Fidel's Final Victory
By Julia E. Sweig. From
Foreign
Affairs, January/February 2007.
Summary: The smooth transfer of power from
Fidel Castro to his successors is exposing
the willful ignorance and wishful thinking
of U.S. policy toward Cuba. The post-Fidel
transition is already well under way, and
change in Cuba will come only gradually
from here on out. With or without Fidel,
renewed U.S. efforts to topple the revolutionary
regime in Havana can do no good -- and have
the potential to do considerable harm.
Julia E. Sweig is Nelson and David Rockefeller
Senior Fellow and Director of Latin America
Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
She is the author of Inside the Cuban Revolution:
Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground and
Friendly fire: Losing Friends and Making
Enemies in the Anti-American Century.
CUBA AFTER CASTRO?
Ever since Fidel Castro gained power in
1959, Washington and the Cuban exile community
have been eagerly awaiting the moment when
he would lose it -- at which point, the
thinking went, they would have carte blanche
to remake Cuba in their own image. Without
Fidel's iron fist to keep Cubans in their
place, the island would erupt into a collective
demand for rapid change. The long-oppressed
population would overthrow Fidel's revolutionary
cronies and clamor for capital, expertise,
and leadership from the north to transform
Cuba into a market democracy with strong
ties to the United States.
But that moment has come and gone -- and
none of what Washington and the exiles anticipated
has come to pass. Even as Cuba-watchers
speculate about how much longer the ailing
Fidel will survive, the post-Fidel transition
is already well under way. Power has been
successfully transferred to a new set of
leaders, whose priority is to preserve the
system while permitting only very gradual
reform. Cubans have not revolted, and their
national identity remains tied to the defense
of the homeland against U.S. attacks on
its sovereignty. As the post-Fidel regime
responds to pent-up demands for more democratic
participation and economic opportunity,
Cuba will undoubtedly change -- but the
pace and nature of that change will be mostly
imperceptible to the naked American eye.
Fidel's almost five decades in power came
to a close last summer not with the expected
bang, or even really a whimper, but in slow
motion, with Fidel himself orchestrating
the transition. The transfer of authority
from Fidel to his younger brother, Raúl,
and half a dozen loyalists -- who have been
running the country under Fidel's watch
for decades -- has been notably smooth and
stable. Not one violent episode in Cuban
streets. No massive exodus of refugees.
And despite an initial wave of euphoria
in Miami, not one boat leaving a Florida
port for the 90-mile trip. Within Cuba,
whether Fidel himself survives for weeks,
months, or years is now in many ways beside
the point.
In Washington, however, Cuba policy --
aimed essentially at regime change -- has
long been dominated by wishful thinking
ever more disconnected from the reality
on the island. Thanks to the votes and campaign
contributions of the 1.5 million Cuban Americans
who live in Florida and New Jersey, domestic
politics has driven policymaking. That tendency
has been indulged by a U.S. intelligence
community hamstrung by a breathtaking and
largely self-imposed isolation from Cuba
and reinforced by a political environment
that rewards feeding the White House whatever
it wants to hear. Why alter the status quo
when it is so familiar, so well funded,
and so rhetorically pleasing to politicians
in both parties?
But if consigning Cuba to domestic politics
has been the path of least resistance so
far, it will begin to have real costs as
the post-Fidel transition continues -- for
Cuba and the United States alike. Fidel's
death, especially if it comes in the run-up
to a presidential election, could bring
instability precisely because of the perception
in the United States that Cuba will be vulnerable
to meddling from abroad. Some exiles may
try to draw the United States into direct
conflict with Havana, whether by egging
on potential Cuban refugees to take to the
Florida Straits or by appealing to Congress,
the White House, and the Pentagon to attempt
to strangle the post-Fidel government.
Washington must finally wake up to the
reality of how and why the Castro regime
has proved so durable -- and recognize that,
as a result of its willful ignorance, it
has few tools with which to effectively
influence Cuba after Fidel is gone. With
U.S. credibility in Latin America and the
rest of the world at an all-time low, it
is time to put to rest a policy that Fidel's
handover of power has already so clearly
exposed as a complete failure.
