With the passage of the Helms-Burton Act, U.S.-Cuban relations have entered a new and even more hostile phase. At the regime's May Day parade this year, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro told ABC's Peter Jennings that the law, which greatly tightens the U.S. economic embargo, will hurt only the United States. If so, one cannot help wondering why the Cuban regime and its friends in the United States put so much energy into opposing it in the first place. Indeed, if all Helms-Burton does is to keep American business out of Cuba, on the face of things Castro should welcome it. Wasn't getting the Yanquis out what the Cuban Revolution was all about in the first place?
Of course, the truth is that Castro well understands what Helms-Burton means for him. It effectively undercuts the nascent efforts to recruit a business constituency in the United States to lift the embargo and forces him to contemplate economic reforms far more drastic and regime-threatening than those taken so far.
Castro's Blurred Vision
President Clinton's sudden decision to sign the bill after months of quiet lobbying against it (or, at least, against some of its key provisions) must have come as a complete surprise to Castro. For the past three years, the Cuban dictator has been throwing kisses to the American president, even to the point of wryly observing that perhaps he was going a bit far, potentially providing ammunition to Clinton's critics at home. Almost from the day of President Clinton's election, the Castro regime has been expecting some good news out of Washington.
Before the recent shooting down of four civilian planes piloted by Cuban-Americans, which led to the president's reversal, the conventional wisdom in Havana was that once reelected, Clinton would lift the trade embargo and normalize relations with Castro. Indeed, that notion may even have played a role in encouraging Castro's most recent outrages; a false sense of impunity could well have provoked not only the shoot-down but the massive arrest (just a few hours before) of dissidents associated with the Cuban Council, an umbrella organization of the opposition.
Just why Castro thinks (or until recently, at least, thought) that he can expect favorable treatment from the Clinton administration is a mystery well worth pondering. After all, as a presidential candidate in 1992, Clinton endorsed the Cuban Democracy Act (the so-called Toricelli Law, the most recent antecedent to Helms-Burton) even before the Bush administration got around to doing so. And while individual Democrats have visited the island and sometimes made declarations that could be interpreted as favorable to the Castro regime, none of them play an important policy role in the present administration. Further, the White House pointedly turned down former president Jimmy Carter, who offered to mediate between Castro and Clinton, shortly after Carter's successful negotiating role in Haiti in 1994.
When Castro looks at Clinton, however, what he sees is not a savvy, supremely pragmatic politician but an alumnus of the protest generation in the United States, a graying "sixty-eighter." (To judge by his declarations to the New York Times shortly after Clinton's inauguration, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein labors--or at least once labored--under the same misconception.) The point Castro and Saddam Hussein both miss is that President Clinton is not, and never has been, a leftist (at least in terms that they would recognize).
Clinton's opposition to the war in Vietnam--whether inspired by idealism or simply by a desire to avoid military service--in no way betokened sympathy with the Viet Cong, communism, or third world revolutionism. It is true that some of his contemporaries in the antiwar movement regarded the Cuban regime with particular sympathy. But nothing could be further from Bill Clinton's sensibility than to go to Cuba to cut cane with the Venceremos Brigade.
Castro also placed too many hopes in certain individuals in the Clinton administration known to be (or thought to be) favorable to lifting the embargo and normalizing relations. Several names on this list are no longer current, since they have recently left the government for the private sector. But given the sensitivity of the Cuban issue in U.S. domestic politics, the fact that there are still one or two advocates of normalization in high places does not amount to much. Certainly, they were unable to stay Mr. Clinton's hand when he decided, virtually overnight, to reverse his position on Helms-Burton.
Castro's overweening self-confidence may also have been shaped by his distorted Marxist view of American society, which holds that the really important decisions in this country are made not by elected officials but by a handful of corporations and superrich financial institutions. If this were really so, the embargo would surely have been lifted long ago: it is sharply opposed not only by the prestige press (the New York Times and Washington Post) and the major networks but by no less conservative a source than the Wall Street Journal. (Ted Turner's CNN is in a class by itself, since its programming on Cuba has lately turned out to be an unpaid advertisement for Cuban investment and tourism.) As if this were not enough, Dwayne Andreas, the president of the agribusiness behemoth Archer Daniels Midland, is financing something called the U. S.-Cuban Trade and Economic Council, whose evident purpose is to build a business constituency for a new, more favorable policy toward Castro.
