Anonymous wrote:
More details from the NYT article referenced above. Basically, they want to turn Cuba into another Venezuela by ousting the current leader and replacing him with someone who's willing to work with the US. No real democratic change. The bolded tells me they want to extract riches just like they are doing from Venezuela. I think we all know that the "American businesspeople and companies" who would do business with the new regime would include family and friends of Trump.
"The move would topple a key figurehead while keeping in place the repressive Communist government that has ruled Cuba for more than 65 years. The Americans have signaled to Cuban negotiators that the president must go, but are leaving the next steps up to the Cubans, the people said.
The United States so far is not pushing for any action against Castro family members, who remain the country’s top power brokers, two of the people said. That is consistent with the general desire of Mr. Trump and his aides to force regime compliance rather than regime change in their foreign policy.
In the view of some Trump administration officials, removing Cuba’s head of state would allow structural economic changes in the country that Mr. Díaz-Canel, whom the officials consider a hard-liner, is unlikely to support, one of the people said. The ouster of the top official in Cuba’s leadership would give President Trump a symbolic win that would allow him to tell the American public that he had brought down the leader of a leftist government long opposed to the United States, as he did in Venezuela, one of the people said. The move, though intended to show the Cuban exile community and other Americans that the Trump administration seeks political as well as economic change, would likely disappoint many conservative Cuban exiles in the United States, who want to see wholesale political transformation in Cuba.
From the perspective of U.S. officials,
the talks are focused on having Cuba gradually open its economy to American businesspeople and companies — laying the groundwork for a client state — while getting a few symbolic political wins for Mr. Trump to announce."