[NYTr] The Cuba-USA Conflict on the Threshold of the 21st Century

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CubaNow - Aug 27, 2007
http://www.cubanow.net/global/loader.php?&secc=12&item=3184&c=2


The Cuba-USA Conflict on the Threshold of the 21st Century

By Esteban Morales Domínguez
English translation by Frank Martìnez Hraste

Cubanow.- The second half of the 1980s is the context we use as a
starting point in order to study the conflict between Cuba and the
United States.

We consider the decade 1986–1996 in particular became a decisive moment
in the formation of the current context in which the clash between Cuba
and the United States is unfolding. During the aforementioned period,
those events we usually call “a change of focus” of U.S policy towards
Cuba, principally took place.

While the Cuban Revolution perceived itself as an internally
consolidated process with a lot of international activism, the North
American policy focused on, paying primordial attention to it, Cuba’s
international presence. But within the aforementioned period, serious
difficulties, mainly economic, appeared and developed for Cuba. They
were basically a direct consequence of having lost the markets from
Eastern Europe’s former socialist countries, particularly the late
U.S.S.R. This situation put to the test and continues to put to the
test, the Cuban Revolution’s capacity, above all internal, to continue
onward with its socialist project.

Because of this, the development of internal Cuban reality, and
particularly the dynamics of its process of recovery and economic
reform – especially since 1995 - becomes a variable that, as never
before, is informing and heavily influencing the characteristics of
U.S. policy towards Cuba and the peculiarities of the confrontation
between both countries.

Within the 1992–1996 period other variables appeared, defined by the
signing of the Torricelli Law, during the 1992 Clinton-Bush
presidential campaign and the passing of the Helms–Burton Law, signed
by President George Bush (son), in March, 1996.

As a starting point, for us, there are three general basic centers of
attention of the conflict between Cuba and the United States. In our
opinion they are the following:

* Cuban internal reality

* North American internal reality

* Reality of the international situation

Variables have been formed within these three centres of attention
where the phenomena of the Cuba–United States conflict takes place. To
continue, we characterize them:

* Within Cuban internal reality, the variable Dynamic of the internal
situation (Is) becomes the synthesis of the advance of the economic
recovery, together with the challenges coming from the process of
economic reforms in Cuba, and the international environment, within
which the Island must develop its process of economic re-insertion.
Within this dynamic the country’s Political Direction aims to overcome
the difficulties, mainly economic, without making concessions in the
stability of the political system.

* We’re going to synthesize the North American internal reality in four
basic variables which are: the Congressional Correlation on Policy
towards Cuba (Ki); the Economic Lobby (El); the support the North
American policy towards Cuba receives from the Cuban-American Extreme
Right (Ca); and Bush’s attitude as president on policy towards Cuba (B)
(Conjunctural Variable, or the so-called: Administration Effect).

* We concretize the international reality in three fundamental
variables that synthetically express the Cuba-United States conflict as
seen internationally. That’s to say, in its current tendency towards
internationalization. These variables are: The Transnationalization of
the blockade (or “Embargo”, according to the U.S. government) (Tb), the
Resistance to the Transnacionalization of the Blockade (Rtb), and the
Negotiation, in the search for on the part of the U.S., a political
consensus to subvert Cuba (N)

A GENERAL CHARACTERIZATION OF THE MODEL’S VARIABLES.

The dynamic of the internal situation of Cuba (Is). This refers in
particular to the current dynamic of the process of economic recovery.
Within it are the tensions provoked by a cluster of economic changes,
under the prism of a reform policy, determined to definitively take the
country out of the crisis, and achieve a model of economic growth,
making no concessions in the basic pillars supporting the socialist
system.

In our opinion, this variable synthesizes the challenges internally
facing Cuba as a result of its gradual process of approaching foreign
capital in particular, and the market economy in general, as well as
the challenges coming from the impact of these rapprochements within
Cuban society.

