Tag: Cuba
Cuba libre?
While the Cuban economy has developed into an odd socialist/capitalist hybrid that is stretching its limits, its complex political system has seen no comparable evolution.
It is not, at least on paper, a classic one-party system in the Chinese or Soviet mold. According to its loyalists, the Communist Party does not choose candidates or exercise executive authority. Its role is supposedly to “oversee” the government, with concern about corruption or other abuse of power avowedly its top priority. Certainly it keeps an eye on things and brooks no organized political opposition at the national level. Public political discourse is about continuing, perfecting, improving, enhancing and polishing the Revolution, not reversing or even modifying it.
The system does provide for complaint and criticism, especially at the local level. Cubans elect neighborhood representatives, supposedly without reference to membership in the Communist party, who in turn elect municipal representatives, who in turn elect provincial representatives, who in turn elect the national parliament and the council of state, which elects the president. All the elections are purportedly non-party contests. This elaborate system of cascading indirect elections obviously allows for a good deal of centralized control. But it also allows a measure of initiative. Loyalists believe it provides ample opportunity for citizens to express themselves and argue their cases. Dissidents would laugh at that proposition.
No one expects any major political change before the Castro brothers are gone from the scene. Neither Fidel nor Raul is seen much in public these days. Nor does the visible cult of personality focus mainly on them. Pictures of the eternally youthful Che Guevara and the equally immortal Camilo Cienfuegos, admired for his humility, are more common. Jose Marti, the nineteenth century leader who fought the Spanish, is omnipresent. Still, the Castros cast a long but no longer loquacious shadow from behind the walls and hedges of their estates in Miramar.
Once they are gone, no one has much idea what might happen. In our stay in Cuba last week, we observed no sign of organized political opposition, but I confess we didn’t seek it out either. I didn’t want to put anyone in danger, including myself, by ill-considered contact. Many Cubans, including the security services, will have seen “Bringing Down a Dictator,” a documentary about the fall of Milosevic in which I appear repeatedly as a commentator. The closest we came to hearing the voice of dissent was a woman who said both her well-educated children had left for Europe and did not want to return despite the recession there. “We have hope,” she said, “but that’s all we’ve had for 55 years.”
She did not say what she had hope for. That seemed a common phenomenon. A Cuban painting observed in a private collection expressed the feeling well: it showed a massive demonstration surrounded by high walls. The demonstrators held signs with nothing written on them.
Cubans know how the rest of the world lives, despite the loyalist media. We listened to Miami FM radio in a car outside Havana, and a loyalist told us 80% of the music young Cubans listen to is American. They are not shy about expressing dissatisfaction in private. Like Mario Comte, the detective anti-hero of Leonardo Padura’s masterful Havana series, they see the seamier side of things and want to hold miscreants responsible, but they see no viable proposition for systemic political change. Asked about a multi-party system and more direct election of political representatives, many Cubans shrug indifferently. They like the opening of economic opportunity they have seen in recent years, but don’t know what might open up their political system.
One wise loyalist told us Cubans would certainly want to keep the goals of social justice and security. He thought only slow change likely. No one wants to propose an end to free education and health care. I’ll regret the passing of the day when a tourist can walk day and night in poor neighborhoods of Havana without fear of anything more than restaurant hawkers flashing menus. But the decline of the Cuban peso relative to the convertible peso (CUC) is doing something Marx talked about, but in reverse. The state is withering away, not to some communist utopia but rather under pressure from the capitalist sector of the economy.
It may not be long before Cuba, like Vietnam or China, is socialist in name only, authoritarian but weirdly disconnected from a society defined mainly by the unrestricted capitalism of its energetically entrepreneurial citizens. The internet–available to Cubans and tourists only at high prices and rare outlets today–is supposed to arrive within weeks on Cuban cell phones. The crowds lined up outside the telecommunications company are at least partly due to people signing up.
Still, Vietnam and China, both of which are connected to the internet, maintain one-party control over political power. That’s what the Castros will never give up. But they have the advantage of their revolutionary mantle, broad social consent and decades of instilling fear, which is declining markedly. Both brothers are in their 80s. Who knows what their successors will be able, willing, or compelled to do?
On my way back into the US, a Customs officer in Miami asked about the purpose of my visit to Cuba. I replied that I was studying the prospects for peaceful democratic transition. He smiled broadly and said that was great. “I’m Cuban,” he said with the lilt so common in Miami, and waved me in without a peek at the paperwork American visitors to Cuba have to fill out to satisfy US government regulations.
