WASHINGTON and MIAMI—Florida authorities have secured a new arrest warrant for former Cuban President Raúl Castro over the 1996 shoot down of two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft, following a federal indictment announced in May. Neither the warrant nor the indictment is likely to bring Castro into US custody anytime soon. But the separate state and federal proceedings carry an additional message that US authorities are serious about pursuing accountability for those who wield power in the country, past and present. And it’s a reminder to Cuban authorities that Washington’s pressure campaign on Havana is gaining new momentum.
Washington’s latest pressure on the Cuban regime, including the tightening of US sanctions earlier this year, comes as Cuba’s economic and humanitarian crisis spirals from bad to worse. Decades of mismanagement, corruption by Cuban authorities, and a military-controlled economic system have led to a collapse in trade and have decimated the country’s traditional industries, particularly tourism and sugar production. That economic devastation has been compounded by a drying up of Cuba’s oil imports—a result of Nicolás Maduro’s removal from power in Venezuela, as well as US President Donald Trump’s January executive order declaring that the situation in Cuba constitutes a national emergency for the United States and threatening tariffs on any country supplying it with oil.
The extent of the crisis is evident in the daily lives of Cubans and it far predates 2026. According to the Cuban government’s own figures, infant mortality more than doubled from 2019 to 2025—up to 9.9 deaths per 1,000 live births. Cuba was once known for its leadership in the medical field, but last year only 30 percent of medicines on the country’s essential list were available. And eight in ten Cubans reported having skipped meals because of food shortages or a lack of money, according to a recent survey by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights. In September, the United Nations estimated that 3.2 million Cubans were struggling to access safe water. The roots of this crisis lie in decades of mismanagement by Cuban authorities and neglect of the needs of the Cuban people, which will make rebuilding a necessary and daunting task.
The difficult road ahead for Cuba is no reason to shrug off the challenge. Lasting change in the country will need to come from the Cuban people. That’s one reason why US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has prioritized speaking to them directly, including in a video released in May. In the five-minute speech, Rubio emphasized the failures of the communist government, and the US vision for a new economic model for Cuba, one in which ordinary people, not just corrupt authorities, would have opportunities for economic progress. More such direct addresses would help paint a clear picture of how Cubans’ daily lives could improve, including via better health care, education, and access to reliable electricity, without the communist regime.
So, what is needed next? Yes, more direct appeals. Yes, more pressure. But also early planning with international financial institutions and other potential partners to mobilize the resources needed to rebuild Cuba following a political transition. Assessments are already being drawn up of the enormous investments needed to revive the crippled Cuban economy. Organizing initial commitments now will help ensure that funding is available when the moment for rebuilding arrives.
What would it take for change to last?
The new arrest warrant does not on its own represent a fundamental change in relations between Washington and Havana, which are already at their lowest point since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. However, systematically sanctioning individuals within the current Cuban leadership and pursuing legal accountability could help dissuade Cubans from supporting the regime and incentivize them to work with the United States.
Havana has signaled it is unwilling to relinquish its monopoly on political power or undertake serious structural reforms. Negotiations have hit a dead end. As it has done before, the regime is placing its hold on power over everything else, including the welfare of the Cuban people and the demographic survival of the Cuban nation. The island’s population is overwhelmed by repression, scarcity, and hunger. A repeat of the mass anti-government demonstrations of July 2021 is a diminishing possibility, as the regime has used harsh repression to isolate protests and deter broader mobilization. Preventing another “11-J,” as the 2021 protests are called, is the regime’s top priority, since the violent suppression of dissent could hand the United States an excuse to intervene militarily.
The economic reforms announced by the government in recent months are a charade: The state retains the power to regulate, co-opt, and strangle any private enterprise, foreign or domestic. A negotiated solution would be possible only if the United States gave up its stated goal of regime change, a step that would undermine its security objectives in the hemisphere. That’s why Washington has not relinquished this goal, which it sees as the best pathway forward for Cuba. Without political regime change, any economic reforms will be fruitless, at best reproducing a system dominated by security elites akin to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s siloviki model.
Only a complete political transition, which starts by dismantling the regime’s political and security structure and establishes democracy, can guarantee both US national security goals and the overall welfare of the Cuban people. Several polls conducted inside and outside Cuba substantiate that there is a broad consensus among Cubans on the island and in the diaspora around this conclusion. An incomplete transition, however, would dash hopes for freedom inside Cuba and it would be unacceptable to many in the Cuban exile community, which will likely be a primary source of the early capital necessary to jumpstart the Cuban economy.
Regime transitions are like young rivers, each carving its own course as it flows downhill. There is, however, an early marker of a transition’s legitimacy: the reaction of Cuban dissidents inside and outside the island. They understand the nature of the regime firsthand, and they will be the ones signaling whether a fundamental political transformation is actually taking place. Many Cuban pro-democracy groups have already coalesced under the Freedom Accord, a March agreement between opposition coalitions representing organizations inside Cuba and in exile that outlines a plan for a democratic transition. They are the best guarantors of a legitimate political transformation in Cuba, and they are critical advisers to the United States. They should have a place at the table in any serious negotiation.