Cuba Moves Under US Pressure

Cuba’s president went on television last week to announce profound changes in the economy. Cuba formally remains a communist country, although it is not one Karl Marx would recognize. Nor is it especially unique among self-described communist countries. Cuba is dominated by the army, which serves three purposes: to provide national defense, to maintain dictatorial order and to operate the Cuban economy. (In many ways, the army is the Cuban economy.) In a way, the army controls the party, which in turn controls the parliament.

The country’s economy is in a state of virtual collapse. Basic necessities like food, electricity and gas are available only intermittently, and the quality of life is poor, save for the political and military elite. That there have been no uprisings in Cuba against these conditions is explained by the fact that the economy, domestic police and the political system are in the hands of the military. Cuba is, in other words, Venezuela on steroids.

I have written that Venezuela, where the U.S. recently ousted a president, is less important to U.S. interests than Cuba. The threat Cuba poses is based on proximity, being only 90 miles (145 kilometers) from the U.S. mainland. During the Cold War, the Soviets placed nuclear missiles on the island to better threaten the United States. Today, Beijing has constructed a massive listening station designed to spy on the U.S. and, in my estimation, to disrupt U.S. communications if necessary.

And because Cuba is more important, managing it will be more difficult. Dislodging President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela has fundamentally disrupted the government’s control over the country. Venezuela was therefore the preface to a more fundamental issue. Since then, the U.S. has put even more pressure on Cuba, further damaging the quality of Cuban life.

The Cuban president’s recent statement, then, appears to be both a capitulation to the U.S. and a recognition that Cuba is a failed state. He said Cuba was willing and able to enact fundamental reforms, which he called “urgent.” Specifically, he said that foreign investment in real estate would be permitted, and private foreign banks would be allowed to operate there. In effect, this would create a private sector. He pointed to Vietnam and China as models, where the communist party is less ideological but still dictatorial. (The president also issued a call to Cubans who had fled the country under Fidel Castro to return under a “clear, stable and respectful framework.”)

That he made these statements indicates a profound existential crisis facing the regime. That he used Vietnam and China as a model means that while he wants a private sector, it will remain under the control of the regime. Some have compared this to perestroika, the program the Soviet Union initiated in the 1980s whereby the communists stayed in power while allowing the existence of a free market within the limits of the regime’s purview. Perestroika led to the collapse of the Soviet Union because it was a formal admission that communism had failed.

Cuba is in a far more desperate position than the Soviet Union was in. This is due in equal parts to the existential crisis of its people and its proximity to the United States. If China is going to have a platform there to intrude on the U.S. as Russia once did, then it is a potential threat.

In the meantime, it’s possible, of course, that the beneficiaries of the status quo could stage an uprising against the president, given all that the reforms could take from them. What makes this unlikely is that they understand that if this were to happen, the U.S. would likely intervene and the future of all those who rebelled would be in profound danger.

President Donald Trump has suggested that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was born in the U.S. to Cuban immigrants, might be sent to take charge of Cuba. Cuba is nearing an internal catastrophe, but the military and political elite face a grim future if they lose power. What they have proposed is a situation in which private investment and a foreign presence would be permitted to prevent an uprising, internal chaos or a U.S. invasion.

One thing that seems to be emerging is that Trump’s strategy to withdraw from the Eastern Hemisphere is not working out. And while he chooses not to simply focus on the Western Hemisphere as he said he would, his actions in this hemisphere seem to be in place. Whether the Cuban regime can afford to reform or capitulate is unclear.