The Correct Line on Castro's Cuba

...At various times we have had hints of a private market...

...vague declarations of free and unfettered elections...

...I fear that it is not as much better as many Americans believe...

...When the heavenly book is finally closed on Fidel Castro, it will be seen that although America stood fast at the ideological level, it was otherwise paralyzed...

...That military adventurism would not be tolerated now by any nation in the Hemisphere does not alter the soothing balm of his message to those for whom isolationism has become not merely a moral goal but an instrument of U.S...

...Cuban exiles and now native-born Cuban Americans carry on the struggle for a free Cuba...

...Now, of course, there is a fourth and perhaps final factor underlying the U.S...

...Thinking Aloud THE CORRECT LINE ON CASTRO'S CUBA BY IRVING LOUIS HOROWITZ There has been such a fixation in Washington on when Fidel Castro's regime will dissolve that his continuing ability to hang on has contributed to a policy paralysis...

...Isolate Cuba diplomatically or open up windows of diplomatic opportunity...

...It will be intriguing to see whether America's policy of nonpolicy finally leads to a successful democratic resolution of the situation...

...In addition to our overall laissez-faire stance where Cuba is concerned, one must not forget the big-power settlement after the Cuban missile crisis...

...True, Castro is no longer a pawn of the USSR...

...I intend neither to arouse expectations nor to dash hopes...

...Waiting for Castro to step (or fall) down has turned out to be like waiting for Godot...

...Nor will it be possible to assert the U.S.' implacable opposition to Castro's tyranny?and press for tightening rather than lifting the embargo...

...On the contrary, he could become doubly dangerous in the military arena, his words notwithstanding, since he has been liberated from his big responsibility of serving as the praetorian guard of Soviet Communism...

...Unfortunately, American political leaders see Cuba only as an extension of European Communism...

...Regardless of how one responds to Waltz' remarks—and I confess to astonishment that they can be casually offered today—they clearly signal commitment to a foreign policy of quiescence rather than activism...

...The extraordinary events in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe took place despite U.S...

...And in the USSR, we backed Mikhail S. Gorbachev against Boris N. Yeltsin long after it was clear that Gorbachev lacked the support of his own people...

...Monroeism has been replaced by Bolivarism...

...3) The severely restrictive Kennedy-Khrushchev pact ending the Cuban missile crisis...

...Recent meetings in New York have called for an end to the war on Castro's Cuba...

...But one must keep in mind that Fidel Castro, unlike Saddam Hussein, has a history of flexibility rather than dogmatism when the crunch comes...

...George Quester, speaking at the same APSA forum on "America as Model for the World," noted that the 1960s produced a "major American disenchantment with foreign policy...

...Each of these "balloons" was floated as backroom gossip or in private off-the-record meetings...

...We have seen this strange new coalition at work denigrating the effort to contain—not defeat, mind you—Saddam Hussein in Iraq...

...But that depends on the viability of the European analogy...

...Nevertheless, they were enough to stave off direct action, especially in combination with three distinct factors: (1) The general U.S...

...At the minimum, it is argued, we ought to seek the normalization of relations with Cuba and let bygones be bygones...

...This at a time when leading politicians of the former USSR have announced that he will no longer receive petroleum on a favorable basis, and that deliveries to Cuba of lumber, foodstuffs and spare machine parts have virtually ceased since the start of the new year...

...I believe that America is better than most nations...

...My conclusion is that as long as our current policy malaise exists, Castro too will persist...

...Since the demise last year of Soviet Communism, even the few calls one used to hear for getting tough with its tenacious advocate in this Hemisphere have been stilled...

...policy toward the last dictatorship in the Hemisphere...

...is mamlaining a cool yet correct relationship with Castro's Cuba...

...From post-Tiananmen Square China, though, we know that a noninterventionist approach does not always yield a favorable outcome...

...But it does not follow axiomatically that he is no longer a threat to hemispheric tranquility...

...They reside in the character of hemispheric relations and the unspoken belief that the United States, because of imperialist pretensions and colonialist behavior at the end of the 19th century, lacks the legitimacy to act at the end of the 20th century...

