EDITOR’S
NOTE: Before returning to the April 23
Brigade’s Tour of Cuba 2015, we will pause for one day to discuss two 800-pound
gorilla’s in the living room of every Cuban:
--Cuba in the Red.
Understanding the failing Cuban economic model, an in-depth report that
answers a lot of questions. Bear with me
on this. It’s a lengthy essay by the
Council on Foreign Affairs and is solid background into to have on hand as we
continue visiting Cuba.
--Quiet Man in Havana. The
politico that is being groomed to take over the country after the Castros.
CUBA IN THE RED
GUEST BLOG—By Julia E. Sweig and Michael J. Bustamante. This essay first appeared in the July/August
2013 issue of Foreign Affairs magazine, “Cuba After Communism: The Economic
Reforms that are transforming the island.”
Cuba's
basic political and economic structures appear as durable as the midcentury
American cars still roaming its streets. The Communist Party remains in power,
the state dominates the economy, and murals depicting the face of the long-dead
revolutionary Che Guevara still appear on city walls.
Predictions
that the island would undergo a rapid transformation in the manner of China or
Vietnam, let alone the former Soviet bloc, have routinely proved to be bunk.
But Cuba does look much different today than it did ten or 20 years ago, or
even as recently as 2006, when severe illness compelled Fidel Castro, the
country's longtime president, to step aside. Far from treading water, Cuba has
entered a new era, the features of which defy easy classification or comparison
to transitions elsewhere.
THE
AUTHOR:
Julia E. Sweig |
Three
years ago, Castro caused a media firestorm by quipping to an American
journalist that "the Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore."
Tacitly embracing this assessment, Fidel's brother Raúl Castro, the current
president, is leading a gradual but, for Cuba, ultimately radical overhaul of
the relationship between the state, the individual, and
society, all without
cutting the socialist umbilical cord.
So far,
this unsettled state of affairs lacks complete definition or a convincing
label. "Actualization of the Cuban social and economic model," the
Communist Party's preferred euphemism, oversells the degree of ideological
cohesion while smoothing over the implications for society and politics. For
now, the emerging Cuba might best be characterized as a public-private hybrid
in which multiple forms of production, property ownership, and investment, in
addition to a slimmer welfare state and greater personal freedom, will coexist
with military-run state companies in strategic sectors of the economy and
continued one-party rule.
For the
remainder of the article go to “Cuba After Communism”
A new
migration law, taking effect this year, provides a telling example of Cuba's
ongoing reforms. Until recently, the Cuban government required its citizens to
request official permission before traveling abroad, and doctors, scientists,
athletes, and other professionals faced additional obstacles. The state still
regulates the exit and entry of professional athletes and security officials
and reserves the right to deny anyone a passport for reasons of national
security.
But the
new migration law eliminates the need for "white cards," as the
expensive and unpopular exit permits were known; gives those who left the
country illegally, such as defectors and rafters, permission to visit or
possibly repatriate; and expands from 11 months to two years the period of time
Cubans can legally reside abroad without the risk of losing their bank
accounts, homes, and businesses on the island.
This new
moment in Cuba has arrived not with a bang but rather on the heels of a series
of cumulative measures -- most prominent among them agricultural reform, the
formalization of a progressive tax code, and the government's highly publicized
efforts to begin shrinking the size of state payrolls by allowing for a greater
number of small businesses.
The
beginnings of private credit, real estate, and wholesale markets promise to
further Cuba's evolution. Still, Cuba does not appear poised to adopt the Chinese
or Vietnamese blueprint for market liberalization anytime soon. Cuba's unique
demographic, geographic, and economic realities -- particularly the island's
aging population of 11 million, its proximity to the United States, and its
combination of advanced human capital and dilapidated physical infrastructure
-- set Cuba apart from other countries that have moved away from communism.
It is
perhaps unsurprising, then, that Cuba's ongoing changes do not resemble the
rapid transition scenario envisioned in the 1996 Helms-Burton legislation,
which conditioned the removal of the U.S. embargo on multiparty elections and
the restitution of private property that was nationalized in the 1960s. In this
respect, Washington remains more frozen in time than Havana.
