Latin America
Journalist Ann Louise Bardach spoke at the New America Foundation today about the situation in Cuba, touching on several drivers of Cuba’s future.
Of Cuba itself, she had this to say:
- The transition has begun: Castro is not coming back to power.
- She is “reasonably optimistic about Raul Castro.”
- A “quiet dissident” told her that “Raul wants openings;” the dissident is also optimistic about change.
- “Cubans want change desperately,” including improved quality of life and free markets.
- They also want stability rather than revolution or violence, and they wish to retain their homes, medical care, and literacy.
Of Cuban-Americans and US policy, she said:
- Bush administration policy is being shaped only by the extreme wing of the exile community, in the guise of the Cuba Liberty Council.
- Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart have a policy of “vengeance” and will not be satisfied by anything short of Castro being “hung by his heels” Mussolini-style.
- Overall, however, the hard-line position is eroding among Cuban-Americans, and huge numbers want reconciliation rather than bloodshed. Sixty percent favor a change in the US embargo policy.
- The US has placed itself out of play in Cuba’s evolution, and others may be in a position to fill the vacuum. Her friends are seeing huge numbers of Chinese on the island.
- If the US invasion of Iraq had been successful, it might have been followed up by a US invasion of Cuba.
Steve Clemons of New America added that more Republican legislators are loosening up on the Cuba issue.
Overall, Bardach’s views suggest the plausibility of the China Option scenario for Cuba’s future.
Endangered: the Amazon forest
Danger level: medium
Time frame: 50-100 years
Causes: climate change, deforestation
A new study of the effects of climate change suggests that without significant action to reduce the phenomenon, rising temperatures and falling rainfall could destroy the ecosystem completely, transforming the rain forest into savanna and wiping out vast amounts of biodiversity.
With Fidel Castro seriously ill, it is worth considering the diverse scenarios that could unfold for a post-Castro Cuba.
FIDELISMO WITHOUT FIDEL
Cuba’s current communist system persists.
Trajectory – Without Castro, would tend to transition toward the China Option or Normal Cuba scenarios.
- Cuba’s system is pervasive and generally competent.
- US antagonism makes the defiance of the current regime necessary in the eyes of many Cubans.
- Venezuelan aid and possible Cuban oil finds could keep the existing system afloat.
Counterforces:
- Castro has always been central to the Cuban Revolution, and its durability in his absence is uncertain.
- There is substantial desire for change of some kind on the island.
- The Cuban government is probably disinclined to use large-scale force to maintain its rule if opposition builds.
THE CHINA OPTION
The Communist Party takes the China route: abandoning socialism but maintaining authoritarian rule.
Trajectory – Would tend to transition to Normal Cuba scenario.
- This would alleviate Cubans’ most common complaint, that they suffer from material deprivation.
- Raul Castro, Fidel’s younger brother and likely successor, is said be less ideologically rigid than the older Castro.
Counterforces:
- Cuba’s past experiences, and the low danger of violent upheaval, are likely to make full democracy preferable to large numbers of Cubans.
- As revolutionary movements go, Cuba’s has been relatively sincere in its approach.
NORMAL CUBA
Cuba becomes a normal Latin American democracy. The Communist Party transitions to one among many parties, and retains a substantial following.
Trajectory – Likely to persist, with slight danger of slipping into the Neo-Batista right-wing authoritarianism scenario or one of the left-wing authoritarian scenarios.
- High levels of education and an ideology of citizenship may have prepared Cuba well for democracy.
- The US will likely offer substantial incentives to promote this outcome.
Counterforces:
- Like any ruling elite, the Communist Party will have elements that wish to retain power.
- Cuban-Americans might push the US to maintain its hard-line stance, impeding a transition.
NEO-BATISTA
Cuban-Americans achieve power and impose a right-wing dictatorship.
Trajectory – Would likely evolve toward a Normal Cuba scenario, but could revert via revolt to a Fidelismo scenario.
- Significant elements of the Cuban-American leadership remain extremist and might not accept the compromises that most transition scenarios are likely to entail.