CHANGE IN THE WEATHER
On July 31, 2006, Fidel Castro's staff
secretary made an announcement: Fidel, just
days away from his 80th birthday, had undergone
major surgery and turned over "provisional
power" to his 75-year-old brother,
Raúl, and six senior officials. The
gravity of Fidel's illness (rumored to be
either terminal intestinal cancer or severe
diverticulitis with complications) was immediately
clear, both from photographs of the clearly
weakened figure and from Fidel's own dire-sounding
statements beseeching Cubans to prepare
for his demise. Across the island, an air
of resignation and anticipation took hold.
The dead of August, with its intense heat
and humidity, is a nerve-racking time in
Cuba, but as rumors sped from home to home,
there was a stunning display of orderliness
and seriousness in the streets. Life continued:
people went to work and took vacations,
watched telenovelas and bootlegged dvds
and programs from the Discovery and History
channels, waited in lines for buses and
weekly rations, made their daily black-market
purchases -- repeating the rituals that
have etched a deep mark in the Cuban psyche.
Only in Miami were some Cubans partying,
hoping that Fidel's illness would soon turn
to death, not only of a man but also of
a half century of divided families and mutual
hatred.
Raúl quickly assumed Fidel's duties
as first secretary of the Communist Party,
head of the Politburo, and president of
the Council of State (and retained control
of the armed forces and intelligence services).
The other deputies -- two of whom had worked
closely with the Castro brothers since the
revolution and four of whom had emerged
as major players in the 1990s -- took over
the other key departments. Ranging in age
from their mid-40s through their 70s, they
had been preparing for this transition to
collective leadership for years. José
Ramón Balaguer, a doctor who fought
as a guerrilla in the Sierra Maestra during
the revolution, assumed authority over public
health. José Ramón Machado
Ventura, another doctor who fought in the
Sierra, and Esteban Lazo Hernández
now share power over education. Carlos Lage
Dávila -- a key architect of the
economic reforms of the 1990s, including
efforts to bring in foreign investment --
took charge of the energy sector. Francisco
Soberón Valdés, president
of the Central Bank of Cuba, and Felipe
Pérez Roque, minister of foreign
affairs, took over finances in those areas.
At first, U.S. officials simply admitted
that they had almost no information about
Fidel's illness or plans for succession.
President George W. Bush said little beyond
soberly (and surprisingly) pointing out
that the next leader of Cuba would come
from Cuba -- a much-needed warning to the
small yet influential group of hard-line
exiles (Republican Florida Congressman Lincoln
Diaz-Balart, a nephew of Fidel's, prominent
among them) with aspirations to post-Fidel
presidential politics.
A few weeks into the Fidel deathwatch,
Raúl gave an interview clearly meant
for U.S. consumption. Cuba, he said, "has
always been ready to normalize relations
on the basis of equality. But we will not
accept the arrogant and interventionist
policies of this administration," nor
will the United States win concessions on
Cuba's domestic political model. A few days
later, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State
for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon
responded in kind. Washington, he said,
would consider lifting its embargo -- but
only if Cuba established a route to multiparty
democracy, released all political prisoners,
and allowed independent civil-society organizations.
With or without Fidel, the two governments
were stuck where they have been for years:
Havana ready to talk about everything except
the one condition on which Washington will
not budge, Washington offering something
Havana does not unconditionally want in
exchange for something it is not willing
to give.
From Washington's perspective, this paralysis
may seem only temporary. Shannon compared
post-Fidel Cuba to a helicopter with a broken
rotor -- the implication being that a crash
is imminent. But that view, pervasive among
U.S. policymakers, ignores the uncomfortable
truth about Cuba under the Castro regime.
Despite Fidel's overwhelming personal authority
and Raúl's critical institution-building
abilities, the government rests on far more
than just the charisma, authority, and legend
of these two figures.
POLITICALLY INCORRECT
Cuba is far from a multiparty democracy,
but it is a functioning country with highly
opinionated citizens where locally elected
officials (albeit all from one party) worry
about issues such as garbage collection,
public transportation, employment, education,
health care, and safety. Although plagued
by worsening corruption, Cuban institutions
are staffed by an educated civil service,
battle-tested military officers, a capable
diplomatic corps, and a skilled work force.
