Faced with the task of thinking up the one set of factors that have made possible for ostensibly preindustrial, monocultural Cuba to keep bobbing around retrogressively, in the name of the freedom to starve and to stand in long lines, it would quite be easy to come up with at least 5. Ranked in order of durability, chronology, and indispensability for the “success” of the hungry Revolution, number one, it goes without saying, would be the airtight totalitarian ideology that has fed the policing system of repression and political control at all levels of society, which according to its progressive, politically correct rationales allows no dissent or even questioning. Without that, such an underdeveloped, economically retarded system would last no longer than “a cockroach in a henhouse,” to use an expression Fidel used to be fond of. But this of course would have been true on the assumption that the American governments of at least the first ten years immediately after the “Assault of Moncada” had not proven to be so good at bungling every attempt at preventing a communist Cuba coming into being and nipping it in the bud.
Following close, the number 2 factor would be the generous material assistance and politico-military support and sponsorship the former Soviet Union conferred upon the wait-on-lines hungry Revolution. Fidel’s personal seizure of power and his consolidation as a leftist Führer or what is the same, as the Caudillo Dear Leader, would have hardly come to pass or last as long as it did without such a degree of Soviet involvement. That was responsible for lending the hungry revolution more prestige than otherwise, gaining for it a great number of friends, collaborationists, and well-wishers, while at the same time forcing the US authorities to tread carefully about Cuba, lest a nuclear conflict arise in which they were not sure to prevail against the Russians backers.
The number 3 factor was the preservation and cultivation of diplomatic, cultural, and even if to a lesser degree, business relations between Cuba and several European and even non-European countries, like Canada and Mexico. The exchange thereof has guaranteed the indigent Castro regime a permanent lifeline in the form of tourism, cultural products, cigar exportation, and financial transactions, all courtesy of countries most of which were the US’s allies against the Soviets. Oddly so, come to think about it.
Factor number 4 is Venezuela, on the one hand, and remittances from Miami and elsewhere to families and friends back home. After the unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union, the starving Cuban regime faced an uncertain immediate future, which it eventually managed to negotiate not through finding socialist incentives to the economy, for instance, by diversifying production or modernizing industries and creating new ones. It managed to survive basically through the exceeding generosity of Venezuela under Hugo Chavez, who kept propping up the inefficient communist regime with oil and derivate gifts, way-under-market price. It is true, merely due to the socialist inefficiency of the Venezuelan government in handling its own economy, Venezuela cannot longer afford its hand-down largesse to its miser-ridden socialist sister, and the 90,000 barrels of oil per day Cuba was getting from 2004 onward, and the US $412 million of Venezuela-subsidized goods are not there anymore, yet the propping-up of the Cuban regime still goes on under Venezuela’s Maduro. That comes in the way of the over 40,000 Cuban teachers, health professionals, military security personnel and military advisers who likely as not get stipends, but surely are roomed-and-boarded at the expense of Venezuelans.
And then, there is remittance. Once the Soviet assistance to Cuba disappeared, it was the remittances of hard cash American dollars to Cuba from the US that kept the island afloat in a meaningful way. It served to tide over the Castro system for a while, until Chavez came to power, and inter-lacing with that event it incidentally ended up working together with the practically free oil and subsidized Venezuelan goods to postpone the inevitable, but by now too-long-in-coming, fall of the socialist state of popular starvation. In force since about 1993, the lifeline remittances of Cuban emigrants to the island got bolstered through the rapprochement introduced under Obama, to the point it was in practice operating as a nullification of the Embargo. That is, the character of the remittance was changed by the set of policies put in place under Obama, and instead of just helping the families and friends of Cuban immigrants make ends meet, the remesas got converted by the communists into financial tools of the Cuban military. Which is why that lifeline had to be cut off under Trump.
And so, now we come to number 5 of the set of factors that explain why there is still a communist regime in Cuba minimally feeding and repressing its people into living sixty years behind in history. That is the Embargo. First imposed on the island in 1958, under the uber-corrupt government of Fulgencio Batista, and again two years later under Fidel after the Bearded Leader successfully nationalized without compensation all American businesses on the island, the Embargo has been a blessing unwittingly conferred by the Americans on its this sworn enemy. How so?