More on that in a next post on Cuba’s international situation.
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Cuba’s economic hybrid stretches the limits
I have been wanting for years to see Cuba before the end of its Castro-style communism, so wife Jackie and I went last week to internet-deprived Havana. We were almost too late. However closed and oppressive Cuba was in the first 40 years after its 1959 revolution, the period since has wrought big, though still controlled, changes. A slow transition is already under way.
I’m someone who reads the Ten Commandments as a description of what my ancestors were up to at the time of their composition. So I read the billboards on the way in from the airport as reflecting the Communist party’s anxieties:
The changes in Cuba are always towards more socialism
The Revolution is strong and going forward
We never forget our history and traditions
The Revolution is a beautiful and indestructible reality
The author of these billboards is clearly worried that someone might misunderstand what is going on as a rejection of the revolution, Cuba’s history and traditions and its socialist system.
Well they might. Cuba’s socialism is like Havana’s decrepit and decaying buildings. There is so little left, it’s a wonder how they remain standing. The society still has its points of socialist pride: free, universal education resulting in very low illiteracy and (sort of) free health care resulting in a life expectancy of more than 79 years (above Mexico’s and even, by a hair, Puerto Rico’s). And its points of shame: I met no one who likes the rationing of 10 or so staples, for sale at subsidized prices when they happen to be available, or the exorbitant taxation of (necessarily imported) motor vehicles. Budget constraints and efficiency will require changes to both the health and education systems sooner rather than later. And something needs to be done about the 2800 money-losing state-owned companies.
But these socialist virtues and defects are atavisms. The past few years have seen the development of a second, market economy. This is most apparent in the tourism sector, which is an important source of foreign exchange and employment, but we stumbled into it also in the agricultural sector, publishing, taxis, music and art. It is even creeping into the health system, where doctors expect gifts from patients in addition to their government salaries. In education, tutors are becoming commonplace in preparation for exams. Sometimes it is associated with cooperatives (in agriculture and publishing, for example) and at other times with individual entrepreneurs (taxis, music and art). At the government-owned Abdala recording studio in Havana, I was assured the very capable technicians producing the recordings do not have to depend on their government salaries to survive. The musicians wouldn’t allow that. Though I doubt it is literally true, we were repeatedly assured that every Cuban has, in addition to official, government employment, a second, private-sector hustle. Certainly on the streets of Havana there is ample evidence that the private sector is generating a significant portion of the locally produced income.
This second, market economy is associated with a second currency. The convertible peso (CUC), originally created for use by foreigners, has replaced the peso in as many as 80% of the island’s financial transactions. The vastly overvalued CUC (it is sold in official exchange houses at more than $1) has virtually driven the Cuban peso, adorned with the famous portrait of Che Guevara, out of circulation. This Cuban variation on Gresham’s law has left government salaries, paid in pesos, at between 15 and 35 CUCs per month. You might not starve on that if you can find rationed supplies, but an even half-decent lifestyle requires more like 300 CUCS per month. A cab driver gets 25 CUCs for a single drive in from José Martí airport, a guide 5 CUCs per day in tips for each client, so 125 CUCs per day for a quire of tourists.
There is no lack of awareness in Cuba of this grotesque incongruence. Raoul Castro has referred to it explicitly in one of his few public appearances and promised to unify the currencies this year. The whole country is holding its breath to see how this will be done, as there will necessarily be winners and losers. Cubans keep some money in banks, but a lot is kept in their homes (stuffed in their mattresses, figuratively or literally). Increasingly, people are investing in property. Seventy per cent of the country’s real estate is said to be in private hands already. But there are limits: you are supposed to own no more than one home and one car. There is a lot to be gained or lost from a hybrid economic model that has clearly stretched to its limits and will change, in one direction or another, in the next year or so.
Next up: politics
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The world according to CFR
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) survey of prevention priorities for 2014 is out today. Crowdsourced, it is pretty much the definition of elite conventional wisdom. Pundits of all stripes contribute.
The top tier includes contingencies with high impact and moderate likelihood (intensification of the Syrian civil war, a cyberattack on critical US infrastructure, attacks on the Iranian nuclear program or evidence of nuclear weapons intent, a mass casualty terrorist attack on the US or an ally, or a severe North Korean crisis) as well as those with moderate impact and high likelihood (in a word “instability” in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq or Jordan). None merited the designation high impact and high likelihood, though many of us might have suggested Syria, Iraq and Pakistan for that category. Read more
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A better way
North Korea’s third nuclear weapons test yesterday raises three questions:
- Why are they doing this?
