Yesterday's announcement that President Fidel Castro has had intestinal surgery and has temporarily ceded power to his brother Raul is another signal of the imminence of transition in Cuba.
For Mr. Castro, who has ruled communist Cuba for 46 years, since his guerrilla army overthrew the Batista dictatorship in 1959, turns 80 on August 13. He has recently displayed many of the physical symptoms of old age, drawing focus to his mortality, and, inevitably, discussion of the post-Castro power relations in Cuba.
Jamaica, which is Cuba's closest neighbour in the Caribbean region, has an interest in how the political situation evolves in that nation. For volcanic upheaval in Cuba in the aftermath of President Castro is unlikely to be contained in that country and will have severe implications for the security of its neighbours, not least Jamaica.
It is imperative, therefore, that Caricom, if it has not yet done so, start developing its own post-Castro strategy and, critically, to engage the United States about a response to the Cuban transition that ensures orderliness and stability and prevents the outbreak of a civil war.
The fact is that Fidel Castro and Cuba, with their communist government are America's last Cold War nemesis, and Castro, in particular, has been a particularly painful thorn in the side of successive U.S. presidents and their administrations. Castro has survived not only everything they have thrown at him, including the agitation of the Miami-based exiles, but the collapse of the Soviet Union and world communism, the West's ultimate victory of the Cold War and the emergence of the United States as the world's sole superpower.
Ramparts of communism
In the absence of the charismatic Fidel Castro it will be tempting, we suspect, to try to quickly pull down the ramparts of communism in Cuba to be replaced by a pluralist political society and to open the economy to the forces of the free market. Much of this is inevitable; but sequencing and timing, we believe, are important.
There is much anger and bitterness between many exiled Cubans and those who remained at home and in the administration. A social and political collapse in the post-Castro period could ignite efforts to settle old scores, pitting pro-Castro Cubans against returnees and internal dissidents.
In other words, a nasty civil war is a distinct possibility in
the absence of a managed transition. The Bush administration has evidence of this scenario in Iraq and, hopefully, won't be tempted to try strategies similar to those applied with the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Importantly, though, Raul Castro, Fidel's younger brother and designated heir, commands Cuba's 50,000-member armed forces as well as the police, which may be crucial to the emergence of events in Cuba.
But Raul Castro, at 75, will, at best be a temporary leader. He has, in recent years, emerged as a pragmatic politician, in the context of Cuba's narrow political system. We could, therefore, see Raul Castro leading a China-type reform of the Cuban economy, where economic advance, in a largely capitalist environment, is given precedence over political freedoms. In the longer run, political change is inevitable in Cuba. The trick is to manage the change without a conflagration.
THE OPINIONS ON THIS PAGE, EXCEPT FOR THE ABOVE,
DO NOT NECESSARILY RELECT THE VIEWS OF THE GLEANER.
