"No escape:" Inside Rubio's Cuba pressure campaign

• President Trump hasn't ruled out military action.

Zoom in: Since last year, the Trump administration has taken two dozen separate actions to pressure Cuba. The quantity and extent of the penalties are unique:

• Sanctioning 40 entities, from foreign companies operating on the island to Cuba's state-run fuel, banking and mining conglomerates.
• Targeting at least 38 people with economic sanctions, U.S. visa limitations and residency revocations.
• Pressuring other countries to stop supporting Cuba's doctor-export program, which the State Department calls "human trafficking."
• Issuing reports attacking Cuba over its human rights record, its failure to fight terrorism and its role in amplifying and assisting anti-capitalist and anti-U.S. political activity.

The big picture: Because of the pressure campaign, Cuba is now a de facto renegade colony of the U.S., upon which it now relies for most of its food, fuel, medicine and currency — all of which are scarce on the island.

• Cuba's prime minister made a historic announcement Tuesday, saying the government was allowing more private-sector activity than since the Revolution of 1959, the Miami Herald reported.

• Rubio told Axios that Cuba is playing for time by faking reforms while seeking ways to evade sanctions.
• "Every time they create a new mechanism in which they try to get out of the noose, we just close it off," Rubio said. "They certainly can't wait us out. Certainly this isn't going to go away for the next 2½ years."

Behind the scenes: Foreign companies are fleeing Cuba amid the threat of sanctions. U.S. companies — especially fuel distributors — are moving in as enterprises such as Cuba's state-run oil company crumble under the pressure. It's creating a nascent capitalist black market.

• One businessman involved in the fuel trade said some Cuban businesses have even sent human mules to Miami, dripping in heavy gold chains to use as currency because U.S. banking restrictions make financial transactions with Havana impossible.
• In the first six months of the year, U.S. fuel exports to Cuba jumped to $96 million — more than half of which was in June as the economic forces take their toll, according to the nonprofit U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council.
• "Trump and Rubio have initiated the most effective sanctions program against a target country than any of their predecessors," said the council's president, John Kavulich. "We've been around since 1994 and never seen anything like this."

Nothing has hurt Cuba as much as Trump's Jan. 3 decision to seize Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro, an island patron like his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

• Venezuela supplied Cuba with as much as 100,000 barrels of oil daily. Now, Cuba can barely keep the lights on. It lost a major revenue stream from selling about half of the oil on the global market.
• "For the first time in Cuba's history, Cuba lacks two things they've always relied on: an outside sponsor and the U.S.'s lack of attention on it as a top priority," Rubio said.
• "They're not going to get a sponsor in the next 2½ years, so that's the dynamic that's changed," he said. "It's forced them into a very tough spot."

Meanwhile, more lawsuits are being filed after a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling tied to a law that allows U.S. nationals to sue private companies trafficking in properties seized during the Cuban Revolution.

• Called the LIBERTAD Act, the law codifies the Cuban embargo, which can be lifted only after Cuba frees political prisoners, guarantees civil rights and has free elections.

Friction point: The U.S embargo against Cuba has long been denounced globally, and accusations of imperialism, particularly from the left, have skyrocketed in the Trump era.

• Rubio's department essentially framed its critics as useful idiots in its July 20 report, "Cuba: The Capital of 21st Century Communism," which traces the island's espionage and ideological subversion campaigns targeting the U.S.
• Officials acknowledge the report "lays the groundwork" for more anti-Cuba action. Rubio wouldn't specify what that could be.
• "If we were to do something with Cuba, you will see the same people who are holding up the pro-Hamas signs and are holding up the 'Release Maduro' signs — they will be out there with the 'Hands Off Cuba' signs," he said.

The other side: Critics say the report fails to catalogue U.S. aggressions against Cuba, exaggerates the island's role as an espionage superpower and wrongly suggests that legitimate complaints about U.S. actions are just Cuban propaganda.

• "It's a political document. It's not great historical analysis. It's short of a ton of context," said Michael Bustamante, a Cuba historian and University of Miami professor.

The intrigue: Rubio has been in talks to change governance on the island with Raulito Castro, the grandson of ailing Cuban revolutionary Raúl Castro. But it's unclear whether he could lead a transition government or have much staying power.

• "When Raúl is no longer around, what is his status? Who protects him?" a U.S. official asked.
• The U.S. is trying to cultivate other Cuban officials and figure out how to create a coalition for reform. But "it's hard to deduce entirely because that system is so paranoid," the official said.
• Intelligence community officials leaked word Wednesday of a "secret CIA task force" in Cuba, but a senior administration official said there's "nothing new about this beyond letting the regime know we're watching."

What's next: The administration imposed more sanctions Thursday. More are on the way, and Rubio says the administration is in no rush.

• "One of the things we've lost in American foreign policy and geopolitics is the concept of patience and persistence," he said.
• "My level of confidence is that when this administration is over, at a minimum, Cuba will be on an irreversible glide path toward a different future."