There’s an old Cold War joke — pre-pantyhose — that to
defeat communism we should empty the B-52 bombers of nuclear weapons and
instead drop nylons over the Soviet Union. Flood the Russians with the
soft consumer culture of capitalism, seduce them with Western contact
and commerce, love bomb them into freedom.
We did win the Cold War, but differently.
We contained, constrained, squeezed and eventually exhausted the
Soviets into giving up. The dissidents inside subsequently told us how
much they were sustained by our support for them and our implacable
pressure on their oppressors.
The logic behind U.S. President Barack
Obama’s Cuba normalization, assuming there is one, is the nylon
strategy. Fifty years of containment didn’t bring democracy. So let’s
try inundating them with American goods, visitors, culture, contact,
commerce.
It’s not a crazy argument. But it does
have its weaknesses. Normalization has not advanced democracy in China
or Vietnam. Indeed, it hasn’t done so in Cuba. Except for the U.S., Cuba
has had normal relations with the rest of the world for decades.
Tourists, trade, investment from Canada, France, Britain, Spain,
everywhere. An avalanche of nylons — and not an inch of movement in Cuba
toward freedom.
In fact, one could argue that this influx
of Western money has helped preserve the dictatorship, as just about
all the financial transactions go through the government, which takes
for itself before any trickle-down crumbs are allowed to reach the
regime-indentured masses.
My view is that police-state control of
every aspect of Cuban life is so thoroughly perfected that outside
influences, whether confrontational or co-operative, only minimally
affect the country’s domestic trajectory.
So why not just lift the embargo? After all, the
unassailable strategic rationale for isolating Cuba — in the Soviets’
mortal global struggle with us, Cuba enlisted as a highly committed
enemy beachhead 90 miles from American shores — evaporated with the
collapse of the Soviet empire. A small island with no significant
independent military capacities, Cuba became geopolitically irrelevant.
That’s been partially reversed in the
last few years as Vladimir Putin has repositioned Russia as America’s
leading geopolitical adversary and the Castros signed up for that
coalition too. Cuba has reportedly agreed to reopen the Soviet-era
Lourdes espionage facility, a massive listening post for intercepting
communications. Havana and Moscow have also discussed the use of Cuban
airfields for Russia’s nuclear-capable long-range bombers.
This in addition to Cuba’s usual
hemispheric mischief, such as training and equipping the security and
repression apparatus in Venezuela.
No mortal threat, I grant. And not enough
to justify forever cutting off Cuba. But it does raise the question:
With the U.S. embargo already in place and the Castros hungry to have it
lifted, why give them trade, investment, hard currency, prestige and
worldwide legitimacy — for nothing in return?
Obama brought back nothing on
democratization, a staggering betrayal of Cuba’s human rights crusaders.
No free speech. No free assembly. No independent political parties. No
hint of free elections. Not even the kind of 1975 Helsinki Final Act
that we got from the Soviets as part of detente, granting structure and
review to human rights promises. These provided us with significant
leverage in supporting the dissident movements in Eastern Europe that
eventually brought down communist rule.
If Obama insisted on giving away the store, why not at
least do it item by item? We relax part of the embargo in return for,
say, Internet access. And tie further normalization to serial
relaxations of police-state repression.
Oh, what hypocrisy, say the Obama acolytes. Did we not normalize relations with China and get no human rights quid pro quo?
True. But that was never a prospect. The
entire purpose was geopolitical and the payoff was monumental:
America walked away with the most significant anti-Soviet strategic
realignment of the entire Cold War, formally breaking up the communist
bloc and gaining China’s neutrality, and occasional support, in
the half-century struggle to dismantle the Soviet empire.
From Cuba, Obama didn’t even get a token
gesture. Not even a fig leaf such as, say, withdrawal of secret police
support in Venezuela. Or extradition of American criminals now fugitive
in Cuba, including a notorious cop killer. Did we even ask?
Obama seems to believe that the one-way deal was win-win. A famous victory — the Cuba issue is now behind us. A breakthrough.
Indeed it is. You know how to achieve a
breakthrough in tough negotiations? Give everything away. Try it. You’ll
have a deal by noon. Every time.
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