Moreover, the Americans the Cuban dictator and his minions tend to know well--and with whom they can consult in a more or less uninhibited fashion--are frankly sympathetic to them and their regime. Perhaps we are talking about two dozen or so people whose names are well known to readers of the daily press: filmmakers and journalists, clergymen and members of Congress, even one or two retired diplomats and high-ranking military officers. To be sure, just because such counselors are sympathetic to Castro does not mean that they might not offer him good and sound advice; but insofar as we can judge from his actions, until recently that advice has been neither good nor sound.
Finally, Castro fails to grasp that while the U.S. political and media establishments (as well as some sectors of the business community) generally favor a rapprochement with his regime, the U.S. public sees no compelling reason to make any changes in policy until there is significant movement forward toward democracy on the island. This much is clear from repeated opinion surveys. In the most recent, conducted by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations last year, the Cuban dictator turned out to be one of the least popular foreign leaders, located on a barometer of public esteem midway between Yassir Arafat and Saddam Hussein.
As a country, Cuba ranks in popularity well below China, Saudi Arabia, or India and only barely edges out North Korea. More surprising, perhaps, is the fact that when queried about the proper U.S. response to a popular uprising in Cuba, nearly half those Americans polled (44 percent) favored military intervention there, bested only by the percentages that would favor a similar response if Russia invaded Western Europe or Iraq invaded Saudi Arabia. While the Cuban-American community is thought to be disproportionately influential in shaping U.S. policy toward the island, it is clear that on this issue it is sailing with plenty of wind behind its back.
Where Do We Stand Today?
The Helms-Burton Act is a lengthy piece of legislation divided into four parts. The first establishes new and tighter economic sanctions and requires the president to monitor (and if necessary sanction) concessionary trade between Cuba and the former Soviet Union. The second outlines conditions and terms for U.S. assistance to a post-Castro Cuba. It also lays down markers to determine that a genuine transition is, in fact, occurring on the island. (First among these is the departure from power of Fidel Castro and his brother Raś, currently commander in chief of the Revolutionary Armed Forces.)
The third section allows U.S. nationals whose property was wrongfully confiscated by the Cuban regime to bring legal action in U.S. courts against those who have purchased it from the Cuban government. And the fourth excludes from entry into the United States those who traffic in stolen property--that is, who after the enactment of the law buy or significantly improve assets they have acquired from the Cuban government. The law also forbids entry to their children, many of whom normally come to this country to study. (This subsection is quite clearly aimed at wealthy Mexicans who have been attempting to buy the old Cuban telephone system.)
Titles III and IV have provoked loud wails of protest from many otherwise friendly governments, particularly Canada and Great Britain, but also Mexico, Spain, and Panama. What all these countries have in common is that lately they (or their nationals) have begun to invest in the limited areas of the Cuban economy open to foreign participation, particularly tourism (hotels) and mining. Helms-Burton, in effect, forces these countries to ask which they prefer--to do business with Castro's Cuba or with the United States. The law also seriously detracts from their ability to establish a disproportionate commercial advantage vis-a-vis American competitors by moving into Cuba before the embargo is lifted. Their threats to take the United States to the World Trade Organization and other international bodies have made headlines, as perhaps they should.
But the media seem to have missed the truly revolutionary innovation of Helms-Burton, which is found not in Title III but in Title I, which codifies the trade embargo into U.S. law. This means that it can be lifted only by a vote of the U.S. Congress. Thus regardless of who wins this year's presidential election or the next or the one after that, Castro can expect no relief, and Canadians, Europeans, and Latin Americans who are investing on the island in anticipation of exploiting waves of American tourists are clearly wasting their time and money. Some seem prepared to recognize this fact already; as Canada's ambassador in Havana said recently, Helms-Burton has had a "chilling" effect on new investments from his country.
