The Economist Intelligence Unit forecasts for Cuba, “fiscal retrenchment will limit growth to only 2% in 2010. In 2011 policy relaxation will allow growth to pick up to 3.7%.”
U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Western Hemisphere, Frank O. Mora, and U.S. Special Assistant to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Western Hemisphere, Nicholas F. Zimmerman, have written a joint article in the September-October, 2010 issue of Military Review titled ”The Top Seven Myths of U.S. Defense Policy Toward the Americas.”
The article is adapted by a speech delivered by Mora in Miami, Florida earlier this year. Cuba is the seventh myth, and subtitled “Myth Seven: U.S. Cuba policy is either too over-reaching or too modest.”
Mora and Zimmerman start off the section with:
Although not necessarily a security or defense issue, the seventh myth concerns Cuba.
Further emphasizing:
It is important to recognize that the President has done exactly what he promised he would do with regard to Cuba policy.
[...]
In sum, the promises that President Obama has fulfilled are significant. They create opportunities for relationship building and exchange, and they demonstrate that the United States is sincere in its openness and in its desire to write a new chapter in the history of U.S.-Cuban relations. Of course, a fundamental change in the U.S.-Cuba relationship requires action and good will from both sides. Unfortunately, the Cuban authorities have demonstrated little good will and even less positive action to date. As Secretary of State Clinton noted, the Cuban authorities remain intransigent.
And, on the policy itself:
Despite the continued intransigence of Cuban authorities, U.S. policy remains focused on reaching out to the Cuban people to support their desire to determine their future freely, and it remains committed to advancing its national interests. Thus, the promotion of people-to-people bonds will continue. The risk that such bonds somehow aid current Cuban authorities is negligible. As such, the administration’s approach is appropriately cautious because it strikes the right balance between moving the U.S relationship with Cuba in a positive direction and maintaining pressure on the Cuban government to allow the Cuban people to be truly free.
The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a London-based independent think tank engaged in defense and security research, asks in its analysis of Cuba, how much of a threat does the Communist regime really pose to the world’s only superpower:
Raúl’s position as head of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias – FAR), who were greatly bolstered by the controlled economic reforms initiated in 1993, suggested that the new president would be in favour of expanding such open-market conditions to benefit the rest of the country. In reality, however, Raúl’s loyalty may lie less with the introduction of capitalism and more with the military itself. He was in favour of the 1993 reforms because they benefitted the army, not because he saw them as an intrinsically positive development.
This allegiance to the armed forces is not unexpected, but may well be giving the US some cause for alarm. The Cuban military currently manages around 60 percent of the economy, making it the strongest institution in the country. With its former head now in charge, the chances of a military state arising appear to be rather high. Indeed, the military exercises of 2004, shortly after Fidel’s public collapse, were the largest executed in nearly twenty years. It is reasonable to suppose that this was intended as a ‘show of strength’, not just for Cuba, but for Raúl himself (knowing, as he would, that he was the obvious candidate for power after his brother) and an indication of the route down which Cuba will be heading.
Joaquín Roy, professor of Int’l Studies at the University of Miami, posits in an op-ed for El Pais that the Obama Administration’s primary goal of modifying the Bush Administration’s past policies toward Cuba is to create a more solid base guaranteeing U.S. security, thus avoiding the destabilization (internal social explosion and mass exodus) of Cuba.
He describes the Cuban armed forces as:
Exceeding the half-century survival of the Castro regime, the Cuban Army is reduced to functioning as as a local territorial guard force and for internal repression. Its government (in transition or succession by the official transfer of power from Fidel Castro to his brother Raul) lies fully in Havana.”
[...]
Instead of presenting itself as a strategic threat, the Cuban Armed Forces are considered to be the only guarantee in avoiding the disintegration of the social fabric of a country just 100 miles from Key West.
And on Cuban internationalism:
Instead of well-equipped [Cuban] regiments fighting post-colonial wars in Africa as Soviet Union allies, today Cuba uses soft power with the exportation of thousands of doctors and teachers to Venezuela, Bolivia and other countries.
Roy sums up the reality of U.S. policy towards Cuba with “in Washington, stability translates into security.”