Cuba's
reforms might appear frustratingly slow, inconsistent, and insufficient to
address its citizens' economic difficulties and desires for greater political
participation. This lack of swiftness, however, should not be taken as a sign
that the government has simply dug in its heels or is ignoring the political
stakes.
The
response of Cuban leaders to their country's vexing long-term challenges has
involved strategic thinking and considerable debate. Indeed, the next few years
will be crucial. As the 55-year-old Miguel Díaz-Canel, the current vice
president and Castro's newly designated successor, recently noted, Cuba has
made "progress on the issues that are easiest to solve," but
"what is left are the more important choices that will be decisive in the
development of [the] country."
Those
fundamental dilemmas include the following: How can Cuba attract and manage the
foreign investment it urgently needs while preserving its hard-fought
sovereignty? How much inequality will the island's citizens tolerate in
exchange for higher productivity and greater opportunities? And even if the
Communist Party manages to take a step back from day-to-day governance, as
Castro insists it must, how will Cuba's leaders address the long-simmering
pressures for greater transparency, public accountability, and democratic
participation? If the recent past is prelude, Cuba will likely continue on its
gradual path toward a more open, pluralistic society, while preserving its
foreign policy independence.
REFORM WITH CUBAN CHARACTERISTICS
From the
moment he assumed provisional power in 2006, Raúl Castro has spoken bluntly
about Cuba's predicament. "We reform, or we sink," he declared in a
characteristically short and pointed 2010 national address.
Even as
Havana sticks to its central political conviction -- namely, that the Communist
Party remains the nation's best defense against more than a century of U.S.
interference -- terms such as "decentralization,"
"accountability," and "institutionalization" have become
buzzwords, not taboos. Whereas in the 1990s, Havana was willing to permit only
limited private enterprise as an emergency measure, the government now talks
openly of ensuring that 50 percent of Cuba's GDP be in private hands within
five years. Realistic or not, such ambitious goals would have been sacrilege
less than ten years ago.
Already,
the representation of Cuban small-business owners in the country's National
Assembly and their participation in the annual May Day parade offer evidence of
changes under way.
The reforms
have yielded several modest successes thus far. After facing sharp liquidity
and balance-of-payments crises in the wake of the 2008 global financial
meltdown, Cuba has succeeded in restoring a modicum of financial stability,
resuming its debt payments, sharply cutting its imports, and beginning the
arduous task of reducing public expenditures.
Several
key strategic investments from international partners -- most notably, the
refurbishing of Mariel Harbor, with the aid of Brazilian capital, to transform
it into a major container shipping port -- are moving forward on schedule.
Meanwhile, a new state financial accountability bureau has begun the hard task
of weeding out endemic corruption.
Nevertheless,
Cuba faces serious obstacles in its quest for greater economic vitality. Unlike
China and Vietnam at the start of their reform efforts, Cuba is an
underdeveloped country with developed-world problems. Not only is the
population aging (18 percent of the population is over 60), but the country's
economy is heavily tilted toward the services sector.
When
Vietnam began its doi moi (renovation) economic reforms in 1986, services
accounted for about 33 percent of GDP, whereas the productive base represented
nearly 67 percent. By contrast, services in Cuba make up close to 75 percent of
the island's GDP -- the result of 20-plus years of severe industrial decay and
low rates of savings and investment. Service exports (mainly of health-care
professionals), combined with tourism and remittances, constitute the country's
primary defense against a sustained balance-of-payments deficit.
Cuban
officials and economists recognize this structural weakness and have emphasized
the need to boost exports and foster a more dynamic domestic market. Yet so
far, the state has not been able to remedy the imbalance. In the sugar
industry, once a mainstay, production continues to flounder despite a recent
uptick in global prices and new Brazilian investment.
Meanwhile,
a corruption scandal and declining world prices have weakened the nickel
industry, leading to the closing of one of the island's three processing
facilities. More broadly, Cuban productivity remains anemic, and the country
has been unable to capitalize on its highly educated work force.
