These are the three social evils Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. warned would destroy America from within: Militarism, materialism, and racism. Decades later, they help explain the divisions in our country that led to the January 6 attack by protesters on the U.S. Capitol. Of the three, however, the role our recent wars have played in exacerbating these conditions is often the most overlooked.
Video produced by Khody Akhavi.
As the February 5 expiration date for New START — the last nuclear arms control treaty remaining between the U.S. and Russia — looms, the Trump administration appears ready to let it die without an immediate replacement.
"If it expires, it expires," President Trump said about the treaty during a New York Times interview given Wednesday. "We'll just do a better agreement."
But as experts tell Responsible Statecraft, allowing New START to lapse without some kind of contingency plan in place could unleash an unconstrained arms race between the world’s greatest nuclear powers.
The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which went into effect in 2010, caps the number of deployed nuclear warheads the U.S. and Russia can each have at 1,550. In addition, the two countries can only maintain 700 deployed delivery vehicles, including intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and heavy bombers, and 800 launchers (missile launchers and bombers) for those weapons, under the treaty.
New START was extended in 2021 for five years, but Russia suspended its participation in 2023, citing U.S. military assistance to Ukraine; the U.S. also partially stopped observing it. A clause in the New START treaty bars it from being formally extended again, but Russia proposed in September that both countries voluntarily maintain the treaty’s “central quantitative restrictions” on deployed nuclear warheads, and relevant delivery systems, for a year from its expiration — a measure Russia says does not require formal U.S. diplomatic engagement.
The U.S. initially seemed amenable to that idea but Trump’s recent remarks suggest disinterest in it.
Anticipating New START’s end, Trump has signaled intent to garner a “better agreement.” But experts tell RS, his own track record indicates this is easier said than done.
“If the Trump administration thinks that getting a new ‘better’ treaty after this one lapses will be easy, they are mistaken,” Jennifer Kavanagh, senior fellow and director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, told RS. “This is the same message that the first Trump administration provided when the decision was made to pull out of the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] with Iran. How did that turn out?”
“Almost 8 years later and there's no new deal, and Iran is closer to a nuclear weapon even after the June 2025 airstrikes than it was before Trump exited the agreement,” Kavanagh said.
Meanwhile, Russia and the U.S. are of different minds on what a new treaty could look like. For example, whether to prioritize reining in China’s growing nuclear stockpiles is a point of divergence. New START, a bilateral agreement, does not include China.
“The United States has pushed to include China in a trilateral [treaty] format, which Beijing rejects due to arsenal size asymmetries, and to cover novel systems and nonstrategic nuclear weapons. Russia frames potential talks around the overall strategic balance, including missile defenses and long-range conventional strike capabilities,” Stephen Herzog, professor of the practice at James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, told RS. “These priorities are difficult to reconcile.”
Simply continuing to observe New START’s weapons and delivery systems limits would set aside its critical weapons verification mechanisms, such as on-site nuclear weapons inspections and biannual weapons inventory updates, and avoid the issue of China’s expanding arsenal. But experts say that arrangement, or another informal commitment, would be better than nothing.
“Even if Trump wants a better agreement, he should offer some informal commitment for now to maintain the caps while negotiating. Walking away with nothing serves no one's interests,” Pavel Devyatkin, a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute and senior associate at The Arctic Institute, told RS.
“Trump is right that extending New START won't address China's growing nuclear stockpile,” Kavanagh concluded. “But this is not a reason to [avoid seeking] common ground with Russia on this issue.”
With only weeks left before New START expires, even a lapse in voluntarily observing its central tenet — maintaining its quantitative limits — paves the way for an unconstrained arms race.
“Once New START is gone, there are no international arms control agreements between the world's two largest nuclear powers anymore,” Geoff Wilson, distinguished fellow and strategic advisor for the National Security Reform Program at the Stimson Center, warned RS. “There is nothing controlling what the United States and Russia can or cannot do with their nuclear weapons.”
“The stakes are high. If Trump fails to respond positively to Russia’s proposal for an interim deal to maintain the New START limits, each side likely will begin increasing the size of its deployed nuclear arsenal for the first time in more than 35 years by uploading additional warheads on existing long-range missiles,” Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, wrote. “Many members of the nuclear weapon establishment are lobbying for such a buildup.”
The State Department declined to say whether the Trump administration would adhere to Russia’s proposal to keep New START’s quantitative limits; the White House did not respond to the same question.
Of the 100 or more people killed in the U.S. military operation that abducted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, 32 were Cuban security officers, most of them part of Maduro’s personal security detail who died “in direct combat against the attackers,” according to Havana.