...We have changed," he said...

...His regime does, after all, represent stability and continuity—elements the Bush Administration prizes above everything else, except electoral votes...

...For quite different reasons, the same may be said of the present stage of U.S...

...Military aid outside our borders is a thing of the past...

...Changes in American demographics must be translated into changes in American policy...

...Will the period ahead bring an end to Cuban Communism, as in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, or a tightening of the vise of totalitarian rule, as in China and North Korea...

...The rise of neoisolationism as articulated by Pat Buchanan, they should also note, simply provides a Rightist gloss to Leftist substance...

...In short, conditions in Cuba will remain desperate and fluid...

...Returning to a pre-indus-trial economy and a horse and buggy (or bicycle) technology would mean greater hardship for the Cuban people, but at the same time it would theoretically eliminate Cuba as a danger abroad altogether and further justify U.S...

...According to J. Anthony Lu-kas, writing in the New York Times, the Bush Administration is only an election away from pursuing a policy of consensus and perhaps even rapprochement with Castro...

...But he has offered enough tidbits along the way to prevent all-out hostility...

...Completely neglected in the circumstances is the possibility that Castro might pursue what the late Karl Wittfogel termed oriental despotism...

...To be sure, the paradox of American power has long been its powerlessness in the face of internal forces that prefer to view the United States as an island of international virtue in a sea of national troubles...

...It doesn't appear to have worked in North Korea or Vietnam, either...

...So the absence of a Soviet threat may actually prolong rather than terminate Castro's rule—at least in the short term...

...denials of drug involvement and offers of punishment...

...nonintervention...

...In a world free of Soviet pressure, this view will gain adherents and acceptability in high places...

...At the subjective level, United States policy is hobbled by our perception of democracy: Who are we to tell anyone else what sort of society to have...

...Castro's dogmatic posture has frustrated his most admiring followers in the United States...

...Irving Louis Horowitz, a past contributor, is Hannah Arendt Professor of Sociology and Political Science at Rutgers University and is the 1992 occupant of the Emilio Bacardi-Moreau Chair in Cuban Studies at the University of Miami...

...There are deeper aspects to the paradox...

...Premature as the disenchantment may have been, it was not simply a consequence of radical opposition from outside but a result of self-doubt within the Establishment...

...Kenneth N. Waltz, speaking at the latest annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA), put it in a nutshell: "We cannot take America or any other country as a model for the world...

...In any event, it is apparent that paradox and procrastination, the hallmarks of United States policy toward Cuba, have afforded Castro the opportunity to at least temporarily stay the hand of history...

...If the latter have any doubts about the character of American policy, they would be well advised to examine Washington's reluctance to take steps that might be deemed reminiscent of our earlier era of gunboat diplomacy...

...This requires (a) banishing the notion of historic guilt...

...policies, not because of them...

...In the Baltics, the independence movement was a fait accompli before we granted diplomatic recognition...

...The so-called zero option could be a mechanism for Castro's survival...

...and a willingness to consider the reuniting of family members...

...promises of a multiparty system...

...It might well be that such a calculated gamble provides the best opportunity for change in Cuba without bloodshed...

...To preserve the status quo, even such stalwart Cold Warriors as Ray Cline are said to be urging the President to lift the economic embargo and take a meliorative approach toward Castro...

...The need for any sort of policy at all seems to have vanished as the notion has grown that Cuba will be forced to reject Castro, if only because of shortages of fuel, food or technology...

...Seal off the island from commercial activity or send commercial missions to explore trade and aid...

...By remaining oriented to Europe and Asia, the United States almost totally disregards the actual population makeup of places like Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and San Antonio...

...Given the recent record, it should hardly surprise that the U.S...

...Guilt exacts a high price—and despite appearances it is no less dangerous because of the relaxation of global tensions...

...We have heard the ideologues of extremes decrying United States intervention, and even sharing rhetoric about a high loss of Iraqi civilian life, while practically denying the developments that prompted this country to organize the war in the first place...

...It is the perfect complement to the objec-tive side of our failed policy making, described above...

...b) ending the informal diplomacy that has produced stagnation for more than 30 years...

