Insisting that the recent transition in Cuba represents "the dying gasps of a failed regime," US President George W. Bush Wednesday vowed to maintain Washington’s nearly 50-year-old trade embargo against Cuba until its government "has adopted in word and deed fundamental freedoms."
"America will have no part in giving oxygen to a criminal regime victimizing its own people," he told an audience of prominent Cuban-Americans and family members of Cuban political prisoners assembled at the State Department.
"We will not support the old way with new faces, the old system held together by new chains," he declared in a reference to the political transition that began in July, 2006, when Raúl Castro replaced his ailing brother, the Cuban Revolution’s historic leader, Fidel Castro, as the de facto head of government.
In his remarks, which were simultaneously broadcast to Cuba via US-funded Radio and TV Martí, Bush also appealed to the "international community" to help Cubans win their "freedom" by providing more support to dissidents and opposition groups. He also called for members of the Cuban military and police not to "use force against your own people" when they "rise up to demand their liberty."
Cuba specialists here panned Bush’s speech, insisting that it failed not only to take account of a more open debate about Cuba’s future under the younger Castro over the past 15 months or of the apparent popular support – or at least tolerance – for the regime that has governed Cuba since 1959.
"He’s effectively warning the Cubans that they must not have a transition from Fidel to Raúl, which is utterly absurd since the transition has already taken place, and what’s Bush doing about it? Nothing," said Wayne Smith, who headed the US Interests Section in Havana under President Jimmy Carter and is based now at the Center for International Policy here.
"So it just seems to be a follow-on to what he’s been saying for the past two years or more, and frankly no one in Cuba is listening to that," he added. "Raúl is moving ahead, he said in July there will be a new debate over how to move toward a more effective system, and there’s every prospect that we will see reforms coming, but not anything like what Bush is calling for."
"If anything can revive Fidel Castro, it’s President Bush’s speech," noted Michael Shifter, a Latin America specialist at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank, who characterized Bush’s rhetoric as "tired and anachronistic."
"It’s a perfect tonic for an ailing dictator who has always counted on Washington to play into his hands and help sustain him in power and his appeal to the rest of the Latin America," Shifter added. "And for the international community and certainly for Latin America, referring to a ‘transition’ seems premature, presumptuous, and even offensive."
Bush called Cuba a "tropical gulag" and insisted that horrors committed by the government will, once revealed "shock the conscience of humanity."
"Now is the time to support the democratic movements growing on the island," he said. "Now is the time for the world to put aside its differences and prepare for Cuba’s transition to a future of freedom and progress and promise."
"The dissidents of today will be the nation’s leaders tomorrow, and when freedom finally comes, they will surely remember who stood with them," according to Bush, who called on other governments to "open up their embassies to pro-democracy leaders and invite them to different events" and "encourage their non-governmental organization (NGOs) to reach out directly to Cuba’s independent civil society."
He also announced what he called a new initiative to develop an international multi-billion-dollar "freedom fund" for Cuba that would be tapped once the government has demonstrated "it has adopted in word and deed fundamental freedoms," including "freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of press, freedom to form political parties, and the freedom to change the government through periodic multi-party elections."
He said Washington was prepared to take "interesting" new measures immediately – including licensing NGOs and church groups to provide computers and Internet access to Cuban people or inviting Cuban young people "whose families suffer oppression" into a US-Latin American scholarship program – "but only if the Cuban regime, the ruling class, gets out of the way."
But Smith, Shifter and others said such offers were most unlikely to be accepted by Havana and argued that Bush’s failure to take advantage of whatever opportunity for even minimal engagement under Raúl – for example, on drug interdiction cooperation – would actually reduce Washington’s ability to affect the ongoing transition.
"These guys had always expected that as soon as Fidel left the scene, the regime would collapse," Shifter told IPS. "That has clearly not been the case, and now they have to rethink how to deal with continuity – rather than collapse – in Cuba, and it’s clear they haven’t come up with much."
"Now is a strategic time to reach out to Cuba and to Latin America as a whole, and this administration is simply missing it," said Elsa Falkenburder, a Cuba specialist at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). "This speech is really just more of the same and it demonstrates that the administration doesn’t have any fresh ideas about how to approach Cuba and is not attuned to changing realities there."
"There is a debate already starting in Cuba about its future, and the government is already exploring reforms," said Sarah Stephens of the Center for Democracy in the Americas. "While we don’t know how extensive these reforms might be, we do know that the president’s policy keeps the US on the sidelines as this debate takes place on the island. Our allies in Europe and the hemisphere have a very different policy, because they know better," she added.
"It’s very hard to see how this will appeal to anyone outside of the diminishing number of anti-Castro hard-liners in Miami," Smith told IPS. "It’s pretty clear that more Cuban-Americans want to see us engage Cuba and they certainly want to see the restrictions on family travel (to Cuba decreed by Bush) lifted. But the president just made clear none of that will happen."
Analysts here were also struck by the timing of the speech, particularly given Bush’s ongoing preoccupation with Iraq, growing belligerence toward Iran, and his calls just last week for greater international pressure on the military junta in Burma.
"I guess he’s under pressure from the hard-line Cubans to say something about the transition since he’s said nothing at all since Raúl took over," said one official who asked not to be identified.
Indeed, Cuba-born Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutiérrez, who is supposed to co-direct the new freedom fund with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, told reporters after the speech, "(T)oday happened to be a good day to get it on his calendar…"
(Inter Press Service)
