Why the US failed in Cuba
This linked article is over 30 years old, but Cuba still has a socialist authoritarian government. After the collapse of the USSR, its primary benefactor. After the death of Fidel Castro and the retirement of Raul Castro. Decades of US boycotts and saber-rattling have failed to elicit regime change. That’s because the US never trusted American capitalism.
What we should have done is love bomb Cuba with tourism and trade. Far from propping up Castro, it would have reminded Cubans daily of what they were missing. And by abandoning military threats, we would have dissolved the glue that holds many dictatorships together—the external threat.
“Cuban leaders have long experience in administering repression and adjusting to hardship. What they do not know how to deal with is openness and peace . . . the United States should . . . stop assisting Cuba’s censorship of information: allow A.T.&T.’s telephone link on a commercial basis; permit the sale of fax machines and other communications equipment; lift regulations impeding U.S. citizens from traveling to Cuba; foster academic, cultural and artistic exchanges; arrange for the opening of news bureaus in Havana and Washington; nurture technical cooperation between U.S. and Cuban institutions to protect migratory species, clean up pollution in the Straits of Florida and exchange information on hurricane tracking. The fact of such cooperation should be broadcast to Cubans.
“To remove aspects of the U.S. embargo beyond communications would require reciprocal changes in Cuba. But having demonstrated a willingness to lift restrictions in one area, the United States could use the remainder of the embargo as an active instrument of negotiation to bring about further opening. Such U.S. policies would at last permit the more normal unfolding of a political process in Cuba, permitting some officials and party members to advocate more openly a redirection of policies. They would also allow regime opponents to build on the evident discontent and galloping inflation in illegal markets. A more varied politics could become possible in Cuba—at first simply as tendencies within the Communist Party—but only if U.S. policy changes so that Cubans who seek change would no longer be vulnerable to the accusation that they are traitors to the homeland.”
The west traded with the Soviet Union. And ultimately, it was western capitalism that exposed the rot that was the Soviet empire. Even today, hot on the heels of its kidnaping of the Venezuelan president, the Trump Administration is menacing Cuba with the threat of regime change. Why not trust the strength of American capitalism and American democracy instead? Could it be that the Trump GOP has other plans for US democracy and capitalism here?
America helped keep Castro in power
What we should have done is love bomb Cuba with tourism and trade. Far from propping up Castro, it would have reminded Cubans daily of what they were missing. And by abandoning military threats, we would have dissolved the glue that holds many dictatorships together—the external threat.
“Cuban leaders have long experience in administering repression and adjusting to hardship. What they do not know how to deal with is openness and peace . . . the United States should . . . stop assisting Cuba’s censorship of information: allow A.T.&T.’s telephone link on a commercial basis; permit the sale of fax machines and other communications equipment; lift regulations impeding U.S. citizens from traveling to Cuba; foster academic, cultural and artistic exchanges; arrange for the opening of news bureaus in Havana and Washington; nurture technical cooperation between U.S. and Cuban institutions to protect migratory species, clean up pollution in the Straits of Florida and exchange information on hurricane tracking. The fact of such cooperation should be broadcast to Cubans.
“To remove aspects of the U.S. embargo beyond communications would require reciprocal changes in Cuba. But having demonstrated a willingness to lift restrictions in one area, the United States could use the remainder of the embargo as an active instrument of negotiation to bring about further opening. Such U.S. policies would at last permit the more normal unfolding of a political process in Cuba, permitting some officials and party members to advocate more openly a redirection of policies. They would also allow regime opponents to build on the evident discontent and galloping inflation in illegal markets. A more varied politics could become possible in Cuba—at first simply as tendencies within the Communist Party—but only if U.S. policy changes so that Cubans who seek change would no longer be vulnerable to the accusation that they are traitors to the homeland.”
The west traded with the Soviet Union. And ultimately, it was western capitalism that exposed the rot that was the Soviet empire. Even today, hot on the heels of its kidnaping of the Venezuelan president, the Trump Administration is menacing Cuba with the threat of regime change. Why not trust the strength of American capitalism and American democracy instead? Could it be that the Trump GOP has other plans for US democracy and capitalism here?
America helped keep Castro in power
why not? because it’s the sensible thing to do. that’s why. but Cuba is not the only regime that profits from a “state of war.”
i can think of another not too far away.
but there is this: i don’t know how “brutal” Cuba’s communist regime is. i do know how brutal Trump’s “criminal capitalist” regime is. I know that Castro ended the brutal American-supported dictator that ran Cuba before Castro, and that the Cubans may be benefitting from at least some of those “communist” policies. So I am not entirely sure I want to see America pfree enterprise re-established in Cuba by even sensible US policy.
@Dale,
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time…”
~Winston Churchill
Churchill was hardly a paragon of liberalism. But as this quote suggests, there are worse things to wish on the people of Cuba than the freedom to choose their overlords. I prefer not to make the perfect the enemy of the good. YMMV.
joel
i can’t disagree with that. not sure we were talking about forms of government, but forms economies. i realize they are tied together by politics. but you can have a capitalist tyrrany as easily as a communist one. and you can have a communist government that is free trade if you allow the people to act, through government. to protect themselves from the shocks that cash is heir to.
meanwhile i don’t know which of us is advocating for the good here. I suppose you think casino capitalism is good if you allow the people to have enough money to enjoy the good life. while i think communism may be good if it protects the people from other people’s idea of the good life. and neither of us is advocating tyranny of either color, which seems to be some people’s idea of the perfect.
I always thought an opportunity was missed in the U.S.reaction to Castro. He was greeted with enthusiastic crowds in New York after deposing Batista. Our government’s reaction seems to have been based on objection to the nationalization of U.S. corporations’ businesses on the island; businesses whose existence was often tied to corrupt connections to Batista. The loyalty of the population to the revolution was pretty well established by the reaction to the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Governmental assistance to the people certainly seems to have improved over that of the Batista regime even with fewer assets to work with.
Jack D
that;s my impression too. but people keep telling me the other side always lies..whichever is the other side to you.
back in the day, when politicians never lied, we were told Castro was a commonist, so we had to get rid of him to save America.i
Well, he was a communist but we didn’t have to get rid of him to save America unless the Eisenhower Republicans were afraid he’d be too successful and the Cuban people would be happy communists.
@Jack,
I haven’t seen any evidence that the Eisenhower (or the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, etc) administration cared how the Cuban people felt. Back in the day, plenty of people understood that the US government had to be seen trying to get rid of Castro (and Ho Chi Minh and Khrushchev and Mao and Saddam and bin Laden) to be elected. Some of us didn’t fall for the propaganda.
@Joel, I agree that none of the governments of that era appeared to be concerned with the welfare of the Cuban people except when they got to the U.S. and could be presented as victims of the Castro regime.