Cuban citizens are highly literate, cosmopolitan,
endlessly entrepreneurial, and by global
standards quite healthy.
Critics of the Castro regime cringe at
such depictions and have worked hard to
focus Washington and the world's attention
on human rights abuses, political prisoners,
and economic and political deprivations.
Although those concerns are legitimate,
they do not make up for an unwillingness
to understand the sources of Fidel's legitimacy
-- or the features of the status quo that
will sustain Raúl and the collective
leadership now in place. On a trip to Cuba
in November, I spoke with a host of senior
officials, foreign diplomats, intellectuals,
and regime critics to get a sense of how
those on the ground see the island's future.
(I have traveled to Cuba nearly 30 times
since 1984 and met with everyone from Fidel
himself to human rights activists and political
prisoners.) People at all levels of the
Cuban government and the Communist Party
were enormously confident of the regime's
ability to survive Fidel's passing. In and
out of government circles, critics and supporters
alike -- including in the state-run press
-- readily acknowledge major problems with
productivity and the delivery of goods and
services. But the regime's still-viable
entitlement programs and a widespread sense
that Raúl is the right man to confront
corruption and bring accountable governance
give the current leadership more legitimacy
than it could possibly derive from repression
alone (the usual explanation foreigners
give for the regime's staying power).
The regime's continued defiance of the
United States also helps. In Cuba's national
narrative, outside powers -- whether Spain
in the nineteenth century or the United
States in the twentieth -- have preyed on
Cuba's internal division to dominate Cuban
politics. Revolutionary ideology emphasizes
this history of thwarted independence and
imperialist meddling, from the Spanish-American
War to the Bay of Pigs, to sustain a national
consensus. Unity at home, the message goes,
is the best defense against the only external
power Cuba still regards as a threat --
the United States.
To give Cubans a stake in this tradeoff
between an open society and sovereign nationhood,
the revolution built social, educational,
and health programs that remain the envy
of the developing world. Public education
became accessible to the entire population,
allowing older generations of illiterate
peasants to watch their children and grandchildren
become doctors and scientists; by 1979,
Cuba's literacy rates had risen above 90
percent. Life expectancy went from under
60 years at the time of the revolution to
almost 80 today (virtually identical to
life expectancy in the United States). Although
infectious disease levels have been historically
lower in Cuba than in many parts of Latin
America, the revolutionary government's
public vaccination programs completely eliminated
polio, diphtheria, tetanus, meningitis,
and measles. In these ways, the Cuban state
truly has served the poor underclass rather
than catering to the domestic elite and
its American allies.
Foreign policy, meanwhile, put the island
on the map geopolitically. The Cubans used
the Soviets (who regarded the brash young
revolutionaries as reckless) for money,
weapons, and insulation from their implacable
enemy to the north. Although the government's
repression of dissent and tight control
over the economy drove many out of the country
and turned many others against the Castro
regime, most Cubans came to expect the state
to guarantee their welfare, deliver the
international standing they regard as their
cultural and historical destiny, and keep
the United States at a healthy distance.
The end of the Cold War seriously threatened
this status quo. The Soviet Union withdrew
its $4 billion annual subsidy, and the economy
contracted by 35 percent overnight. Cuba's
political elite recognized that without
Soviet support, the survival of the revolutionary
regime was in peril -- and, with Fidel's
reluctant acquiescence, fashioned a pragmatic
response to save it. Cuban officials traveling
abroad started using once-anathema terms,
such as "civil society." Proposals
were circulated to include multiple candidates
(although all from the Communist Party)
in National Assembly elections and to permit
small private businesses. The government
legalized self-employment in some 200 service
trades, converted state farms to collectively
owned cooperatives, and allowed the opening
of small farmers' markets. At Raúl's
instigation, state enterprises adopted capitalist
accounting and business practices; some
managers were sent to European business
schools. As the notion of a "socialist
enterprise" became increasingly unsustainable,
words like "market," "efficiency,"
"ownership," "property,"
and "competition" began to crop
up with ever more frequency in the state-controlled
press and in public-policy debates. Foreign
investment from Europe, Latin America, Canada,
China, and Israel gave a boost to agriculture
and the tourism, mining, telecommunications,
pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and oil industries.
