Posts from — April 2008

From AFP:

The head of the US Southern Command, Admiral James Stavridis, told lawmakers Tuesday the changes in Cuba under President Raul Castro were “interesting,” but that only time would tell if they were real or “cosmetic.”

“I think it is too early to tell as yet, but it is interesting that Raul is opening some of the economic freedoms such as cellphones, access to tourist hotels, property rights,” he told a congressional panel looking into his command’s budget.

“We need to watch to see if this is a sincere change or just cosmetic,” he added.

Stavridis was questioned on the reforms Raul Castro, 76, has introduced in Cuba since he took over as president from his ailing brother Fidel, 81, in late February.

Raul Castro recently lifted a series of bans on Cubans renting cars and hotel rooms and purchasing goods such as pressure cookers, DVD’s, electric bikes and cell phones.

He is also considering agriculture reforms that include opening up the sector to greater foreign investment and closing down farming cooperatives that have proven to be inefficient.

Cuba watchers say there is likely a short-term political benefit of allowing greater economic openness, though they also warn that too many reforms by Cuba’s centrally-controlled, one-party regime could build pressure for more change than the government is prepared to allow.

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The specter of an army inspired coup d’etat in Cuba is remote, but perhaps a viable one, if the right variables are in place.

However, the general trend of coups internationally has waned significantly.

Nikolay Marinov of Yale University and Hein Goemans of University of Rochester have recently written a paper addressing the subject of the coups decline, titled: “What Happened to the Coup d’Etat? International Responses to the Seizure of Executive Power.”

The authors use new data to demonstrate the decline of non-constitutional seizure of power since the 1990s. They contend one possible explanation to the dwindling popularity of the coup is based, since the end of the Cold War:

outside pressure has produced a development they characterize as the “electoral norm” - a requirement that binds successful coup-entrepreneurs to hold reasonably prompt and competitive elections upon gaining power.

They model their findings based on cost/benefit analysis with successful coups and utilize Archigos (a data base on Leaders 1875-2004), which identifies all leaders in all countries in the world and information about the manner in which they assumed and left office. The dataset produces 231 distinct coup events between 1960 and 2003.

Marinov and Goemans further add:

Empirically, this model suggests that greater post-coup likelihood of elections (due, for example, to international pressure for democracy) would go together with a decreasing incidence of coups. Using a new, comprehensive dataset of coup-events and elections, we find this to be the case. After the Cold War, the incidence of coups has decreased markedly. At the same time, coups are much more likely to result in competitive elections rather than in the entrenchment of a non-elected government: whereas pre-1990 only 15 % of all coup events lead to elections in 3 years or less, a comparablestatistic for the post-1990 world sets the incidence of elections at 52 %.

[Photo: Napoleon Bonaparte in the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire in Saint-Cloud, François Bouchot, 1840.]

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The recent changes implemented by Cuba’s government (i.e., domestic appliances, cars, cell phones, and hotels now accessible to the populace) although positive, they do not go to the root of economic, social and political problems facing the country, writes Pedro Anibal Riera Escalante in La Nueva Cuba.

Riera Escalante under the cover of Cuban consul, was chief of Cuba’s Intelligence Center in Mexico City  in the 1990s where he was sent to surveil and penetrate Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operations in Central America. Years later, Riera Escalante was involved in an incident, which turned into an international scandal. Believing that he was going to defect in Mexico, the Cuban regime ordered operatives to kidnap Riera bringing him to Cuba in less than 24 hours with cooperation of Mexico’s government. In Cuba, Riera served years in prison, and was later set free.

Riera emphasizes:

While dissidents and opposition are not permitted to have access to the press, these measures, do not really constitute a democratic opening in the country.

Might this point of view be the growing mindset of a faction within Cuba’s intelligence apparatus acknowledging Cuba’s political state through Riera’s written voice?

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Cuba’s Central Army commemorated on Friday its 47th anniversary. A politico-cultural ceremony took place at the Defense Preparation School in Matanzas presided by Army Corps General (Lt. General) Joaquín Quinta Solá (Chief, Central Army), presidents and vice-presidents of the Defense Councils of the five provinces comprising of respective commands.

A military review was held with blocks of infantry, tank, and artillery units, Special Troops, Revolutionary War Navy, Ministry of Interior, sharpshooters, Camilitos, units of the MTT (Territorial Troop Militias) and Production and Defense Brigades.

Source: AIN

[Photo: Central Army military review, 2005.]

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