October 29, 2007

Bush: If It Failed Everywhere Else, Let’s Do It in Cuba Too

 

The Johnny-One-Note Administration is playing its music with a Latin beat, by applying the only approach it knows to the dynamic Cuban situation. The president is assuring any doubters that the U.S. government will continue its unsuccessful Cuba policy of 50 years – namely, saying their government is evil, refusing to deal with it in any constructive manner and unsuccessfully pleading with other countries to follow suit.

 

The administration’s stated policy seems designed to achieve several objectives – limiting its own options in responding to current changes, ensuring the new leadership has less incentive toward reform and announcing that potential competitors for Cuba’s business have nothing to fear from us. Some misguided folks might see an opportunity for correcting a fruitless course and gaining new leverage. But “stay the course” is again the phrase of the day. No quitters we.

 

Describing the complexity of the present Cuban situation as merely a brotherly transfer of power is Mesopotamianly simplistic. The dynamics of Cuban politics have been precarious for some time. Clearly the Commandante’s mystique and charisma have largely kept the basic structure of the regime in place. Without his persona at the helm, many existing forces are likely to bubble to the surface.

 

Our president is right that many Cubans want to be more like us – at least economically – Michael Moore’s rendition of their health system notwithstanding. There are reports that many pre-Castro evils are recurring – rampant prostitution, economic disparities and social discontent. But Cubans are proud of many aspects of their situation – gains in education, yes, health and a government that has refused to be pushed around by Uncle Sam and gotten away with it for so long. Many dislike multiple aspects of their current system and want serious change, but they will never fight to trade their “revolution” for George W. Bush’s “democracy”.

 

Our actions all but ensure that when the dust finally clears, our friends will be a small and marginal minority, as are our “friends” in many other countries. We are not doing them a service with our narrow-minded “support”. They also ensure that the U.S. will be left out of lucrative business opportunities that others exploit during this dynamic period.

 

The administration uses the same hammer for any type of nail that comes its way. Divide people into “good” and “evil”, threaten, and then attempt to bludgeon the evil people into submission – first by other means, then by force.

 

You’d think the failure of this approach to yield positive results might cause some reflection and review. But these aren’t apparently in the repertoire of the decider. As has been pointed out in several recent books and articles, the job of the decider is deciding, which doesn’t include second-guessing any of those decisions, regardless of the results or situation on the ground.

 

The good can do no wrong, incompetence and even corruption notwithstanding. And the evil can do nothing good, no matter how balances of power and interests may shift. The Bible teaches that God would rather have the sinner repent than be destroyed. Good enough for God perhaps, but not for this administration.

 

I was no fan of Ronald Reagan as president. He shared qualities with this president – deeply conservative instincts, the willingness to make unpopular decisions, very little in the way of intellectual curiosity – rather a tendency to apply basic principles and intuition to the situation of the moment. But even Reagan took the world as it came, rather than as he wished it were. He used U.S. power in ways that generally avoided outright military force. He cut and ran when useful.

 

Relying on force or the threat of force as a principal strategy may have had some possibility when the U.S. had the large preponderance of power in the world, though even then with limits and downside. Now with power and influence more evenly balanced, especially economic, this approach mostly makes us look silly and emboldens and empowers our adversaries.

 

We are still the most powerful nation on the planet, but raw power now has its limits. We can’t get the Germans or the French to support sanctions on Iran. We can’t get the Turks not to attack Kurdistan, the only area of Iraq that has remotely complied with our vision for that country. We can’t even get the Kurds to placate the Turks by, imagine, fighting terrorism on their own soil.

 

Our current leadership has not factored new power limitations, and much else, into current decision-making. Nostalgia feels good, but it can be disastrous as a focus of foreign policy. Cuba, just 90 miles from Florida, is an unfortunate example of this limitation. It’s not the most dangerous.