The congressional correlation on policy towards Cuba (Ki). Since the
signature of the Helms-Burton Law, the Congress has gradually become
the nucleus of the debate where not only the liberal and extreme right
positions can be found, but also that of the Administration, now headed
by Bush, and the Cuban-American extreme right, which undoubtedly try to
maximally sharpen the aggressiveness towards Cuba. Logically, when
Clinton signed Helms–Burton, he moved the center of the debate to
Congress, today the main scene of the clashes between the extreme right
positions concerning Cuba and the different attempts to erode the
blockade policy. In reality, President Bush has paid almost no
attention at all to the Congress, considering it more as an obstacle in
his intentions to keep Cuba under more and more pressure.

Support of the Cuban American Extreme Right. (Ac) We mean the extreme
right groups that internally, from the so-called Cuban-American
community, support the aggressiveness of current United States’
government policy towards Cuba. These groups, although recently
affected by internal struggles and political erosion, continue to play
an important role, mainly in the Congress, to halt any attempt to
change U.S. policy towards Cuba. Its leading representatives,
congresspersons Ileana Ross Lehtinen, Lincoln Díaz Balart and Bob
Menéndez, followed by other allied North American congresspersons, do
everything possible inside the legislative body to halt any initiative
against the blockade, and try to advance all those aimed at increasing
pressure on Cuba even more.

Transnationalization of the blockade (Ts) The pressures of the
blockade against Cuba have been increased, broadening its previous
framework (tipified by the Torricelli Law) moving, with the passing of
the Helms–Burton Law, to more direct attacks against the process
linking the Cuban economy to foreign capital and the world economy in
general. This intensification of the transnational character of the
blockade essentially explains the tendency to the internationalisation
of the conflict between Cuba and the United States. Bush now, for his
part, is pressuring, as never before, to isolate Cuba, trying to
articulate a unique political framework in order to deal with the
Island at international level and to “speed up” the so-called Cuban
transition to the market economy and liberal democracy, supported in
the so-called “Transition Report.”

International resistance to the blockade’s transnationalization (Rts).
This is the daughter of Helms-Burton because it has contributed – to an
extent the extreme right never imagined - to internationalizing the
conflict and making evident the insanity of the blockade policy, thus
creating difficulties for the United States in its relations with its
allies. Without doubt, the conflicts of interest brought about by this
law in the international sphere explain the emerging of “antidote
laws”, and the panel against the U.S. before the World Trade
Organization (WTO), as well as the United States’ attempts to reach an
agreement with the European Union, which turn the concept of “Traffic”
contained in the third chapter of the aforementioned law into part of
the Multilateral Accords on Investment (MAI) negotiated not long ago.
More recently, Bush has closed ranks more with Josè Marìa Aznar
(architect of the European Union’s so-called Common Position) in Spain,
looking for increased pressures against Cuba from the European Union.
But he lost this member of the Transnational Oligarchy, who committed a
ridiculous criminal act against the Spanish people, which lost his
party (PP) the presidential election. It doesn’t seem that Bush can
keep his alliance to bring the Island along the so-called “peaceful
transition to democracy” based upon his aggressive policy against Cuba;
despite the fact that this would also be his allies’ strategy, because
it’s very clear, including to the actual president of the United
States, that the Cuban transition would not be peaceful at all.
Starting from this situation, there’s a growing resistance on the part
of enterprises and businesspersons in Europe and the world in general
to following the North American policy guidelines dealing with Cuba at
an international level.

Negotiation in the search for an international political consensus to
subvert Cuba (N), as a variable expressing the desire to use
Helms–Burton, for its main purpose: to pressure Cuba, as well as U.S.
allies, with the aim of forcing them to follow Bush in a consensus to
bring the Island towards the so-called “democratic transition”.
Undoubtedly in his search, Bush has been able to make use of the law as
an instrument to re-float his most aggressive political aims towards
Cuba. But a difference is now appearing between the way proposed by
Bush for Cuba, and that accepted by his allies before, for Cuba’s
“peaceful transition” to democracy. Contrary to Clinton, Bush doesn’t
seem to be concerned about negotiating the strategy of policy towards
Cuba with his allies, rather carrying it on alone, by his own methods,
and by pressuring the others. All this is reflected very well in the
Report of the “Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba”, issued in
May, 2004, and supplemented in 2006. The latter is the program seeking
to speed up the Cuban transition.

