Cuba is America's Taiwan

While headlines obsess over China and Iran, the real Trump doctrine is hiding in plain sight 90 miles off the Florida coast. It's about 70 years overdue.

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NOTE: Yesterday while the world was watching the Beijing summit, CIA Director John Ratcliffe led a U.S. delegation to Havana to meet with Cuban government officials. As in Iran, the word “surrender” wasn’t used, but as in Iran, it didn’t have to be.

Ratcliffe offered the Communist leadership $100 million in immediate humanitarian relief. That plus a lifting of the embargo and massive U.S. direct investment are all in view, but not for free: Cuba must accept wideranging democratic reforms and boot the Chinese, Russians, and Iranians off the island, just 90 miles offshore.

Havana can choose the easy way or the hard way, but the outcome is not meaningfully in doubt. All the traffic to and from the Gulf of America must flow past it. Cuba is existentially important to the United States, and essential to any enemy who wants to threaten us. Donald Trump has no intention of allowing that loose end to go untidied.

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