Donald Trump likes to win. He made that clear in his 1987 book, The Art of the Deal, where he writes about how he likes to ‘think big’ and ‘win big’. What Trump dislikes is a ‘loser’, a word that he uses frequently in The Art of the Deal, and which he deploys in his conversations to mark the character of people he dislikes. In recent years, it has meant everything to Trump that he wins elections (his loss to Joe Biden in 2020 rattled him so much that he refused to accept the result). But this year, Trump has focused his attention on achieving victory in something that he promised to avoid: wars.

Boyish Imperialism

Trump’s kind of war is emblematic of a kind of boyish imperialism:

1. A testosterone-driven use of US military power, mostly air power or aerial bombardment that produces a video game-like quality of a war.

2. This use of force must have a big result, such as the grand explosion of the largest non-nuclear bomb, the MOAB (Mother of All Bombs) used in Nangarhar (Afghanistan) in 2017, the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, or the killing of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

3. No or minimal US casualties.

4. A declaration of victory without a surrender and without care for the regional or international implications of the conflict.

Venezuela and Iran set in place a grammar of imperialist war that Trump very much identifies with:

1. The demonisation of the leader as a narco-terrorist (Maduro) or as a nuclear terrorist (Khamenei).

2. The build-up of a lethal armada of ships and aircraft off the coast of the country being demonised.

3. Negotiations as a smokescreen for the military plans.

4. The removal of the leader by kidnapping (Maduro) or assassination (Khamenei).

5. The enforcement of a pliant administration that is now told publicly that it is following US orders, with no internal revolt organised and no expectation of a change of the political leadership beyond that of the top leader (this is so that Trump is not saddled with the experience of Iraq and Afghanistan).

In Venezuela, where it appeared for a few days after the shock of the kidnapping of Maduro that the administration of acting President Delcy Rodríquez would follow instructions to prevent another attack, on January 26, she said that she had ‘enough with orders from Washington’. The situation in Iran was sharper. The leadership refused any offer of a ceasefire or of talks, let alone a change of direction. Iran refused to follow the plot line in the fifth point by selecting Mojtaba Khamenei as the new Supreme Leader and not allowing Trump to have a say in the process, understanding that this is an existential fight against an enemy that cannot be trusted. The Iranians are fighting back ferociously, pinning the US down in a war that could either lead to something like the quagmire of Iraq (with very high US casualties if they send in ground troops) or lead to an ignominious retreat as with Afghanistan or Libya (both bombed but then out of US control).

Taking Cuba in Some Form

Having failed to win the war in Iran, and having failed to prevail fully in Venezuela, Trump has turned his focus on Cuba. In mid-March, as Cuba suffered a national blackout due to Trump’s Oil Embargo, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, ‘I do believe I’ll be having the honour of taking Cuba. That’s a big honour. Taking Cuba in some form. I mean whether I free it, take it. Think I can do anything I want with it. You want to know the truth’. These are startling sentences, but in précis, they reveal the entirety of US policy since the Cuban Revolution of 1959: the United States has felt that it can do anything with Cuba and that Cuba has no sovereignty whatsoever. There was no rebuke from any major elected officials in the US, who seem to stand in unison when it comes to this policy of suffocation against an island of about ten million people.

Negotiations have opened at the highest level between Cuba and the United States, but these are not going very well because Trump wants a prestige win as the primary item on the agenda. If he cannot get the Cuban Revolution to be fully dismantled, he is asking for the removal of Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel. The Trump team demonised Maduro, calling him a narco-terrorist for months; but they have built up no such public narrative about Díaz-Canel, who is a loyal member of the Communist Party of Cuba which continues to have faith in his leadership as its First Secretary. ‘We’re talking to Cuba’, Trump told reporters on Air Force One, ‘but we’re going to do Iran before Cuba’. The timeline is unpredictable: Trump shoots while he talks, so his word is not to be relied upon. But, since the US is trapped in Iran and since the Iranian leadership has refused a ceasefire on US terms, it seems that the US might not be ‘free’ to attack Cuba at this time.

Dire Situation in Cuba

A few years ago, I co-edited (with Manolo De Los Santos) a book for LeftWord of speeches by Fidel Castro (Comrade of the Revolution, 2021). The speeches we chose were those given by Fidel in moments of setback or defeat for the Cuban Revolution, because it was in these speeches that Fidel articulated the actuality of the revolutionary process: always under attack, always in search of new ways not only to survive but to advance the revolutionary process, and always ready to defend itself against any and every assault. I was thinking about these speeches in early March as I walked through the Fidel Castro Centre in Havana. Among the speeches in the book is one given in 2005 where Fidel asks, ‘Can a Revolution be reversed?’, and answers, no, it cannot be reversed even if there are serious setbacks. The collapse of the USSR did not entirely erase the gains of the Soviet period, because the Russian population retains a memory and an experience of a society based on something other than the profit motive, and this memory and experience continues to motivate their sense of patriotism even if the class character of those memories and experiences have slowly dissipated. Cuba’s people, even those deeply frustrated with the Revolution, understand that its erasure will mean a return to the harsh ways of the pre-1959 mafia state and poverty. What they have now is dignity; that will be wiped out by the Counter-Revolution. This is what Fidel warned in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs victory in 1962, when he told the Cuban people that the invaders wanted to re-establish the large landlords, which is why the people did not rally to their cause.

Trump’s Oil Embargo has resulted in national blackouts in Cuba, which deeply impacts all aspects of life. In Cuba, I asked President Díaz-Canel if he felt that the Cubans would withstand the pressure. ‘Yes’, he said. ‘We have no choice but to fight. We will never surrender our dignity’. Everywhere I went in Havana, the people told stories of the difficulties, and spoke openly about their frustrations, but at the same time, they knew that the source of their problems did not lie in the Revolution but in Washington. ‘Let Trump come’, said an old man. ‘Every US president has threatened us. Trump is no different. They threaten. We stand with dignity’. Ships of fuel from Russia and Mexico are on their way; other aid convoys are bringing small amounts of relief. Cuba, with its acute fuel shortage, cannot defend itself against the staggeringly powerful US military but every Cuban I met said that if US troops and their oligarchic Cuban mercenaries land on Cuban soil, they will be met with fierce resistance. This echoes the views in Iran and in Venezuela. Trump has set his own trap. He expected easy victories to help his allies triumph in the mid-term elections and help bury once and for all the Epstein story. But he is stuck in Iran, unable to get anyone to help him exit, and he will be stuck in Cuba.

Imperialism is powerful, but it is not omnipotent.