Cuba & Venezuela Tied Together

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With all eyes on the U.S. Navy’s buildup in the southern Caribbean, less attention is going to the spike in repression inside Venezuela. Dictator Nicolás Maduro is behaving like a wounded king.

Things aren’t much different in Cuba, where dissidents are battered, as they have always been, and the 67-year-old regime in Havana sits atop a social and economic time bomb.

President Trump’s challenge to Venezuela—and by extension Cuba—means democracies of the Western Hemisphere have a rare opportunity to be rid of the region’s two greatest threats to peace and freedom. To let the moment pass without taking action would be a travesty.

Yet to believe a transition in either country can happen without U.S. leadership and help from the international community is fantasy. Removing the tyrants may turn out to be the easy part. It’s the morning after when things are likely to get complicated.

On Dec. 2, Caracas sentenced the son-in-law of President-elect Edmundo González to 30 years in prison for terrorism. With Mr. González in exile in Spain, the regime has turned to targeting his family as part of Mr. Maduro’s effort to crush the opposition. Some 900 political prisoners were held by Mr. Maduro as of Dec.15, according to the nongovernmental organization Foro Penal. On Wednesday Nobel Peace Prize winner and opposition leader María Corina Machado posted on X that she has “received information about direct and systematic threats of extrajudicial execution against political prisoners” in Venezuela.

It’s popular to blame Mr. Trump’s Venezuelan oil blockade for Cuba’s economic crisis, but the island meltdown is homemade. From its earliest days, the revolution stole wealth—from the capitalists it imprisoned, murdered or exiled—to sustain itself. Then the regime became a ward of Moscow for three decades.

To avoid collapse after the Soviet Union dissolved, Cuba opened to foreign investment and adopted tepid reforms. It backtracked in 1999 when Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, Mr. Maduro’s predecessor, came to the rescue. The 2014 drop in the international price of crude marked the beginning of the gradual withdrawal of Venezuelan support and the acceleration of Cuba’s economic and social decline.

Mr. Maduro’s recent crackdown on opponents demonstrates that Mr. Trump’s pressure campaign isn’t cost-free. Backing down now would damage U.S. credibility and devastate those Venezuelans who have stood up to the despot. A U.S. retreat would also grant a new lease on life to the regime in Havana. China and Russia could continue to use Cuba for espionage and to extend their malevolent influence in the Americas.

In Venezuela, Mr. González and Ms. Machado have the legitimacy to take the reins on day one. Ms. Machado has built her career on a classical liberal vision for the country, and she’s popular. She would inherit a dysfunctional government and a corrupt judiciary, but her commitment to a new republic founded on freedom, property rights and the rule of law would give her a good start.

A liberated Venezuela would need assistance from abroad, even if key elements of the military get on board and swear an oath to the new government. Meeting the humanitarian needs of a nation caught in hyperinflation, joblessness and hunger would be a priority. Venezuela doesn’t need a Marshall Plan. It sits on the world’s largest oil reserves and, with political will, could rebuild a thriving economy. But it would require international financial aid to bridge the transition....

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