FOCUS: President Trump’s Thursday Executive Order on Cuba is a clean, disciplined execution of the 2025 National Security Strategy’s core logic: defend U.S. sovereignty, protect the Western Hemisphere, treat economic power as national security, and confront hostile regimes close to home. It shows how the NSS moves from theory to enforcement.
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ADDRESSING THREATS TO THE UNITED STATES BY THE GOVERNMENT OF CUBA
What This Executive Order Actually Does
Thursday’s Executive Order formally declares the Government of Cuba an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security and foreign policy. It does so under established emergency authorities and creates a tariff enforcement regime aimed not just at Cuba, but at any country that supplies oil to Cuba, directly or indirectly.
This is important. The order does not rely solely on sanctions against Havana. Instead, it weaponizes secondary economic pressure, forcing third countries to choose between access to the U.S. market and propping up a hostile regime operating 90 miles from U.S. shores.
The order explicitly cites Cuba’s alignment with Russia, China, Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, and highlights Cuba’s role in hosting intelligence facilities, facilitating regional destabilization, and enabling hostile actors inside the Western Hemisphere. It also ties Cuba’s behavior to migration pressure, human rights abuses, and ideological export.
In short, the order treats Cuba not as a relic of the Cold War, but as an active node in a modern hostile network.
Why This Fits the 2025 National Security Strategy Perfectly
This Executive Order maps almost line-by-line onto the NSS’s Ends, Means, and Strategy framework.
Ends: Defining Success
The NSS defines success as protecting U.S. sovereignty, security, economic strength, and hemispheric stability. This order directly serves those ends by:
- Countering hostile intelligence activity near U.S. territory
- Disrupting adversarial alliances in the Western Hemisphere
- Reducing migration and regional instability tied to authoritarian regimes
This is not democracy promotion for its own sake. It is security-first realism.
Means: Economic Power as National Security
The NSS makes a clear argument that economic security is national security. This order operationalizes that idea by:
- Using tariffs instead of troops
- Leveraging U.S. market access as pressure
- Turning trade into a deterrence tool
This is classic “peace through strength” in economic form. The United States is using what it has—market power, regulatory reach, and trade dominance—to impose consequences without military escalation.
Strategy: Western Hemisphere First
The NSS elevates the Western Hemisphere as a top priority. This order reflects that shift unmistakably. It draws a hard line: hostile powers and terrorist networks will not be allowed to entrench themselves in America’s near abroad without consequence.
This is a modernized Monroe Doctrine enforced through economics.
Why This Order Is More Important Than the Headlines Suggest
This Executive Order matters because it shows how the NSS governs behavior.
It demonstrates:
- How national emergencies will be defined
- How economic tools will replace endless interventions
- How adversaries will be isolated through network pressure
- How allies and partners will be forced to choose alignment
It also signals discipline. Authority is delegated clearly. Monitoring is ongoing. Retaliation is anticipated. Escalation and de-escalation pathways are built in.
The Bigger Picture
This order should be read as a template. Expect similar approaches toward other regimes that operate as platforms for hostile powers near U.S. interests. Expect trade, energy, and tariffs to increasingly replace moral appeals and open-ended commitments.
Under President Donald J. Trump, this administration is making the NSS real. The Cuba order is proof that the strategy is executable.
Final Takeaway
If the 2025 NSS is the blueprint, this Executive Order is the first visible structure rising from the ground. It is focused, unsentimental, and unapologetically interest-based. That is exactly what the strategy promised and exactly why this order matters.
Here is our previous coverage of the NSS: