[NYTr] Phil Peters' Cuban Triangle: The Nightmare Scenario

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The Cuban Triangle Blog - Aug 17, 2007
http://cubantriangle.blogspot.com/2007/08/nightmare-scenario.html


The nightmare scenario

By Phil Peters

Here are a few comments on a University of Miami essay by Professor
Jaime Suchlicki and Jason Poblete, “When Should the U.S. Change Policy
Toward Cuba.”  (See:
http://www.miscelaneasdecuba.net/web/article.asp?artID=11158 )

The authors begin by discussing the confusion involved in the terms
“transition” and “succession.” I thought the Administration defined the
terms pretty well: “transition” meant a change in political system,
“succession” a change in leadership with the system unchanged. Then the
Administration confused the issue completely, giving us one more reason
not to rely on our own government for analysis of what’s going on in
Cuba. In my book, what has occurred is pretty clear: Cuba’s leadership
has changed, the system hasn’t.

The authors’ real point, however, is to stand up for the all-or-nothing
U.S. policy in the Helms-Burton law, which provides that only a
complete change in Cuba’s political system, not partial reform, can
trigger any easing of U.S. sanctions. They underscore that the law
provides that “a transition government cannot include either Fidel
Castro or Raul Castro.” Actually, the law goes them one better; it says
that a “democratically elected government” cannot include Fidel or
Raul, which is worth chewing over for a minute.

Set aside your supposition about Raul Castro’s chances in a free
election in Cuba -- would he get 12 percent? 51 percent? 70 percent? --
and contemplate that this law says that if Cuba were to free political
prisoners; allow a free press, political parties, and labor unions to
operate; dissolve state security; and hold elections under
international observation; then the result would not be a
“democratically elected” government if it were to include Raul Castro.
In other words, it defines not only the processes that Cubans must
follow to achieve democracy, it also sets conditions on the result. Its
message to Cubans is simple: Hold an election and satisfy all our
conditions, but if you elect Raul we won’t accept the result as
democratic. Helms-Burton, in this sense, is purely anti-democratic. But
this is the provision of the law that these authors hold up virtually
as sacred writ in an essay devoted to democracy in Cuba and the
constancy of democratic principles in U.S. foreign policy. Go figure.

Regarding those principles, the authors try mightily to cram the
current U.S. approach toward Cuba into the mainstream of U.S. foreign
policy, implying that any deviation amounts to “supporting regimes and
dictators that violate human rights.” They reach back to the Ford
Administration, ignoring that Ford offered to normalize relations
without demanding that Cuba change its political system. They ignore
that Presidents of both parties have long promoted American contact
with citizens and officials in communist countries as a means of
promoting U.S. influence, all the while maintaining our moral
disapproval of the communist system. They ignore the 1992 Cuba
Democracy Act, a law embraced by the late Jorge Mas Canosa, which
offered to ease U.S. sanctions in response to political or economic
openings in Cuba -- the precise opposite of the Helms-Burton approach.

There’s more. They set up an old straw man, claiming that proponents of
engagement with Cuba believe that engagement will produce regime
change. (Some do, I’ll admit, but they are wrong. There are many
benefits to engagement, but if you want regime change the only honest
path is to make an unjustifiable call for military action.) They make
the tired and customary insinuation about the motives of proponents of
engagement. They argue that the tourism industry “is the one area of
the economy on which the government, besides oil exploration, on which
[sic] the future economic survival of the island depends.” Nonsense.
They suggest negotiations with Cuba, which now makes us all
dialogueros, I guess. Jason and Jaime, welcome to the club.

Beneath it all, my hunch is that the authors are beginning to grapple
with a scenario that may soon confront us.

No one knows whether, when, or how much Raul Castro would liberalize
Cuba’s economy. But what if he does, even in small ways, as Suchlicki
himself expects? What if an opening produces positive economic results?
What if those results earn him some political approval from Cubans who
are sick of orthodoxy and eager to have opportunities to provide for
themselves and their families?

What if Americans would react by saying that a degree of
liberalization, even if limited, is a positive development? How would
we react to a scenario where Cuban policies are changing and Cubans of
all political persuasions are debating what should come next? The next
question would be to ask, pragmatically, what to do? Are there any
tools in U.S. policy that would encourage a greater opening?

At that point, we would crash right into the big question posed by
Suchlicki and Poblete. And the answer, they remind us, is dictated in
our law: We would do absolutely nothing until Cuba’s political system
is transformed and Raul Castro is gone.

We would greet a scenario of new possibilities as spectators with our
feet in concrete. We would make the perfect the enemy of the good,
which is not a typical American approach. 

In that scenario, Americans might then look for different options. The
system of laws enacted in response to Fidel Castro might lose their
sacrosanct quality. The Calle Ocho argument that anyone who seeks a
different approach toward Cuba is abandoning democratic values and
supporting dictatorship, might seem a little ridiculous.

That’s why an economic opening in Cuba after Fidel would be a hopeful
sign for some, and the political nightmare of a lifetime for others.

[Philip Peters works with the Lexington Institute in Washington, DC.
Since 1996 he has traveled regularly to Cuba to monitor and write about
economic and political developments. Peters is an advisor to the Cuba
Working Group in the House of Representatives.]

Republished by Progreso Weekly, August 23, 2007.