Although
important, the expansion of the small-business sector cannot resolve these core
issues. There are now 181 legal categories for self-employment, but they are
concentrated almost exclusively in the services sector, including proprietors
of independent restaurants, food stands, and bed-and-breakfasts. Start-up funds
are scarce, fees for required licenses are high, and some of the legal
categories are senselessly specific. It also remains unclear whether the chance
to earn a legitimate profit will lure black-market enterprises out into the
open.
No
surprise, then, that the expansion of self-employment has not yet enabled the
state to meet its targets for slimming down its bloated payrolls. In late 2010,
Castro pledged to eliminate 500,000 state jobs in the first six months of 2011,
with an eye to incorporating over 1.8 million workers (out of a total estimated
work force of 5.3 million) into the private sector by 2015. But the government
managed to eliminate only 137,000 positions that first year. Still, the reforms
are making a serious impact. Small businesses currently employ some 400,000
citizens, an increase of 154 percent since the liberalization of
self-employment began in October 2010. To spur further growth, moreover,
authorities recently launched a wholesale company that will allow emerging
enterprises to purchase supplies on the same terms as state-run companies, thus
addressing a major complaint of business owners.
To
supplement these gains, Cuba needs to continue rebuilding its productive
capacities in core areas such as agriculture. Before Raúl Castro came to power,
approximately 20 percent of the cultivable land in the country lay fallow and
Cuba imported half its domestic food supply -- a significant part of which came
from the United States, under a 2000 exception to the trade embargo.
To
increase domestic production, the state has handed over more than 3.7 million
acres of land to private farmers, whose crops now account for 57 percent of the
total food production in the country despite their occupying just under 25
percent of the arable land. Yet aggregate food-production levels in most basic
categories still hover at or slightly below 2002 levels.
More
promising is the investment to renovate Mariel Harbor, led by the Brazilian
conglomerate Odebrecht, with backing from the Brazilian National Development
Bank. Cuba is hoping to position itself as a major shipping hub in the
Caribbean. Located between the Panama Canal and points in the United States and
Europe, the enormous, deep-water port at Mariel is ideally situated to handle
trade with the United States and beyond in a post-embargo world. In addition,
four Brazilian pharmaceutical companies have signed on to produce medicines in
the port's vicinity for direct export to Brazilian and other markets. Still, if
the U.S. embargo remains in place, the long-term benefits of the Mariel investment
will be limited.
Odebrecht S.A. is a holding company for Construtora Norberto Odebrecht S.A., the biggest engineering and contracting company in Latin America, and Braskem S.A., the largest petrochemicals producer in Latin America and one of Brazil's five largest private-sector manufacturing companies. Odebrecht controls Braskem, the fifth largest in the world, with exports to 60 countries in all continents of the world. By revenue Braskem is the fourth largest petrochemical company in the Americas and 5th in the world. |
The port
project underscores some of the broader dilemmas constraining foreign
investment in Cuba and the country's overall growth prospects. Havana
designated Mariel as a special economic development zone -- an area where
foreign companies are given special incentives and prerogatives -- in an effort
to attract badly needed investment dollars.
Cuban
officials also aim to take advantage of the country's well-educated population
and establish investment zones geared toward high-tech innovation and other
high-value-added activities, such as biotechnology. Yet without links to local
industries, such investment zones could become economic islands, providing
employment to locals and income to the Cuban government but reduced multiplier
effects.
The
island's dual-currency system makes the challenge all the more difficult. A
byproduct of the circulation of U.S. dollars in the 1990s -- first in the black
market, then legally -- the Cuban convertible peso (CUC) today functions as the
currency of the tourist sector and is required for the purchase of many
consumer items.
For
common Cuban citizens, the value of the CUC is pegged to the dollar, with one
CUC equal to 25 Cuban pesos (CUP), the currency in which most state workers are
paid. Consequently, citizens who receive hard currency from abroad or who earn
money in CUC, such as workers who collect tips from foreign tourists, enjoy
much higher incomes than workers who rely solely on salaries paid in CUP.
Even
worse, the values of the CUC and the CUP are considered equal within and
between state enterprises. This bizarre accounting practice helped insulate CUP
prices from inflation during the depths of the economic crisis that followed
the collapse of the Soviet Union, but today it makes it difficult for analysts
and investors to estimate the real costs of doing business on the island or the
value of state companies.
