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La Nueva Cuba broke the story that was first published in Spain’s El Periódico de Catalunya:
The BBC reports:
Cuba’s National Assembly has opened its end-of-year session without President Fidel Castro, who was taken ill some five months ago.
It is only the second time in the past 30 years that he has not attended and his usual chair was left empty.
The veteran leader handed over control to his brother Raul in July, before undergoing urgent intestinal surgery.
Fidel Castro has not been seen in public since then but photographs and TV images of him have been shown.
The Cuban leader is not expected to make an appearance during the meeting, although a telephone call or message is possible.
The session began with lawmakers singing the national anthem behind the closed doors of the Havana convention centre.
Missed parade
A minute’s silence was observed for a member of parliament who had died.
During a speech, Cuban Economics Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez addressed the absent Fidel Castro.
“Keep following the new paths of combat for the good of your people,” Mr Rodriguez said.
“We will be ready to carry out your orders and guarantee your work with the faith in victory that you have always instilled in us.”
It is the latest in a series of national events that Mr Castro has missed since falling ill.
Last month, he was not present at a major military parade marking the 50th anniversary of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces and the delayed celebration of his mid-August birthday.
In a speech earlier this week, Raul Castro, 75, did not mention his brother’s health.
But he said Cuba’s communist system would continue with or without Fidel, whom he called “irreplaceable”.
State secret
Correspondents say Raul Castro’s stated intention to delegate more widely and encourage more public debate may signal a shift towards more openness.
Cuban officials have repeatedly denied that Fidel Castro is suffering from cancer and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has denied that his ally’s illness is terminal.
Correspondents say that an increasing number of Cubans believe that, whatever Fidel Castro’s health might be, he seems unlikely to return to power.
Cubans were told that details of the ailment would be kept secret to prevent Cuba’s enemies from taking advantage of them.
Sphere: Related ContentKaren DeYoung of the Washington Post writes:Â
Cuban President Fidel Castro is very ill and close to death, Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte said yesterday.
“Everything we see indicates it will not be much longer . . . months, not years,” Negroponte told a meeting of Washington Post editors and reporters.
Castro relinquished power for the first time in 47 years after surgery July 31 for an undisclosed intestinal disorder. His brother, Raul, has assumed Castro’s duties, but Cuban authorities have repeatedly insisted that he is recovering and eventually will return to office. He was last seen in an Oct. 28 video, shown on Cuban national television, in which he appeared gaunt and weak and warned that his convalescence would be lengthy.
The Cuban leader did not show up as anticipated at a Dec. 2 national celebration in Havana scheduled to commemorate his 80th birthday and the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution. In a brief speech at the event, Raul Castro imparted no message from his brother but said that Cuba is willing to open negotiations with the United States “to settle the long U.S.-Cuba disagreement.”
In rejecting the offer this week, Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon told reporters that the Bush administration will deal with Cuba’s Communist government only when it shows a commitment to democracy. During the period of uncertainty under Raul Castro, Shannon said, “the regime has actually become harder and more orthodox and is not in a position to signal in any meaningful way what direction it will take post-Fidel.”
Congressional advocates of easing long-standing U.S. sanctions against Cuba are scheduled to fly to the island today for a three-day visit exploring potential policy changes under Raul Castro. The bipartisan group of 10 is the largest congressional delegation to visit Cuba.
Sphere: Related ContentCanada’s CBC reports:
A crowd of government supporters swarmed a small group of dissidents in the Cuban capital Havana on Sunday, an incident a Canadian expert on Cuba suggests is part of a message being sent to Washington.
The demonstrators were on a silent march in a Havana park to mark International Human Rights Day when they were roughed up.
It was one of the first public confrontations since President Fidel Castro disappeared from public life because of illness in July.
Hal Klepak, a historian at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ont., says the incident shows that the Cuban military is trying to send a message to the U.S. that, although its uniformed ranks are depleted, Cubans are prepared to fight to defend the island nation.
Loyalists accused Sunday’s demonstrators of being mercenaries for the U.S. government.
Klepak says during the last four months, with Castro sick and out of the public eye, the U.S. has been trying everything short of armed invasion to find chinks in Cuba’s self-defence plan.
“It is essential that the Cuban armed forces show that this will not be quick victory,” Klepak said.
The Cubans realize they can’t win an all-out war against the United States, he said, but “they will still be in a position to make the war long, bloody, costly and embarrassing.
“They believe and they are determined.”
Cuba’s armed forces recently paraded through the streets of Havana in a display of military force, but Klepak said the military is down to its bare bones.
When Cuba’s economy nearly collapsed after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, it drastically cut its armed forces from 300,000 troops to about 55,000.
If it had to muster a real fighting force, Klepak said the Cuban military would need the “people’s army,” hundreds of thousands of trained civilians on the reserve list, to put up a real fight. Klepak estimated there are 700,000 trained reservists in Cuba.