How did Cubans come to be the Praetorian Guard for Venezuela’s president, and what does the decapitation of the Venezuelan government mean for Cuba?
After Hugo Chávez was elected president in 1998 and launched his “21st Century Socialism,” Venezuela became Cuba’s closest ally in the Americas. Chávez and the late Fidel Castro developed a close personal relationship, and built a robust economic and security alliance. Cuba sent Venezuela thousands of medical personnel to serve the Venezuelan poor, Chávez’s political base, and in exchange Cuba received cheap Venezuelan oil. After the failed coup attempt against Chávez in 2002, Cuba organized his personal security and provided intelligence assistance to forestall another coup.
By deposing Maduro and threatening that interim President Delcy Rodríguez will “pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro,” if she refuses to do his bidding, President Donald Trump believes he and his foreign policy team will be able to “run” Venezuela. With Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio leading this project, one of Washington’s top demands is that Caracas sever its special relationship with Havana.
“Venezuelans…have to declare their independence from Cuba that tried to basically colonize it from a security standpoint,” Rubio said at the president’s press conference announcing the Delta Force strike on Venezuela.
The United States, Rubio later explained, will control the distribution of Venezuelan oil by imposing an “oil quarantine,” giving Washington “tremendous leverage” over the new Venezuelan leadership. None of that oil will go to Havana. The Cuban regime survived on the largesse of donors like Venezuela, Rubio explained, “That’s now gone.” Trump himself confirmed it. “Cuba lived, for many years, on large amounts of OIL and MONEY from Venezuela,” he posted on Truth Social. “THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA - ZERO!”
The blow to Cuba’s economy will be devastating. That prospect has led to widespread predictions that the Cuban government, already in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, will not survive.
Rubio outlined the administration’s theory of the case: “The people in control in Cuba have a choice to make. They can either have a real country with a real economy where their people can prosper, or they can continue with their failing dictatorship that's going to lead to systemic and societal collapse.”
At the same time, there is a reluctance to intervene militarily in Cuba the way the administration did in Venezuela. Asked by reporters if he would strike at Cuba next, the president replied, “It looks like it’s going down. I don’t think we need any action.” He repeated that sentiment several days later in response to a suggestion that the U.S. increase pressure on Havana: “I don't think you can have much more pressure other than going in and blasting the hell out of the place.” Cuba, he continued, would “go down…of its own volition.”
What would a sudden and complete cutoff of Venezuelan oil mean for the Cuban economy? Before COVID, Cuba consumed about 120,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd). The economy has been stagnant or in decline since then and currently consumes about 100,000 bpd because that is all it can afford. That level is below what is needed to keep the domestic economy operating at anything near capacity or to power Cuba’s thermoelectric plants fulltime. For the past several years, Cubans have suffered daily scheduled (and unscheduled) power blackouts of increasing lengths.
A decade ago, Venezuela was providing Cuba with more than 100,000 bpd, but that has gradually fallen by between 75 and 90 percent due to Venezuela’s declining production. By some estimates, Mexico, which has its own doctors-for-oil deal with Havana, provided Cuba with more oil in 2025 than Venezuela did. Washington has pressured Mexico to stop, but President Claudia Sheibaum has pushed back, calling the shipments, “humanitarian aid.” Russia provides only about 5,000 bpd compared to Mexico’s 13,000 bpd.
Nevertheless, for Cuba to replace the oil it currently gets from Venezuela would be a Herculean task, perhaps an impossible one. Cuba might implore Mexico and Russia to increase their shipments, and hope that other friendly oil-producing countries around the world — like Brazil, Angola, or Algeria — will step up with smaller contributions. But even the generosity of its friends has limits, and Cuba has no money to pay for additional petroleum imports, so it seems certain that the Cuban economy — and the Cuban people — are destined for further suffering.
Back in 2014, economist Pavel Vidal estimated that if Venezuelan oil were suddenly cut off, the Cuban economy would drop 7.7 percent. Today, when Venezuela provides far less than it did then and the price of oil is about half of what it was, the impact would be less.
But Cuba’s GDP has already fallen about 15 percent since the COVID pandemic. Another 4 or 5 percent drop would exacerbate the vicious circle of declines in domestic production reducing export earnings, and widening the gap between what Cuba needs to import and what it can afford.
Would that be enough to collapse the Cuban government? Trump certainly seems to think so. At his press conference, Trump called Cuba “a failing nation right now, very badly failing nation,” and he elaborated two days later: “Cuba looks like it is ready to fall,” he told reporters. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Rubio’s fellow Florida Republican, is equally certain. “It’s going to be the end of the Díaz-Canel regime, the Castro regime, it’s going to happen,” he said. “I think it will probably happen maybe this year, maybe next year. It’s going to happen.”