Counterforces:
- The Cuban population would strongly resist a new right-wing dictatorship.
- US and world expectations for democracy would be high.
- Much of the Cuban-American population expects and favors democracy.
COLLAPSE
Contending forces tear the government apart and prevent an organized transition, creating chaos and violence.
Trajectory – Would gradually coalesce into Normal Cuba or one of the authoritarian scenarios.
- Castro might prove to be the crucial structural element in Cuba’s political system.
- The existing system is all most Cubans have known, and has been in place nearly half a century.
Counterforces:
- The current system is pervasive and competent.
- Internal divisions in Cuba don’t seem to be sharp.
- The US has strong incentives not to create a refugee-generating failed state 90 miles off its shores.
- Many Cubans would wish to prevent the opening for direct intervention by the US that this would open up.
BAY OF PIGS II
The US launches a military invasion to hasten a transition of its liking. It is met with substantial resistance.
Trajectory – Would likely result in an eventual compromise that evolved toward a Normal Cuba scenario. Less likely would be such sharp resistance that the US loses heart and retreated, leaving Cuba to the Fidelismo outcome.
- The impatience of Cuban-American extremists could lead them to push for military intervention.
- Americans tend to have a black-and-white view of Cuba that does not reflect reality.
Counterforces:
[Cuba’s future / Cuban scenarios / Cuba scenarios / future of Cuba]
Moises Naim suggests two ways to redirect US policy in Latin America and reengage with the region:
- end the trade embargo with Cuba
- engage with Brazil, beginning with a trade agreement
Of Cuba, Naim writes:
The first step toward draining the appeal of Chávezism and restoring the U.S.’s image in Latin America would be to unilaterally lift the embargo on Cuba. The U.S. embargo has never worked as a tool to weaken Castro. Instead it has provided him with a wonderful excuse to hide his failures and justify the island’s dire poverty and harsh political repression. The embargo is even less effective now that Cuba is so deeply intertwined economically and politically with Venezuela and other countries in the region. …. The U.S. embargo on Cuba has enormous political costs for the U.S. and no benefit other than pleasing a portion, but not all, of Cuban-American voters.
Engaging with Brazil would mean paying attention to the single most important country in the region. Engagement
would involve offering an attractive trade agreement that would grant freer access to the U.S. market for Brazilian steel, shoes, orange juice, ethanol and other products that currently face import barriers. The costs for the U.S. economy would be relatively minimal. For Brazil, such a deal would stimulate exports, drive investment and lift the economy. Even more important, such an approach would reward and support a country (and a government) that is providing a powerful counterexample to the populist policies that are gaining favor in the region.
Examining a map of the regional split in the Mexican election results, Investor’s Business Daily applies American political analogies: the “red,” sunbelt north of Mexico voting for the conservative PAN party, and the “blue” south going for the leftist PRD.
The analogy is flimsy, however, due to “dyschronicity”: Mexico and the US live in wholly different eras, and no elements of their politics line up neatly beside each other.
The PAN may be conservative, but in the Mexican context that means that they are modernizing, outward-looking, and one sense progressive: they are trying to achieve a functioning modern state in which capitalism can operate. Success would mean making Mexico more like the early 20th century United States: Mexican conservatives can only dream of their country being as capitalist, individualist, and libertarian as “blue America.”
The Mexican south is much farther removed from any American experience, resembling blue America not at all, and red America only by loose analogy, in that both are the traditional, religious, and inward-looking parts of their countries. The dyschronicity with the US is acute: the peasant and indigenous culture that dominate the Mexican south has never existed in the United States, and most Americans’ ancestors have not lived in similar circumstances for 300-500 years. Chiapas resembles Bolivia more than it does Massachusetts.
In short, the Rio Grande is too broad for some analogies to make it across.
[via Social Technologies]
Cuban dissident Oswaldo Jose Paya Sardinas offers a “program for change” whose elements outline a scenario for a moderate transition to a democratic Cuba:
We want to preserve the right to free health care and education, and to expand our rights to include freedom of religious education and freedom of expression. We do not want change if it comes at the cost of paying a ransom to those in power, allowing them to take control of the country’s resources, to define its values, to become millionaires and to leave the people of the country in distress. In Cuba, there will be no lynchings, no revenge, no exclusions. Those now in power will have the same rights as all citizens. There will be no uncontrolled privatizations, but there will be a guarantee for the right of all Cubans to a free economy, the right to have private enterprise and to trade freely. No one will be forced out of his home; the law will prohibit evictions. All Cubans in exile will regain their rights as Cuban citizens.
The plan is clearly an effort to preserve aspects of Cuban society that many Cubans value, and avoid the jarring transitions that many post-communist countries have gone through. It attempts to defy the reality that those in power in any society will attempt to continue in power, even if in a new guise, and also seeks to forestall a vindictive backlash, which may make such a plan unpopular with Cuban-Americans, whose leadership is still prone to extremism.
The Boston Consulting Group has released a report on 100 emerging-market companies with global competetive potential, according to the Daily Telegraph.
Firms from China (44 companies), India (21), Brazil, and Russia constitute most of the group, with Mexico also making a good showing.
Companies like these will be the shock troops for the redistribution of global economic power. In the process, they will transform their home countries’ global roles and interests.
An emerging market expert points out that the developed world may balk at the process:
“The whole pace of globalisation may have to slow or it could set off a wave of protectionism. So far the West has mostly been losing jobs at the low end, and the process has been mutually beneficial. There is now a big risk of losing jobs at the high end too now that China and India are moving move swiftly up the ladder, as we have already seen in software. This means that incomes in the West may have to adjust downwards, and the workforce is not going to tolerate this.”
[Via Social Technologies; image: Social Technologies]
Two recent stories suggest that the rising powers of the world will find themselves with new roles and interests:
- Brazil and Bolivia, traditionally friendly and both led by leftists, got in a spat over Bolivian energy nationalism, which threatens Brazilian investments.
- Militants in Nigeria’s Niger Delta warned that they would target Chinese working to extract oil in their region.
Brazil and China thus find themselves cast in unfamiliar roles: status quo powers with an stake in the established system working smoothly, and accused bullies.
As their interests continue to diversify and globalize, Brazil, China, and other rising powers will find their traditional outlooks challenged. Simple verities like South-South solidarity and noninterference will no longer suffice, and new perspectives on many issues — trade rules and intellectual property are only the beginning — will be required.
Cuba is about to begin drilling for oil in the Florida Straits, with the help of Indian and Chinese companies.
This could have two effects on Cuba:
Foreign policy and the Fund for Peace have released their annual Failed States Index, a valuable tool for tracking potential instability.
Foreign Policy explains:
The category of “failed states” has become part of the strategic vernacular, and it has many definitions. For the purposes of this index, a failing state is one in which the government does not have effective control of its territory, is not perceived as legitimate by a significant portion of its population, does not provide domestic security or basic public services to its citizens, and lacks a monopoly on the use of force. A failing state may experience active violence or simply be vulnerable to violence. The great majority of the states listed in the index are not presently failed states. The index measures vulnerability to violent internal conflict. It is an index of country risk, not of countries that have already failed.
The 20 most endangered states are concentrated in Africa, and include many of the least-governed countries. Ranked from most in danger downwards, they are:
1. Sudan
2. Congo, Dem. Rep. of the
3. Ivory Coast
4. Iraq
5. Zimbabwe
6. Chad
6. Somalia
8. Haiti
9. Pakistan
10. Afghanistan
11. Guinea
11. Liberia
13. Central African Republic
14. North Korea
15. Burundi
16. Yemen
17. Sierra Leone
18. Burma
19. Bangladesh
20. Nepal
The status of all 148 rankings is mapped here.
Instability in Pakistan is potentially disastrous: it could be the first nuclear-armed state to fail, and some of the parties that might get hold of the country’s nuclear weapons have links to Islamic extremist groups.
Number 31 on the list is Egypt, a lynchpin state of the Middle East, and right behind it at 32 is Indonesia, one of the largest countries in the world.