These changes rendered Cuba almost unrecognizable
compared with the Cuba of the Soviet era,
but they also allowed Fidel's government
to regain its footing. The economy began
to recover, and health and educational programs
started to deliver again. By the end of
the 1990s, Cuba's infant mortality rate
(approximately six deaths per 100,000 births)
had dropped below that of the United States,
and close to 100 percent of children were
enrolled in school full time through ninth
grade. Housing, although deteriorating and
in desperate need of modernization, remained
virtually free. And a cosmopolitan society
-- albeit one controlled in many ways by
the state -- grew increasingly connected
to the world through cultural exchanges,
sporting events, scientific cooperation,
health programs, technology, trade, and
diplomacy. Moreover, by 2002, total remittance
inflows reached $1 billion, and nearly half
of the Cuban population had access to dollars
from family abroad.
In 2004, a process of "recentralization"
began: the state replaced the dollar with
a convertible currency, stepped up tax collection
from the self-employed sector, and imposed
stricter controls on revenue expenditures
by state enterprises. But even with these
controls over economic activity, the black
market is everywhere. Official salaries
are never enough to make ends meet, and
the economy has become a hybrid of control,
chaos, and free-for-all. The rules of the
game are established and broken at every
turn, and most Cubans have to violate some
law to get by. The administrators of state
enterprises steal and then sell the inputs
they get from the government, forcing workers
to purchase themselves the supplies they
need to do their jobs -- rubber for the
shoemaker, drinking glasses for the bartender,
cooking oil for the chef -- in order to
fill production quotas.
At the same time, the revolution's investment
in human capital has made Cuba uniquely
well positioned to take advantage of the
global economy. In fact, the island faces
an overcapacity of professional and scientific
talent, since it lacks the industrial base
and foreign investment necessary to create
a large number of productive skilled jobs.
With 10,000 students in its science and
technology university and already successful
joint pharmaceutical ventures with China
and Malaysia, Cuba is poised to compete
with the upper ranks of developing nations.
STRAITS JACKET
The last potential turning point in U.S.-Cuban
relations came with the end of the Cold
War. Cubans greeted the fall of the Berlin
Wall with a collective sigh of relief; it
was, they thought, an opportunity to explore
the kind of society Cuba might become once
it could no longer depend on the Soviet
Union. But over the next decade and a half,
U.S. policymakers -- hobbled by domestic
politics and a fundamental misunderstanding
of the reality on the island -- missed opportunity
after opportunity to bring decades of enmity
to a close.
Instead of allowing debates about reform
to take their natural course in Cuba, Washington
jumped on the chance to, as Bill Clinton
put it in the 1992 presidential campaign,
"bring the hammer down" on Fidel.
Congress passed and Clinton signed the Cuban
Democracy Act, which, among other things,
barred foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies
from trading with Cuba and ships traveling
from Cuban ports from docking in the United
States. Havana reacted with predictable
outrage, condemning U.S. imperial designs
in dramatic public protests. More important,
some reform proposals were put on hold --
lest the slightest crack in Cuba's armor
open the way to U.S.-backed counterrevolution.
National security trumped everything else.
The next decade saw a series of half steps
forward followed by large steps back. Hoping
to learn more about the island while driving
a wedge between its people and its government,
the Clinton administration began to allow
licensed travel to Cuba for academic purposes
and for the sake of lending "support
to the Cuban people." It also embraced
a policy of "calibrated response":
as Cuba changed, U.S. policy would as well.
Without ever relating them to U.S. gestures,
Cuba did undertake some important (and largely
unreciprocated) reforms, loosening restrictions
on family and some professional travel,
relaxing residency requirements for writers
and artists, and continuing the economic
openings. And when 40,000 rafters left for
U.S. shores in 1994, after a summer of brutal
heat and electricity and food shortages
in Havana, U.S. and Cuban officials began
secret negotiations in Canada. The result
was unprecedented cooperation on migration
issues -- Washington would provide 20,000
visas to Cubans a year, and the U.S. Coast
Guard would send Cubans picked up at sea
to the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo
Bay -- and a degree of official and people-to-people
contact unknown since a brief opening under
Jimmy Carter.
