Cuba (merged thread)

[SWJED]

27 July NY Times - Cuba’s Revolution Now Under Two Masters by James McKinley Jr.

For the first time, Raúl Castro, the acting president, gave the traditional revolutionary speech during Cuba’s most important national holiday on Thursday, deepening the widespread feeling that his brother Fidel has slipped into semi-retirement and is unlikely to return. Yet Cuba continues to live in a kind of limbo, with neither brother fully in control of the one-party Socialist state...

Since the Communist Party has yet to officially replace Fidel Castro as the head of state, his presence in the wings and his towering history here continue to exert a strong influence in Cuban politics. That has made it difficult for Raúl Castro to shake up the island’s centralized Soviet-style economy, experts on Cuban politics said, though Raúl’s public remarks on Thursday made it clear he would like to.

He scolded the nation for having to import food when it possessed an abundance of rich land and vowed to increase agricultural production. He also said Cuba was seeking ways to secure more foreign investment, without abandoning Socialism...

27 July Washington Post - Cuba's Call for Economic Detente by Manuel Roig-Franzia.

As one of history's longest-serving political understudies, Raúl Castro often struggled to persuade his all-powerful brother Fidel Castro to open Cuba's moribund economy to more foreign investment.

But Thursday, with Fidel Castro still hidden from public view after intestinal surgery last July and his prospects of returning to power uncertain, the younger brother asserted his desire to push Cuba in a new direction. Speaking at a ceremony commemorating the start of the 54th anniversary of the Cuban revolution, Raúl Castro declared that Cuba is considering opening itself further to foreign investment, allowing business partners to provide this financially strapped nation with "capital, technology or markets."

The younger Castro's remarks, coupled with his unusual admission that the Cuban government needs to pay its vast cadres of state-employed workers more to cover basic needs, amounted to the clearest indication yet of how he might lead this island nation. Castro, who was named interim president last July 31, vowed to partner only with "serious entrepreneurs, upon well-defined legal bases."...

27 July Miami Herald - Raúl Again Offers 'Olive Branch' to U.S. by Frances Robles.

In Raúl Castro's most important speech since he replaced ailing brother Fidel, the interim Cuban leader Thursday bluntly admitted during the island's July 26 celebrations that Cuba faces myriad problems and little hope of quick fixes.

Castro, 76, told the tens of thousands convened in the eastern city of Camagüey that while salaries and food production are too low, inefficiency and prices are way too high. He added that Cuba's days of inefficiency, graft and dependence on foreign imports must come to an end.

Castro, also for the third time, called for a dialogue with Washington and made only passing mention of Fidel -- whose absence at the ceremony marking the 54th anniversary of the start of the Cuban Revolution reinforced the belief that Fidel will not return to active rule after his emergency surgery for intestinal bleeding last July...

Wikipedia:

Fidel Castro

Raul Castro

[Dominique R. Poirier]

In a culturally planned economy, capital goods and services are allocated by bureaucratic decision. Over a period of time, prices established by administrative fiat lose their relationship to costs. So long as the system is run as a policy state, the pricing system becomes a means of extorting resources from the population.
However, as soon as terror eases, prices turn into subsidies and are transferred in a method of gaining public support for the communist party. In the end, everything, from food to housing is subsidized without any criterion for efficiency and hence turns into an obstacle to a rising standard of living.

France has consistently engaged into similar methods during the last thirty years, though in the case of this country the communist origins of this way of doing things have systematically been denied. Bureaucratic decisions upon what ought to be relevant to private economy truly exist and the whole economic system is truly run as a policy state, but the subtlety lies in the fact that bureaucrats and officials directly intervening in private economy are not officials, though in many cases they have been indoctrinated and trained in one or several of the four state schools and universities which use to train the ruling elite since decades. Instead those "unofficials officials" act as said-to-be private entrepreneurs and businessmen and other investors and “business angels” who carefully follow official and unofficial state directives touching on nearly everything, from goods and services prices, to wages per profession and specialties, to fashion, to design, to private banking, to insurance, health industry and many other things.

Instead of an open and officially claimed communist economic policy, this system works as one might describe as a conspiracy since it has no official existence; but the visible effects on private economy and the collective behavior of the society are exactly similar to those usually affecting communist and socialist rulled economies and they are likely to lead to depression and unemployment, as it happens in Cuba, for the reasons I explained in the first paragraph of this comment.

At this point, and since the existence of a communist ruled economy is denied, then the system belongs to another category known as enlightened despotism.
Enlightened despotism, when it is not practiced by a visible king or dictator but by a collectivity or a secret council of “wise men” is said to be ruled by synarchy.
This is what also happens in Iran today where the Mullahs truly rule the country from behind the political stage; and in Russia where the ruler is publicly visible and truly influential though he has been put in place by a council of wise men; and in some other countries such as China, though there the system is slightly different and seems to undergo a positive evolutionary phase.

This way of governing is more easily tolerated by other states as long as it is not officially named communism and as long as leaders who practice it fiercely deny it so.
Is Cuba going to adopt such system in the future is a likely hypothesis, in my own opinion, since it constitutes a more suitable, not to say obvious, way to attract foreign investments and to gain a foot, through private investments, in truly democratic countries.

[Jedburgh]

SSI, 30 Jul 07: Security Requirements for Post-Transition Cuba

This monograph serves multiple purposes, the most important of which is to contribute to the thought process of dealing with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias of Cuba (FAR). Change is inevitable in Cuba. Both Fidel Castro and his brother Raul are aging. Their passing will trigger either a succession or a transition. With that change, Cuba’s security requirements will change as well. This monograph analyzes security requirements that the new Cuba will face and proposes what missions and structure the Cuban security forces might have after a transition. The overall long-range U.S. goal is a stable, democratic Cuba which is integrated into the global market economy. The U.S. Government Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba says that if a Cuban government asks for assistance, the United States could be made available “in preparing the Cuban military forces to adjust to an appropriate role in a democracy.”

The Cuban military will have to change with the times, altering its focus from the territorial defense of Cuba and internal security to missions that are consonant with modern circum-Caribbean militaries: control of air- and sea-space against transnational criminals. The military will need a new structure for these missions, less focused on insurgency in defense of the island and more focused on a common operating picture and integration with the efforts of Cuba’s neighbors.

This monograph proposes a way ahead in preparing Cuban forces for the future, integrating them into the Western Hemisphere community of militaries, and ensuring their support for democracy, subordination to elected officials, and respect for human rights. It also suggests constructive engagement of the Cuban military with the international community. This change is inevitable, and can be relatively painless or long and difficult. Both the Cuban military and the international community have to decide which way they want it to be....

Full 39 page paper at the link.