The United States and Cuba sit less than 100 miles apart, but their political relationship has often felt like an ocean wide. Across two centuries, the story repeats in different forms: American leaders see Cuba as strategically essential, Cuban leaders resist outside control, and everyday people on both sides live with the consequences of policy choices made far above them.
To understand why U.S.-Cuban relations are still so volatile today, it helps to start with a simple fact of geography. Cuba is close enough to matter to Washington in almost every era, and that closeness has repeatedly turned into pressure, intervention, and backlash.
Early U.S. interest
Donald Trump is not the first U.S. president to talk like Cuba is a prize to be taken. Historian Michael Zeuske, a professor at the Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies at the University of Bonn, notes that U.S. leaders had already set their sights on the island as early as the mid-19th century.
Long before Cuba became independent, prominent U.S. officials spoke openly about bringing the island into the United States. In 1820, Thomas Jefferson wrote that the United States should seize the first chance to annex Cuba. Three years later, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams framed Cuba as something that would naturally “gravitate” toward the United States if it broke from Spain, using his famous “apple” metaphor:
There are laws of political as well as of physical gravitation; and if an apple severed by the tempest from its native tree cannot choose but fall to the ground, Cuba, forcibly disjoined from its own unnatural connection with Spain, and incapable of self support, can gravitate only towards the North American Union, which by the same law of nature cannot cast her off from its bosom.
— John Quincy Adams
Those weren’t just idle musings. In 1848, President James K. Polk offered Spain $100 million for Cuba. Spain refused. Six years later, U.S. diplomats drafted a secret statement asserting a right to take Cuba by force if Spain would not sell. Nothing came of it, but the pattern was clear: U.S. interest in Cuba was persistent, and it was not primarily about friendship.
Monroe Doctrine
These plans grew out of the Monroe Doctrine, rooted in President James Monroe’s 1823 message to European powers that “America [is] for the Americans.” On the surface, the phrase spoke to sovereignty in the hemisphere. In practice, it sat alongside U.S. expansion. Cuba, about 160 km (99 miles) from Florida, looked to strategists like a ripe apple practically on the doorstep.
This is one of the recurring tensions in U.S. foreign policy: a language of protecting the hemisphere, paired with actions that smaller neighbors experience as domination. Cuba has been one of the clearest examples.
1898 and war
By the late 1890s, Cubans had been fighting to end Spanish rule for years. Washington established a strong military presence on the island, arguing it needed to protect U.S. citizens there. The battleship USS Maine sat in Havana Harbor for weeks, until disaster struck.
On February 15, 1898, an explosion tore open the ship’s hull and it sank, killing more than 250 U.S. sailors. Was it a smoldering fire that reached the ammunition? Or had the Spanish attacked the ship, as the U.S. claimed? According to Zeuske, the accusation has never been substantiated, and there is no proof it was an attack. Still, the incident became the catalyst for war. “Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!” became a rallying cry, and the U.S. declared war on Spain.
The conflict was brief, lasting about four months. Spain lost major colonial holdings, including Puerto Rico, Guam, the Philippines, and Cuba. The United States took control of the island, but Cuba did not become a U.S. state.
Platt Amendment
Cuba’s failure to become a state was due in large part to U.S. Senator Henry M. Teller, who opposed annexation, supposedly to protect the sugar industry in his home state of Colorado from Cuban competition.
Yet Cuba also wasn’t given full independence. After the war, U.S. troops remained in Cuba. Washington agreed to withdraw only if the new Cuban government accepted the Platt Amendment and incorporated it into Cuba’s constitution. As Zeuske explains, the amendment would define the relationship for years, effectively allowing the U.S. to shape Cuba’s foreign policy, national debt and health policy, as well as intervene militarily and build naval bases.
The naval base at Guantanamo is the best-known legacy of that era and remains a point of contention today.
On May 20, 1902, U.S. military rule formally ended and the Republic of Cuba installed its first president. But even then, Cuba remained a quasi-protectorate of its powerful northern neighbor.
Money and influence
Political leverage was reinforced by economic dominance. By 1926, U.S. companies controlled about 60% of Cuba’s sugar industry. American investors also poured large amounts of money into hotels, bars, and casinos in Havana. That money helped build a glamorous image of Havana for visitors, while also deepening inequality and making Cuba’s economy more vulnerable to shifts in U.S. policy.