Sphere: Related ContentBy George Friedman of STRATFOR
It is now apparent that Fidel Castro is dying. He is 80 years old, so that should not be surprising. The Cubans are managing his death as if it were a state secret — hiding the self-evident — but that is the nature of the regime, as it is the nature of many governments. The question on the table is whether the Cuban government can survive Castro’s death — and in either case, what course Cuba will follow.
The Communist regime, as we have known it, cannot possibly survive Castro’s death. To be sure, Fidel’s brother Raul will take over leadership; the Cuban Communist Party, the military and intelligence system, and the government ministries will continue to rule. But the regime that Castro created will be dead. It will be dead because Castro will be dead, and whatever survives him cannot be called the same regime. It will have been fundamentally transformed.
Fidel Castro’s departure from the stage, then, leads to two questions. First, what will the future hold for Cuba? And second, will that matter to anyone other than the Cubans?
The Death of a Dream
Under Fidel, the Cuban regime had an end beyond itself. Fidel believed — and, much more significantly, enough of his citizens and international supporters believed — that the purpose of the regime was not only to transform life in Cuba but, more important, to revolutionize Latin America and the rest of the Third World and confront American imperialism with the mobilized masses of the globe. Fidel did not rule for the sake of ruling. He ruled for the sake of revolution.
Raul was a functionary of the Castro regime, as were the others who now will step into the tremendous vacuum that Fidel will leave. For Raul and others of his class, the Cuban regime was an end in itself. Their goal was to keep it functioning. Fidel dreamed of using the regime to reshape the world. His minions, including his brother, may once have had dreams, but for a very long time their focus has been on preserving the regime and their power, come what may.
Therefore, on the day that Fidel Castro dies, the regime he created will die with him and a new regime of functionaries will come into existence. That regime will not be able to claim the imaginations of the disaffected and the politically ambitious around the world. The difference between the old and the new in Cuba is the difference between Josef Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev. It is not a difference in moral character but of imagination. Stalin was far more than a functionary. He was, in his own way, a visionary — and was seen by his followers around the world as a visionary. When the Soviet Union fell into the hands of Brezhnev, it fell into the hands of a functionary. Stalin served a vision; Brezhnev served the regime. Stalin ruled absolutely; Brezhnev ruled by committee and consensus. Stalin was far more than the state and party apparatus; Brezhnev was far less.
Brezhnev’s goal was preserving the Soviet state. There were many reasons for the fall of the Soviet Union, but at the core, the fact that mere survival had become its highest aim was what killed it. The Soviets still repeated lifelessly the Leninist and Stalinist slogans, but no one believed them — and no one thought for one moment that Brezhnev believed them.
It has been many years since Fidel’s vision had any real possibility of coming true. Certainly, it has had little meaning since the fall of the Soviet Union. In some ways, the death of Che Guevara in Bolivia was the end. But regardless of when the practical possibilities of Cuba had dissolved, Fidel Castro continued to believe that the original vision was still possible. More important, his followers believed that he believed, and therefore, they believed. No one can believe in Raul Castro’s vision. Thus, the era that began in 1959 is ending.
The ascent of Raul raises the question of what hope there is for Cuba.
Fidel promised tremendous economic improvements, along with Cuba’s place in the vanguard of the revolution. The vanguard now has disintegrated, and the economic improvements never came in the ways promised. When Fidel took power, he argued that it was economic relations with the imperialists that impoverished Cuba. By the end of his rule, he had come to argue that it was the lack of economic relations with the imperialists that impoverished Cuba — that the American embargo had strangled the country. That was absurd: Cuba could trade with Canada, the rest of Latin America, Europe, Asia and wherever it wanted. It was not locked out of the world. It wasn’t even locked out of the United States, since third parties would facilitate trade. But then, Fidel was always persuasive, even when completely incoherent. That was the foundation of his strength: He believed deeply in what he said, and those who listened believed as well. Fidel was writing poems, not economic analysis, and that kept anyone from looking too closely at the details.
Now, the poetry is ending, and the detail men and bean-counters are in charge. They don’t know any poems — and while they can charge the United States with bearing the blame for all of the revolution’s failures, it is not the same as if Fidel were doing it. Regimes do not survive by simple brute strength. There have to be those who believe. Stalin had his believers, as did Hitler and Saddam Hussein. But who believes in Raul and his committees? Certainly, the instruments of power are in their hands, as they were in the hands of other communist rulers whose regimes collapsed. But holding the instruments of power is not, over time, enough. It is difficult to imagine the regime of functionaries surviving very long. Without Fidel, there is little to hope for.
A Question of Control
The future of Cuba once meant a great deal to the international system. Once, there was nearly a global thermonuclear war over Cuba. But that was more than 40 years ago, and the world has changed. The question now is whether the future of Cuba matters to anyone but the Cubans.
Geopolitically, the most important point about Cuba is that it is an island situated 90 miles from the coast of the United States — now the world’s only superpower. Cuba was a Spanish colony until the Spanish-American war, and then was either occupied or dominated by the United States and American interests until the rise of Castro. Its history, therefore, is defined first by its relationship with Spain and then by its relationship to the United States.
