army

Fidel Castro has written his latest reflection titled: “The Living and the Dead.” The Maximum Leader turned op-ed writer acknowledged recently sacked Education Minister Luis Ignacio Gómez Guriérrez as “truly exhausted” and “losing energy and revolutionary conscience.” While referencing his numerous travels abroad on behalf of Cuban education, Fidel chastised him for previous speeches whereby he took “personal accomplishment” instead of “extolling a body of work that was the authentic product of numerous revolutionary cadres.”

Fidel mentions the selection process of his replacement Ena Elsa Velázquez Cobiella, who was among the list of fifteen candidates.

However, further along his reflection, a cryptic passage summons the following:

“When I had the privilege of also being consulted on the eve of the election of the Council of State, I did not hesitate in proposing that prestigious military leaders –who brought our heroic people glory and moral authority– such as Leopoldo Cintras Frías and Álvaro López Miera, who are mature, modest, brimming with experience and energy, younger than the military officer who is one of the strongest and most threatening candidates for the leadership of the empire, should be proposed to the National Assembly as candidates for membership in the Council of State. I know other cadres, quite a bit younger than they are, highly qualified, with excellent training and not very publicized, people whom we must consider.”

Is this tacit acknowledgment that those generals selected to the Council of State where chosen because they are loyal acolytes of Raul Castro and the younger generation of capable officers were passed over?

Moreover, does this cryptic passage alert us to a discontent by officers, and that future and careful consideration by Raul’s regime should be made to advance the younger generation within the officer corps to quell such discontent?

Something worth pondering about the state of internal cohesion of the armed forces.

[H/T: La Nueva Cuba.]

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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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Pinar del Rio

• PEDRO MIGUEL PÉREZ BETANCOURT (Chief, Navy)

Habana

• DELSA ESTHER PUEBLA VILTRE (Chief, Office of Combatant Care)
• CLARIBEL AGUILAR RODRÍGUEZ (Captain, Ministry of Interior (MININT)
• DAYMARA ILEANA AGUILAR SEVILLANO (Instructor, Political Directorate - Ministry of Interior (MININT)
• REINALDO ROMERO PÉREZ (Officer, Personal Security - Ministry of Interior (MININT)
• RAMÓN PARDO GUERRA (Chief, General Staff, National Civil Defense)
• CARLOS LIRANZA GARCÍA (Specialist, Military Industries Union)
• LEOPOLDO CINTRA FRÍAS (Chief, Western Army)

Matanzas

• JOAQUÍN DE LAS MERCEDES QUINTAS SOLÁS (Chief, Central Army)
• ÁLVARO LÓPEZ MIERA (Chief, General Staff and Vice-Minister - FAR)
• JULIO CÉSAR GANDARILLA BERMEJO (Chief, Military Counter-Intelligence)
• ERNESTO RUIZ RAMOS (Chief, General Staff - Military Sector)

Villa Clara

• JULIO CASAS REGUEIRO (First-Vice Minister - FAR)
• JOSÉ ANTONIO ALONSO MONTERREY (Chief, FAR Enterprise System - Party Politics Department)

Ciego de Avila

• REINA LUCÍA BLANCO BÁEZ (Chief, Cadres and Personnel - Military Counter-Intelligence)

Camaguey

• ENRIQUE CARMELO PÉREZ MEDINA (Chief, Youth Direction - Ministry of Interior (MININT)

Las Tunas

• JUAN RAFAEL RUIZ PÉREZ (Chief, Direction - MINFAR)

Holguin

• CARLOS FERNÁNDEZ GONDÍN (First Vice-Minister - Ministry of Interior (MININT)
• RUBÉN MARTÍNEZ PUENTE (Director, Agricultural Military Union - MINFAR)
• JORGE LUIS GUERRERO ALMAGUER (Chief, Cadre Direction - MINFAR)
• RAMÓN ESPINOSA MARTÍN (Chief, Eastern Army)
• WALTER JOSÉ SANTANA HABER (Cadre, Ministry of Interior (MININT)

Granma

• FRANCY REBECA GARCÉS GARCÍA (Official, Ministry of Interior (MININT)
• LEONARDO RAMÓN ANDOLLO VALDÉS (Second Chief, General Staff - FAR)
• LEONARDO TAMAYO NÚÑEZ (Association of Cuban Revolution Combatants)
• ANTONIO ENRIQUE LUSSÓN BATLLE (Chief, Special Forces - FAR)
• ONELIO MARIANO AGUILERA BERMÚDEZ (Chief, General Staff - Eastern Army)

Guantanamo

• CLARO ORLANDO ALMAGUEL VIDAL (Chief, Logistics - FAR)
• ARMANDO ENRIQUE GARCÍA BATISTA (Chief, Political Section - Eastern Army)

Source: National Assembly of the People’s Power

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Might Cuba’s military draw parallels to China’s plight in regards to unemployed ex-servicemen?

The Economist features an article detailing the predicament be facing China’s PLA and leadership’s concern over such a destabilizing situation.

The following excerpts illustrate the case in point:

Over the past couple of years protests by demobilised soldiers have become a potent challenge to local governments trying to keep the lid on unrest during a period of wrenching social and economic change. The unrest has embarrassed the ruling Communist Party, which came to power militarily and might have fallen in 1989 but for the army’s crushing of pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square.

The ex-servicemen’s main grievance is the difficulty of settling back into civilian life. Most soldiers from towns are assigned jobs in the civilian sector when they leave the army. But this has become increasingly difficult because of the dismantling of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in recent years and the resentment of surviving SOEs at having ex-soldiers foisted on them. Rural soldiers—the bulk of the non-officer ranks—are being sent back to villages where there is next to nothing to do.

In Yantai around 2,000 ex-soldiers gathered in mid-July outside the local legislature to demand better benefits. They also wanted to make the point that the toothless legislature should be doing a better job of supervising the government. The Yantai authorities responded unfavourably. Activists say that police have stepped up surveillance of their homes and that plainclothes officers often follow them. Police broke up your correspondent’s meeting with a group of ex-servicemen, on the pretext of a passport check.

[…]

Given the army’s vital importance to the maintenance of party rule, the official press is especially reticent about publicising unrest among ex-servicemen. Chinese academics rarely mention the topic. But in an article that appeared in the spring edition of China Security, a quarterly published in Washington, DC, Yu Jianrong of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said that demobilised soldiers could act as a “bond” to bring together isolated disaffected groups. Mr Yu said ex-servicemen in the countryside, who he said numbered 20m, had the “social capital, organisational, networking and mobilisation capabilities to be the bridge between workers and peasants”. In the southern province of Hunan, he said, veterans had formed an “anti-corruption brigade” including laid-off workers, peasants and intellectuals of 100,000 members. This number is unverifiable, given the underground nature of any such movement.

[Photo: The Economist]

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