Is Castro Convertible? A Skeptic Says No
KAGAN, ROBERT
Is Castro Convertible? ? Skeptic Says No By Robert Kagan American policy toward Fidel Castro's Cuba could well change dramatically during the next administration, no matter who wins in November...
...It has a flair, a daring, and an elegance to it, while the old policy suffers, in the Wall Street Journal's view, from a fatal "failure of imagination...
...An increasing number of influential American policy-makers and experts seem to agree that this might be the best course for Cuba, though they dare not admit it, perhaps even to themselves...
...Dwayne Andreas, the chairman of Archer Daniels Midland and a fervent opponent of the embargo against Cuba, believes American statesmen "have learned how to help reform communist countries...
...Faith in the power of the free market and the free exchange of ideas, faith in the inability of dictatorships to withstand the onslaught of liberal capitalism-these form the bedrock of the emerging "new consensus" about Cuba...
...More significantly, it offers no answer to the problem of refugees, except letting more in or taking unpleasant measures on the high seas to keep them out...
...If you get into the game, you should be prepared to lose...
...It sounds more like a businessman's desire to find a way to "do business...
...And at the Pentagon, a recent study concluded that gradual economic liberalization in Cuba would be preferable, from the U.S...
...In supporting these reforms, Castro has declared that "nothing is going to get out of hand," and he has specifically pledged to avoid the catastrophe of perestroika that destroyed communism in the Soviet Union...
...In the early 90s, as the Soviet empire crumbled, Castro's battle cry was "socialism or death...
...In Nicaragua, the Sandinistas followed Gorbachev's lead, succumbed to American pressure for reform, gave their opponents an opening, and promptly got themselves voted out of office...
...And what are the chances that Castro will lose control of whatever economic and political opening he permits in Cuba...
...And, best of all, the policy of "calibrated response" promises a satisfactory solution to the immigration problem, since Castro will presumably not punish a president who is dutifully climbing up his side of the ladder...
...And if Castro refused to play his part in the American minuet, he would lose the sympathy of the world as well as his support in Cuba...
...The United States is the most powerful country in the world, but its foreign policy instruments tend to be big and blunt...
...He ordered news of Gorbachev's reforms censored from Cuban newspapers and tried to immunize Cuba against the virus of perestroika by launching a "rectification of errors" campaign against would-be reformers...
...Given the dismal state of American intelligence on the internal workings of the Cuban military, it is a safe bet that Castro will always be several steps ahead when it comes to securing the army's loyalty...
...Gradually, the two countries would move in this synchronized fashion "up the ladder" to the highest rungs and the biggest rewards: Castro would agree to carry out constitutional reforms and, ultimately, hold internationally monitored elections in return for full normalization of relations with the United States...
...Or call it simply "blackmail," which is the word used by Gillian Gunn, director of the Cuba Project at Georgetown University, who nevertheless favors paying at least part of Castro's ransom...
...As in China, the question quickly becomes, who's leveraging whom...
...Those who suggest that the United States can ultimately split the Cuban military from Castro's control, for instance, ought to realize that Castro is well aware of the dangers and has been ruthlessly efficient in meeting them...
...Would Castro really want to climb all the way up the ladder to the end of communism and his own rule in Cuba...
...For one thing, the current policy is honest about its goals and its proposed means for achieving them...
...policy toward the Castro regime...
...He clearly believes that in the coming dangerous phase of engagement with the United States, he can get what he wants-the salvaging of his disastrous economy and an easing of the social pressures that have resulted-without undermining either his own rule or that of his chosen successors...
...Is the United States clever enough, nimble enough, and resolute enough to beat Castro at his own game...
...The new investment law passed at the beginning of this month may have tantalized some potential investors, but it did nothing to limit state control over the economy...
...The Reagan administration did not lift sanctions against Pinochet's Chile until the dictator agreed to hold a plebiscite...
...Don't be misled by the lopsided vote in the House last month to tighten the economic embargo against Cuba...
...In an act of supreme courage and self-confidence, and with an iron determination to hold onto power at all costs, Castro in the late 1980s tacked in the opposite direction from his superpower patron...
...Andreas, for instance, seems to believe that "if you get rid of Castro, you'll get something worse," and he wishes Cuban-American activists would stop "trying to demonize Castro and everybody connected with him...
...If the United States eased restrictions on U.S...
...Doesn't Castro realize that he is walking into an American trap...
...But this capacity to manipulate power on the world stage is not matched by an equal facility in manipulating power in Cuba...
...intervention...
...Those who today suggest that Castro can be lured into holding free elections in Cuba in the same way the Sandinistas were lured to their defeat in 1990 should recall Castro's advice at that time...
...Perhaps we would be better off keeping our policy simple...
...News & World Report that he had noted "with interest" the economic changes in China and Vietnam, but he insisted that similar reforms in Cuba must occur "without destabilizing the country and heading towards chaos...
...This week or next, the Senate version of that legislation may face stronger opposition...
...Lee Hamilton calls the current policy "risky, because the more pressure you apply the more likely you make it that [the Cuban people] will turn to violence, and we do not want this to happen...
