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Would
Kerry shove Castro, or embrace him?
Carlos Alberto Montaner
/ www.firmaspress.com. Posted on Tue, May.
18, 2004 in The
Miami Herald.
On May 6, Gen. Colin Powell, on behalf
of the State Department, handed President
Bush a remarkable document about Cuba. It
is almost 500 pages long and proposes many
measures, from the way to accelerate the
end of the Cuban dictatorship on the island
to the steps that must be taken to ensure
that that country will have a felicitous
transition to democracy and prosperity in
a post-Castro era.
Presumably, this project represents the
Republican vision of how the United States
must confront a decrepit dictator and a
failed regime in the final phase of their
long existence. If one had to characterize
the document in three words, they would
be: contention, confrontation and isolation.
That's how Bush thinks.
Forty-eight hours after the text submitted
by Colin Powell was made public, five U.S.
senators -- three Democrats and two Republicans
-- came up with a different and much shorter
document. It condemned the repressive aspects
of Castro's tyranny and questioned whether
the dictatorship was indeed in its final
stage, although its authors did not dispute
the convenience of a regime change. However,
to achieve that purpose, they proposed a
different method: Facilitate the presence
of American tourists and eliminate the restrictions
on trade and contacts between the two countries.
Engagement policy
To these legislators, it was evident that
Castro and the Castro regime could be liquidated
better with a strong capitalist embrace
than with a hostile shove, a strategy that
has a name in U.S. foreign policy: engagement.
It appears that Sen. Kerry totally subscribes
to it -- although he didn't sign the document
because he's in the midst of an electoral
campaign and does not wish to look bad to
most Cuban-Americans.
Which of the two paths is better to get
rid of Fidel Castro and quickly bury his
regime after the dictator -- infirm and
about to mark his 78th birthday -- disappears?
There are enough arguments and opinions
to uphold either position. But there's no
doubt that the person who has studied the
two strategies most closely -- because his
survival is at stake -- is Fidel Castro
himself.
What does the comandante think? Of the
two anti-Castro strategies, the one that's
more convenient for the dictator is engagement.
Castro would rather be embraced than shoved.
Why? Because for the past 15 years, the
Cuban intelligence services have learned
to associate with European and Latin American
investors and have welcomed literally millions
of Canadian, German, Spanish and Italian
tourists, without modifying a single basic
aspect of the communist model.
That preparation -- Castro and his followers
believe -- guarantees that they can absorb
without difficulty a couple of million American
tourists and transact all kinds of business
with them without surrendering one inch
of ideological space. After all, what's
the essential difference between an American
tourist and a Canadian tourist or between
an American banker and a Dutch banker?
Lesser threat
Kerry, then, is Castro's candidate. Not
because Castro thinks Kerry is pro-communist
but because Kerry appears to be less risky
than Bush and more convenient to guarantee
the survival of Castro's regime. What would
Castro expect from a government presided
by Kerry? Curiously, in an early phase the
Cuban government would be contented with
the simple resumption of full diplomatic
relations between Havana and Washington,
as Cuban official Ramiro Abreu openly told
an influential member of the U.S. Democratic
Party recently, in his office at the Central
Committee of the Communist Party.
To the ''immovable'' segment of the Castro
government -- led by the comandante himself,
the staunchest of Stalinists -- the conversion
of the current U.S. Interests Section to
a conventional embassy would be an unmistakable
signal to the rest of the world that the
United States accepts the irrevocable nature
of the Cuban model and does not expect a
regime change now or in the future. In other
words, exactly the type of message that
the ruling elite needs to turn over authority
without delay to Raúl Castro, the
appointed heir, upon the death of his brother
Fidel and enable the system to prolong indefinitely.
Naturally, Castro's preference for Kerry
could change or weaken if the Democratic
candidate assumes a vigorous stance toward
the dictatorship and moves closer to the
Republican position. And that's not impossible.
In fact, that's exactly what Bill Clinton
did in 1992.
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