- What difference does it make?
- How should the rest of the world respond?
Why does North Korea develop nuclear weapons?
If you believe what Pyongyang says, the answer is clear: to defy and threaten the United States, which the North Koreans see as their primary enemy. But this should not be understood as a classic state-to-state conflict. North Korea poses, at least for now, little military threat to the United States. But Pyongyang believes Washington wants to end its dictatorship (I certainly hope there is some truth in that–even paranoids have enemies). The North Koreans see nuclear weapons as a guarantee of regime survival. No one wants to run the risk of regime collapse if the regime holds nuclear weapons, for fear that they could end up in the wrong hands. NATO attacked Libya only after Qaddafi had given up his nuclear program. So the North Koreans view nuclear weapons as guaranteeing regime survival.
What difference does it make?
South Korea and Japan have reason to be nervous about North Korea’s nuclear weapons and improving missile capability to deliver them. But it is going to be a long time before North Korea can seriously threaten the US with nuclear weapons. And the US holds a capacity to respond massively.
The larger significance of the North Korean nuclear program is the breach it puts in the world’s nuclear nonproliferation regime, which has been remarkably successful in limiting the number of nuclear powers, especially in Asia. But Taiwan, South Korea and Japan face real difficulty in maintaining their abstinence if North Korea is going to arm itself and threaten its neighbors. There are not a lot of worse scenarios for the world’s nonproliferation regime than an expanded nuclear arms race in Asia, where China, India and Pakistan are already armed with nuclear weapons.
How should the rest of the world respond?
This is where the issues get difficult. There are already international sanctions on North Korea, which has managed to survive them so far with a bit of help from Iran on missile technology and China on economic ties. More can be done, especially if the Chinese crack down on illicit trade across the border. But the North Korean objective is juche (self-reliance), so tightening sanctions may help rather than weaken the regime.
The Economist last week suggested the efforts to block the nuclear program have failed and that the international community should instead now focus on regime change, by promoting North Korean travel, media access, Church-sponsored propaganda and trade. This would mean a partial reversal of the efforts to isolate North Korea and a new strategy of building power centers that might compete with the regime, especially among the growing class of entrepreneurs and capitalists operating more or less illicitly in North Korea.
We are not good at reversals of policy. But the failure of our decades-long attempts to isolate the Castro regime in Cuba is instructive. Communism did not fall in Eastern Europe to sanctions. It fell to people who took to the streets seeking a better life, one they learned about on TV and radio as well as in illegally circulated manuscripts. Isolation alone seems unlikely to work. Isolation of the regime with a more concerted effort to inform and educate the people might be a better approach.
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Prevent what?
Most of us who work on international affairs think it would be much better to use diplomacy to prevent bad things from happening rather than waiting until the aftermath and then cleaning up after the elephants, which all too often involves expensive military action. But what precisely would that mean? What do we need to prevent?
The Council on Foreign Relations survey of prevention priorities for 2013 was published last week, just in time to be forgotten in the Christmas rush and New Year’s lull. It deserves notice, as it is one of the few nonpartisan attempts to define American national security priorities. This year’s edition was in part crowd-sourced and categorizes contingencies on two dimensions: impact on U.S. interests (high, medium, low) and likelihood (likely, plausible, unlikely).
Syria comes out on top in both dimensions. That’s a no-brainer for likelihood, as the civil war has already reached catastrophic dimensions and is affecting the broader region. Judging from Paul Stares’ video introduction to the survey, U.S. interests are ranked high in part because of the risk of use or loss of chemical weapons stocks. I’d have ranked them high because of the importance of depriving Iran of its one truly reliable ally and bridge to Hizbollah, but that’s a quibble.
CFR ranks another six contingencies as high impact on U.S. interests and only plausible rather than likely. This isn’t so useful, but Paul’s video comes to the rescue: an Israeli military strike on Iran that would “embroil” the U.S. and conflict with China in the East or South China seas are his picks to talk about. I find it peculiar that CFR does not treat what I would regard as certainly a plausible if not a likely contingency: a U.S. attack on Iran. There are few more important decisions President Obama will need to make than whether to use force to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Certainly it is a far more challenging decision than whether to go to war against China in the territorial disputes it is generating with U.S. allies in Pacific. I don’t know any foreign policy experts who would advise him to go in that direction.