...And this, from their point of view, would not be such a bad thing...
...Why not hold the world's most successful dictator to the same high standard...
...In that game, Castro has the advantage...
...investments in Cuba in exchange for, say, Castro's granting greater press freedoms, would we be willing to pay the price of nullifying those investments once he found it necessary to clamp down on the press...
...In each case, the argument runs, economic and political engagement, not isolation, helped bring the downfall of communism...
...And, although few seem to realize this, it plays to American strengths while the proposed policy of engagement plays to Castro's...
...Merely by taking the first few steps, by allowing some turn toward the free market, by easing political repression even a little, by letting American business, culture, and ideas into Cuba, Castro would unleash forces that must eventually escape his control...
...Our policy toward China since Tiananmen Square ought to raise serious doubts...
...It is always interesting to theorize about outfoxing Castro, but it seems pretty clear that Castro has played his hand perfectly so far...
...When Andreas argues that the United States and its businessmen should be "in there helping [Castro] achieve these reforms," therefore, it doesn't sound like a clever ruse to up-end Castro...
...Nothing could be clearer than Castro's intention to let in only those businesses willing to play by his rules...
...Castro has been especially careful to prevent independent economic forces from emerging inside Cuba...
...policy should be to "help ensure that the inevitable change coming to Cuba will be peaceful rather than violent and traumatic...
...At its most sophisticated, the engagement strategy is a carefully choreographed minuet between the United States and the Castro regime...
...All he needs now is the right American president in 1997, one strong enough and secure enough to move to the next stage in the plan...
...In this sense, at least, the engagement strategy fits the spirit of the age...
...Even Bernard Aronson, a sincere opponent of the Castro regime, agrees that the goal of U.S...
...And if perestroika does come to Cuba, the argument goes, then glasnost and political reform can't be far behind...
...It is worth recalling that the Bush administration did not lift economic sanctions against Nicaragua until after the Sandinistas held free elections...
...The current policy of embargo may be boring and unimaginative...
...The United States might ease restrictions on travel or allow the delivery of more medicines and health services to Cuba, and in return Castro would release political prisoners...
...Thus the new law invites investment from Cubans living abroad but denies the same right to those living in Cuba...
...To skeptics who doubt the plausibility of a peaceful, American-brokered transition from communism to democracy in Cuba, the adherents of the "new consensus" point to the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, to the 1990 elections that ended Sandinista rule in Nicaragua, and, more intriguingly, to modernizing China...
...But it does have its simple virtues...
...The Clinton administration's code phrase for this policy is "calibrated response," which Secretary of State Warren Christopher uttered once last year before being hushed by political commissars worried about the Cuban-American vote...
...It promises Castro no bribes in exchange for stability...
...Castro did all he could to convince the Sandinistas to cancel the elections in 1990...
...Within the past year, William F. Buckley, Jr., Richard Lugar, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and a collection of former Reagan and Bush Latin Americanists have all called for lifting or easing the embargo, or at least beginning serious negotiations with Castro...
...maybe we should hold out until he makes the most difficult choice of all...
...He has devoted himself single-mindedly to forcing the United States to lift the embargo, enticing American businessmen with promises of bounty, reaching out to more moderate Cuban-Americans to begin a dialogue and soften the opposition in the Cuban-American community, seeking every opportunity to prod American diplomats into discussions, and trying to open channels of communication even with conservative foreign policy experts in the Republican opposition...
...With a little refugee crisis here and there, he has persuaded some important former enemies that it is in America's interest to help him get through these hard years...
...A year ago he told interviewers from U.S...
...Castro, of course, is not an idiot...
...Long before he faced a hint of trouble in his own military, he ordered the execution of Cuba's most highly decorated military hero, General Arnoldo Ochoa, merely because Ochoa was beginning to amass the kind of influence that could someday pose a challenge...
...Some American analysts would have us believe that the wily Castro is merely trying to reassure hard-liners in his government who oppose economic reform...
...As laid out by Aronson, for instance, the plan would include "a step-by-step relaxation of the provisions of the embargo in exchange for concrete steps by the Cuban government to move irreversibly toward democracy...
...That's the problem, of course, with trying to use American investment and trade in Cuba as leverage to force political reform...
...With the end of the Cold War, the strategic rationale for making economic war against Castro has lost its force-even among some conservatives...
...Though he is supposedly in a very weak position due to the demise of his Soviet patron, Castro has had great success frightening the world's most powerful nation into re-examining its policy...
...The people," he once noted sagely, "can make mistakes...
...Once having allowed an opening, Castro would not be able to close it...
...Like Castro, they prefer stability to upheaval on the island because upheaval means refugees and pressure for U.S...
...Castro has long admired the ability of Chinese leaders to combine a growing economy with strong dictatorial rule...
...Recent laws passed by the Cuban National Assembly to make foreign investment more inviting, if only slightly, have led many observers to conclude that Castro really wants to turn the Cuban economy in a free-market direction...
...The only problem with this new approach, however, is that it rests on the assumption that Fidel Castro is an idiot...
