Important Takeaways:

• Forget Europe or the hotspots of East Asia and the Middle East, Marco Rubio’s first foreign trip as secretary of state took him to one Caribbean and four Central American states. The tour tells us that the Trump foreign policy is focusing on the region closest to the American homeland.
• It is not clear when China first started collecting signals intelligence, commonly termed SIGINT, in Cuba, but it was evident that the effort began more than a decade before 2019.
• The CSIS study identifies four likely Chinese listening posts in Cuba. There are two from the Soviet era…
• China wants to do more than just collect SIGINT. “China and Cuba are negotiating to establish a new joint military training facility on the island, sparking alarm in Washington that it could lead to the stationing of Chinese troops and other security and intelligence operations just 100 miles off Florida’s coast,” reported the Wall Street Journal in June 2023.
• Cuba provides the Chinese one an ideal location to surveil America. “Sitting less than 100 miles south of Florida, Cuba is well-positioned to keep watch on sensitive communications and activities, including those of the U.S. military,” the CSIS report states. “The southeastern seaboard of the United States brims with military bases, combatant command headquarters, space launch centers, and military testing sites.”
• China denied the Wall Street Journal reporting, calling it “totally mendacious and unfounded.” In any event, since the paper’s article, there has been no confirmation that the Chinese military has actually built or obtained access to such a site.
• Perhaps one explanation is that the Biden administration pressured both Havana and Beijing to back off.
• At the moment, Cuba needs Chinese cash and might therefore accede to granting China greater access to the island. The Cuban regime, after all, is enduring its worst economic crisis since at least the Soviet collapse. Russia, its old patron, is tied down by the war in Ukraine and troubled by recent setbacks in the Middle East. Vladimir Putin, therefore, is not able to help much.
• It is not clear, therefore, how far the Chinese friends will go in rescuing their Cuban comrades.
• China made great strides in the Caribbean when the United States was not paying attention.
• Rubio, however, is focused on the Caribbean basin, as the itinerary for his first trip shows. Moreover, the new secretary of state is apparently willing to use raw American power to strong-arm countries.
• The United States is unlikely to use force against Cuba over listening posts, but President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are not about to let the Chinese military take control of a country so close to the American homeland. Cuba should expect intense pressure, so China is probably at high tide in that country.

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