...At the moment, the old battle lines are drawn...

...Yet he is perfectly capable of initiating the Cambodianization of Cuba, of forcing the populace to accept economic retreat and a variety of other austerities in the name of Communism...

...Our Cuba policy papers over serious rifts that have plagued the departments of State and Defense, and have had ramifications in the Oval Office, for more than three decades...

...It would be foolish to believe that this coalition will keep silent in the event of a United States decision to topple the Castro regime—even if such an action is undertaken in conjunction with the other nations of the Western Hemisphere...

...Our sentiments were in tune with the demands of the people for democracy, but our policies remained attuned to traditional State Department patterns of realpolitik...

...Indeed, the emergence of the independent Baltic Republics, the liberation of Eastern Europe from the Communist yoke, the collapse of the Soviet empire itself—all these momentous events took place in an environment of unambiguous United States military neutrality, coupled with broad displays of ideological support for those seeking freedom...

...attitude toward Castro...

...The misgivings implicit in this question are revealed in frequently heard declarations that minding our own business is the only correct posture when it comes to revolutionary regimes like Castro's...

...Should we support exiled guerrilla troops or punish them for violating the neutrality pact...

...foreign policy...

...With the collapse of the Soviet Union, it still haunts the United States...

...consideration for religious groups...

...in Yugoslavia, we upheld the principle of national unity long after it became evident that Slovenia and Croatia were going their own way...

...It would be naive to dismiss them as the final demonic gasp of the American Communist movement and its fellow travelers...

...and (c) recognizing that the United States, as a partially Latin nation, is entitled to consider actions relating to Cuba as an insider, not an outsider...

...The doubt can only be reinforced by Castro's announcement last January at a conference in Havana sponsored by Brown Universi-ty's Center for Foreign Policy Development...

...One sees here a familiar pattern: The United States prefers to deal with established, stable powers and figures, even if they are venal and totalitarian...

...Clearly, it is time for a new tack...

...It is almost as if the United States is bogged down in its own history, suffering an inertia born of guilt as well as ignorance...

...We need to look closely at the political demobilization within the United States following such mighty events as the Persian Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union...

...In the United States a new constellation of forces, embracing the far Right and the usual suspects from the ultra Left, urges immobilisme as a stategy and an ethic of grand isolation...

...Welcome refugees from Cuba as political freedom fighters or return some of them as criminal elements...

...American intellectuals and lawyers argue the case for Castro, as they have been doing throughout his 33-year reign...

...Times have changed...

...Not until the extent of our own Latin-ization is incorporated into the American ethos will it be possible to alter the present tendency to perceive ourselves as an Anglo-Protestant nation with merely marginal interests in what occurs south of our borders...

...While its juridical outlines may be contested, the arrangement has been honored for 31 of the Castro regime's 33 years...

...My concern, rather, is to instill a sense of sobriety among those who expect a radical shift in American policy...

...It is not enough to look at the economic deterioration within Cuba...

...President Bush, for example, in pronouncing the end of Fidel Castro, was careful not to set forth how that pleasant prospect is ultimately to be brought about, except by the collapse of the Cuban regime through economic self-strangulation...

...Talk is cheap, but it bought victories for the democratic camp at no cost in American lives and precious little in economic aid...

...President John F. Kennedy and Prime Minister Nikita S. Khrushchev arrived at a tradeoff: Soviet nuclear-tipped warheads in Cuba were eliminated in exchange for a firm agreement of nonintervention by the U.S...

...In the argument by analogy made by President George Bush at the end of last year, and by Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney shortly after the beginning of this one—namely, that Cuban Communism will go the way of Eastern Europe—we fall prey to awaiting events rather than forging them...

...disdain for intervention after the Vietnam experience...

...and no less, a sense of anxiety among those who believe that a policy of non-policy will inevitably have happy consequences for the forces of freedom...

...In fact, it might be that his growing sense of frustration and isolation will provide the basis for United States action...

...2) The turn to Bolivarism and rejection of Monroeism—that is, the conviction that Latin America is in control of its own destinies and will solve the Cuban problem by cauterization...