It is striking that few of the other “plausible” and high-impact contingencies are amenable to purely military responses:
- a highly disruptive cyberattack on U.S. critical infrastructure
- a mass casualty attack on the U.S. homeland or on a treaty ally
- severe internal instability in Pakistan, triggered by a civil-military crisis or terror attack
It is not easy to determine the origin of cyberattacks, and not clear that a military response would be appropriate or effective. The same is also sometimes true of mass casualty attacks; our military response to 9/11 in Afghanistan has enmired the United States in its longest war to date, one where force is proving inadequate as a solution. It is hard to imagine any military response to internal instability in Pakistan, though CFR offers as an additional low probability contingency a possible U.S. military confrontation with Islamabad “triggered by a terror attack or U.S. counterterror operations.”
In the “moderate” impact on U.S. interests, CFR ranks as highly likely “a major erosion of security in Afghanistan resulting from coalition drawdown.” I’d certainly have put that in high impact category, as we’ve still got 100,000 troops in Afghanistan and a significant portion of them will still be there at the end of 2013. In the “moderate” impact but merely plausible category CFR ranks:
- a severe Indo-Pakistan crisis that carries risk of military escalation, triggered by a major terror attack
- a severe North Korean crisis caused by another military provocation, internal political instability, or threatening nuclear weapons/ICBM-related activities
- a significant increase in drug trafficking violence in Mexico that spills over into the United States
- continuing political instability and emergence of a terrorist safe haven in Libya
Again there are limits to what we can do about most of these contingencies by conventional military means. Only a North Korea crisis caused by military provocation or threats would rank be susceptible to a primarily military response. The others call for diplomatic and civilian responses in at least a measure equal to the possible military ones.
CFR lets two “moderate” impact contingencies languish in the low probability category that I don’t think belong there:
- political instability in Saudi Arabia that endangers global oil supplies
- renewed unrest in the Kurdish dominated regions of Turkey and the Middle East
There is a very real possibility in Riyadh of a succession crisis, as the monarchy on the death of the king will likely move to a next generation of contenders. Kurdish irredentist aspirations are already a big issue in Iraq and Syria. It is hard to imagine this will not affect Iran and Turkey before the year is out. Neither is amenable to a purely military response.
Most of the contingencies with “low” impact on U.S. interests are in Africa:
- a deepening of violence in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo that involves military intervention from its neighbors
- growing popular unrest and political instability in Sudan
- military conflict between Sudan and South Sudan
- renewed ethnic violence in Kenya surrounding March 2013 presidential election
- widespread unrest in Zimbabwe surrounding the electoral process and/or the death of Robert Mugabe
- failure of a multilateral intervention to push out Islamist groups from Mali’s north
This may tell us more about CFR and the United States than about the world. Africa has little purchase on American sentiments, despite our half-Kenyan president. All of these contingencies merit diplomatic attention, but none is likely to excite U.S. military responses of more than a purely emergency character, except for Mali. If you’ve got a few Islamist terrorists, you can get some attention even if you are in Africa.
What’s missing from this list? CFR mentions
…a third Palestinian intifada, a widespread popular unrest in China, escalation of a U.S.-Iran naval clash in the Persian Gulf, a Sino-Indian border crisis, onset of elections-related instability and violence in Ethiopia, unrest in Cuba following the death of Fidel Castro and/or incapacitation of Raul Castro, and widespread political unrest in Venezuela triggered by the death or incapacitation of Hugo Chavez.
I’d add intensification of the global economic slowdown (high probability, high impact), failure to do more about global warming (also high probability, delayed impact), demographic or financial implosion in Europe or Japan (and possibly even the U.S.), Russian crackdown on dissent, and resurgent Islamist extremism in Somalia. But the first three of these are not one-year “contingencies,” which shows one limit of the CFR exercise.
I would also note that the world is arguably in better shape at the end of 2012 than ever before in history. As The Spectator puts it:
Never has there been less hunger, less disease or more prosperity. The West remains in the economic doldrums, but most developing countries are charging ahead, and people are being lifted out of poverty at the fastest rate ever recorded. The death toll inflicted by war and natural disasters is also mercifully low. We are living in a golden age.
May it last.
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GOP critique: Russia and Latin America
This is the fifth installment of a series responding to the Romney campaign’s list of ten failures in Obama’s foreign and national security policies.
