation of Cuba risks becoming another case in which emotional investment outstrips structural capacity, and in which the costs of failure are borne not by those who demanded change, but by those left to live with its aftermath.

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[1] Comments delivered at the roundtable: Consequences for Cuba of a Course Correction in Venezuela

 February 6, 2026, Cuban Research Institute, Florida International University.