Center for International Policy

As printed in
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel
August 2, 2006

Change must come from internal process

By Wayne S. Smith

The "Compact with the Cuban People," issued on July 10 by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, as the two co-chairs of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, puts forward a view of Cuba divorced from reality and a vision of the future which can only be described as pie in the sky.

For example, it tells us that "chronic malnutrition, polluted drinking water and untreated chronic diseases continue to affect a significant percentage of the Cuban people."

Now, life is no bowl of cherries in Cuba. There are shortages. And yet, U.N. indices consistently show Cuba's population to be much healthier than those of most neighboring states, including the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico -- one reason being that Cubans have free health care. And the fact is that life expectancy for Cubans is five years longer than for African-Americans living in these United States!

Indeed, the image painted in the commission report -- of Cubans wandering about like half-starved refugees in Darfur -- is so far from the truth that one might conclude the Bush administration doesn't want Americans traveling to Cuba precisely so they can't see Cuban reality -- with all its warts -- for themselves.

The report gives the strong impression that the Cuban economy is on the verge of collapse, as did an earlier version two years ago. But rather than collapsing, the Cuban economy shows signs of vigorous recovery. Even the CIA gives it a growth rate of 8 percent. The price of nickel, now Cuba's leading export, is at record highs. Cuba has new and vitally important economic relationships with Venezuela and China, and various nations are already bidding for new oil drilling sites off the north coast. Electrical blackouts are a thing of the past and food is more plentiful. In short, things are definitely looking up.

The central purpose of the new "compact" -- which Gutierrez and Transition Coordinator Caleb McCarry were in Miami a few days ago to push -- is nonetheless to encourage the Cuban people and the international community to prevent constitutional succession in Cuba. That is, that when Castro passes from the scene, he not be succeeded by First Vice President Raul Castro; rather, the U.S. wants instead a "transitional government" -- one, needless to say, endorsed by the U.S.

Even the overwhelming majority of Cuban dissidents have rejected this or any other formula introduced from the outside. One leading dissident, Oscar Espinosa Chepe, for example, said: "We absolutely disagree that any foreign government should give opinions as to what Cubans should do in their own country."

Another, Elizardo Sánchez, said he didn't understand why there should be a "coordinator" in a foreign capital to deal with Cuba's future.

Miriam Leiva, one of the founding members of the dissident Ladies in White, stated categorically that "the United States should not try to solve Cuba's internal problems."

If even Cuban dissidents are opposed to the new U.S. approach, one can imagine the reaction of the Cuban people. They are going to confront their own government and throw over their own constitutional succession because the U.S. government wants them to? Not likely! They understand, as the Bush administration does not, that change in Cuba must come about as the result of an internal process. We may be seeing even now a trial run of that succession. On July 31, Castro temporarily handed power over to his brother Raul while he recovers from an operation. The expectation is that Castro will be back in harness shortly, but if not, the succession will be in place.

It is not at all likely that the international community will push for the transitional government favored by the Bush administration. For one thing, U.S. policy toward Cuba has almost no support among other governments. The U.S. embargo was condemned in the U.N. General Assembly last year by a vote of 182-4. Cuba was elected this year to the new U.N. Human Rights Council with 135 votes -- probably not because so many countries thought Cuba an ideal candidate for membership, but as an "in your face" rejection of U.S. policy toward Cuba.

To hear Condoleezza Rice and Gutierrez tell it, if Cubans will only bring into being that transitional government, the U.S. will provide massive assistance to rebuild the Cuban economy and turn Cuba into an incredibly prosperous democracy. One can almost imagine the Halliburton Co. ready with reconstruction contracts!

But Cubans have only to look at the U.S. Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to see that the Bush administration doesn't always deliver on its promises to rebuild and provide assistance, and at the smoking ruins in Iraq to see what can happen to its promises to create prosperous democracies.

Wayne S. Smith, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C., and an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is the former chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana (1979-82).