But these tentative steps, bitterly resisted
by exiles who feared a slippery slope toward
full-blown U.S.-Cuban relations, were soon
thwarted. In February 1996, the Cuban air
force shot down two planes being flown in
the area by an exile group called Brothers
to the Rescue. Led by a Bay of Pigs veteran,
the group would make surveillance flights
over the Florida Straits (to inform the
U.S. Coast Guard of rafters) and occasionally
drop anti-Castro pamphlets over Havana from
Cessnas bought at Pentagon tag sales. Sometimes,
U.S. officials would join the flights. Havana
had repeatedly warned Washington that the
flights would not be tolerated, but the
shootdown nonetheless resulted in swift
congressional retaliation -- in the form
of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidary
Act, better known as Helms-Burton.
Helms-Burton took the U.S. embargo to new
extremes. It attempted to halt all foreign
investment in Cuba by allowing investors
to be sued in U.S. courts. It mandated that
future presidents could lift the embargo
only if Cuba complied with a number of conditions,
including holding multiparty elections,
recognizing private property, and releasing
all political prisoners. And it stipulated
that any future change in U.S. policy would
depend on Fidel and Raúl Castro --
along, implicitly, with other senior officials
in the military and the Communist Party
-- leaving politics altogether.
The Cuban regime responded with its own
hard line. Raúl, although a leading
advocate of economic reform domestically,
was an absolutist when it came to confronting
the United States. Even as some liberalization
continued, and a new Cuban constitution
opened the way for a religious revival by
allowing Communist Party members to practice
openly, there was a government-wide purge
of academics and intellectuals -- many of
them party loyalists -- thought to be associated
with the United States or U.S.-backed reforms.
The message was chillingly clear: given
a choice between national security and a
more open society, the revolution would
pick security every time.
In the wake of Helms-Burton, the Clinton
administration worked to revive a series
of goodwill initiatives. When Pope John
Paul II visited Havana's jam-packed Revolution
Square in 1999, he asked "the world
to open to Cuba and Cuba to open to the
world." His entreaty gave both Washington
and Havana political cover to revive some
momentum on improving relations. The countries'
coast guards worked together on antidrug
operations, and retired U.S. military commanders
met with Fidel and Raúl. The Baltimore
Orioles and the Cuban national baseball
team played each other -- once in Baltimore,
once in Havana -- and after the musicologist
Ry Cooder released an album of traditional
Cuban ballads, there was a "Buena Vista
Social Club effect," with American
artists, musicians, clergy, academics, students,
businesspeople, and politicians flocking
to Cuba in record numbers. Cuban Americans
who had not returned to the island since
leaving as small children visited for the
first time, and then returned over and over,
reconnecting with long-lost family members.
A number of prominent Republicans, including
former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger
and George Shultz, called for a bipartisan
commission to undertake a full-scale review
of U.S. policy toward Cuba.
But the day after Thanksgiving in 2000,
progress was undermined once again -- this
time by the arrival in southern Florida
of a six-year-old boy named Elián
González. Elián had left Cuba
with his mother, but she had died on the
trip to the United States. At first, the
Clinton administration was slow to take
Elián from the custody of his relatives
in Florida and return him to his father
in Cuba -- inflaming Cuban nationalism and
inciting mass anti-U.S. protests in Havana.
Then, when Attorney General Janet Reno ordered
federal agents to seize Elián in
a predawn raid and return him to his father,
the exile community erupted. The incident
not only ended the prospect of a further
thawing in U.S.-Cuban relations; it also
(at least absent a recount) helped tip the
presidential election to George W. Bush,
who defeated Al Gore in Florida by a few
hundred votes.
Like most aspiring presidents casting around
for votes, candidate Bush had promised to
end the Castro regime. But it was not until
the September 11 attacks, and the administration's
newfound attention to democracy promotion
and rogue regimes, that U.S. Cuba policy
took a decidedly more aggressive turn. Bush's
first-term Latin America team (many of whose
members had either helped write or lobbied
for Helms-Burton) rejected any business
or security cooperation with Havana and
encouraged speculation that Cuba was developing
bioweapons for export to rogue regimes or
use against the United States. (Those allegations,
not surprisingly, withered under closer
scrutiny.) By the end of its first term,
the Bush administration had upended virtually
all initiatives, official and unofficial,
for improving relations. It ended the bilateral
talks on migration. It stopped approving
most medical sales, made legal travel to
Cuba difficult for all but faith-based groups
and some academics, and cut off visas for
Cuban academics and artists. And it almost
entirely barred Cuban Americans, who lean
strongly Republican, from visiting or sending
money to Cuba. Only sales of U.S. agricultural
products, because they were explicitly allowed
by Congress, escaped the crackdown.
