Gerardo Hernández Nordelo attempted to undermine warnings from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio by presenting an alleged contradiction: that Cuba cannot simultaneously be a failed state and a threat to American security.
While this argument might initially seem clever, it is fundamentally flawed. It conflates a government's ability to control and oppress its population with its competence in fulfilling the essential functions of a state. Moreover, it overlooks how internal instability can lead to external threats.
A state doesn't cease to be a failure simply because it maintains police forces, prisons, intelligence services, and a one-party system. Nor does it stop being a threat due to a collapsed economy.
Understanding the Concept of a Failed State
The notion of a failed state is debated and lacks a universally accepted definition. However, leading frameworks assessing state fragility consider factors like economic decline, loss of legitimacy, population exodus, collapse of public services, human rights abuses, and the actions of closed, extractive elites.
For instance, the Fragile States Index by the Fund for Peace evaluates economic decline, human capital flight, state legitimacy, public services, human rights, and demographic pressures. A government doesn't need to lose control over its entire territory to be recognized as institutionally failing.
Indicators of Cuba's State Fragility
Cuba exhibits many of these traits. While the regime maintains a high level of coercive power, it increasingly struggles to provide stable electricity, food, medication, transportation, housing, or economic prospects.
Non-governmental organizations like Human Rights Watch have documented power outages lasting up to 20 hours a day, severe shortages of food and medicine, and frequent national electrical system failures. They also highlighted that Cuba sought help from the World Food Program to supply milk to young children.
Additionally, NGOs reported a 10% decrease in the Cuban population from December 2021 to December 2023, primarily due to emigration.
The True Nature of Cuban Governance
This scenario does not depict an absence of government. Rather, it reveals a government that has retained the tools of control but failed in its duty to serve.
The apparent Cuban paradox is resolved by distinguishing between coercive and institutional capacity.
Freedom House categorizes Cuba as "not free" and describes a single-party system that bans political pluralism, suppresses dissent, controls the media, and severely restricts civil liberties. Their report on internet freedom notes the blocking of independent media, imprisonment for digital publications, and new measures to monitor content.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has also documented the absence of democratic institutions, the subordination of public powers, and patterns of persecution, criminalization, and harassment against activists, opponents, journalists, and human rights defenders.
Cuba's Dual Nature: Control and Failure
Thus, the regime is not weak across all domains. It is strong where it needs to monitor, punish, and retain power, but extraordinarily ineffective when it comes to producing food, managing infrastructure, protecting rights, or creating conditions for a dignified life for its people.
This combination does not contradict the idea of state failure. It reinforces it.
International Implications of Cuba's Fragility
Fragile states can pose international risks in numerous ways: mass exoduses, human trafficking, expansion of illicit economies, humanitarian crises, regional conflicts, or the use of their territory by foreign powers.
In Cuba's case, the most visible external effect is emigration. The departure of hundreds of thousands of people is not just a demographic tragedy caused by misgovernance; it exerts pressure on the migration systems of other countries, fuels human trafficking networks, and shifts part of the crisis's cost created by Havana to the outside world.
Furthermore, there is a security and intelligence dimension. A State Department report titled "Cuba: The Capital of Communism in the 21st Century" presents the regime as a player that has long combined espionage, political infiltration, propaganda, and cooperation with U.S. adversaries. The report cites legally proven cases, such as those of Ana Belén Montes and Víctor Manuel Rocha, to argue that Cuba's material poverty has never eliminated its intelligence services' operational capabilities.
Though this report is a governmental document with a political purpose rather than an independent academic investigation, its central argument remains difficult to dismiss: a poor regime can still maintain intelligence networks, ideological ties, influence capacity, and alliances with powers seeking proximity to U.S. territory.
Being impoverished does not equate to being harmless.
Debunking the False Dichotomy
Hernández Nordelo presents a false dichotomy by treating "failed state" and "threat" as incompatible categories. They are not.
Cuba can fail in providing welfare, rights, public services, and opportunities while retaining tools to repress internally and cause destabilizing effects abroad.
It can lose population, endure nationwide blackouts, and rely on humanitarian aid while maintaining an experienced intelligence apparatus and offering geopolitical value to Washington's adversaries.
The decisive question is not whether the regime controls the country. It does. The question is what it uses that control for.
After more than six decades, Cuba's power has shown greater ability to perpetuate itself than to effectively govern. That is precisely the core of its failure and one of the reasons why its consequences no longer end at the island's shores.
Key Aspects of Cuba's Political and Economic Situation
What defines a failed state?
A failed state is characterized by economic decline, loss of legitimacy, population exodus, collapse of public services, human rights abuses, and extractive elites.
How does Cuba pose a threat internationally?
Cuba poses an international threat through mass emigration, human trafficking, and maintaining intelligence networks and alliances with powers near U.S. territory.
Why is the concept of a failed state debated?
The concept of a failed state is debated because it lacks a universal definition and involves assessing complex factors like economic stability, legitimacy, and human rights.