US
President Barack Obama came to Havana with a cautiously crafted,
calculated message to the people of the world, the people of the US,
and the people of Cuba.
To
the people of the world, Obama was signaling, on his part, a new
posture towards the Republic of Cuba. His expressed desire to remove
the blockade and to open up relations must be taken at face value and
welcomed. How far he intends to pursue this goal and with how much
energy is to be seen. That it is part of a carefully cultivated
“Obama Doctrine” blossoming in the last year of his Presidency
should be apparent.
In
his confessional series of interviews with Jeffrey Goldberg for The
Atlantic, he makes his posture towards Latin American
anti-imperialism clear:
“When
I came into office, at the first Summit of the Americas that I
attended, Hugo Chávez”—the late anti-American Venezuelan
dictator—“was still the dominant figure in the conversation,”
he said. “We made a very strategic decision early on, which was,
rather than blow him up as this 10-foot giant adversary, to
right-size the problem and say, ‘We don’t like what’s going on
in Venezuela, but it’s not a threat to the United States.’ ”
Obama
said that to achieve this rebalancing, the U.S. had to absorb the
diatribes and insults of superannuated Castro manqués. “When I saw
Chávez, I shook his hand and he handed me a Marxist critique of the
U.S.–Latin America relationship,” Obama recalled. “And I had to
sit there and listen to Ortega”—Daniel Ortega, the radical
leftist president of Nicaragua—“make an hour-long rant against
the United States. But us being there, not taking all that stuff
seriously—because it really wasn’t a threat to us”—helped
neutralize the region’s anti-Americanism.
If
we substitute “anti-imperialism” for “anti-Americanism”
(tellingly, Obama doesn't count Latin America as America), we can see
that the Obama Doctrine is a more clever and, therefore, more
insidious policy to maintain US dominance in the region; overt
tolerance coupled with covert intervention promises more success than
an earlier strategy of saber-rattling and brute force.
To
the people of the US, Obama was underscoring what he hopes to be
perceived as his foreign policy legacy, an opening to Cuba that will
stand with Nixon's rapprochement with the Peoples Republic of
China and Reagan's overtures to Gorbachev's USSR. Like Reagan's move,
Obama's Cuba trip was a charm offensive meant to sell the image of a
benign super power putting aside long-standing differences in order
to “open up” opportunities for business and bring Cuba back into
the Western fold. But unlike his predecessors, Obama presses his
initiative late in his term, leaving the heavy lifting to those who
will follow. The fact that he never tackled the Helms-Burton act
early in his service (and a host of other promises and expectations)
when he inherited a super-majority in the legislative branch
demonstrates both a slug-like caution and a shallowness of
conviction, a less flattering part of his legacy.
To
the Cuban people, Obama brought to Havana a caricature of past
relations and the attitude of a friendly big brother. He made his
point of selling market reforms, outside investors, and Western-style
“democracy,” wrapping it with a ribbon of smarmy
good-neighborliness.
While
the Western media and liberals saw this as a moment of Obama's
greatness and magnanimity, one man saw it differently. Charged with
protecting Cuban sovereignty and dignity for the last fifty-six
years,
Fidel Castro Ruz wrote
from retirement, reminding the world that while Cuba seeks normal
country-to-country relations with the US, it neither forgets nor
forgives the transgressions of the past. Nor does it trust the
promises of the future.
In
a not-too-subtle reminder-- direct enough for even the planners and
speech writers in the State Department-- Fidel quotes Antonio Maceo,
Afro-Cuban leader of the mambises in the liberation struggle
against Spain: “Whoever attempts to appropriate Cuba will reap only
the dust of its soil drenched in blood, if he does not perish in the
struggle.”
Fidel
offers “brother Obama” a history lesson in the long and
relentless effort to overthrow the Cuban revolution by its “neighbor”
to the North. Nor will he allow the neighbor to the north to shrug
off the Cold War as merely a past misunderstanding. He reminds Obama
that the Cold War battle lines in Africa divided colonialism and
Apartheid from African liberation. Without embarrassing Obama with
the fact that the US stood with those opposing African
liberation, Fidel revisited Cuba's intense, principled and long
support for Africa's freedom.
In
contrast to the truncated, simplistic, and self-serving account of
the struggle for racial equality in the US offered by Obama (“But
people organized; they protested; they debated these issues; they
challenged government officials. And because of those protests, and
because of those debates, and because of popular mobilization, I’m
able to stand here today as an African-American and as President of
the United States. That was because of the freedoms that were
afforded in the United States that we were able to bring about
change.”), Fidel reminded the US President that the Revolutionary
government “swept away racial discrimination” in Cuba and
persistently fought manifestations of racism. Unlike in the US, the
Cuban people fought racism along with their government, not against
the government's promotion of it; where racism persists in Cuba, it
is in spite of the government, not because of it.
Fidel,
with a Marxist dedication to historical context, understandably views
US overtures with some skepticism, doubting that the changes mark an
epiphany from the long-standing policy of defeating the revolution.
But as one its leaders and staunchest defenders, he makes his
position clear: “No one should be under the illusion that the
people of this dignified and selfless country will renounce the
glory, the rights, or the spiritual wealth they have gained with the
development of education, science, and culture... We do not need the
Empire to give us anything.”
Cubans
should be filled with pride that they enjoy the wisdom and vigilance
of one of the last century's greatest revolutionary leaders. We
should all be appreciative of the exceptional commitment to truth and
principle of this warrior for socialism and peace.
Zoltan
Zigedy
1 comment:
Bravo Zoltan, for the well written summary of President Obama's recent trip to Cuba. I agree that "slug ilke caution and shallowness of conviction" are less than laudable traits, but regrettably they seem to serve the personal interests of American politicians well. As for Mr. Fidel Castro declaring that Cuba requires nothing from the Empire, it expresses a noble independent spirit. Curious; however, that it was left to Fidel, rather than his brother who is the elected President, to state such an eloquent riposte to Mr. Obama's "Imperialism lite" message. Raul was made out as a buffoon like character trying in vain to lift Obama's arm in public.
Post a Comment