For all the talk last week about President Donald Trump looking to close the door on renewed U.S.-Cuba relations, there was little conversation about Trump's motive - save the ubiquitous mention that if Barack Obama did it, Trump had to try to undo it.
Certainly that might make Trump's effort seem sweeter to him, but it surely isn't the entire purpose - this time or any time.
With Cuba, which sits just 90 miles off our shore, the answer is two-fold: Russia and no Trump Tower there.
Let's take Russia first.
A few months after Donald Trump's inauguration, 16 retired senior military officers, including a former commander of SouthCom, sent National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster an open letter. The letter urged the administration to maintain engagement with Cuba on national security grounds: "If we fail to engage economically and politically," they warned, "it is certain that China, Russia, and other entities whose interests are contrary to the United States' will rush into the vacuum."
Of course, our president's fondness (and that of his administration) for Russia is inescapable. And what's especially laughable is Trump's stated reasoning for a possible rollback of Obama's Cuba policy. Trump cites human rights abuses by the Castro government.
Never mind that Trump shows admiration for quite a list of despots who murder their own citizens - Putin, Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt to name a few.
But Cuba's Castros are different, and that brings us to motivation No. 2: The Castros may have cold-shouldered a Trump exploration for a business arrangement in the 1990s.
According to a Sept. 29 Newsweek investigative report, a company then controlled by Trump secretly conducted business in Communist Cuba during Fidel Castro's presidency despite then-strict American trade bans that made such undertakings illegal. Newsweek, citing interviews with former Trump executives, internal company records and court filings, stated that Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts had reimbursed consultants more than $68,000 and instructed them to link their Cuba trip expenses to a charity.
The Newsweek report, written by Kurt Eichenwald, states: "Though it has long been illegal for corporations to spend money in Cuba without proper authorization, there is no chance that Trump, the company or any of its executives will be prosecuted for wrongdoing. The statute of limitations ran out long ago (and staff was too thin to investigate). ... And perhaps that was the calculation behind the company's decision to flout the law: the low risk of getting caught versus the high reward of lining up Cuban allies if the U.S. loosened or dropped the embargo. The only catch: What would happen if Trump's Cuban-American supporters ever found out?"
Perhaps the key to a free Cuba and our national security isn't Obama or even democracy. Perhaps it's a Trump Tower.