Failure #7: A “Reset” With Russia That Has Compromised U.S. Interests & Values
The “reset” with Russia has certainly not brought great across the board benefits to the United States, but things were pretty bad between Washington and Moscow at the end of the Bush Administration, which had started in friendly enough fashion with George W. getting good vibes from Putin’s soul. Bush 43 ended his administration with a Russian invasion of a country the president wanted to bring into NATO. Neither our interests nor our values were well-served by that. But there was nothing we could do, so he did nothing.
A reset was in order. With Putin back in the presidency, it should be no surprise that it hasn’t gotten us far, but certainly it got us a bit more cooperation during Medvedev’s presidency on Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan than we were getting in 2008. The Russians are still being relatively helpful in the P5+1 talks with Iran and the “six-party” talks on and occasionally with North Korea. Their cooperation has been vital to the Northern Distribution Network into Afghanistan.
The Republicans count as demerits for President Obama his abandonment of a missile defense system in Europe, without mentioning that a more modest (and more likely to function) system is being installed. They also don’t like “New START,” which is an arms control treaty that has enabled the U.S. to reduce its nuclear arsenal.
I count both moves as pluses, though I admit readily that I don’t think any anti-missile system yet devised will actually work under wartime conditions. Nor do I think Iran likely to deliver a nuclear weapon to Europe on a missile. It would be much easier in a shipping container.
The fact that the Russians could, theoretically, increase their nuclear arsenal under New START is just an indication of how far behind the curve we’ve gotten in reducing our own arsenal and how easy it should be to go farther. The Romneyites don’t see it that way, but six former Republican secretaries of state and George H. W. Bush backed New START.
The GOPers are keen on “hot mic” moments that allegedly show the President selling out America. This is the foreign policy wonk version of birtherism. In this instance, they are scandalized that he suggested to then Russian President Medvedev that the U.S. could be more flexible on missile defense after the November election. The Republicans see this as “a telling moment of weakness.” I see it as a statement of the screamingly obvious. Neither party does deals with the Russians just before an election for some not-so-difficult to imagine reason.
More serious is the charge that President Obama has soft-pedaled Russia’s backsliding on democracy and human rights. I think that is accurate. The Administration sees value in the reset and does not want to put it at risk. The arguments for targeted visa bans and asset freezes against human rights abusers are on the face of it strong.
The problems are in implementation: if someone is mistreated in a Russian prison, are we going to hold Putin responsible? The interior minister? The prison warden? The prison guards? How are you going to decide about culpability for abuses committed ten thousand miles away? And if the Russians retaliate for mistreatment of an American citizen in a Louisiana State penitentiary, what do we do then? While many of the people involved may not care about visas and asset freezes, where would the tit-for-tat bans end up?
Russia has unquestionably been unhelpful on Syria, blocking UN resolutions and shipping arms to the Asad regime. The Russians have also supported Hugo Chávez and used harsh rhetoric towards the United States. But what Romney would do about these things is unclear. His claim that Russia is our number one geopolitical foe is more likely to set the relationship with Moscow back than help us to get our way.
Failure #8: Emboldening The Castros, Chávez & Their Cohorts In Latin America
I’m having trouble picturing how the octogenarian Castros have been emboldened–to the contrary, they are edging towards market reforms. Obama’s relaxation of travel and remittance restrictions has encouraged that evolution. It would be foolhardy to predict the end of the Castro regime, but cautious opening of contacts is far more likely to bring good results than continuation of an embargo that has never achieved anything.
I’d have expected the Republicans to compliment Obama on getting the stalled trade agreements with Colombia and Panama approved, but instead they complain that he waited three years while negotiating improvements to them that benefit U.S. industry. Given the difficulty involved in getting these things ratified, it is unsurprising that President Obama doesn’t want to reach any new trade agreements in the region, or apparently anywhere else.
Hugo Chávez looms large for the Republicans. They view him as a strategic threat. Obama thinks he has not “had a serious national security impact note on us.” That Chávez is virulently anti-American there is no doubt. But to suggest that he seriously hinders the fight against illicit drugs and terrorism, or that his relationship with Hizbollah is a threat we can’t abide, is to commit what the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness.” We’ve got a lot bigger drug and terrorism challenges than those Venezuela is posing.
Except for Mexico, Obama has not paid a lot of attention to Latin America. That’s because things are going relatively well there. If Chávez goes down to defeat in the October 7 election and a peaceful transition takes place, it will be another big plus, one that will redound to Obama’s credit. There are other possibilities, so I’d suggest the Administration focus on making that happen over all the other things the GOP is concerned about.
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