In everyday terms, this is where many Cubans experienced “sovereignty” as something theoretical: the island had its own flag and government, but key sectors of its economy were shaped by foreign owners and foreign demand.
Mafia and Batista
When the United States banned alcohol in 1920, tourists began flocking to Cuba. Organized crime groups followed soon after. Cuba was close enough to be easily reached, but far enough away to avoid U.S. law enforcement.
Havana became a major hub for gambling, drug and arms trafficking, money laundering, and prostitution. U.S. crime groups and the circle around Cuba’s dictatorial leader Fulgencio Batista made millions. Batista maintained close ties with mob boss Meyer Lansky, who became a key business partner and informal adviser. The result was a system that looked profitable and stable to some outsiders, but felt exploitative and humiliating to many Cubans.
Revolution
While elites grew wealthier, much of the population struggled in poverty. In 1953, Fidel Castro led an initial insurrection that government forces crushed. His “26th of July Movement” regrouped and waged a guerrilla war that ended in 1959 with Batista fleeing the country.
As Zeuske notes, Castro initially tried to maintain a good relationship with the United States, but U.S. officials showed little interest in negotiating with a socialist revolutionary. Castro ordered the expropriation of U.S.-owned refineries and sugar plantations, and Cuba moved closer to the Soviet Union.
Embargo and crises
In 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower imposed a trade embargo on Cuba. In 1961, Cuban exiles, backed covertly by the CIA, attempted an amphibious landing at the Bay of Pigs on Cuba’s southern coast to overthrow Castro. The operation failed miserably and became a public embarrassment for the United States. In Cuba, the failure strengthened Castro’s standing and accelerated his turn toward Moscow, making Cuba a Soviet-aligned state in the Western Hemisphere.
The stakes rose dramatically in 1962, when the Soviet Union deployed nuclear missiles to Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. The immediate crisis ended when the Soviets withdrew the weapons in exchange for a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba.
But U.S. efforts to eliminate Castro continued, first through assassination plots and later through schemes involving poisoned cigars, a contaminated diving suit, and an explosive device disguised as a seashell. Whatever their practical impact, these attempts caused Cubans to rally even more closely around their leader.
Thaws and reversals
The relationship has not been uniformly frozen. Relations improved twice, under President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s and under President Barack Obama in the 2010s. These openings mattered because they showed a different possibility: that diplomacy and travel could sometimes lower tensions even when the two governments fundamentally disagreed.
But each thaw has been fragile. President Donald Trump later reversed that course, tightening restrictions and returning to a posture of maximum pressure. That back-and-forth has become part of the lived reality of Cuban families, Cuban Americans, and U.S. businesses. A policy shift in Washington can change access to travel, fuel, and imports almost overnight.
Today’s pressure
Recent U.S. rhetoric has revived an older, unsettling theme: that Cuba is an object to be taken, not a sovereign neighbor to be negotiated with. In mid-March, President Donald Trump said of Cuba, I think I could do anything I want with it
. In early January, he claimed Cuba was ready to fall
and increased pressure on the island by blocking its foreign oil supplies, including those from Cuba-friendly Venezuela, where the U.S. had taken military action. In March, he added on camera: I think I will have the honor of taking Cuba.
The Cuban response was swift. Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossío told NBC News that Cuba was sovereign and would not accept being controlled by another state.
Meanwhile, conditions inside Cuba have been strained. Its energy supply has faltered, and blackouts have become common. When electricity fails, refrigerated food spoils and basic city services break down. Tourism has declined, and garbage has piled up in the streets. Zeuske describes Cuba as extremely resilient when it comes to leadership, the military, and territorial control. At the same time, he says people are deeply dissatisfied with their government, especially with the power cuts, and conditions continue to deteriorate. Many young people want to leave.
The pattern
Two nations can be close neighbors without being close partners. Over and over, proximity has turned into temptation, and temptation has turned into coercion, resentment, and resistance. That cycle has shaped how each side interprets the other’s actions, and it helps explain why even small moves today can feel, to both governments, like steps toward a much older fight.