No lifeline to a dying regime

Cuba:
No lifeline to a dying regime
Posted By Stephen Johnson Friday, September 3, 2010 - 11:20 AM Share

When in a bind, Cuba's Castro brothers sometimes ease their repressive
grip on the island's population. Case in point: during the current
economic crunch, President Raúl Castro has released some two dozen
political prisoners, revived a lapsed self-employment experiment, and
allowed foreigners to lease land for 99 years. Impressive, except we've
seen this movie before.

And to remove any doubt about its meaning, President Raúl Castro
reportedly told his National Assembly that it does not signal a change
in the 50-year-old anti-American police state. Which is why the United
States should not significantly alter its equally long-lived trade
embargo. The tougher it gets for the regime, the more likely that a few
small freedoms will last longer -- hopefully until the two brothers go
to the great commune in the sky.

It may be useful to remember that the harshest periods of the brothers'
rule were when their coffers were flush and the revolution was strong.
That's when the Soviet Union supported it with subsidies worth up to $6
billion a year as a regional arms trafficking and subversion hub. During
that time, the regime reportedly held as many as 60,000 political
prisoners, according to some estimates.

Yet in 1980, when outside help wasn't enough to pay the bills and
thousands of Cubans took to the streets, then-president Fidel Castro
allowed nearly 125,000 citizens -- some from prisons and mental
hospitals -- a one-time good deal to flee to the United States. It was
either appear magnanimous or lose control.

After subsidies dried up with the Soviet collapse in 1991, he licensed
some 200,000 workers to earn their livings as cuentapropistas,
self-employed street vendors and taxi drivers. At the end of the decade,
when the economy had adjusted and Venezuela started providing subsidized
oil, many permits were not renewed.

During the same period, the Cuban government began inviting foreign
businesses to engage in joint ventures with state enterprises. In 1999,
a project with a Canadian firm to refurbish a Soviet-built power plant
seemed on track until the regime arbitrarily terminated the partnership
and used the company's proprietary plans to shop for new partners,
sinking a $9 million investment.

Now facing a cash crunch on the heels of a disastrous sugar harvest,
brother Raúl is consulting Fidel's old playbook -- releasing jailed
dissidents, ramping up self-employment, and making nice to foreign
businesses, which, by the way, must abide by Cuban policies of denying
workers' rights, in violation of International Labor Organization
conventions. Meaningful reform? You be the judge.

Last year, President Obama rolled back Bush-era restrictions on
family-member travel and remittance payments, and promised to allow U.S.
companies to provide cell phone and satellite telecommunications
services. Now he is about to encourage visits by academics and artists
in a return to Clinton-era policies of purposeful engagement. Such
measures might foster more people-to-people contact, but he should be
careful about going much further.

The more radical 2010 Travel Restriction Reform and Export Enhancement
Act (H.R. 4645), reported out of the House Agriculture Committee on June
30, would streamline financial transactions with Cuban banks to speed
U.S. farm exports and lift the U.S. ban on tourist travel to the island.
While enhancing sales is a good thing, a horde of American vacationers
now could revive the army-run tourist industry and kill the current
cuentapropista revival.

Tempting as it may be to view Cuba's tactical retreats as reforms, they
are stopgaps. However, for as long they last, they provide certain
benefits to ordinary Cubans. In that sense, the Obama administration and
Congress would do well to stay the current course and abide by
principled policies designed to pry open access to individual freedoms
for Cubans wherever possible. To tweak U.S.-Cuba policy and perhaps
minimize the embargo's impact on American businesses, U.S. policymakers
could:

* Link seeming concessions to more positive behavior. As U.S.
officials urge Raúl to release all prisoners of conscience, they could
caution against booting them out of their own country.
* Take advantage of resurging self-employment. Business information
and news of micro-financing opportunities on U.S. official broadcasting
to the island might fuel popular expectations of further liberalization.
* Facilitate free expression by easing more U.S. restrictions on
cell phone and equipment sales, and service agreements consistent with
broader U.S. technology transfer limits. Wider ownership of laptops,
mobile phones, and other consumer electronics (now legal in Cuba) can
further complicate the regime's ability to control communication.
* Consolidate America's position as a key goods supplier to the
island. President Obama could urge Congress to expand the list of what
can be exported under the embargo's cash and carry sales rules that now
contemplate food, clothing, and medicine.

To sustain leverage over Cuba's government on the cusp of transition,
the United States should continue to:

* Deny financial support and credit until Cuba releases its captive
labor force and pays creditors, and
* Condition normal diplomatic and economic relations on respect for
human rights and civil liberties such as freedom of expression, of
assembly, movement, and access to due process of law.

Since they came to power in 1959, the Castro brothers' goal has been the
survival of their socialist dream. Adaptability has been the key to
success, retreating at critical junctures without altering the regime's
basic structure. Such measures often looked like signs of change because
we wanted to see them as such. On close inspection, they were skillful
maneuvers to get through a crisis.

A number of congressmen and business groups are now saying that Raúl is
sending friendly signals to Washington like crazy. Perhaps. But it would
be crazy for us to believe he would admit that a life spent building a
repressive police state was just a mistake. Rather, we would be better
off dealing with new leaders willing to take Raúl's retreats to the next
level by guaranteeing human rights and civil liberties, respecting
ordinary citizens' right to choose their leaders, and allowing a market
economy to flourish.

http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/09/03/cuba_no_lifeline_to_a_dying_regime