Preparations for full-scale oil exploration are gaining momentum in Cuba’s Gulf of Mexico waters just 50 miles from the US. [Financial Times]
“I was at death’s door, but I came back.” [Fidel Castro's interview in La Jornada]
Eight more arrested according to the Ladies in White. Three human rights activists in Havana and five members of the opposition in Guantánamo. [AFP]
“I still view corruption as an extraordinary danger to the country, since its “corrosive power” makes it a matter of “national security.” [IPS interview with Esteban Morales]
The Cuban gov’t is attempting to attract wealthy visitors by allowing the development of golf courses. A new law allows foreign investors to use state-owned land for up to 99 years. [BBC]
Jerry Brewer of Criminal Justice International Associates pens an op-ed (via Mexidata.info) on whether U.S. concessions are justified in light of the Castro regime’s destabilizing campaign in Latin America and continuous iron grip at home:
As Cuba and Latin America’s leftist regimes continue their efforts to prevent the U.S. from assisting its democratic neighbors with drug interdiction, and in the fight against transnational criminal insurgencies — violence and deaths continue to soar. In Venezuela alone, reports indicate a murder rate of 220 per 100,000 people. This is a higher rate than Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez.
Indeed, Caracas may currently be the most violent city in the world.
The U.S. must remember that Cold War espionage against us, by Cuba, is still alive and well. Too, the Guantanamo base remains a strategic observation hub for Caribbean activities that potentially threaten free people within this hemisphere. And it is clear Fidel Castro wants us out.
President Obama holds the cards. To free the Cuban people is a decision of the Castro regime.
(Image: Front page of August 13 edition of El Nacional showing homicide victims in a Caracas morgue as a result of spiraling violence.)
According to a report by Spain’s Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce on defense exports, anti-riot equipment was exported from Spain to Cuba in 2008—destined for the National Revolutionary Police and to be used for the public.
The anti-riot equipment, described in the report within articles related to defense materials, also falls under the category of chemical agents or biological toxins.
(Image: Madrid police officer in anti-riot gear. By Flickr – Oscar in the middle.)
The United States is creating conditions to change its foreign policy toward Cuba. [La Jornada]
A newly published book delves into the possibility that Fidel Castro ordered the murder of Chile’s Salvador Allende at the hands of a Cuban diplomat/agent whom Allende’s daughter married. [El Ciudadano]
The Spanish government has gotten into a diplomatic imbroglio because of its conciliatory posture toward the Cuban regime. [ABC]
Brazil and Cuba sign bilateral agreement on agriculture, meteorology and geology. [Prensa Latina]
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at the Aspen Institute on whether the Obama administration should move toward normalizing relations with Cuba. [Aspen Daily News Online]
The list encompasses strategic “items that senior Army and Department of Defense leaders should consider in providing military advice and formulating military strategy.”
Section VII under Regional Strategic Issues of KSIL focuses on the “Evolving Regional Security Matters in the Western Hemisphere,” wherein item 15 concentrates on “Implications for U.S. security of a post-Castro Cuba.”
“Jane’s Defense Weekly” reported that U.S. companies take high-resolution digital earth satellite images makes the United States recognized the existence of Chinese underground nuclear submarine base in Cuba, and captured 096 Chinese military is extremely confidential, “Tang” class strategic nuclear submarine (I commented: If a message is true, then this is a super enhanced version of the “Cuban missile crisis!” and I want to draw attention to this is that, since the Chinese nuclear submarine base in Cuba, then it may even is almost certain that Russia has military bases in Cuba and even the nuclear military bases! we know, the issue of Russian troops stationed overseas could be far more positive than China!).
There is no specific reference to the publication date of the JDW article nor the location of the base. A search through JDW‘s website has yielded no article.
However, if true, this significantly poses a major strategic threat to the United States mainland if future hostilities were to arise between the United States and Chinese militaries.
Moreover, China’s naval modernization efforts is to establish a blue water fleet.
Does this mean that Chinese naval power projection aspires outside its natural periphery of the South China Sea1 to also include the Atlantic and Caribbean with possible basing in Cuba?
Notes
1. For further elaboration on the subject, see International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Strategic Comments (Chinese navy’s new strategy in action), Volume 16, Comment 16 – May 2010.
(Image: The Type 096 submarine is a new class of SSBN rumored to be in development for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). By Wikipedia.)
Incompetence even helps explain the closeness of Venezuelan ties with Cuba. Two of the few state functions that do work reasonably well are Mr Chávez’s intelligence service and the social missions that deliver basic healthcare to Venezuela’s poor. Both, though, are primarily delivered not by Venezuelans but by Cubans, working in the country as doctors and attachés, in return for cheap oil.
As a European diplomat explained, whenever he has wanted to finesse a tricky point with the Venezuelan government he has often run it past the Cuban attachés first, because they could explain it in terms Venezuelans might accept and understand. “The Cubans are diplomatic adepts, and know which battles to fight,” he said. “The Venezuelans … see enemies behind every tree.” Because of this, Cuba might even have found itself a new global strategic role: Venezuela’s interlocutor to the rest of the world.