On the one hand, thanks to it, the Cuban regime has through its long history counted on an easily credible formula to explain away its failures to deliver to Cubans the promised quality of life the revolution vaunted to be superior to life under capitalism. By this logic, the errors, mistakes, and misguidance of the regime are not organic to the social system engineered by Fidel and his compañeros, but are supposedly imposed on Cubans from abroad. Liberal or Republican US is to blame, not Marxism-Leninism. Thus, contrary to the wrong-headed policy that first put it in place and kept it alive, the Embargo has the been the main source of political legitimacy for the Castros’ stranglehold on their own people.
On the other hand, it lends credibility to the communist contention that the American Embargo is the main or sole culprit in the suffering of the Cubans, it has been instrumental to the regime’s cultivation of victimhood status while at the same time succeeding in selling its homegrown image as a hero. And, to this very extent, the image of the US as an aggressor, a malicious power that inflicts pain on the weakest has been decisive in encouraging animosity toward it across the world, particularly across Spanish-speaking cultures. Thus, the Embargo has been bad PR for the side that imposed it and good PR for the side it was imposed on. However, politicians like AOC are only partially correct in declaring, as she did, that the Embargo on Cuba and by extension American policy has no objective but to cause harm for harm’s sake. For it must be added that the Embargo has been bad for the party it was intended to do good but good for the party it was designed to be bad.
But that outcome was implicitly contemplated in the illogicality that guided the Embargo policy. That is, according to the way it was designed to work, if the Cuban people suffered enough, they would eventually rise and overthrow the regime. But no popular arousal could ever happen if the people accept that it is the Embargo that aggravates their misery. Nothing need be said about how much ignorance about the efficiency, popularity, and iniquitousness of the apparatus of vigilance and repression operating in Cuba is reflected in the Embargo rationalization. But what is worse, no timeline or deadline was ever set—no plan B to resort to was ever devised, and just in case, no other tactics or political tools were conceived of to work alongside the Embargo. The Embargo was given all the time in the world to show its worth, if it ever would. Sixty long years have not been enough to persuade successive American administrations that such policy was ill-conceived. As it stands, the communist regime might eventually collapse—but in how long a time, in sixty or maybe one hundred years from now? Sure, the repressive regime might fall one day. But maybe nobody will be around sane enough to attribute such event to an Embargo.
A New Winning Strategy Is Needed. Here it is.
The good thing is, considering the recent manifestations for freedom taking place on the island, the time is ripe to finally put the Embargo to good use. So, do this about Cuba. A), The Biden administration should adopt a new policy for doing away with the old one and show readiness to do so when a series of steps are taken or agreed to be taken by the Cuban regime. The main objective of a New Policy on Cuba would be the peaceful replacement of the regime and its state machines. B), The core of such new policy is the ending of the Embargo, contingent to the Cuban regime allowing general elections at all levels, supervised by international observers. In addition to the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and the European Union, Russia should also be considered as an observer. And C), As the second condition for the lifting of the Embargo, the Biden administration should seek a formal agreement between the parties just mentioned and the Cuban regime in which the latter commits itself to retroactive compensation or repayment of all American businesses and industries nationalized or expropriated by the Castro revolution. Repayment should be fulfilled in installments as per a schedule to be agreed on, and preferably at the same valuation as at the time of expropriation. Repayment should be agreed to start only after a new, freely elected government is set up. D), Remittances from emigrated or exiled Cubans will resume unfettered once a new government emerges through general, democratic, and free elections. E), Financial aid and technical support should also be agreed on, starting with the newly elected government. And finally, F), It should be agreed by both parties the setting up of Permanent Commission on Corruption, which would operate under international supervision, at least for the foreseeable future.
This new strategy, or another along these same lines, will guarantee the intended effects of the Embargo will come true in a fraction of the time that it had previously been in force, to no avail. Its pointed aims are, first, disrupting the regime’s business as usual by showing the people a clear, peaceful path out of the communist dictatorship. Secondly, the new strategy will have a powerful destabilizing effect on the regime since it guarantees the turning of popular and international opinion against it. And thirdly, it will encourage the subversion of the regime from inside-out and from below the communist party, the government, and popular organizations.
There has never been a better moment inside Cuba than now. But the positive outcome depends on Biden taking the first shot.