For its part, the European Union seems to base itself, in the very
aggressive context that the Bush policy offers to Cuba, so that the
aggressiveness that the United States wants to apply seems to be Cuba’s
responsibility for not accepting the more “gentle” and supposedly “less
aggressive” variant of the European Union, contained in the so-called
“Common Position”. So, everything seems to indicate that, amidst the
current aggressiveness, the strategic coincidence between the E.U. and
the U.S. in their policy against Cuba, puts the Island in the dilemma
of waiting for the Marines, or accepting the European Union’s Trojan
Horse.

More recently, with the visit of the Spanish Minister of Foreign
Relations, Moratino, Spain seems to be distancing itself from the U.S.
position against Cuba.

Bush’s attitude on the policy towards Cuba (B). The so-called
Administration Effect. This is a conjunctural variable, due to the fact
that each administration tends to stamp its specific seal on policy
towards Cuba. Now, with George Bush’s (son) administration, U.S. policy
towards the Island has retaken increasingly more aggressive channels.
Pressures of all kinds: abrogation of trips and of academic exchanges,
elimination of People to People diplomacy, accusations of all kinds
against the Island plus a return to an aggressiveness coordinated with
all the mechanisms of the administration. Accusing Cuba of terrorism,
of having biological weapons or the capacity with the intention to
produce them, broadcasting TV-Martì from a military plane, threats of
speeding up the transition, measures against recently approved
commerce, etc.

That’s to say, the perspective of conflict (PC) between the two
countries seems determined by an equation, in which the internal Cuban
situation, the congressional correlation on policy towards Cuba
(congress’s internal debate), the support of the Cuban-American Extreme
Right, the perspective of the Economic Lobby, the transnationalization
of the blockade, the resistance to the transnationalization of the
blockade, negotiation, and Bush’s conjunctural variable as the
administration, work as independent variables, determining the
perspective of the conflict, according to its impact and mutual
interrelations with the main centers of attention in which it develops.

Just as we’ve already outlined, the variable Dynamic of the Internal
Cuban Situation (Is), has acquired a fundamental role for understanding
what’s happening now or might happen regarding the conflict between
both countries. Above all, amidst the current political aggressiveness.
In this aspect the internal dynamic of the Island informs and impacts,
as never before, the debate on Cuba within the reality of North
American policy in all spheres.

The complexity of the process described above has had as its most
general scene the reality that Cuba has managed to survive the severely
negative impacts of the 1989–1994 economic crisis, which has as a
consequence a growing debate within the framework of United States’
policy towards the Island. Because of this, some pretty hard questions,
none easy to answer, have come to light. Let’s look at them:

1. Firstly, we have that the attitude toward the policy’s object (Cuba)
in the current situation -- a period in which internal Cuban reality
informs and conditions the internal and international debate, as never
before -- is determined by the spectrum of positions coming from the
answers to the following questions.

* What is the cost for the United States of keeping its current policy
towards Cuba?

* Although Cuba is recovering, taking into account the challenges it
still faces, should a negative outcome for Cuba be expected, or is it
already necessary to change U.S. policy?

* Should businesspersons keep on waiting for the “Cuban transition”,
despite that, faced with other capital, they’re losing opportunities in
Cuba?

2. The aforementioned doesn’t contradict the problem remaining a
question of internal policy, although to the extent that the forces
opposing Cuba within the United States loose their power, a change of
direction favoring policy change occurs.

3. Undoubtedly, internationalization of the conflict is increasing and
weakens the internal factors, as has been happening since the passing
of Helms–Burton in March, 1996, and particularly after the rescue of
the child, Elián González.