Economists
agree that the least disruptive way to move toward a single currency would be
to gradually merge the two exchange rates in tandem with a steady rise in GDP
and salaries overall. But in the meantime, the artificial one-to-one ratio
within the state sector has the effect of overvaluing the CUP's international
exchange rate and thus decreasing the competiveness of domestic goods.
Paradoxically, the dual-currency regime protects imports at the expense of
domestic production.
ISLAND HOPPING
Cuba's
recent reform of its migration law neatly encapsulates a number of the
possibilities, limits, and implications of Castro's larger agenda. Despite
being both a sign of the state's willingness to make strategic decisions and
arguably the most important reform to date, the new law also underscores the
uphill battles that remain and illustrates the difficulty of managing optics and
expectations. As with most issues in Cuban society, the line between politics
and economics is entirely blurred.
Faced
with an exodus of educated professionals and capital from the country after the
revolution, the Cuban government began heavily regulating the movement of its
citizens abroad in the early 1960s. In light of émigrés' direct involvement in
attempts to unseat the Castro regime, often financed by the U.S. government,
Havana treated migration as a matter of national security. For many years, those
who succeeded in leaving, legally or illegally, had their property stripped by
the state and could not, barring extraordinary exceptions, return home. Such
restrictions left deep wounds.
Yet it
has been a long time since Cubans on the island and off could be neatly divided
between anticommunists and pro-Castro revolutionaries. Any visit to the Miami
airport today attests to the strength of transnational ties; in peak season,
over a hundred weekly charter flights carry Cubans and Cuban Americans between
the two countries. Such travel, allowed under some circumstances since the late
1970s, has expanded considerably since 2009, when U.S. President Barack Obama
lifted restrictions on family visits. In 2012, upward of 400,000 Cubans in the
United States visited the island. And this is to say nothing of the hundreds of
thousands of Cuban emigrants living across Latin America, Canada, Europe, and
beyond who also visit and support family at home.
Indeed,
by making it easier for Cubans to travel, work abroad, and then return home,
Cuba's new migration law is also meant to stimulate the economy. At an
estimated $1 billion a year, remittances have been big business since the late
1990s, helping Cubans compensate for low salaries and take advantage of what
few opportunities have existed for private enterprise. Now that the government
has undertaken a wider expansion of the small-business sector, ties between the
diaspora and the island are bringing an even greater payoff. Cubans abroad are
already helping invest money in the window-front cafeterias, repair shops, and
other small businesses popping up across the country. Some islanders are also
sending their own money out of the country so that relatives can buy them
consumer goods abroad.
Beyond
redressing a deeply unpopular status quo, however, the new migration law has
put the government in an awkward position. Assuming enough Cubans can afford
the now reduced, but still comparatively high, fees associated with acquiring
necessary travel documents, other countries -- principally the United States --
will need to continue receiving Cuban visitors and migrants in large numbers.
Ironically, Havana has long criticized the special preferences granted to
Cubans under U.S. immigration law for seeming to encourage and reward dangerous
attempts to reach U.S. shores. Now, Cuba appears to benefit from such measures'
remaining on the books -- especially the one-year fast track to permanent
residency established by the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act. Under Cuba's expanded
two-year allowance for legal residency abroad, the more than 20,000 Cubans
emigrating legally to the United States each year will be able to acquire green
cards without necessarily giving up their citizenship claims, homes, or
businesses on the island.
Small-time
diaspora capital may prove easier to regulate and rely on than funds from
multinational corporations driven strictly by profits. Under the repatriation
provisions of the island's new migration law, some Cubans may even retire to
the island with their pensions and savings after decades of working abroad. Yet
opening the doors for more young citizens to leave could prove risky for a
quickly aging, low-birthrate society that has been suffering from a brain drain
for some time.
