This is CBSI in the world. I'm John Batson with Professor Evan Ellis of the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute.

The day after the day after, Donald Trump, second administration, the State Department, and Latin America, Cuba.

This is a challenge to presidents at least as far back as Mr. Eisenhower, but we're

looking at right now collapse of the infrastructure that is profound in Cuba. There's no cause

whatsoever to admire or celebrate or observe or make light of what's happening to the people of Cuba.

Those that are left, millions have left over these years.

I believe there's something like 8.5 million people on the island.

Without adequate food, with bad water, with no prospects, with the brutality of the regime,

and with the collapse of the electric grid, it was supposed to be solved, but now a storm has come and it fell again.

So Cuba is living a primitive life, not North Korean, but in that direction.

Professor, there is talk that Cuba will be on the agenda for the second Trump term.

I believe Senator Rubio's name is mentioned.

What do you expect can be done with a regime as intransigent and arrogant as the Cuban regime?

Well, John, as you pointed out, the question of how to deal with authoritarian regimes,

especially those that are working within Latin American and elsewhere to undermine democracy

and also that serve as a point of entry for what I'd call extra hemispheric threat hosts,

collaborating with Russia, collaborating with Iran, and certainly collaborating and certainly, you know, collaborating with China.

And so, you know, certainly Cuba has always been at the center of that, you know, but which

also involves Nicaragua, which also involves Venezuela and others. During the Trump administration,

the posture was much more focus on, again, trying to maintain sanctions, to tighten sanctions, especially properties that

had been expropriated from people in the U.S. and in the West travel restrictions. And so that

balance between essentially humanitarian things and things that could try to put more pressure

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