4. Notwithstanding the pressures, Cuba continues the process of
reconstructing its international economic relations, to the extent that
its international ties are still continually increasing.

5. This is a struggle in which Cuba, (as object), confronts those
formulating and executing factors, which from a North American internal
sphere, debate a policy whose failure becomes gradually more and more
obvious. So, to the extent that the debate sharpens, the different
actors’ positions depend more on how Cuba’s capacity, above all
internal, is interpreted, in order to respond to the necessities of a
difficult conjuncture whose duration is still undetermined.

6. Another level of analysis refers to the fact that the ruling forces
within the debate, which in no case are extreme in the sense of their
viability (within the prevailing political atmosphere of a shift to the
right), are not those opposed to Cuba being a market economy with a
liberal democracy multi-party political system. Since really what a
faction of these political forces oppose is the methods by which
current North American policy aspires to reach such objectives, and
above all, that such methods would prevail as an imposition over other
domestic and international interests.

So, then, although U.S. allies side with Cuba in its struggle to get
rid of the weight of the blockade, they neither support it nor side
with it in its intention of maintaining its socialist project.

This scene of such complex confrontation, within which the Island
develops, brings us again to reflect on the role that Cuba’s internal
situation is playing.

Can Cuba, at the same time that it frees itself from the blockade,
prevent the fulfilment of North American strategic policy intentions,
supported by U.S. allies?

Has Cuba space to maneuver, within a situation in which Bush’s policy
becomes obvious as having nothing to do with a “peaceful transition”?

We think so; Cuba has proved its ability to survive the pressures of
the blockade, having advanced its project while at the same time not
letting itself be tricked by the North American policy strategy.

Although doesn’t not mean that Cuba shouldn’t pay attention to the way
that it’s being victimized by such policy.

Then, the truth is that for Cuba, going forward with its economic
recovery and its international reinsertion, never losing its capacity
to lead both processes, especially concerning their impacts within
civil society, becomes a condition that can not be ignored, so that
neither the United States nor its allies can achieve their strategic
goals of destablizing Cuba.

All these reasons reconfirm the Cuban internal variable (Is) in its
status as decisive factor of what might happen in the future in the
confrontation with the United States.

Therefore, the real synthesis of the processes which take place today
within the Cuba–U.S. conflict, are concretized more than ever in the
current struggle carried on in the Island to escape the pressures of
the blockade, impart more dynamism to the internal economy, and to
avert North American strategic policy aims.

Both the current debate which takes place within the North American
political system, as well as the one existing at international level,
aimed at reinforcing pressures against Cuba, or succeeding in changing
the United States’ blockade policy, exist because Cuba was able to
survive such a policy and is still going forward, increasing its
vulnerability. Reason for which, although Cuba is not the place where
North American policy can change, nevertheless, neither is what can be
done from the Island to change such a policy inconsiderable.

These circumstances allow us to state that the variable that determined
the beginning of an opposing dynamic in behavior regarding policy
towards Cuba was the change which began to take place in the Cuban
internal situation, particularly in its economy. To which is added, in
those same years 1994 and 1995, the W. Clinton administration’s
acceptance of Cuba’s capacity to struggle to reach an agreement in the
so-called “raft-people crisis”.

The rapprochement with the United States, essentially produced by the
situations described, were what determined the Cuban-American extreme
right’s reaction, preparing the legislative package to try to impose
the so-called Helms-Burton Law in the same year, 1995.

Because of all this, appears then one of the constants which have
characterized the history of the conflict and which tells us: Every
time the extreme right notices a rapprochement taking place between
Cuba and the United States, they work to throw a roadblock in the way
of a potential understanding.

Undoubtedly, when estimating the current perspectives of the
Cuba–United States conflict, all the variable must be taken into
account, but, within them, the dynamics of the Cuban Internal Reality
(Is) play a kind of either dynamizing or slowing role of the objective
processes pointing to a potential change or not, of policy. Because,
undoubtedly, whatever happens in Cuba, is always linked with what might
happen with the policy aimed at it.

