Ninety miles. That is the distance between the southern tip of Florida and the northern coast of Cuba. In the grand geography of the world, it is a rounding error. A marathon runner could cover it in a few hours if the water turned to asphalt. But for the people living on either side of that blue divide, those ninety miles represent an infinite, shifting chasm of political theater, broken families, and the heavy hand of American executive power.
When a president says, "I can do anything I want," the words don’t just echo in the briefing rooms of Washington. They ripple. They travel across the salt water and land in the small, humid kitchens of Havana, where a grandmother wonders if the remittance money that buys her medicine will suddenly vanish. They land in the bustling cafes of Little Havana in Miami, where the hope of a fallen regime is a flickering candle kept alive by decades of rhetoric.
We often treat foreign policy as a game of chess played by giants. We look at the headlines about Donald Trump ramping up his stance on Cuba and see a map. We see trade embargoes. We see diplomatic chess pieces moving across a board. But the board is made of skin and bone.
The Weight of a Single Signature
Consider a hypothetical man named Elias. Elias drives a 1954 Chevrolet Bel Air through the streets of Old Havana. It is held together by prayer, Russian tractor parts, and a stubborn refusal to let the engine die. For Elias, the "thaw" of a few years ago wasn't just a political trend; it was a floodgate. It meant American tourists with crisp dollar bills. It meant he could finally paint his house. It meant his daughter could dream of opening a small paladar, a private restaurant, to serve the travelers who were finally coming.
Then, the tone changes. The rhetoric sharpens. The man in the Oval Office asserts a singular, unchecked authority over the fate of that island.
The power of the American presidency over Cuba is unique. Because of the complex web of the Helms-Burton Act and various executive orders, a president has a dial. They can turn the pressure up until the pipes scream, or they can ease it until the island breathes. When Trump signals a return to the "maximum pressure" campaign, he isn't just talking to voters in a swing state. He is telling Elias that the paint on his house might have to wait another twenty years.
The "I can do anything I want" stance is a claim of absolute leverage. It treats a nation of eleven million people not as a neighbor, but as a leverage point. It assumes that if you squeeze hard enough, the system will snap. History, however, has a different story to tell.
The Ghost of the Cold War
We have been here before. The history of U.S.-Cuba relations is a repetitive loop of hope and heartbreak. For decades, the embargo—the bloqueo—has been the central pillar of American policy. It was designed to starve a revolution. Instead, it became the revolution's greatest excuse. Every failure of the Cuban state, every empty shelf in a bodega, was blamed on the "Yankee imperialists."
When the Obama administration moved to normalize relations, it was a gamble on the power of the middle class. The idea was simple: if you can't break the door down, try to melt it from the inside with capitalism and contact. For a moment, it worked. Airbnb took off. Private businesses bloomed like desert flowers after a rare rain.
But then came the pivot. The return to the rhetoric of the Cold War.
This shift isn't just about policy; it's about the theater of strength. By asserting that he can do anything he wants, the president is signaling a departure from the slow, grinding work of diplomacy. Diplomacy is boring. It requires nuance. It requires acknowledging that the other side has a face. Rhetoric, on the other hand, is fast. It is loud. It plays well on the evening news in Miami-Dade County.
The invisible stakes are the lives caught in the middle. We talk about "remittances"—the money sent from family members in the States back to Cuba. To a policy analyst, a remittance is a statistic, a line item on a balance sheet. To a family, it is the difference between eating meat once a week or once a month. When the president threatens to shut those valves, he is reaching directly into those kitchens.
The Illusion of Control
There is a certain seduction in the idea of a leader who can "do anything." It suggests a world where complex problems have simple, forceful solutions. If the Cuban government won't behave, we will simply starve them into submission. If they align with our adversaries, we will erase their economy.
But the world is no longer a bipolar map of 1962. Cuba has found other friends. Russia and China are more than happy to fill the vacuum left by American retreat. Every time we pull back, someone else steps in. Our "absolute power" to dictate terms is often an illusion that leaves us with less influence than when we started.
I remember standing on the Malecón, the sea wall that runs along the edge of Havana. The waves crash against the stone, spraying salt water onto the sidewalk. You can look out at the horizon and know, somewhere just past the curve of the earth, is Florida. It feels so close you could touch it.
The people there aren't talking about "strategic imperatives." They are talking about the price of eggs. They are talking about whether their relatives in Hialeah will be allowed to visit this Christmas. They are talking about the fear that the window which briefly opened is being slammed shut and bolted from the outside.
The Human Cost of Grandstanding
The tragedy of the "I can do anything I want" philosophy is that it treats foreign policy as a monologue rather than a dialogue. It ignores the reality that for every action in Washington, there is a reaction in the streets of Santiago de Cuba.
When we tighten sanctions, the government in Havana doesn't usually starve. The elites keep their cars and their air conditioning. It is the librarian, the doctor, and the taxi driver who feel the pinch. They are the ones who stand in line for hours for a liter of cooking oil. They are the ones who eventually decide that the only way to have a future is to build a raft.
The rhetoric of strength often leads to the reality of crisis. If the goal is a free and democratic Cuba, we have to ask if decades of the same pressure have brought us a single inch closer to that goal. Or have we simply created a cycle of suffering that fuels the very regime we claim to oppose?
The stakes aren't just geopolitical. They are moral. When a superpower uses its might to squeeze a small island, it bears a responsibility for the human fallout. You cannot claim to be the champion of the Cuban people while simultaneously cutting off their lifelines.
The Florida Strait is a graveyard of dreams and a highway of desperation. It is a place where the politics of "I can do anything I want" meets the reality of "I have nothing left to lose."
As the rhetoric ramps up and the speeches grow bolder, the people on the island wait. They watch the northern horizon. They listen to the words coming across the water, translated into a language of survival. They know that when the giants in Washington decide to flex their muscles, it is the people in the shadows who feel the bones break.
The sun sets over the Gulf of Mexico, casting long, orange shadows over the crumbling facades of Havana. The city is beautiful and broken, a testament to endurance. Somewhere, a radio plays a speech from a land far away, full of certainty and power. And in a small room, a mother turns down the volume, tucks her children into bed, and prays that the ninety miles between her and her husband don't become a thousand.
Power is not just the ability to do what you want. It is the wisdom to know what your actions do to those who cannot fight back.
