Could Trump really invade Cuba?

CBS News reported recently that Pentagon officials were exploring the possibility of military action against Cuba.

“Military planners have in recent weeks examined a range of options for possible action against the island, including an Army-led air assault involving thousands of U.S. soldiers to be carried out by the 101st Airborne Division, the only unit trained for such a task,” according to the report .

Only days later, the State Department released a 100-page report describing Cuba as a “unique threat” to U.S. national security, claiming Havana sought to “turn America against itself” and even “conquer” the United States. Some analysts and commentators interpreted the report as an effort to lay the political groundwork for possible military action.

President Donald Trump has also repeatedly declared that he intends to overthrow Cuba's government, at one point saying that he might “ stop by ” the island after he was “finished” with the war in Iran.

Experts who spoke with Responsible Statecraft cautioned that reports of military planning should not necessarily be interpreted as evidence that an intervention is imminent. Several said the recent rhetoric and reported contingency planning could just as easily reflect an effort to increase pressure on Havana. Should Washington ultimately decide to use force, they warned, any operation aimed at toppling the Cuban government would confront far greater military, political, and humanitarian risks than the administration's rhetoric suggests.

Those risks extend well beyond the immediate military operation. A war in Cuba could trigger a migration crisis just 90 miles from Florida, create opportunities for other armed groups to exploit instability, and lead to a prolonged U.S. military occupation.

While the recent CBS News report points to an "Army-led air assault" as one plausible scenario, what military action against Cuba might actually look like remains unclear. The administration could intensify pressure through a blockade; pursue an air campaign or decapitation strike intended to weaken the regime without occupying the island; or launch a ground invasion.

Which path the administration ultimately pursues may depend largely on Washington's political objective. The more limited options could increase pressure on Havana but may prove insufficient if the goal is to overthrow the Cuban government. Yet the option most likely to achieve that objective — a ground invasion — is also the one experts who spoke with RS considered the least likely because of its enormous costs.

The reports come amid a continuing humanitarian crisis on the island. Cuba has been under a de facto oil embargo since February, leaving the country victim to regular fuel shortages and blackouts.

Mark Cancian, senior adviser at the Defense and Security Department at the Center for Strategic and International studies, says a continued blockade continues to be the most probable outcome.

"It puts the regime under permanent pressure," Cancian, a retired Marine Corps Colonel, told RS. "But it can't force the regime to change."

Lee Schlenker, a research associate with the Global South program at the Quincy Institute, said the potential blowback is one reason he remains skeptical that the administration is preparing to invade. The U.S. may not “need to use military tools because the economic warfare has been so devastatingly effective," Schlenker, who recently visited the island, told RS. At the same time, he added, the current approach may not be enough to force the government out.

“I think history has shown and the Cuban government has been very clear that the more you pressure them, the more you back them into a corner, the more you produce the siege mentality ,” Schlenker said. “They'll just continue to close ranks.”

Should the administration conclude that economic and maritime pressure had failed, analysts say a limited air campaign would represent the next rung on the escalation ladder. Rather than immediately launching a broad bombing campaign, planners would more likely focus on narrowly defined military objectives including suppressing Cuban air defenses, striking military infrastructure, or targeting intelligence facilities, Cancian said.

Recent American military operations have demonstrated the limits of so-called decapitation strikes. “The first day of the Iran war was like the purest example of a decapitation strike,” Dan Grazier, Director of the National Security Reform Program at the Stimson Center, told RS, referencing the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. “This is the very essence of air power doctrine. You drop bombs in a very strategic fashion, trying to upend the whole enemy system.” Despite that tactical success, the war in Iran is still going nearly five months later.

Grazier added that the Trump administration should avoid drawing broad conclusions from its January operation in Venezuela, saying that the special forces operation to remove President Nicolas Maduro “could have gone sideways very easily.”

And, having seen the Venezuela operation, the regime in Cuba may also be better prepared for such an eventuality. “There's always an element of luck,” Cancian said. “Because you have hundreds of troops on the ground, the possibility of casualties and captured personnel is very high.”

Given the limits of air power alone, experts said an airborne assault – similar to the one described in the CBS report – would be a necessary, if risky, way to counter Cuba’s military response. “What are we going to do? We're going to drop $100,000 bombs trying to go after insurgents in the mountains? Doesn't work that way,” Grazier said. “You need troops on the ground and you need a lot of them on the ground to be able to control territory.”

If neither a blockade nor an air campaign with limited ground troops succeeded in forcing political concessions, the administration would be left with the last — and, according to every expert interviewed by Responsible Statecraft, the least attractive — option: a full-scale ground invasion.

Experts said the opening phase of such an operation would move quickly. “Cuba has a tiny military, and it's not particularly capable,” said Grazier. “The green-on-green, U.S. regular soldiers up against Cuban regular soldiers – that part of the conflict would probably be very short.”

But defeating Cuba's conventional military would likely be the easiest part of the campaign. The greater challenge, he argued, would begin after organized resistance collapsed. Cuba's military doctrine has long assumed it cannot defeat the United States in a conventional war. Instead, it emphasizes territorial defense and guerrilla warfare designed to make any occupation costly and prolonged.

“This would be like the worst parts of Iraq and Afghanistan,” Grazier said, in which U.S. soldiers would be fighting against a “really hard to identify insurgency.”

A large-scale invasion would also be difficult to conceal. Cancian said observers should watch for aircraft deploying to South Florida, naval forces assembling in the Caribbean, and additional Marines reinforcing the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay. Those movements, he said, would likely precede any major military operation.