Waiting for Cuba's one-party system to implode raises the price of what follows

The essay puts the causation in a specific order. Collapse was triggered by the regime's unwillingness to reform and hastened by U.S. sanctions ^[16], and the trends it describes predate the foreign oil cutoff and the newest sanctions by years, if not decades ^[20]. Sanctions are an accelerant on a decline that was already running ^[26]. The pressure is also being applied to a state with less left to lose each year: outside its repression apparatus, that state is weakening fast ^[17].

The design institute makes the capacity problem literal. The building stood for 166 years and had housed a Spanish officers' club, U.S. occupation forces after 1898, Cuba's health ministry and, last, the design school ^[1]. It was declared uninhabitable years ago and collapsed partially twice during 2025, and nobody was sent to fix it ^[2]. In February the rest came down on several squatters ^[3]. The state had two recorded failures to act on before the fatal one ^[24]. When the essay's author visited in June, men were prying bricks out of the mound to cart off for makeshift houses ^[4].

Three readings of Rubio's August remarks are offered, and they are not compatible. One is that the administration is bluffing, holding extraordinary sanctions pressure in place either to restart the stalled talks or to misdirect Havana ahead of a military operation ^[13]. Another is that, with Washington entangled in Iran and managing Venezuela, Cuba has been demoted, left on life support with just enough fuel and food reaching private firms to prevent societal breakdown ^[14]. A third is that Washington has concluded that waiting for the one-party system to implode from within is the only viable path to regime change ^[15]. If the bluff reading is the right one, Havana's capacity to deliver services keeps falling while the bluff runs.

Havana rejected Washington's offer of U.S. investment and petroleum in exchange for President Miguel Diaz-Canel's removal and the privatization of the state oil company, and the Miami Herald reported that the backchannel had collapsed by late May ^[8]. In June, Havana enacted 176 economic reforms that expanded space for the private sector ^[9]. The Trump administration added new sanctions on state companies and regime officials while allowing limited U.S. fuel and food to reach the island through private distributors ^[10]. The reforms followed the rejection ^[25].

What still functions inside the state is selective. The author reports a joke heard in Havana: "Only two things work in this country: the state security apparatus and the hospitals." ^[22] The author wrote that it "was too generous to the hospitals" and that "Repression is the only thing the Cuban state still does well" ^[23].

For a decision taken this quarter, the only dated commitment on the record is Rubio's: "patience and persistence" ^[11], and a regime that could survive into 2028 or beyond ^[12]. For the decade, the essay's claim is that the wait is not cost-free, because current conditions calcify into the baseline for any future transition ^[21]. The essay gives no figures for the contraction, the inequality or the crime it describes ^[27]. Its forecast is that unless the course is reversed soon, rebuilding Cuba as a stable, prosperous and democratic place could become virtually impossible ^[5].