I do not think trump will risk any boots on the ground type actions- not against Cuba, Canada, Iran, or anywhere.
If we take the view that most of MAGA, from the small influencers up to Trump himself, is in it for self-profit and just doing our saying whatever they need to, to keep their followers and entice donors to give them money, then our current situation is that we’re probably low on munitions. Trump is trying to sell more up Saudi Arabia and who every will take more of them, despite no obvious advantage to himself. Laura Loomer and, potentially, more influencers might start pushing us to give more to Ukraine. Trump is blowing up munitions quickly in Iran, moved a lot of our capability away from the Pacific Ocean to park in the Middle East, and has stopped most of our munition production - preventing delivery - with requirements that every provider document down to each nut and bolt what country it came from and then redo until it’s all made in the USA, preventing us from restocking anything that we blow up, give away, or sell for about another two years.
If you’re of the opinion that Trump is an idiot, but loyal to the country, then he can’t afford to go into Cuba unless he can be confident that it won’t require any missiles or other armaments.
If you’re of the opinion that Xi wants to take Taiwan and needs the US to be incapable of moving against him, and that Trump is the guy that defied Congress to protect TikTok after meeting with their CEO about how the platform helped to get him the presidency, pardoned Binance, approved selling AI microchips to China, and is selling voting rights on cryptocurrency implementation details for millions of dollars to Chinese investors, and is listening to MAGA influencers receiving money from unknown donors, then Cuba looks like another good way to mire the US military and continue to deplete our munitions.
Whatever happened to his promise not to start wars, especially endless ones? And not that it matters, but JD Vance was the only one or one of the only ones to oppose the idea of starting the Iran war so I suspect him to oppose this idea as well.
Same thing as his promise to end inflation. And the war in Ukraine. Oh and give the rust belt all their manufacturing jobs back. Pay down the national debt? Nope, not that either, in fact just the opposite. I could go on…
I do not see Trump as being extremely consistent. And I do not see Trump avoiding boots on the ground in the case of Cuba.
Maybe Trump will order doing to the Cuban first secretary/president (Miguel Díaz-Canel) what we did to Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. But, well, first of all, that did require some boots on the ground. And the Cubans undoubtedly read the newspapers that day and are working to make it much more difficult for the U.S. to do to Diaz-Canel what we did to Maduro. Plus, we already have maybe 6,000 Americans in Guantanamo Cuba (12,000 boots on the ground?). If the U.S. tried a pure bombing campaign against Cuba, wouldn’t a land battle involving Guantanamo be a rather predictable consequence?
I’m not putting a number on how likely a US military intervention is in Cuba because there is no way to reduce that sort of thing to statistics. I just think that, as is still the case with Greenland, the risk is substantial enough to keep on discussing – and would require boots on the ground.
One more comment on this – here’s a 1980 interview concerning Iran:
Has he changed his mind on boots on the ground? I think so. But he could change it back, and it makes more sense (or is less insane) with a closer much-smaller-than-Iran adversary like Cuba.
“Abeyance”? Wow, he had a way better writer back then.
Since 1980 he is an entirely different person. And there is a lot of difference between thinking someone else should have gone in- and ordering it himself.
The Public does not look at some rockets etc going back and forth the same way they look at their sons actually their in person.
I felt he was, in that 1980 interview, misusing the word.
These things sometimes start out small and grow.
If the January 2026 capture of Nicolás Maduro, by a reported 200 U.S. special forces troops (backed up by 150 aircraft) had failed, we might have troops fighting on Venezuelan soil now.
This May 2026 U.S. Justice Department press release makes me suspect U.S. special forces may well try something similar in Cuba, but it would be rash to assume the same outcome:
The GOP is rapidly going into panic mode about the midterms. As a result I would fail to be surprised if intervention in Cuba proves to be the traditional “October Surprise” often seen in our electoral politics. If US intelligence agencies can pin down the locations of Raúl Castro and President Diaz-Canel I can easily imagine Hegseth conivincing DJT a raid like the one in Venezuela is a good idea. I doubt it would be as easily pulled off but even if it were to be successful I doubt it would do much to help GOP candidates.
I do not see a ground invasion of Cuba being at all likely now or in the near future.
Such a raid is a small ground invasion. And if it wasn’t as easily pulled off as in Venezuela, what’s next? I’m guessing a bigger invasion. And then it gets tempting for the Cuban government to threaten Guantanamo, even though in the past they have been careful not to do that.
I do not think it would happen before the midterms because leaks are usually true, and the leak says that the reserves have until December or so to get ready.
If I had to predict, there will be just one more attempt to overthrow a foreign government this presidential term. Could be Panama. Could be Greenland. Could be Cuba. And because of the Trump administration’s failure to overthrow Iran just by bombing, next time is more likely to be boots on the ground.
If an invasion of Cuba was Trump’s only foreign intervention, it might appeal to the MAGA crowd but after Venezuela and Iran and an exhausted military, I think even his most ardent supporters are growing tired.
Trump 47 has lasted 20 months so far – one major attempt to overthrow a foreign government every 10 months.
It has 28 more months to go. So if there was just one more attempt left in this presidential term, that could be interpreted as growing tired.
As for exhausted military, I think I recall a few posters here saying that, so I don’t mean to pick on you in particular, but I find that highly implausible. Sure there are shortages of a few types of the most modern munitions, and a couple of our smaller bases in the Middle East have been shot up, but by any historical standard of what it means for a military to be exhausted, U.S. forces are in great shape.
What about your statement that “his most ardent supporters are growing tired”? I guess that is true. And dictators have a reputation for caring about public opinion. So we’ll see.
and I wonder how those people felt when DJT inconsiderately said “we only lost 18 troops”?
I would agree. I don’t think DJT knows that and Hegseth has shown himself to be a testosterone fueled idiot. And again, I said this would be in response to the panic mode that is starting to grip the party heading into the midterms.
I never said these were smart people or that it would be a smart move. In fact I said in my penultimate sentence I didn’t think it would do much to help GOP candidates, to wit it would not appeal to the MAGA base.
I agree the conquest of Cuba would not help the GOP in a small d democratic electoral sense. But each legally questionable military intervention helps weed out military leaders (and even enlisted ranks) who lack loyalty to the Trump project. It all depends on whether Trump is a real dictator, or mostly make-believe. And you can argue it either way.
Agree. I should have said whomever was writing for him then knew multisyllable words.
All those other things are not within his powers, especially given the roster of incompetents he has chosen to surround himself with. But not starting a war was well within even Trump’s ability. As for Cuba, well the US tried once before, took its licks and ran. Trump is incapable of that, so I guess a second endless war.
My guess- not gonna happen, at least boots on the ground. Maybe a strict naval blockade?