7 Warnings about Obama’s New Cuban Policy

This is one of those rare times in which it’s better to begin at the end. The words that follow will quickly convey how the relationship between the United States and Cuba has been since 1959 in order to analyze the new Cuban policy announced by President Barack Obama and General Raúl Castro in December 2014.

This task requires me to give seven warnings. They are not recommendations or conclusions. They are observations that come naturally from the story that I will briefly tell.

Let’s examine them:

The first warning is that the Castro brothers’ government continues to hold the same opinion of the United States in 2015 that it had when the guerrillas came to power in January 1959.

According to them, their big, powerful neighbor and its alleged predatory practices in the field of economics are at the root of humanity’s fundamental problems. Because they read little and perceive poorly, they continue to believe that the calamities of the Third World are due to the ill will of developed nations, especially the United States and its vicious terms of exchange and exploitation of poor nations’ resources.

The second warning, as a consequence of the first, is that this regime, true to its beliefs, will continue to try to negatively affect the United States every chance it gets.

In the past, the Castros retreated underneath the Soviet umbrella. In the post-Soviet era, it expelled the Sao Paulo Forum and, later, the group known as socialism of the 21st century, which spans the countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas – ALBA. Today, it has allied itself firmly with Iran, and it is already moving toward the Chinese-Russian alliance in this new, dangerous cold war that is beginning. For the Castros, anti-Americanism is a moral crusade that they will never give up.

The third warning is that the Cuban dictatorship does not have the smallest intention of beginning the deregulation process that would allow political pluralism as well as the liberties that are found in the more developed nations on the planet.

The opposition Democrats wait while their movements and communications are watched by the political police. The Castros are experts in social control. Apart from the conventional police, to maintain the opposition at bay, the regime has at least 60,000 counterintelligence officials assigned to MININT*, as well as other tens of thousands of collaborators. To them, repression is not a dark, shameful behavior, but rather a constant, patriotic work.

The fourth warning is that the economic system developed by Raúl Castro is not intended to help civil society flourish. It is not the economy that, one day, magically, will bring down the dictatorship. Rather, it is a model of military state capitalism, the backbone of which includes the army and the Ministry of the Interior, institutions that control the majority of the country’s productive machinery.

In that context, as we can gather from the words of the official economist Juan Triana Cordoví, the state — really, the military sector — controls the management and exploitation of the 2,500 medium and large businesses in the country, leaving self-employed groups an endless list of menial activities in order to avoid supporting them.

Contrary to what they think in Washington and in the nongovernmental sectors of Cuba that support those economic reforms, Raúl Castro and his advisers suppose, correctly, that the self-employed will be a source of stability for the military state capitalist system, not because of an ideological affinity, but because they will want to keep the small privileges and advantages they obtain there.

The fifth warning is that the Castros’ government is not the least bit interested in helping foreign businesses become rich. They scorn profit-oriented capitalists; they think them repugnant, although many of them, in some form, practice capitalism in secret.

Foreign investment will be welcomed only when it strengthens military state capitalism. For the Cuban government, those investments are a necessary evil, akin to cutting off an arm to save a life. If someone thinks that the regime will allow independent businesses to grow and thrive, it is because that person has not taken the time to study the texts, speeches, and behavior of the regime’s personnel.

The real estate investor and notable millionaire, Stephen Ross, was correct when he declared, after a visit to Cuba, that he had not seen even the smallest serious opportunity to do business. In truth, there is none, except in those activities that present a clear profit to the government or that are absolutely indispensable for the survival of the regime.

It’s obvious that the Castros’ priority is to maintain power, not to develop a strong, entrepreneurial network that could lift Cubans out of their misery. To explain these deficiencies, they have created the alibi of revolutionary austerity and consumer criticism — the taste for the second-rate — as a heroic, selfless way to fight poverty.

The sixth warning is that in the face of this depressing picture of abuse and the same nonsense as always, Washington’s switch from containment to engagement, to which we add their surrender in the battle for regime change, as Obama commented in Panama, is a dangerous, irresponsible act that will damage the United States, encourage its enemies, discourage its allies and negatively affect the Cubans that want liberty, real democracy, and an end to their misery.

Why does the United States — and the Catholic Church — contribute to the fortification of a regime that advances military state capitalism (the enemy of economic liberty), violates human rights and maintains in power a collectivist dictator that has destroyed Cuba and now contributes to the destruction of Venezuela because it cannot teach anything else but what it has done during the last 56 years?

The seventh warning is that the Democratic opposition has never been weaker or less protected, despite the impressive number of dissidents and heroes that abound. It has never been more alone.

Why does no one care that the United States has given up on regime change and is ready to accept the Cuban dictatorship without demanding anything in return? The United States has quit telling Havana that real change begins the moment the leaders of the dictatorship accept dialogue with the opposition as the first step toward change and admits that societies are pluralistic and should contain diverse points of view. What argument do the regime’s quiet, fearful reformists have now to demand political and economic changes if no one demands that of the Castros’ government?

In conclusion, Obama has made a grave mistake by leaving behind the policy of the ten presidents, Democrats and Republicans that came before him. You cannot demand that your enemy suddenly become your friend and begin to think like you do. That is childish. This is not a criticism of Obama for starting a new policy. The problem is that he initiated a bad policy.