Cuba, Regime Change, and the Implications for South Africa

The United States (US) administration has signalled its desire to see a new government in Cuba by the end of the year. This objective fits squarely within a hard realist view of hemispheric security and reflects a broader effort to close off remaining sources of hostile anti-Western leverage in the Americas.

From Washington’s perspective, Cuba is no longer merely a historical antagonist, but the last standing strategic proxy aligned with Iran in the Western Hemisphere, following the collapse of the Maduro regime in Venezuela.

Cuba’s strategic importance does not lie in its economic size or military power. It lies in its historical role as an intelligence, security, and ideological hub. For decades, Havana functioned as a facilitator of regional co-ordination among anti-Western regimes, offering intelligence expertise, internal security training, and political cover. This role expanded significantly during Venezuela’s rise as a petro-state patron. Cuban intelligence services were deeply embedded in Venezuelan defence and internal security structures, effectively exporting regime survival expertise in exchange for oil and financial support.

The fall of the Maduro regime therefore struck at the heart of Cuba’s external relevance. It also exposed vulnerabilities within Havana’s own intelligence and security apparatus, given that those structures were presented as robust enough to underpin the stability of the Venezuelan regime. Their failure in Caracas has inevitably raised questions about their effectiveness at home.

The economic consequences for Cuba have been severe. The economy was already fragile, but the loss of subsidised Venezuelan oil has pushed it into a more acute crisis. Energy shortages, fiscal stress, declining infrastructure, and weakened state capacity have sharply narrowed the regime’s room for manoeuvre. Attempts to secure alternative support have yielded limited results.

China has shown little appetite for underwriting Cuban stability at scale, while Iran lacks the financial capacity to compensate for Venezuela’s collapse. Regionally, Cuba is now more isolated than at any point since its 1950s revolution.

From Washington’s perspective, this combination of economic distress, regional isolation, and diminished security credibility creates a narrow but meaningful window for pressure. The objective is not an abrupt collapse of the Cuban state but rather a political transition, or at minimum, as has been pursued in Venezuela, the removal of Cuba as a functioning platform for hostile intelligence and influence operations in the Americas. In this sense, Cuba is no longer a Cold War relic. It is a near final unresolved node in a wider effort to restructure security across the Western Hemisphere.

Domestic US politics reinforces this posture. The Cuban exile community in Florida remains one of the most organised and influential foreign policy constituencies in the country and is close to the current White House (the parents of Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, were Cuban immigrants who fled to the US in the 1950s). Their pressure aligns with strategic calculations inside the administration and ensures sustained focus on Havana.

At the same time, the absence of a clear leadership successor (institutional or individual) in Cuba complicates any transition scenario. The Cuban state has proved highly effective at suppressing dissent, fragmenting opposition, and preventing the emergence of a credible alternative elite. Any change is therefore likely to be managed, contested, or uneven.

Yet the broader trajectory is difficult to ignore. With Venezuela gone, and Iranian influence degraded, Cuba stands increasingly alone. The dismantling or transformation of this final communist outpost in the Western Hemisphere would significantly reduce the ability of hostile actors to project influence into the Americas and would mark the effective closure of the decades-long southern pressure arc against the US.

These developments have under-appreciated implications for South Africa.

Pretoria has long maintained close fraternal ties with Cuba, albeit not anchored in any contemporary national interest calculation for South Africa. These ties have been reinforced by South Africa’s broader foreign policy posture, which has included close relations with Iran and strong alignment with actors opposing US power.

The problem for South Africa is that the strategic environment sustaining these positions is rapidly eroding. The fall of Venezuela removed one pillar of this alignment. The degradation of Iranian influence has weakened another. A political transition in Cuba would remove a third. What remains is not a coherent alternative bloc but a shrinking set of increasingly isolated actors within South Africa’s foreign policy and security infrastructure whose relevance depends on an international order that is disappearing.

This matters because a foreign policy misaligned with national interest considerations carries increasing material consequences that have translated into a harsh political reality for the African National Congress-aligned side of South Africa’s government.

If Cuba undergoes political change under US pressure, South Africa will be forced closer to a choice. It can continue to value a foreign policy anchored around corruption masquerading as ideological solidarity, and at odds with national interest, even as the practical foundations of that solidarity collapse. Or it can begin recalibrating towards a posture that recognises national interest considerations.

There is also a more immediate implication. As hostile influence networks in the Americas are dismantled, attention will increasingly shift to remaining points of leverage elsewhere. South Africa’s foreign policy institutions have, in part, provided diplomatic cover and rhetorical support for actors now in strategic retreat. As those actors fall away, the individuals and networks that sustained those positions risk becoming exposed, isolated, and increasingly misaligned with global power realities.

In this sense, Cuba is not simply a Caribbean story. It is a signal of how quickly the strategic environment can change and how unforgiving it can be to states that fail to adapt. Washington’s pressure on Havana is not about ideology or punishment. It is about closing gaps, removing proxies, and consolidating hemispheric security at a time of intensifying global confrontation.

For South Africa, the lesson is stark. Foreign policy grounded in corruption and ideology rather than power analysis becomes brittle when the world hardens. As the last pillars of an older alignment fall, Pretoria will have to decide whether it wants to adapt to the emerging order or remain rhetorically committed to a network that no longer exists.