MIAMI, May 22 (Agencies): The US has charged Cuba's 94-year-old former president, Raúl Castro, with murder - stoking speculation that Havana could be next on Washington's regime-change list.
Amid a maximum pressure campaign that has led to the most significant fuel and energy shortages in Cuba in decades, a steady chorus of US officials is calling for the end of the island's 66-year-old Communist government.
While President Donald Trump has said that he believes no "escalation" will be necessary, the White House has also vowed it would not tolerate a "rogue state" 90 miles (144km) from US shores.
What comes next is anyone's guess: economic collapse, domestic turmoil or US military intervention. Here's three possible ways it could play out.
The indictment of Castro on charges stemming from the 1996 shootdown of two civilian aircraft by Cuban fighter jets prompted immediate speculation that US forces could launch an operation to capture him and spirit him to an American courtroom.
Such an operation is not without precedent.
In January, US commandos launched a lightning-fast operation in Venezuela to capture President Nicolás Maduro - a longtime ally of Cuba - and bring him to New York to face drug and weapons charges.
In 1989, a much larger operation - Operation Just Cause - saw thousands of US troops invade Panama to topple and detain the country's then-leader, Manuel Noriega.
President Trump has so far brushed off questions about whether he is eyeing a similar operation in Cuba.
Several US lawmakers, however, have openly called for a similar mission to be carried out.
"We shouldn't take anything off the table," Florida Senator Rick Scott told reporters. "[The] same thing that happened to Maduro should happen to Raul Castro."
A third possibility is that Cuba buckles under the weight of the massive economic pressure it is facing, which has already led to hours-long daily blackouts and massive food shortages on the island.
"There will be no escalation. I don't think it's necessary," Trump said this week. "The place is falling apart. It's a disaster, and they have lost control to some extent."
Experts, however, paint a far more complicated picture in which the mechanisms of Cuban government control over its populace remain largely intact, even during a difficult economic period.
"You have to distinguish between the Cuban economy and the Cuban state and government," Shifter said. "The Cuban economy can collapse, and is collapsing... but the state still functions, especially on the security side."
Any state collapse could also pose a challenge to the Trump administration if large numbers of Cubans fled the country, particularly towards the US.
More recent Cuban arrivals have not been spared from a lack of access to political asylum and other immigration restrictions during the Trump administration.
"If there's a collapse, you're going to see a big portion of the Cuban population do everything they can to get away, the same way they have from Haiti over the years," Isacson said.
"Florida is the closest place, but I would also expect to see some people make their way to Mexico."
Isacson added that he was "surprised" such an outflux had not already begun.
"People are probably subsisting on 1,000 or 1,500 calories a day, and are not able to get basic healthcare," he said. "You'd think that people would already be building their boats."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Cuba on Thursday that the United States (US) was laser-focused on changing the communist system, after the island was stunned by a US indictment of its former president Raul Castro.
Officials in Cuba, who slammed the indictment against Castro as “a political action” to build the case for an invasion, say they are preparing for war.
Carlos Fernández de Cossío, Cuba’s deputy foreign minister, said that while the country hopes to avert conflict, it is hardening its defenses.
“We would be naive” not to, he said.
For weeks, Cuba has been circulating a pamphlet among its citizens — a “Family Guide for Protection Against Military Aggression” — that says the U.S. “threatens to launch a military assault and destroy our society with the aim of perpetuating capitalism ... and annihilating the dream of our Commander-in-Chief, Fidel Castro.”
The document instructs families to pack survival kits, seek shelter if they hear air raid sirens and shares first aid instructions for things such as tying a tourniquet. “Should the enemy attack,” it reads, “our Revolution will defend itself until victory is achieved and the aggressor is expelled.”
Cubans are watching the developments anxiously, but are focused on the daily business of survival.
Trump in January seized on a US domestic indictment of Venezuela's leftist leader Nicolas Maduro to send in US forces to depose him and take him into custody.
"The idea is to say, we can do to you what we did to Nicolas Maduro," said Christopher Sabatini, senior fellow for Latin America at Chatham House.
The Cuban government called the 1996 shootdown was "legitimate self-defense" against an airspace violation.
China and Russia both criticized Trump's steps on Cuba, which come as he tries to end an unpopular war he started with Israel against Iran.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told a press briefing that Washington "should stop brandishing the sanctions stick and the judicial stick against Cuba and stop threatening force at every turn."
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