Besides,
along with remittance dollars, Cuba urgently needs both medium and large
investors. Ultimately, only larger outlays can help fix Cuba's most fundamental
economic problem: its depleted productive base. Castro appears to recognize
that attracting foreign investment, decentralizing the government, and further
expanding the private sector are the only ways to tackle this long-term
predicament. The government is unlikely to proceed with anything but caution,
however. Officials are wary of rocking the domestic political boat, and citizens
and party leaders alike recoil from the prospect of more radical shock therapy.
Rising public protests in China and Vietnam against inequality and rampant
corruption have only reinforced the Cuban government's preference for
gradualism.
Striking
an adequate balance will be no easy task. In late 2012, Havana legalized the
creation of transportation cooperatives -- private, profit-sharing entities
owned and manage by their members -- to fix bottlenecks in agricultural
distribution. Meanwhile, 100 state enterprises are now running their finances
completely autonomously as part of a yearlong pilot program. The government is
also reportedly considering ways to offer a wider array of potential foreign
partners more advantageous terms for joint ventures. But the Communist Party is
working through numerous contradictions -- recognizing a place for market
economics, challenging old biases against entrepreneurs, and hinting at
decentralizing the budget while incongruously insisting, in the words of its
official 2011 guidelines, that "central planning, and not the market, will
take precedence."
EASING OFF THE DADDY STATE
Curtailing
the state's economic role while preserving political continuity requires
threading a delicate ideological needle. Although the government expects to
continue providing Cubans with key social services, such as health care and
education, party leaders have reprimanded the island's citizens for otherwise
depending too heavily on what one prominent official a few years ago called the
"daddy state." In the eyes of many Cubans, this is deeply ironic.
Cuba's revolutionary founders, who built up a paternalistic state in the
service of equality, are now calling for that state's partial dismantlement.
What's more, most Cubans already need to resort to the black market or
assistance from family abroad to acquire many daily necessities.
That is
not to say that the reforms have been conducted without popular input. In the
run-up to the 2011 Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, the government
convened an unprecedented series of assemblies across the country to hear
citizens' grievances and proposals for change and to discuss Castro's agenda.
Although multiparty elections are not on the horizon, this undertaking allowed
for widespread and often contentious public debate, albeit within broadly
"socialist" conceptual parameters. Despite defending one-party rule,
Castro has also called on public officials to make themselves accessible to the
state press, and he has asked the press, in turn, to drop its traditional
triumphalism. In a similar vein, he has implored students to "debate
fearlessly" and party members to "look each other in the eyes,
disagree and argue, disagree even with what leaders say whenever [you] think
there is reason to do so." More recently, Díaz-Canel publically mentioned
the impossibility of prohibiting the diffusion of news via social media and the
Internet -- a sign that, for the government, the strategic benefit of
facilitating wider Internet connectivity may well outweigh the usefulness of
controlling access.
Reality
has not yet caught up with this rhetoric. Debate in public among high-ranking
Cuban officials remains rare, even if it is reportedly vigorous behind closed
doors. Nor is it clear whether Cuba's National Assembly can become a more
consequential, deliberative branch of government. Public statements perceived
to impugn the Cuban Revolution's legitimacy remain taboo and are grounds for
facing consequences in the workplace or even ostracism. Nevertheless, outside
of high-level government bodies and the still largely anodyne daily press,
diverse voices have pushed the terms of debate considerably in recent years,
blurring the purportedly neat line dividing "revolutionary" and
"counterrevolutionary" positions.
International
attention tends to focus on Cuba's small, self-identified dissident community,
particularly a newer cast of digitally savvy activists and bloggers. Yet in a
country where the Internet remains an expensive, highly regulated commodity,
perhaps the most interesting, potentially consequential debates are transpiring
among academics, artists, independent filmmakers, former officials, and lay
religious leaders, particularly from the Catholic Church, whose websites,
journals, and public forums are more accessible to the island's population. In
general, these actors do not propose a radical break with all of the
revolution's legacies, symbols, and narratives. They also maintain their
distance from foreign, especially U.S. and Cuban American, financial support,
which marks many dissidents as "mercenaries" in the eyes of the Cuban
state. Yet they do so more out of political conviction than strategic calculus,
refusing to accept the purported choice between towing the party line at home
and collaborating with transition schemes concocted abroad.
