FIDEL
CASTRO, always full of bluster, says Cuba will never change
its socialist ways. He says he might cut off ties with America
altogether by shutting down the U.S. Interests Section in
Havana. He's threatening to flood America with a new wave of
refugees. We've heard all this before. It's Castro
boilerplate.
But there is something new. Cuba is now
in deeper trouble, both economically and politically, than at
any time in the 43 years of Castro's rule. Not only is Castro
slipping mentally and physically, but he's lost most of his
friends around the world. Venezuela, whose president is
onetime Castro acolyte Hugo Chavez, has halted shipments of
subsidized oil, forcing Cuba to institute blackouts. Despite
Castro's grousing, the Russians dismantled their massive Cold
War listening post in Cuba after having terminated their
annual multi-billion dollar subsidy a decade ago. Since
September 11, the flow of European tourists has slowed so
drastically that 12,000 hotel rooms have been closed up. And
the sugar crop, once Cuba's chief export, is approaching its
lowest levels of production in more than a century.
With the pressure on, now is not the time to bail out
Castro and his failed regime. Yet that's precisely what a
growing group of business leaders, agricultural lobbyists, and
members of Congress want the United States to do. They're
clamoring to lift the trade embargo, the travel ban, and the
requirement that Cuba use only cash, not credit, in buying
U.S. medicine and food. The argument is that an opening to
Cuba will lead to liberalization and maybe even democracy.
It's a bad argument.
We know this from the way
dictators act generically, and Castro specifically.
Tyrants--Stalin, Hitler, Saddam, Arafat--regard concessions by
their foes as acts of weakness to be exploited. But pressure,
external and internal, is another matter. Dictators cannot
ignore pressure. They must respond, and can thus end up being
the ones who make concessions. When Castro has faced domestic
economic pressure and America's steady refusal to open full
economic relations--as in 1965, 1980, and the early
1990s--he's blinked. In 1965, he announced Cuban Americans
could come pick up relatives at a Cuban beach. In 1980, he
dispatched the Mariel boatlift. After Russian aid was
withdrawn in the 1990s, Castro created a crisis by casting off
hundreds of rafts with refugees eager to reach Florida 90
miles away.
But forced migration hasn't been Castro's
only tack. Confronted by a deep economic downturn in the
1990s, Castro instituted free-market reforms. He legalized
holding dollars. He allowed Cubans to open restaurants and
hotels in their homes. He encouraged foreign firms to invest
in joint ventures with Cubans. These reforms weren't sweeping,
but the point is Castro didn't willingly adopt them. He was
forced to, if only to relieve the pressure on his government.
Pressure, not concessions, worked.
Castro is under far
greater pressure now than in the 1990s. "In a country where
unemployment and underemployment taken together exceed 50
percent, the average GDP per capita is a mere $1,500, less
than every other western hemisphere nation except Haiti,"
notes Jerry Haar of the University of Miami. The experience of
foreign investors, supposedly protected by Cuba's touted
Foreign Investment Law No. 77, has been excruciating. They've
been slapped with fraudulent back taxes and had their
development plans stolen. The current economic slump has
caused Cuba to default on debts to private banks and firms in
France, Spain, Japan, Canada, Chile, and Venezuela. Last year,
Cuba devalued its peso 18 percent. Nothing has worked.
The pressure has rattled Castro. Since President Bush
announced his new Cuban policy of carrot and stick last May,
Castro has been frantic, irrational, counterproductive. He
insists the U.S. Interests Section is grossly violating Cuba's
sovereignty by handing out free radios so listeners can tune
into Radio Marti (or any other station). Castro maintains that
free radios constitute a serious diplomatic breach. And rather
than accept Bush's insistence on democratic and free-market
reforms, Castro recently organized a petition drive in favor
of socialism. Now he expects us to believe it was signed
voluntarily by 99.2 percent of Cuban adults. The national
assembly took up the matter and, after three days and 168
speeches, "irrevocably" declared socialism the way of life in
Cuba. This, by the way, nullified the authentic Varela
petition, gathered by democratic dissidents and endorsed by
former President Jimmy Carter when he visited Cuba in May. It
called for free elections and capitalist reforms.
Castro's hardline reaction might make sense if it were
the only signal he was sending. But that isn't the case. Last
winter, he issued no complaint when prisoners of war from
Afghanistan were locked up at Guantanamo Bay. Just last week,
Cuba celebrated America's Independence Day. And Cuba is so
desperate for food that it stiffed its creditors earlier this
year and plunked down $73 million in cash to purchase food in
the United States. That was twice the amount of food Castro
had initially planned on buying.
The truth is Castro
has nowhere to turn but the United States. His only allies are
pariah states like Iraq and Libya or Communist states such as
China and North Korea. None is offering help. The countries
with whom he's had economic relations aren't stepping forward
either because they've been burned once too often by Cuba.
"We've got him by the nuts," a Bush administration official
says inelegantly. And it's true--unless the bizarre alliance
of political left and right and corporate America prevails in
its campaign to open full relations with Cuba. By unleashing
American tourists, if only the curious ones, and allowing Cuba
to buy food on credit, they'd give Castro a reprieve. Still,
he would decide the terms of trade and what businesses would
get to enter the meager Cuban market. And the Cuban people
wouldn't be rewarded. The government takes 95 percent of
salaries paid to Cuban workers. Socialism would stay.
Contrary to media reports, Bush's Cuban initiative did
more than tighten the screws. It was a worthy precursor to his
Palestinian policy, offering "a meaningful American response"
in exchange for Cuban steps toward democracy, free markets,
and private property. Not only would the bans on travel and
trade be lifted, but the United States would provide
humanitarian aid and scholarships for Cuban students. At the
moment, Castro isn't ready to yield. But as poverty and
squalor increase over the summer, so will unrest. This time,
mass migration won't suffice. Castro may decide he has to
strike a bargain with Bush. And that could be, at long last,
the beginning of the end of his brutal, dictatorial regime.
--Fred Barnes, for the Editors
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