Conrad Black - A Free Cuba May Be on the Horizon

 It appears that Cuba is about to end the 67-year disaster of communism. When Fidel Castro became the communist dictator of Cuba on New Year’s Day, 1959, the per capita GDP was US$3,000.

 After 25 years, it had struggled to $5,000 in 1985, but then collapsed back to $3,000 within a few years. In the last nearly 40 years it has struggled to $8,000, not a bad rate of growth but a disgracefully low figure for such a fundamentally rich country.

Cuba was the last significant Spanish colonial possession in the Americas and continued to be a Spanish colony after Spain had been evicted from all the rest of central and southern America in the 1820s. Spain’s misgovernment of Cuba was so notorious that it became a matter of public outrage in the United States.

The battleship USS Maine blew up in Havana Harbor on Feb. 15, 1898, presumably as the result of an accident. But the United States implied that it was an act of war by Spain, and after a good deal of posturing, the Spanish, like a mindless and angry fighting bull, declared war on the United States and were promptly expelled from Cuba and her other principal remaining colonial territories, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

The United States was very proud of not being a colonial power and of conducting the first durably successful uprising against colonial rule. Under Gen. Leonard Wood, it conducted a very benign and efficient government of Cuba from 1899 to 1902, when the United States granted Cuba independence.

It would certainly have been better for that island, one of the most naturally prosperous jurisdictions in all of Latin America, if it had joined the United States then. As an independent country, it was no more politically successful than most of the rest of Latin America and had a series of corrupt military juntas. The economy was largely based on sugar and extensive tourism from the United States, particularly to the elegant casinos and resorts of Havana.

Fidel Castro conducted a six-year civil war, and finally chased out the suave but corrupt and inept dictator Gen. Fulgencio Batista. Batista led what was called the Sergeants’ Revolt in 1933 and was the principal leader of the Cuban government for the following 26 years. He was reasonably popular with successive U.S. administrations because he did not overtax American businesses and American tourists were well-treated.

Batista cooperated completely in keeping German submarines out of the Caribbean during World War II, and he was a staunch anti-communist through the opening phase of the Cold War. But his indifference to the lot of the disadvantaged was steadily exploited by Castro, and ultimately Castro’s unpaid guerrillas fought with greater courage and determination than Batista’s underpaid soldiers.

Castro’s iron dictatorship began with the execution of many hundreds of officials of the previous regime. Most of them were undoubtedly guilty of misconduct but not necessarily of capital crimes, and in any case did not receive anything remotely resembling an authentic trial. Castro has been credited with universal health care and the abolition of illiteracy.

These undoubted accomplishments were accompanied by the usual Marxist economic nostrums, including the state takeover of practically all commercial activity and the collectivization of agriculture. Of course, this is almost always a disaster because it contradicts the almost universal human ambition for more. In times of immense national crisis such as a war for the country’s survival, or amongst people who share a fervent attachment to a collectivist belief, some religious or occasionally political sects, the collective income can be divided equally among the participants who are entirely focused on the collective goal.

In Canada during World War II, approximately a million people volunteered for the armed forces though Canada was not itself under threat, but in solidarity with the British Commonwealth and in defense of the cause of freedom throughout the world.

As the military volunteers risked their lives and subsisted in spartan living conditions, many of the country’s leading industrialists worked for the war effort for one dollar a year. Castro’s Cuba was no such galvanizing cause.

Castro had a charismatic personality, and even though he gave speeches that lasted over four hours and the country objectively floundered, he was widely seen by the Cubans as a champion of their nationality. Many American businesses in Cuba were seized with no compensation. The resulting American economic blockade was prolonged and onerous.

A large number of Cuba’s most talented people were intimidated and imprisoned, and over 2 million fled the island, frequently in rickety sea craft and at a high risk of losing their lives. The population of Cuba was stagnant throughout most of the communist era, and is today only about a million more than it was when Castro arrived in Havana in 1959 (11.5 million).

Castro got off to a good start with the horrible American fiasco of the Bay of Pigs in 1961, but was humiliated in the Cuba missile crisis of 1962 when he wanted to fire the short-range missiles that were already deployed—even if that led to the destruction of Cuba—and his Soviet sponsor, Nikita Khrushchev, made a compromise withdrawal agreement with U.S. President Kennedy instead.

Castro’s efforts to propagate communist revolution in Latin America were a complete failure, exemplified by the capture and execution of his close collaborator Che Guevara in Bolivia in 1967.

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev tired of the financial burden of Cuba, and up to a point it was taken up by the quasi-communist Venezuelan government of Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro (now a resident of the detention facility in Brooklyn, New York). Mexico was somewhat helpful as it has often flirted with the left, including in the Spanish Civil War and in granting asylum to Leon Trotsky (until Stalin had him assassinated in 1940).

 But the Trump administration has forced the complete severance of Venezuela’s assistance to Cuba with oil shipments and otherwise, and has undoubtedly muscled Mexico, which is no longer extending a lifeline either.

The Cuban government is in desperate negotiations with the United States to salvage some of its authority in exchange for any national policy course correction Washington dictates.

The United States is not interested in a military occupation, but will compel Cuba’s retirement as an ally of Russia and China and serious reforms. The rejoicing of the Cuban people for their liberation from this awful regime will be deafening.

https://www.newenglishreview.org/a-free-cuba-may-be-on-the-horizon/