Recently,
a small group of Catholic moderates and reformist Marxists, brought together
under the auspices of a church-sponsored cultural center, circulated a series
of straightforward proposals for political reform online. These included
allowing direct, competitive elections for all of Cuba's major leadership
positions (albeit with all the candidates coming from one party), unrestricted
access to the Internet, freer media, more effective separation of powers in the
government, and greater use of plebiscites on major government decisions. The
proposals have provoked opposition from some defenders of the status quo while
generating substantial support, interest, and debate among academics on the
island.
Yet
despite the unprecedented scope of these discussions, it is hard to predict
whether they will produce much concrete change in the short term. Presently,
they do not seem to be having much impact on the public, which pays less
attention to them than do the orthodox keepers of the revolutionary faith. The
explanation for ordinary Cubans' disengagement has as much to do with apathy,
inertia, self-preservation, and the material demands they face every day as it
does with limited access to information and a curtailed right of assembly.
After all, substantial numbers of Cubans watch Miami television stations via
pirated recordings or illicit satellite hookups, yet they have so far proved no
more likely to take to the streets than their neighbors who lack such access.
Since the 1960s, the primary means for those disaffected or unsatisfied at home
to register their opinion has been to emigrate -- particularly to the United
States, given the multiple incentives for Cubans built into U.S. immigration
law. As long as this pattern continues, Havana will have the political space to
continue its reforms "without pause, but without haste," in Castro's
formulation.
THE LAST ICICLE OF THE COLD WAR
As the
migration issue shows, Cuba's economic and political predicaments cannot be
appreciated in isolation from its international context. The U.S. embargo
remains a formidable obstacle to the island's long-term economic prosperity,
and it casts a long shadow over Cuban domestic politics. In the case of
Vietnam, it was only after the lifting of the U.S. embargo in 1994 that the
economy began to transform in earnest. Given Cuba's proximity to the United
States and its relatively low labor costs, a similar shift in U.S. law could
have a profound impact on the island.
In 2013,
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry opened his confirmation hearing by
celebrating his close collaboration with Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) in
overcoming the legacy of war in order to restore U.S. relations with Vietnam.
Yet both Kerry and Obama still seem to defer to the outdated conventional
wisdom on Cuba, according to which Washington cannot change its failed policy
so long as Cuban Americans in Congress continue to oppose doing so. Reality,
however, is already changing. These legislators' constituents have started
voting with their feet and checkbooks, traveling to the island and sending
remittances to family there as never before. Several wealthy Cuban Americans,
moreover, are now talking directly with Havana about large-scale future
investments. As a Democrat who won nearly half of Florida's Cuban American vote
in 2012, Obama is in a better position than any of his predecessors to begin
charting an end to the United States' 50-year-long embargo. [Editor’s note: That was written in 2013
and given the events of 2015, it has emerged as a very telling prediction].
The
geopolitical context in Latin America provides another reason the U.S.
government should make a serious shift on Cuba. For five years now, Obama has
ignored Latin America's unanimous disapproval of Washington's position on Cuba.
Rather than perpetuate Havana's diplomatic isolation, U.S. policy embodies the
imperial pretensions of a bygone era, contributing to Washington's own
marginalization. Virtually all countries in the region have refused to attend
another Summit of the Americas meeting if Cuba is not at the table. Cuba, in
turn, currently chairs the new Community of Latin American and Caribbean
States, which excludes Washington. The Obama administration has begun laying
out what could become a serious second-term agenda for Latin America focused on
energy, jobs, social inclusion, and deepening integration in the Americas. But
the symbolism of Cuba across the region is such that the White House can
definitively lead U.S.–Latin American relations out of the Cold War and into
the twenty-first century only by shifting its Cuba policy.
To make
such a shift, however, Washington must move past its assumption that Havana
prefers an adversarial relationship with the United States. Raúl Castro has
shown that he is not his brother and has availed himself of numerous channels,
public and private, to communicate to Washington that he is ready to talk. This
does not mean that he or his successors are prepared to compromise on Cuba's
internal politics; indeed, what Castro is willing to put on the table remains
unclear. But his government's decisions to release more than 120 political
prisoners in 2010 and 2011 and allow a number of dissident bloggers and
activists to travel abroad this year were presumably meant to help set the stage
for potential talks with the United States.