Such confidence is not new. Washington officials have been predicting the imminent end of the Cuban government since 1959. The Eisenhower administration was certain that cutting the Cuban sugar quota would do it. Kennedy thought that covert CIA operations plus an economic embargo would do it. Lyndon Johnson thought that getting Latin America and Europe to join the embargo would do it. George H. W. Bush thought the collapse of the Soviet Union would do it. George W. Bush thought that the death of Fidel Castro would do it. And ever since the first Trump administration, Republicans have been predicting that the loss of Venezuelan oil would do it.
They have been so consistently wrong because although economic despair often causes political discontent, it does not automatically give rise to an opposition movement capable of overthrowing the government. Foreign diplomats in Havana, excluding those in the U.S. Embassy, generally agree that organized opposition in Cuba is weaker today than at any time in recent memory and poses no threat to the regime.
One reason is that disaffected Cubans have always found it easier to emigrate than to confront the government. When the economy sinks, they don’t rise up, they leave. Another reason is that the government has been increasingly intolerant of dissent as the economy has deteriorated, encouraging outspoken opponents to leave and jailing those who don’t.
A deepening economic crisis may well unleash spontaneous social unrest (like the Maleconazo riot on the Havana waterfront in 1994) and anti-government demonstrations (like the nationwide protests on July 11, 2021). But absent some organized opposition to channel discontent into a sustainable political movement, security forces can contain occasional outbursts. The Catholic Church, the only independent civil society institution with a nationwide presence, shows little ability or inclination to play such a role. Cuba is not Poland or the German Democratic Republic in 1989.
If cutting off Venezuelan oil shipments does not bring down the Cuban government, will the Trump administration decide to take direct military action? Nothing is beyond the realm of possibility for a president who threatens to attack Denmark, a NATO ally, if it refuses to surrender Greenland.
But Trump seems to realize that Cuba is a harder case than Venezuela. “They're tough people,” he has said repeatedly in recent days, even acknowledging that Cuba has defied past predictions of collapse. If pacifying Venezuela proves to be more difficult than Trump expects, he may be reluctant to take on a second nation-building project while the first is still festering.
With the “Donroe Doctrine” shaping U.S. policy in Latin America, it appears the United States will have to relearn the central lesson of colonialism: no people want foreigners telling them how to run their affairs. They will resist, passively, then actively, and in the end, successfully. No matter that the foreigners have superior military force. Eventually they tire of the endless war and go home, just like the British did in 1783.
On January 7, Saudi-backed forces established control over much of the former South Yemen, including Aden, its capital, reversing gains made by the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) in early December.
Meanwhile, the head of the STC, Aidarous al-Zubaidi, failed to board a flight to Riyadh for a meeting with other separatists: he seems to have fled to Somaliland and then to Abu Dhabi. The STC is a secessionist movement pushing for the former South Yemen to regain independence. The latest turn of events marks a major setback to the UAE’s regional ambitions.
On December 30, Saudi Arabia bombed a Yemeni port to prevent an alleged Emirati weapons shipment from reaching the STC. The STC’s seizure of eastern Yemen in early December had appeared to consolidate its control over its envisioned state, a move that directly challenged Saudi authority and that of the Saudi-backed groups that oppose southern independence.
These fast-moving developments in Yemen demonstrate that Saudi Arabia will not tolerate Emirati-backed revisionism, and underscore the disconnect between Saudi and Emirati regional agendas.
Riyadh and Abu Dhabi are also pursuing incompatible outcomes across the Red Sea in Sudan where the Saudis financially support the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Emiratis provide weapons to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The SAF have ties to the previous Islamist government of Omar al-Bashir, who was ousted in 2019, while the RSF grew out of the Janjaweed, the notorious militia that committed genocide in Darfur in the early 2000s.
The RSF, led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, or “Hemedti,” established a parallel government in August to challenge SAF control. The violence in Sudan is driving the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with the RSF in particular committing horrific atrocities against civilians, most notably in the city of El Fasher and elsewhere in Darfur.
In both Yemen and Sudan, the UAE supports groups that seek to fragment existing structures of state control. By backing non-state actors that undermine the security of existing states, the UAE appears to be pursuing the strategy that has earned Iran such strident criticism. What explains why the UAE would foment instability?
A significant factor in the UAE’s behavior in Yemen is to control important territory. By backing secessionist groups and other militias in Yemen, Emirati proxies until recently oversaw much of the southern coast of Yemen and islands along the strategic route. Saudi Arabia tolerated this until the STC seized territory in December along the Saudi border. That incursion, as well as the loss of al-Mahra, where Riyadh has long envisioned an oil pipeline, threatened core Saudi interests and precipitated a military response.