This also means that, while Cuba is always available for something that
will stimulate the United States’ interest in negotiating; it always
works at strengthening the Island’s capacity to face the profound
asymmetries that have always characterized the bilateral relation.

If Cuba had not proved its capacity to survive and go forward during
all these years, it wouldn’t have been necessary for some political
actors to explore other ways to destroy the Island’s stability or try
to reach an understanding with it. Nor would it have been necessary for
the different North American administrations to constantly design new
measures and instruments aimed at subverting Cuba.

Some final considerations

According to what we’ve analysed we can consider that, although the
essence of the conflict remains, and the aim of United States’ policy
towards Cuba remains unchanged, nonetheless, the model of analysis
reveals very important aspects to take into account about the future,
among them:

* Within the setting of the 1992-2007 period, changes in the dynamic
and the context of the policy towards Cuba have taken place.

* The mere fact of the existence of a debate on U.S. policy towards
Cuba in the United States signals criteria different from those that
have characterized the conflict for more than three decades. Within
this circumstance Cuba seems to have more opportunities.

* Although the objective of North American policy remains the same, it’s
now characterized by “trying to grab the direction and orientation of
the changes and adjustments that Cuba’s making from the hands of the
Cuban Revolution’s political leadership”, in order to, according to the
current administration, “speed up” the so-called transition to “regime
change”.

* In a substantial way, Cuba has come to have a more active role
concerning a possible change in North American policy towards the
Island. Among other factors, it’s due to this that the Congress is more
sensitive to this dynamic of a Cuba policy debate.

* The international factors have come to play a more important role.
This is expressed by a lack of respect and support for the blockade.

* Within North American internal reality tendencies in favor of a
potential policy change towards Cuba are still accumulating as never
before.

* It’s also obvious that the United States–Cuba conflict is going
through a conjuncture of unpredictable duration, delimited by several
events:

* The so-called “special period” in Cuba, of still unpredictable
duration, although little by little being surpassed.

* The gradual changes of attitude towards Cuba recently accelerated
within the United States, despite the recent backsliding within the
current Congress.

* The international changes that are bringing about a growing scene of
confrontation with the United States’ blockade policy.

* Those processes which have to do with the reconstruction of United
States’ hegemony, pointing to uni-polarity (we mean: a single political
system) of North American power at international level. Although it’s a
process it has its limits because North American foreign policy is now
facing a level of unpopularity and questioning that hasn’t happened
since the Viet Nam War period.

These are events that prejudice or favor Cuba’s capacity to maintain
its position in the clash, that allow it to resist, while actively
waiting for a change in North American policy.

Notwithstanding, within the conjuncture produced by the George Bush
(son) administration’s aggressiveness, the policy towards Cuba is more
organically inserted in the so-called Bush Doctrine, directed to the
so-called “regime change”. The fact of locating its current policy of
so-called regime change within the context of the so-called “war on
terror”, has limited this latest focus. Now Bush is making this
orientation independent. Because of this, the perception of the course
of internal events in Cuba, that’s to say, the dynamic of the internal
situation (Is), becomes a more decisive variable than ever, amidst
great danger, in the remaining years of that administration whose
intentions are so characterized by escalating its interventionist
choices against Cuba.

At the same time, everything indicates that the current administration
in its policy towards Cuba is clashing with reality, to be a transition
administration, which confronts those ongoing tendencies towards
changing Cuba policy with a policy totally contradicting such
tendencies, and which seems to have no future at all in the domestic
and international reality which could open, once the Bush era is
surpassed.

Then within this complex, convulsed and dangerous, although also full
of opportunities world, there are spaces for Cuba. But Cuba must
respond to them always on the basis of an ever-recovering economy, with
a growing process of international reinsertion, together with
leadership of the internal changes, able to assimilate the negative
impacts on Cuban civil society, and to preserve the stability of its
socialist political system.