Meanwhile,
the death of Hugo Chávez, the former Venezuelan president, and the narrow
margin in the election of his successor, Nicolás Maduro, have made it clear
that Havana has reasons of its own to chart a path forward with the United
States. In the last decade or so, Cuba came to depend on Venezuela for large
supplies of subsidized oil, in exchange for a sizable brigade of Cuban doctors
staffing the Chávez government's social programs. Political uncertainty in
Caracas offers a potent reminder of the hazards of relying too heavily on any
one partner.
Havana is
already beginning to branch out. In addition to financing the refurbishing of
Mariel Harbor, the Brazilians have extended a line of credit to renovate and
expand five airports across the island and have recently signed a deal to hire
6,000 Cuban doctors to fill shortages in Brazil's rural health coverage. Even
so, in the long run, the United States remains a vital natural market for Cuban
products and services.
Of
course, as the 1990s proved, even a huge financial setback may not be enough to
drive Havana to Washington's door. Half a century of U.S. economic warfare has
conditioned Cuban bureaucrats and party cadres to link openness at home or
toward the United States with a threat to Cuba's independence. Some hard-liners
might prefer muddling through with the status quo to the uncertainty that could
come from a wider opening of their country.
The best
way to change such attitudes, however, would be for Washington to take the
initiative in establishing a new diplomatic and economic modus vivendi with
Havana. In the short term, the two countries have numerous practical problems
to solve together, including environmental and security challenges, as well as
the fate of high-profile nationals serving time in U.S. and Cuban prisons.
Most of
the policy steps Obama should take at this stage -- removing Cuba from the list
of state sponsors of terrorism, eliminating obstacles for all Americans to
travel there, and licensing greater trade and investment -- would not require
congressional approval or any grand bargain with Havana. Although it might be
politically awkward in the United States for a president to be seen as helping
Castro, on the island, such measures would strengthen the case that Cuba can
stand to become a more open, democratic society without succumbing to external
pressure or subversion. Deeper commercial ties, moreover, could have
repercussions beyond the economic realm, giving internal reformers more leeway
and increasing support on the island for greater economic and political
liberalization.
In 1991,
Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev stood beside U.S. Secretary of State James
Baker in Moscow and announced that the Soviet Union would eliminate its
multibillion-dollar annual subsidy to Cuba. Cia analysts and American pundits
immediately began predicting the imminent demise of the Cuban Revolution and a
quick capitalist restoration. More than 20 years have passed since then, Fidel
Castro has retired, and 82-year-old Raúl Castro is now serving the first year
of what he has said will be his final five-year term as president.
In 2018,
when Díaz-Canel takes the reins, Cuba in all likelihood will continue to defy
post–Cold War American fantasies even as it moves further away from its
orthodox socialist past. For the remaining members of Cuba's founding
revolutionary generation, such a delicate transformation provides a last
opportunity to shape their legacy. For Cubans born after 1991, the coming years
may offer a chance to begin leaving behind the state of prolonged ideological
and economic limbo in which they were raised.
Obama,
meanwhile, has a choice. He can opt for the path of least political resistance
and allow the well-entrenched bureaucrats, national security ideologues, and
pro-embargo voices in his own country to keep Cuba policy in a box, further
alienating regional allies and perpetuating the siege mentality among Cuban
officials. Or he can dare to be the president who finally extracts the United
States from Cuba's internal debate and finds a way for Washington and Havana to
work together. Both the Cuban people and U.S. national interests would benefit
as a result.
AUTHOR:
Co-author Michael J. Bustamante |
“Cuba After Communism"
The Economic Reforms That Are
Transforming the Island” reposted from Foreign Affairs magazine, 2013.
Authors: Julia E. Sweig, Nelson
and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies and Director for
Latin America Studies, and Michael Bustamante
AHEAD TOMORROW:
Forward to Day 4 of the April 23rd
Brigade’s Tour of Cuba 2015
No comments:
Post a Comment