In the past, the purpose of the economic embargo was to impose an additional financial burden on Castro's attempts to export subversion throughout Latin America and elsewhere. At present, however, its major purpose is to force the dismantling of his totalitarian system. The assumption is that to the degree to which the island's economic situation becomes more parlous, Castro is forced to part with his monopoly of resources, and, in so doing, the basis of his dictatorship will be undermined.
This has already happened in several areas. The economic crisis provoked by the fall of the Soviet Union, for example, has forced the Cuban government to allow its citizens to hold dollars legally. This change has created two classes of Cubans--those with dollars and those without. Since the former tend to be people with relatives in the United States (usually Miami), the effect has been to reward the least "integrated" members of society and to punish those who have been most loyal to the regime. No great political imagination is required to see how this undermines revolutionary loyalties and Communist Party morale.
Likewise, the decision to open certain areas to foreign investment has summoned to life a new workers' aristocracy--made up of people who are lucky enough to have jobs that bring them into contact with foreign tourists, from whom they can expect tips in hard currency. (A new joke making the rounds of Havana has an engineer running around saying, "I'm a waiter at the Hotel Nacional"; eventually he is confined to an asylum, where he is diagnosed as suffering from delusions of grandeur.)
Finally, in the absence of the Soviet subsidy, the government is contemplating a drastic reduction of Cuba's huge public sector. To absorb some of the redundant work force, the regime legalized certain kinds of self-employment. So far, the categories are limited and strictly confined to individuals; that is, no Cuban can hire another Cuban. [1] Even home restaurants (paladares) are restricted to twelve seats and must not employ people outside the immediate family.
Castro has consented to these changes under extreme duress, and any significant improvement from other quarters would no doubt lead to their quick cancellation. Indeed, there has been much talk about taxing the paladares, privately run tourist taxi services, and other independent endeavors out of existence at the earliest possible date. One ominous indicator of the government's true long-term intentions is a sudden drop in the official numbers of "self-employed" from 208,000 in January to 205,694 in February.
Castro is engaged in a decisive tug of war with economic reality. He can perpetuate his suffocating control of the island, but only by pursuing policies that cause Cuban living standards to spiral down exponentially. Or he can allow his people's natural entrepreneurial impulses to flourish, but only by putting in peril his authority over every aspect of their lives.
In the past two or three years, Cuban economic policy has been on a kind of seesaw; when things looked so desperate as to threaten the regime seriously with street demonstrations or acts of civil disobedience, the regime grasped at a few straws of economic reform. The moment the crisis seems to have passed, the government has sought to reassert control. To the extent that a lifting of the U.S. embargo was viewed as imminent, its effect was to encourage the hard-liners to resist change and hold out for better days. With Helms-Burton, such illusions can no longer be entertained.
Persisting Uncertainties
This is not to say that the embargo in its latest form is a panacea that will lead straight to democracy and free markets. Rather, it is intended to force Castro to permit the rebirth of civil society through the diffusion of property and economic power. Without that antecedent, Cuba's viability as a nation is in doubt, regardless of whether Castro survives another thirty years or is ousted from power next week.
Of course, many uncertainties in Cuba-U.S. relations persist. Like any of us, Castro could die tomorrow, and few observers of Cuban life think that his regime could survive his departure. Or, alternatively, a deepening social crisis might lead the Cuban dictator to unleash another flood of refugees to the Florida coast. But that, too, would be extremely dangerous to his health, since--as the Haitian colonels have learned--this president is not particularly reluctant to deploy military force under such circumstances. Or perhaps nothing at all will happen--the relationship will continue to be frozen for another decade or more. But to the extent to which the United States has been able to frame the issue, it has sharpened the contradictions of the Cuban system and made the choices facing the regime clearer and more obvious than ever before.
Note
1. The Helms-Burton Act does provide an incentive for a widening of the permissible categories of economic activity. If the Cuban government permits the creation of freely operated small businesses, the existing ceiling on family remittances from abroad is lifted.
Mark Falcoff is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