INFIDELITY
Although the George H. W. Bush administration
ended covert efforts to topple Fidel, the
United States today spends about $35 million
a year on initiatives described by some
as "democracy promotion" and by
others as "destabilization." Radio
Martí and tv Martí broadcast
from Florida to Cuba; other U.S. government
programs are intended to support dissidents,
the families of political prisoners, human
rights activists, and independent journalists.
Although some Cubans do listen to Radio
Martí, the Cuban government blocks
the tv Martí signal, and without
open ties between the countries, only a
fraction of the support actually reaches
Cubans living on the island; the lion's
share is distributed through no-bid contracts
to the anti-Castro cottage industry that
has sprung up in Miami, Madrid, and a few
Latin American and eastern European capitals.
The recipients of such federal largess --
along with the Cuban intelligence agents
that routinely penetrate the groups they
form -- have become the primary stakeholders
in Washington's well-funded, if obviously
ineffective, policy toward Cuba.
On the ground in Cuba, moreover, these
efforts are generally counterproductive.
U.S. economic sanctions have given Cuba's
leaders justification for controlling the
pace of the island's insertion into the
world economy. The perception, pervasive
in Cuba, that the United States and the
Cuban diaspora are plotting regime change
further strengthens domestic hard-liners
who argue that only a closed political model
with minimal market openings can insulate
the island from domination by a foreign
power allied with old-money elites. Dissidents
who openly associate with U.S. policy and
its advocates in Miami or the U.S. Congress
mark themselves as stooges of the United
States, even if they are not. Moreover,
the Cuban government has successfully undermined
both the domestic and the international
legitimacy of dissidents by "outing"
some as sources, assets, or agents of the
United States (or of Cuba's own intelligence
services). The 2003 arrest and incarceration
of 75 dissidents was intended to demonstrate
that Cuba could and would preempt outside
efforts at regime change regardless of the
consequent international outcry and U.S.
congressional rebuke.
There are some genuine dissidents in Cuba
untainted by either government and not weakened
by infighting. One, Oswaldo Payá,
is a devout Catholic who heads the Varela
Project, which collected more than 11,000
signatures in 2002 for a petition calling
on the Cuban government to hold a referendum
on open elections, free speech, free enterprise,
and the release of political prisoners.
Yet it is only by resisting the embrace
of the international community, and of the
United States in particular, that Payá
has maintained his credibility and autonomy.
Meanwhile, below the radar screen (and throughout
officially sanctioned Cuban institutions),
there are scores of thoughtful nationalists,
communists, socialists, social democrats,
and progressives who may not yet have the
political space to air their views publicly
but who express dissent in terms that U.S.
policymakers either do not recognize or
do not support.
The upshot of a half century of hostility
-- especially now with ties severed almost
entirely -- is that Washington has virtually
no leverage over events in Cuba. With no
other way to make good on its campaign commitments
to Cuban Americans short of a full-scale
invasion, the Bush administration established
the Commission for Assistance to a Free
Cuba in 2003 and appointed a "Cuba
transition coordinator" in 2004. To
date, the commission, the membership and
deliberations of which have been kept secret,
has issued two reports, totaling over 600
pages, on what kind of assistance the U.S.
government could, "if requested,"
provide to a transitional government in
Cuba.
The basic assumption behind the commission's
planning is that with outside assistance,
Cuba's transition will be a hybrid of those
in eastern Europe, South Africa, and Chile.
Those analogies and the policy prescriptions
derived from them do not hold up. Unlike
Eastern Europeans in the 1980s, Cubans,
though enthusiasts of American culture and
dynamism, regard Washington not as a beacon
of freedom against tyranny but as an imperialist
oppressor that has helped justify domestic
repression. (Moreover, the United States
had actively promoted travel, commerce,
and cultural ties with the Soviet bloc before
the transitions there began.) In the case
of South Africa, the sanctions that helped
topple the apartheid regime were successful
because they were, in contrast to the unilateral
U.S. embargo on Cuba, international in scope.