From the U.S. standpoint, Cuba is always a geographical threat. If the Mississippi River is the great highway of American agriculture and New Orleans its great port to the world, then Cuba sits directly athwart New Orleans’ access to the world. There is no way for ships from New Orleans to exit the Gulf of Mexico into the Atlantic Ocean but to traverse two narrow channels on either side of Cuba — the Yucatan channel, between Cuba’s western coast and the Yucatan; or the Straits of Florida, between the island’s northern coast and Florida. If these two channels were closed, U.S. agricultural and mineral exports and imports would crumble. Not only New Orleans, but all of the Gulf Coast ports like Houston, would be shut in.
Cuba does not have the size or strength in and of itself to close those channels. But should another superpower control Cuba, the threat would become real and intolerable. The occupation of Cuba by a foreign power — whether Spain, Germany, Russia or others — would pose a direct geopolitical threat to the United States. Add to that the possibility that missiles could be fired from Cuba to the United States, and we can see what Washington sees there. It is not Cuba that is a threat, but rather a Cuba that is allied with or dominated by a foreign power challenging the United States globally. Therefore, the Americans don’t much care who runs Cuba, so long as Cuba is not in a politico-military alliance with another power.
Under Spain, there was a minor threat. But prior to World War II, German influence in Cuba was a real concern. And Castro’s Communist revolution and alliance with the Soviet Union were seen by the United States as a mortal threat. It was not Cuban ideology (though that was an irritant) nearly so much as Cuba’s geopolitical position and the way it could be exploited by other great powers that obsessed the United States. When the Soviet Union went away, so did the American obsession. Now, Washington’s Cuba policy is merely a vestige from a past era.
Without a foreign sponsor, Cuba is geopolitically impotent. It cannot threaten U.S. sea-lanes. It cannot be a base for nuclear weapons to be used against the United States. Its regime cannot be legitimized by the fact that the international system is focused on it. That means that since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Cubans, under Castro, have been trying to make themselves useful to major powers. Havana approached the Chinese, and they didn’t bite. The Russians may be interested in the future, but they have their hands full in their own neighborhood right now. Countries like North Korea and Iran are in no position to exploit the opportunity.
The Cubans have had to content themselves with playing midwife to the leftist movements in Venezuela and Bolivia. The Latin American left in general continues to take its inspiration from Fidel’s Cuba. Now, this does not create a new geopolitical reality, but it does create the possibility of one, which is what Fidel has been working on. If Fidel dies, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia are not going to turn to Raul for inspiration and legitimacy. Rather, Raul is going to be looking to Venezuela for cheap oil, while Chavez claims the place of Fidel as the leader of the Latin American left.
So, if Cuba is no longer to be the center of the Latin American revolutionary left, then what is it? It will become an island of occasional strategic importance — though not important at the moment — with a regime of functionaries as inspiring as a Bulgarian Party Congress in 1985. Cuba with Fidel was the hope of the Latin American left. Cuba without Fidel is tedious method, a state with a glorious past and a dubious future.
Past as Prologue
Certainly, Raul and his colleagues have superb instruments with which to stabilize Cuban security, but these are no better than the instruments that Romania and East Germany had. Those instruments will work for a while, but not permanently. For the regime to survive, Cuba must transform its economic life, but to do that, it risks the survival of the regime — for the regime’s control of the economy is one of the instruments of stability. Raul is not a man who is about to redefine the country, but he must try.
We are, therefore, pessimistic about the regime’s ability to survive. Or more precisely, we do not believe that the successor regime — communism without Fidel — can hold on for very long. Raul Castro now is reaching out to the United States, but contrary to the Cuban mythology, the United States cannot solve Cuba’s problems by ending the trade embargo. The embargo is a political gesture, not a functioning reality. End it or keep it, the Cuban problem is Cuba — and without Fidel, the Cubans will have to face that fact.
Sphere: Related ContentThousands of Cubans will be participating in the National Defense Days Saturday and Sunday, aimed at training the population to face any possible armed aggression.
The two-day exercises intend to continue improving the preparation of all Cubans involved in the Defense Councils, with the principle of the “War of the Entire People.”
Men and women civilians have formed part of the defense system along with the armed forces.
Members of the Territorial Troop Militias, Special Troops, Production and Defense Units, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces will also participate in the territorial defense drills, it was announced here.
Source: PL
Sphere: Related ContentThe military parade began along the Plaza of the Revolution at 8AM EST with the Cuban national anthem and a multiple cannon fire salute.Defense Minister Raul Castro was the only one to give a speech. He made reference to the Cuban government’s willingness to establish relations with the United States and negotiate under Cuba’s conditions. He made no reference to Fidel Castro’s state of health.
Fidel Castro was not present.
859AM: Central Army passes, Gran Unidad de Tanques Sanguily, Special Forces.
905AM: Amphibious transports and tanks (modernized T-55 & T-62).
909AM: Anti-air cannons, modernized by the Union of Military Industries.
911AM: MiGs 21, 23 & 29 roar over the sky.
912AM: General Staff of the Revolutionary Armed Forces.
918AM: Cuban populace marches.
Sphere: Related Content
