05-04-2009, 03:11 PM
First, when the embargo was introduced, nobody thought it was going to last for half a century. The US government was trying just about the full range of methods from exploding cigars to the Bay of Pigs to even practicing for an outright invasion, and the embargo was just one part of the policy: remove Castro as quickly as possible. He was supposed to die, or be overthrown, or exiled, in the next handful of years. The constraint on this policy was nuclear war with the USSR, not a deliberate decision to bleed the government slowly.
Second, I wouldn't lionize 'democratic Cuba' too much as a foil to Fidel. Castro didn't overthrow a democracy, he overthrew the Batista dictatorship, which in turn had overthrown Cuban democracy *with direct American support*. By the point of the revolution, all effective opposition parties (or perhaps more cynically, all ineffective opposition parties...) had ceased to function. The Autenticos had been suppressed, and the Ortodoxos had their leader blow his brains out during a radio broadcast. All that was left was some ragtag urban insurgent groups, the communists perpetually waiting for Moscow (and Godot...) and the 26th of July Movement.
Third, if you're wanting to replace a dictator with something other than a dictator, the absolute last thing you want to do is tighten the economic thumbscrews. As I said, a dictator will expropriate to preserve their own power, and this means eroding any other competitive power base. The more deprivation, the more the dictator becomes the only one with any wealth or power. Then, the only ways to overthrow them involve the one thing they can't do without: the army. The people aren't going to rise up, they're too busy making ends meet, and in any case, the army has more and better guns. But if you're trying to start a military coup, then you're not going to end up with a democracy, you're going to end up with a junta. Like I said, has this policy ever had the effect you're hoping for? It's not like it hasn't been tried. I mean, how's North Korea doing these days? When cut off from the world, dictators just establish oppressive autarkies, and sustain themselves at the expense of their people.
What does seem to work, at least some of the time, is openness. Information about the outside world leaks through. Things get better, and people with some measure of power get used to that, and no longer accept the dictator's fiat in the way they used to. Pressure for change builds up. Interest groups form who aren't directly subjugated to the government, who can then support reform, or even support revolution. The dictator loses their powerful symbolic ability to decry 'the great enemy'. That's an argument Fidel has driven for millions of miles, the rhetorical version of an old classic 1950s car; it may be outdated, but it still works. So long as the US policy is just to bluster about wrongs done half a century ago, all Fidel has to do is follow suit: he just has to mention the Bay of Pigs, the embargo, the Platt Amendment, and people get the point, that America is responsible for their problems. It's not really true, but it has enough truth in it to work.
Perestroika and Glastnost killed the Soviet Union. It's not deprivation that transforms dictatorships into democracies.
-Jester
Second, I wouldn't lionize 'democratic Cuba' too much as a foil to Fidel. Castro didn't overthrow a democracy, he overthrew the Batista dictatorship, which in turn had overthrown Cuban democracy *with direct American support*. By the point of the revolution, all effective opposition parties (or perhaps more cynically, all ineffective opposition parties...) had ceased to function. The Autenticos had been suppressed, and the Ortodoxos had their leader blow his brains out during a radio broadcast. All that was left was some ragtag urban insurgent groups, the communists perpetually waiting for Moscow (and Godot...) and the 26th of July Movement.
Third, if you're wanting to replace a dictator with something other than a dictator, the absolute last thing you want to do is tighten the economic thumbscrews. As I said, a dictator will expropriate to preserve their own power, and this means eroding any other competitive power base. The more deprivation, the more the dictator becomes the only one with any wealth or power. Then, the only ways to overthrow them involve the one thing they can't do without: the army. The people aren't going to rise up, they're too busy making ends meet, and in any case, the army has more and better guns. But if you're trying to start a military coup, then you're not going to end up with a democracy, you're going to end up with a junta. Like I said, has this policy ever had the effect you're hoping for? It's not like it hasn't been tried. I mean, how's North Korea doing these days? When cut off from the world, dictators just establish oppressive autarkies, and sustain themselves at the expense of their people.
What does seem to work, at least some of the time, is openness. Information about the outside world leaks through. Things get better, and people with some measure of power get used to that, and no longer accept the dictator's fiat in the way they used to. Pressure for change builds up. Interest groups form who aren't directly subjugated to the government, who can then support reform, or even support revolution. The dictator loses their powerful symbolic ability to decry 'the great enemy'. That's an argument Fidel has driven for millions of miles, the rhetorical version of an old classic 1950s car; it may be outdated, but it still works. So long as the US policy is just to bluster about wrongs done half a century ago, all Fidel has to do is follow suit: he just has to mention the Bay of Pigs, the embargo, the Platt Amendment, and people get the point, that America is responsible for their problems. It's not really true, but it has enough truth in it to work.
Perestroika and Glastnost killed the Soviet Union. It's not deprivation that transforms dictatorships into democracies.
-Jester