Another broader explanatory factor is the UAE’s opposition to Islamists. The Emirati leadership fears democratic pressure, of which political Islam, and specifically various offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood, have been a major source.
This fear was amplified by the popular uprisings of 2011, when a group of 133 Emirati activists, academics, and lawyers — some of whom were members of the Islamist group Islah — signed a petition for democratic reforms. The government cracked down on all forms of dissent, including through mass trials, such as the UAE 94 trial in 2013, and the UAE 84 trial of 2024. Many of the original petitioners remain in prison to this day.
The Emirati leadership’s fear of political Islam has motivated its support for anti-Islamist groups in Libya, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, and Somaliland. Turkish intelligence sources also assert that the UAE supported the failed coup against Turkey’s Islamist President Erdogan in 2016, when Ankara and Abu Dhabi supported warring sides in Libya. Qatari support for Islamist groups in the region after 2011 eventually motivated the UAE and Saudi Arabia to initiate their ultimately unsuccessful blockade of Qatar in 2017.
The eruption of armed conflict between Emirati- and Saudi-backed groups in Yemen and Sudan raises the specter of yet another serious Gulf rift, only this time between the two largest Arab economies. The leaders of both — Mohamed bin Zayed is the president of the UAE and the emir of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Salman is the crown prince and de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia — were once seen as close allies, with MBZ having mentored MBS and supported his consolidation of power.
The two leaders were also allied in their offensive against the Houthi-led insurgency that devastated much of the former North Yemen.
Yet Saudi and Emirati interests have increasingly diverged, as MBS pursues the ambitious social and economic agenda of his Vision 2030, much of which competes directly with the UAE’s already well-established role as a regional hub for finance, tourism, and investment.
Although MBS has similarly assailed Islamists, blaming them for Saudi Arabia’s previously draconian interpretation of Islam, he is primarily interested in preserving regional stability, which is necessary to achieve Vision 2030’s ambitions. If partnering with Islamists in Sudan, Yemen, or elsewhere provides stability, he is prepared to do so.
Saudi monarchs once felt they had to uphold Wahhabi doctrine in order to maintain the clerics’ stamp of approval, whereas MBS’s policy of extreme repression has largely silenced those who would portray his social reforms as incompatible with Wahhabism. He appears confident that Saudi Arabia’s religious authority as the home of Mecca and Medina will prevail even as he transforms how the kingdom practices Islam. Therefore, Islamists do not pose a fundamental challenge.
The Emiratis, on the other hand, view the threat posed by Islamists as significantly greater than that of instability, such that they prefer to support anti-Islamist groups even if doing so risks provoking violence and chaos. In this, they are not unlike Israel, with which the UAE has developed an increasingly close strategic partnership, particularly since normalizing relations in 2020.
Israel also sees Islamists, and likewise democratization in the Middle East, as a possible existential threat. If Arab government policies actually reflected the will of their populations, in its view, relations would likely become much more hostile, as public opinion polls in the region have long suggested. The new government in Damascus, for example, is Islamist: Israel looks to undermine it by supporting the Druze and other separatist movements in Syria. The Netanyahu government likewise seeks regime collapse in Iran.
Like the UAE, Israel is not threatened by secessionists. Both Israel and the UAE have pursued relations with the breakaway state of Somaliland in order to gain greater access to the Red Sea: Israel last week became the first state to recognize Somaliland. Secessionists also appear to recognize this dynamic: the STC had promised that if South Yemen achieved independence, it would recognize Israel.
The UAE may believe that by working alongside Israel, Washington will give it free rein in the region. But the U.S. government generally prioritizes stability and views chaos as dangerous, a perspective shared by Saudi Arabia.
Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE are important U.S. partners; in his first trip abroad since his reelection,Trump visited both countries, along with Qatar. Open hostilities between Saudi and Emirati-backed factions in two different hot zones raise questions about how Trump will manage the increasingly fractious relationship between the two Gulf heavyweights.
On January 7, Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan visited Washington. Meanwhile, on January 5, an influential Emirati commentator seen as close to the leadership, tweeted about the situation in Yemen by acknowledging its deference, for now, to Riyadh: “The UAE realized its respected elder brother was seething with anger, and the UAE's wisdom led it to contain his anger, calm his feelings, and avoid provoking him with escalatory decisions.”
It seems that the UAE is not looking to escalate in Yemen at present, but the fundamental incompatibility between Saudi and Emirati/Israeli objectives will persist.
Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.
