Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

Your 2nd sentence assumes facts not in evidence, to wit, that Castro is still alive!

Yes, because the successors will want to use his funeral for positioning.

That's Castro's only remaining function.

It happens to the best, it happens to the rest.

What will change once Fidel dies? Won't Raul and the rest of the Communist regime have just as much incentive to cling to power as Fidel did? Where is the Cuban Gorbachev to start the tinkering from within the regime, or the Cuban Lech Walesa to agitate for change from outside the regime? Will the US suddenly change it's apporach to Cuba once Fidel dies and go for the soft kill? I think not. Especailly with the current administration.

We have 3 models of post-communist evolution:
(1) The Eastern European model, which means evolution to a society very much like the social democracies of the EU (and even Blue America), namely, managed capitalism and political democracy;
(2) The Russian model, which means evolution towards gangster capitalism, with political democracy in form but not in substance;
(3) The Chinese model, which means evolution toward minimally-managed entrepreneurial capitalism, with a Singaporean non-democratic political system.
Where will Cuba go? There is also a fourth possibility which is rarely mentioned, namely, that Cuba stays communist and becomes a Chavezista state.
US policy will not likely change as long as Raul, or any other "communist" is in power, which means that an evolution towards (1) will not happen. On the contrary, continuation of the embargo could spur anti-Americanism which could bring about (4). More likely, however, is some sort of military coup that could lead to (2). As to (3), I don't see much likelihood of the Asian political model taking hold in Cuba, and I also see a lot of Cuban resistance to the Chinese economic model, because the Cuban social safety-net is fairly successful and popular ("Sicko" wasn't totally off-base - Cuba probably has the best health-care system of any country outside of the Old Core). How do you get a better outcome than (2)? Seems to me that this could be a place where the South American ABC states of the New Core, which themselves are trying to combine political democracy, market economies, and social safety nets, could take the lead in reaching out to Cuba, opening up trade and investment, while the US remains mired in the politics of the early '60s.

Kevin: after the big man goes down, the subsequent generations often can't hold on the way he did. there's a lot of pressure on Cuba to liberalize. we will see what happens...

Remember that Cuba is Cuba and not the Soviet Union, Eastern Bloc, or China.

From my limited time inside Cuba, everyone is waiting to see what happens next. Not sure how long they will wait, but what choice do they have? With police at every corner in Habana Vieja a little hard to do much. Out in the country, of course, it is different.

After Stalin and after Nikita K, the WWII generation held on in the USSR until there were basically none of them left. Expecting Raoul to capitulate to capitalism is very optimistic, especially since we are doing all we can to keep them a closed system.

The contrast with the Chinese, who are moving new cadres/generations into leadership positions on a regular basis, is instructive.

Has anyone found any good reports of what is going on in Cuba these days. All of the media reports seem to just be rehashing the same story.

This story has an interesting mention of the Cuban army.

After Fidel, Who will rule Cuba?

Maybe Stuart's #2 brought about by a military coup could happen.

Using the new core states of Latin America as a bridge from the US to Cuba has real appeal. Unfortunately it seems to be a race with Chavez to retain our influence there.

Who will get the Havanna MLB franchise? Las Vegas should post odds on that foreign policy quandry? More important is DHS ready to implement "Distant Shore?"