Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog

indeed, raul is sort of the hua guofeng era in 1996-1978 (but there are difference)
i hope the US government would listen.

questions:
1) would you recommend an engagement policy to cuba (c. iran)? lifting embargo would be hard politically, but should we at least move in that direction?
2) why would post-KJI era be unlike Cuba? (I know KJI is too "young" and healthy, but god permits, for academic purpose, let's suppose his health suddenly deteriorates.....)

The real chaos will not be Cuba but in the south Florida Cubano community and US politics. A good chance exists that our lack of skill and knowledge about real sentiments in CUBA may make for a second "Who lost Cuba" debate. By the way I have been told by somewhat reliable sources that 85% of the Cuban population presently is black. Since 1959, however, 85%of Cubans immigrating to the US legally or illegally have been white. If so an interesting question is what the social structure of CUBA today is and what is the social structure of the US CUBANO population. My understanding is that President Lincoln personally rejected Sherman's desire for the US to invade Spanish Cuba after the US Civil War and set it free to hopefully become part of the US. With 80M people speaking fluent spanish in the US perhaps Lincoln's desire to keep the US an English speaking nation and therefor rejecting Sherman's idea won't be the controlling issue. Also in 1959 95% of the US sugar supply was natural sucrose. Now 95% is artificial. I bet the sugar lobby has a plan for CUBA. Not suprising, I suspect the Baseball Commissioner's Office has more real knowledge of Cuban attitudes than anyone in the US Government including the 16 so-called Intelligence agencies and the DNI! Isn't the real issue "who will own the Havana Baseball Franchise?" Also CUBANS in CUBAN will certainly want to turn the free medical system into the wonderful class system of medicine in the US. CUBA also has better secondary education statistics than the US so they certainly would also want our system so that they can downgrade to ours. I suspect we have perfectly timed it to have a President very knowlegeable about baseball to assist in resolution of this "Non-Free-market issue." This very important international issue is about the level of difficulty that would allow the competence of the US foreign policy establishment to succeed in resolving, which after losing track of the Russians can't seem to learn a new trade, namely religious warfare. At least they flunk on a bipartisan basis. I hope so because we certainly want and need CUBA in the CORE and not the GAP! Besides I want to see all those great CUBAN baseball players upgrading major league baseball from the current drug addicted lot. And I still hate the Yankees! (Baseball team of course!)

With the education level/etc i doubt if there is any basis for Cuba to be classified as the gap. Cuba has also not been involved with any of these terrorist activities, nor required UNIFIL action for the past 45 years.

IMHO the baseball embargo, and that a law of isolation as long as the leader's last name is castro is quite childish. Although I would also think losing the universal medical service and education is a cost/trade-off for economic development.

Interesting.

From what I have read about Cuba (a subject in which I claim no special expertise), Raul was the original Marxist ideologue of the Castro brothers and it was he who pulled Fidel from nationalist populism to Communism and an alliance with the Soviets. Of course, even if that conventional wisdom was accurate, that was nearly fifty(!) years ago and the reality of day-to-day governance of an impoverished police state may have made Raul more of a realist.

In any event, Malenkov was a weaker man than Raul Castro is, but Raul is also quite old - the transitional figure may come after a short reign by Raul.

Ah, this reminds me of the days of Kremlinology ! Read those tea leaves...

Cuba has other options. It's making great friends in Venezuela and Chavez' dreams of an expanded bolivarian republic would be greatly enhanced if he merged with Cuba. That sets the cat among the pigeons because I don't think we can afford to extend the embargo to Venezuela and the dictator progression clock gets turned back because Chavez is relatively young and likely to stay on top for some time.

It might not play out this way. I hope it *doesn't* play out this way. But connectivity increases and entering into the Core are not the only viable path for Cuba. We shouldn't kid ourselves.