I'm John Batchel with my colleague Professor Evan Ellis of the U.S. Army War College,

Secretary Rubio, days after the event of detaining Maduro, pointed to Havana as a challenge,

that certainly suggests that there is more to be done.

Havana depends on the oil that has been shipped from Venezuela.

No more, says the Trump administration. But Havana depends on the oil that has been shipped from Venezuela. No more, says the Trump administration.

But Havana itself, there are bad actors in Cuba, we're told.

China's there with listing posts.

Russia has always regarded Havana as a safe port.

Evan, the reason I bring up Cuba is because it's a longstanding sore form of the United States.

Is there a profound change coming after the Caracas episode or the tattered economy will get worse?

Well, John, there's clearly a lot of pressure on Cuba and Miguel Diaz Canal.

And there's been pressure for quite some time, really. The Cuban economy lost most of its European tourism after COVID in 2020, and that never fully recovered. Of course, long under strong U.S. embargoes, and that's only really doubled down with President Trump administration right now. And, of course, the latest President Trump indicating that, you know, with the U.S.

Navy there, that there would be zero oil going to Cuba. And by my estimate, it's been about a month

since any Venezuelan oil was actually permitted to Cuba as

well as Russian oil. And the problem is that, you know, most of Cuba's electricity grid,

with the exception of a few different solar facilities and wind facilities, the Chinese have been

building for them. But the vast majority of the grid, which is falling apart, depends on petroleum-powered electricity.

And so without that oil, basically the lights, which are out of those, you know, 20 hours a day,

making things very hard for people in Cuba as well as businesses to produce anything or even to, you know, store food is just life is becoming impossible.

Now, there has been a continuing willingness of the leftist regime of Claudia Shinebaum

in Mexico to send some oil to Cuba. There was literally just a small tanker of 85,000 barrels,

which I understood was sent to Cuba from Pemex.

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