And in Chile, the U.S. government was able
to ease Augusto Pinochet out of power only
because it had staunchly supported him for
so long.
The second feature of Washington's vision
for post-Fidel Cuba is more dangerous than
a bad analogy. The Bush administration has
made clear that its top priority is to interrupt
the Castro regime's succession plans. The
Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba
report released just before Fidel underwent
intestinal surgery in July states, "The
only acceptable result of Fidel Castro's
incapacitation, death, or ouster is a genuine
democratic transition. ... In order to undermine
the regime's succession strategy, it is
critical that the U.S. government maintain
economic pressure on the regime."
Since the 2003 war in Iraq, Cubans have
closely observed the effects of de-Baathification
there. Like membership in Iraq's Baath Party
under Saddam Hussein, membership in the
Cuban Communist Party is a ticket to professional
advancement for devout believers and agnostic
opportunists alike. Party members include
sophisticated intellectuals, reform-minded
economists, clergy, brash up-and-coming
youth leaders, scientists, professors, military
officers, bureaucrats, police officers,
and businesspeople in the "revenue-earning
sectors" of the economy. In short,
it is impossible to know who among the roughly
million party members (and 500,000 members
of the Union of Communist Youth) is a real
fidelista or raulista. Purging party members
would leave the country without the skilled
individuals it will need after Fidel, whatever
the pace of change. And should the United
States, or a government that Washington
deems adequately transitional, ever be in
a position to orchestrate such a purge,
it would then face an insurgency of highly
trained militias galvanized by anti-American
nationalism.
One encouraging development is that the
Cuban American community is no longer of
one mind with respect to Cuba's future and
its role in it. For decades, a vocal minority
of hard-line exiles -- some of whom have
directly or indirectly advocated violence
or terrorism to overthrow Fidel -- have
had a lock on Washington's Cuba policy.
But Cuban Americans who came to the United
States as young children are less passionate
and single-minded as voters than their parents
and grandparents, and the almost 300,000
migrants who have arrived since 1994 are
generally most concerned with paying bills
and supporting their families on the island.
Now, the majority of Cuban Americans, although
still anti-Castro, recognize that the embargo
has failed and want to sustain family and
humanitarian ties without completely eliminating
sanctions. Overall, many want reconciliation
rather than revenge.
The State Department is starting to recognize
these changes, and many members of Congress
must now answer to constituents from other
Latin American countries who resent the
outsized influence of Cuban Americans. But
the hard-liners and their allies in Washington
will continue to fight any proposed policy
overhaul. They worry that if Washington
adopts a more realistic approach to the
island, the policy train will bypass Miami
and head straight for Havana -- and they
will have lost their influence at the moment
when it matters most.
WASHINGTON'S MOVE
Even with the economy growing and new public-sector
investment in transportation, energy, education,
health care, and housing, Cubans today are
deeply frustrated by the rigors of just
making ends meet. They are eager for more
democratic participation and economic opportunity.
But they also recognize that Cuba's social,
economic, and political models will change
only gradually, and that such reform will
be orchestrated by those whom Fidel has
long been grooming to replace him. Washington,
too, must accept that there is no alternative
to those already running post-Fidel Cuba.
From the perspective of Fidel's chosen
successors, the transition comes in a particularly
favorable international context. Despite
Washington's assiduous efforts, Cuba is
far from isolated: it has diplomatic relations
with more than 160 countries, students from
nearly 100 studying in its schools, and
its doctors stationed in 69. The resurgence
of Latin America's left, along with the
recent rise in anti-American sentiment around
the globe, makes Cuba's defiance of the
United States even more compelling and less
anomalous than it was just after the Cold
War. The Cuban-Venezuelan relationship,
based on a shared critique of U.S. power,
imperialism, and "savage capitalism,"
has particular symbolic power. Although
this alliance is hardly permanent, and American
observers often make too much of Venezuela's
influence as a power broker, it does deliver
Cuba some $2 billion in subsidized oil a
year and provide an export market for Cuba's
surfeit of doctors and technical advisers.