...All foreign investment still has to be approved by the Cuban government, and Castro has made it clear that foreign investors will rarely be granted majority ownership of businesses in Cuba...
...Castro also witnessed firsthand what happened to those who took a different course at that critical moment...
...The genius of the engagement strategy, its proponents argue, is that, in the end, Castro's intentions won't matter very much...
...For all its elegance and creativity, at the heart of the proposed strategy of engagement with Cuba is an enormous conceit: that the United States can outmaneuver Castro in the struggle for Cuba's future and that it can do so even though Castro knows in advance precisely how we aim to go about undermining him...
...As former assistant secretary of state Bernard Aronson complained during last year's refugee crisis, although the United States is "uniquely vulnerable" to events in Cuba, it has developed "no real policy to influence" those events...
...With due respect to American foreign policy virtuosity, this would seem to be a tall order...
...Complementing these theoretical speculations is a very untheoretical problem: the ever-present threat of another outpouring of Cuban refugees...
...The dirty little secret, of course, is that many of those who support a new policy of engagement with Castro know perfectly well that, far from undermining him, it will help him stay in power...
...By "flooding Cuba with goods, people and information," the United States could overwhelm even Castro's carefully laid plans...
...But everything in his long career as Cuba's dictator suggests that he means exactly what he says...
...The Cuban government also refused to grant foreign employers the right to hire and pay their employees directly, thus ensuring continued state control of workers, their earnings, and the flow of hard currency...
...and Reebok International, two large employers in his district...
...Although dependent on the Soviet Union for everything from arms and defense to an economic subsidy amounting to several billion dollars a year, Castro stood fast against the global hurricane Gorbachev had unleashed...
...Elections are a risky business," Castro warned an over-confident Daniel Ortega in 1989...
...For the past two years or more, Castro has been practically begging the United States to begin this policy of engagement and rapprochement, the purported aim of which is to sweep away everything he has spent the last four decades building...
...Put simply, support for the embargo has lost intellectual respectability in Washington, and it may not be long before this defeat in the realm of ideas turns into a defeat in the realm of policy...
...point of view, to a violent domestic challenge to Castro's rule and even to more radical economic reforms under Castro's leadership...
...In some parts of the Clinton administration, and increasingly in Republican foreign policy circles, the idea is taking hold that the United States can and should use economic and political engagement with Cuba as a means of hastening Castro's departure from power, shaping the pace and direction of reform, and easing the way for a peaceful transition to democracy...
...It is hardly reassuring to listen to American businessmen make their case...
...Is he wrong...
...And even if it passes, the political victory will mask a deep vulnerability in the embargo policy that has governed American relations with Cuba for 35 years...
...After all, "Nixon went to see Mao . . . and China immediately began to open up . . . [a] market economy and move toward democratic institutions...
...American businesses would be allowed to invest in Cuban enterprises in exchange for Castro's giving international human rights monitors freer rein...
...One is inclined to skepticism...
...When it comes to power in Cuba, Castro must believe he knows more about how to keep it than the Americans know about how to take it away...
...Already the embargo is forcing Castro to make difficult choices...
...Call it immigration as a spur to imagination...
...Well before American leaders appreciated the likely effects of Gorbachev's reforms, Castro knew, as former Soviet official Yuri Pavlov recalls, that "perestroika could get out of control and wreck the very system it was intended to improve . . . that perestroika was acting like the AIDS virus, destroying the immunological defense of the socialist political system...
...Even while declaring the current embargo futile and obsolete, supporters of an engagement strategy sometimes let slip their deeper fear that the contrary may be true...
...Our ability to influence the decisions of international investors is enormous, as is our ability to keep Cuba in a state of relative political and diplomatic isolation...
...He would no longer have the convenient scapegoat of the American embargo on which to blame all his economic troubles...
...Even Congressman Joe Moakley, a liberal Democrat and a long-time crusader for human rights in Latin America, cannot help noting that lifting the embargo, in addition to being the "best way to push for democratic reforms" in Cuba, would also create opportunities for the Gillette Co...
...At bottom, fear of refugees is what fuels the current drive for a "new consensus" on U.S...
...Castro, it is safe to say, knows as much as Americans do about the downfall of communism and the end of the Cold War, and perhaps a good deal more...
...In August 1994, Castro proved that he can make an American president's life miserable in vote-rich Florida whenever he decides an administration is not being creative enough in its policy toward Cuba, by sending 19,000 refugees to America on leaky boats...
...Skeptic Says No By Robert Kagan American policy toward Fidel Castro's Cuba could well change dramatically during the next administration, no matter who wins in November 1996...
...Castro, on the other hand, has made few mistakes...
...Indeed, by almost any measure he is one of the shrewdest and most resilient dictators of our time...
...Nixon himself, in his last book, argued that the way to bring Castro down was "to build pressure from within by actively stimulating Cuba's contacts with the free world...
...Let's start at the top of the ladder, not the bottom...
...Merely by offering a policy of engagement, Aronson argues, the United States could "shift the weight of international and internal pressure onto the Castro regime...
Vol. 1 • October 1995 • No. 5
