US Helps Raul Castro To Maintain Stability In Cuba

US Helps Raul Castro To Maintain Stability In Cuba / 14ymedio, Pedro Campos
Posted on June 15, 2015

14ymedio, Pedro Campos, Havana, 10 June 2015 — Even when senior
officials of the Obama administration and the president himself have
said the new US policy toward Cuba is not intended to change the regime,
the propagandists of the Caribbean Stalinism insist that this remains
the real pretension of the United States.

Of course the intention is to say that nothing has changed and continue
raising the smoke screen of the blockade of the "enemy's" plans to
continue to try to hide the true causes of the economic disaster and
justify the lack of democracy and the repression of difference.

It is elementary that the United States would like a free market economy
regime, with a government that helps it to preserve its interests on the
Island and in the region. But to accomplish this it can't subvert the
Cuban government.

However, from there to trying to impose a government of its will, in the
new international conditions, goes a long way, because they know full
well that a deliberate attempt in this sense would be met with great
resistance in the country and the region. Besides, why fall into
dangerous adventures, if via other "intelligent" ways you can get the
same results?

No. Today the objective of the United States is not to "destroy the
Revolution." The "revolutionaries" in power have been changed with this,
as Fidel Castro himself said on 5 November 02005 at the University of
Havana. He and his group prevented, first, the triumph of the democratic
revolution in 1959-1960 and later, in the name of the Revolution,
Socialism and the working class have avoided the Socialist transformations.

In Cuba we've had neither a democratic revolution nor a socialist
revolution.

The United States watched the transition of the centralized "socialist"
economies in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China and Vietnam, to
more or less free markets, in the hands of many of their own former
leaders. Boris Yeltsin, former member of the Politburo of the USSR
Communist Party, or Deng Xiaoping, also a member of the Politburo of the
Communist Party in China, and others of a similar style.

With this disaster it became clear that "State Socialism" never ends,
because its inconsistencies between socialist ends and capitalist
measures (working for wages and the centralization of property), sooner
or later, move the economy in a natural way toward private capitalism.

This is the result of not having socialized the economy nor democratized
political power, i.e. delivered real power – economic and governance –
to the workers and the people.

Previously, the objectives pursued by the United States in Cuba were to
avoid the consolidation of a "socialist" regime, its eventual reversal
and to avoid its spread in the region. But with the fall of
international support the Castro regime fell into crisis, ending the
export of the Revolution and no one on the continent is excited about
following the Cuban model.

With these goals, without any invasion, and demonstrating the endogenous
unviability of the Cuban State socialist model (neither socialist nor
Cuban), the United States believed that its implosion would be
the matter of a short time. It didn't understand until today that,
despite its inconsistencies and economic deficits, the "confrontation
with imperialism," the support from Venezuela, the hyper-exploitation of
those who work for the State, the permanence of the historic leader and
some populist measures brought certain reserves of time to the "Castro
experiment."

In parallel, starting from 1994, concern was growing among the American
"establishment" over the complicated internal crisis that was generating
another rafter migration crisis, converting Cuba into a failed state,
and leading the United States to have to engage in some kind of
intervention. This definitely put US strategic interests in the region
at risk.

This was no longer defined by the Intelligence Community, as expressed
by different representatives, when the transmission of power in Cuba
from Fidel Castro to his brother became clear. They then specified that
a government in military hands, like those of Raul Castro, suited their
purposes of realizing a peaceful economic and political transition in Cuba.

It was at that time that the United States began to understand the
political futility of the blockade-embargo and to delineate a new
policy. Obama was not yet president.

Once power was transmitted to Raul, and with a different administration
in Washington, a new intention became clearer: to help the General's
Government ease the internal economic situation to avoid this dangerous
crisis and, of course, to take advantage of the opportunities offered by
the "opening" for foreign capital and the established of all the ties
and commitments permissible to be as close as possible to the Cuban
government

And this is what, in the first instance, explains the policy change that
had antecedents even in the Bush administration, when food imports were
allowed and talks were held on commitments about migratory problems.

Another key element in this new projection is that the unnecessary
extension of the absurd blockade-embargo became a boomerang for US
foreign policy, particularly in Latin America. Mending its relations
with Cuba would seem to be a precondition to reverse this situation and
create a more favorable environment for the expansion of political and
economic relations in the region in the face of the Chinese and Russian
offensive.

We must not forget that the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), with
which the United States tried to create an economic zone on the
continent to try to preserve the extra-continental competition, was
sabotaged by the initiative of Fidel Castro with the support of Hugo Chavez.

With "normalization," the United States aims to neutralize the extreme
anti-imperialism of the "historic leadership," which has brought it so
many problems around the world.

Part of the new policy is the continuation of the Cuban Adjustment
Act, a permanent escape valve for the dissatisfied, now with more
opportunities to skip the country with the new migratory law; clearly
there is a need to get the growing discontent — generated by the
"update" itself — off the Island.

A sign of discontent? An old man in the neighborhood, 80 years
old, loyal to Fidel, and upset because the ration book offers almost
nothing, and his pension doesn't stretch far enough, told me, "If Fidel
knew that Raul took the food away from the people, he would have him
shot. End of story."

Certainly, a major relief would be political changes that ease the
internal tensions. But the United States knows that this part is the
responsibility of Cubans.

To the Stalinist extreme, deep in the structures of the Communist Party
and for the purposes of its intransigent anti-imperialist image, it is
not convenient to accept that the strategic objective of the United
States in Cuba is the stability to avoid a crisis, nor that supporting
Raul Castro's government is a part of the tactic to accomplish that.

Such an approach would undermine the "confrontation with imperialism,"
the Party's propaganda and the philosophy of the "citadel under siege"
that tries to justify the internal repression of the dissidence and
those who think differently, as well as the democratic deficit of the
"model" (a model of what should not be done in the name of socialism).

The real purpose of the "update" is no longer to build "socialism," but
to go from the monopolistic capitalism of the State to the restoration
of private capitalism, but under the control of the senior bureaucracy
in alliance with big foreign capital.

Source: US Helps Raul Castro To Maintain Stability In Cuba / 14ymedio,
Pedro Campos | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/us-helps-raul-castro-to-maintain-stability-in-cuba-14ymedio-pedro-campos/