BLUF: Money.With economic power will come political power, and the veterans of the Castro regime will have nothing left to show for sixty years of poverty and sacrifice. The ‘reform’ faction in Cuba hopes that an interim twilight period between total socialism and total capitalism will allow them to do what other ex-communists have done, and shift their political control in a socialist context into political control and economic power as Cuba changes. They hope for the kind of privatizations and investments that leave the current elite holding the sources of wealth.
The problem with that theory is that Cuba isn’t a China or a Vietnam, where there is enough wealth-creating power to unleash so that a process of economic reform can be managed in such a way that it shores up rather than undercuts the power of the current rulers. Cuba is too small and too poor.
That the Obama White House thinks that a deal with Castro under the circumstances is a diplomatic victory and a trophy to go in the trophy case is not a mark of wisdom—though one can hope that the people who arranged it are smart enough to know that, and are only making a big deal out of it because of all the aging hippies and Sandernistas out there who will hail this as a glorious victory for working people everywhere.
But it remains the case that under the current circumstances it is in America’s interest to do what we can to offer a soft landing to a failed regime and a failed polity in a neighboring state. We don’t want Cuba to collapse in poverty, anarchy and ruin. We don’t want the Cuban people to starve—and to build rafts. We don’t want order to break down. Transition will clearly come; something that is unsustainable won’t last forever. And though we may have to hold our noses to do it, when the time comes it will be better for U.S. interests to work with the heirs of the Castros to arrange a transition that they can live with. We may need to acquiesce in the creation of some new Red Tycoons in Cuba as the price of a peaceful transition.
| Why not let the people stand the Red Tycoons against the wall, as was done in Romania, and have some less-tainted folks step up? |
Two important countries in our neighborhood are melting down; dealing with that is likely to take much more of the next President’s time than most people now think. Pragmatic and levelheaded policy is what we are going to need, and getting to a good place isn’t going to be easy.