(By providing the backbone for Venezuelan
President Hugo Chávez's social programs
and assistance in building functional organizations,
Havana exercises more influence in Venezuela
than Caracas does in Cuba.) Havana, without
ceding any authority to Chávez, will
optimize this relationship as long as it
remains beneficial.
Nor is Venezuela the only country that
will resist U.S. efforts to dominate post-Fidel
Cuba and purge the country of Fidel's revolutionary
legacy. Latin Americans, still deeply nationalistic,
have long viewed Fidel as a force for social
justice and a necessary check on U.S. influence.
As attendance at his funeral will demonstrate,
he remains an icon. Latin Americans of diverse
ideological stripes, most of them deeply
committed to democracy in their own countries,
want to see a soft landing in Cuba -- not
the violence and chaos that they believe
U.S. policy will bring. Given their own
failures in the 1990s to translate engagement
with Cuba into democratization, and the
United States' current credibility problems
on this score, it is unlikely that U.S.
allies in Latin America or Europe will help
Washington use some sort of international
initiative to advance its desires for radical
change in Cuba.
When Fidel dies, various actors in the
United States and the international community
will rush to issue and, if they get their
way, enforce a series of demands: hold a
referendum and multiparty elections, immediately
release all political prisoners, return
nationalized property and compensate former
owners, rewrite the constitution, allow
a free press, privatize state companies
-- in short, become a country Cuba has never
been, even before the revolution. Many of
those goals would be desirable if you were
inventing a country from scratch. Few of
them are now realistic.
After Fidel's funeral, a "transition"
government of the sort Washington is hoping
for will not occupy the presidential palace
in Havana. This means that the White House
cannot responsibly wait for the happy day
when the outlines of its commission reports
can be put to the test. Instead, the current
administration should immediately start
talking to the senior Cuban leadership.
Recognizing that Cuba and the United States
share an interest in stability on both sides
of the Florida Straits, the first priority
is to coordinate efforts to prevent a refugee
crisis or unforeseen provocations by U.S.-based
exile groups eager to exploit a moment of
change on the island. Beyond crisis management,
Washington and Havana can cooperate on a
host of other concerns in the Caribbean
Basin, including drug trafficking, migration,
customs and port security, terrorism, and
the environmental consequences of offshore
drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The two
countries have successfully worked on some
of these issues in the past: each has bureaucracies
staffed by professionals who know the issues,
and even know one another. An end to Washington's
travel ban, a move already backed by bipartisan
majorities in the House of Representatives,
would further open the way to a new dynamic
between the United States and Cuba. Just
as the first Bush White House formally ended
covert operations on the island, this Bush
administration or its successor should also
affirmatively take regime change, long the
centerpiece of Washington's policy toward
Cuba, off the table.
By continuing the current course and making
threats about what kind of change is and
is not acceptable after Fidel, Washington
will only slow the pace of liberalization
and political reform in Cuba and guarantee
many more years of hostility between the
two countries. By proposing bilateral crisis
management and confidence-building measures,
ending economic sanctions, stepping out
of the way of Cuban Americans and other
Americans who wish to travel freely to Cuba,
and giving Cuba the space to chart its own
course after Fidel, Washington would help
end the siege mentality that has long pervaded
the Cuban body politic and, with the applause
of U.S. allies, perhaps help accelerate
reform. Cubans on and off the island have
always battled over its fate -- and attempted
to draw American might into their conflicts,
directly or indirectly. Lest the next 50
years bring more of the same, the wisest
course for Washington is to get out of the
way, removing itself from Cuba's domestic
politics altogether.
Fidel's successors are already at work.
Behind Raúl are a number of other
figures with the capacity and the authority
to take the reins and continue the transition,
even after Raúl is gone. Fortunately
for them, Fidel has taught them well: they
are working to consolidate the new government,
deliver on bread-and-butter issues, devise
a model of reform with Cuban characteristics,
sustain Cuba's position in Latin America
and internationally, and manage the predictable
policies of the United States. That these
achievements will endure past Fidel's death
is one final victory for the ultimate Latin
American survivor.
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