Konstantin Sonin, a Professor of Economics at the New Economic School in Moscow, penned an article in the Moscow Times where hecompares the economic and political consequences of Moscow’s support of local “tsars:” Cuba’s Fidel Castro and Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko.
The political life of Cuban leader Fidel Castro goes on and on, thwarting all attempts to draw up a final summary of his reign. Over the course of Castro’s 50 years in power, Cubans’ standard of living has remained practically unchanged — even as living conditions have improved by leaps and bounds in most other countries. Among the many questions I’d like to pose: How was Castro able to maintain control of a small and militarily weak country using the energy of far stronger world powers?
A comprehensive history of Fidel would undoubtedly help us understand the behavior of Belarussian leader Alexander Lukashenko, who has recently taken a series of steps to spite Russia’s current leadership.
It’s a historical fact that Cuba benefited greatly from the friendship and material support of the Soviet Union from the beginning of the 1960s to the late 1980s. But it is worth remembering that Fidel’s rule began with a friendship of an entirely different sort. Having seized power following the overthrow of the Batista regime, the newfound Cuban prime minister set out on a long visit to the United States in an effort to shore up relations there. It didn’t work out, of course. To draw support from the revolutionary poor while simultaneously defending American special interests at the U.S. government’s behest was a balancing act too difficult for even Castro. Understandably fearing that the United States would interfere in the island’s internal power struggles, Fidel threw himself into the arms of its Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union.
The story of the dramatic confrontation that occurred between the two warring superpowers during the Cuban Missile Crisis is a familiar one: Moscow placed nuclear-tipped rockets in Cuba; the Americans responded by threatening to blockade the island and inspect incoming vessels. Moscow withdrew the rockets and, in exchange, Washington agreed to withdraw its bases from Turkey and Italy and guarantee the safety of the Cuban government. Was it a draw? Yes, unless you count the person who won big at someone else’s expense.
It’s unclear what Moscow gained from all those years of supporting socialist Cuba. Fidel got the ability to consolidate and retain power despite shoddy domestic policies and brash foreign policies. (His country, one of the major economic failures of the 20th century, actually served as a source of “ideas” for others.)
The history of Fidel is not just an isolated case. The 20th century knew many other local “tsars” and socialist leaders who built up their own power and took handouts from all sides. For Russia, the lessons can be applied to Lukashenko. Support for an authoritarian, undemocratically elected leader might bring short-term gains, but it eventually turns a big country into a smaller country’s hostage. Attempts by big countries to use economic levers to pressure little Castros lead to lower standards of living and strengthen the authoritarian leaders’ power. If Lukashenko had to answer to voters, or if his power were restricted by an opposition-led parliament, he would have far fewer opportunities to manipulate us through his foreign policy.
In general, we don’t spend enough time studying the United States’ mistakes in Latin America over the past two centuries. We ought to hit the history books.
Deutsche Welle reports of a rebellious Spain hell-bent on pushing for change in the EU’s stance on Cuba:
As holder of the rotating EU Council presidency, Spain tried to massively influence the EU position on Cuba by pushing for increased dialogue and a normalization of relations despite Cuba not yet meeting the benchmarks set out in the Common Position.
“The relationship between the EU and Cuba has always been superficial,” Thiago de Aragao, Latin American senior research associate at the Foreign Policy Center, a London-based European think-tank, told Deutsche Welle.
“The only difference has been the relationship between Cuba and Spain, which due to history has been deeper. Spain has always had closer ties with Cuba. Spain has always been the most active EU state in encouraging talks between the countries in the hope of democratic openings.”
Spain’s argument that a more relaxed EU position would actually help achieve the human rights and democratic reform it sought took a massive blow in February with the tragic death of Cuban dissident Orlando Zapata, who died as a result of a hunger strike while in prison. Spain was forced to condemn Cuba along with the rest of Europe and the international community and reinforce the EU position on standing firm until human rights abuses ended.
[...]
“Germany holds strong to the Common Position and has been quite critical to the Spanish efforts to change it,” Professor Guenther Maihold, the deputy director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, told Deutsche Welle.
[...]
“While Spain seems to see in the release of the prisoners a moment of change in the Cuban regime, many observers see heavy economic problems as a future trigger to some opening of the economic system of the island,” Professor Maihold said. “After the release of prisoners we have always seen the arrest of new people and no change in the general politics of the regime.”
It seems likely that the debate over the EU’s Cuba policy will continue once the bloc’s political summer break is over. Many in the EU see the release of the political prisoners by Cuba as a step toward Havana meeting the criteria Europe has set for the normalization of relations but not as a justification for increased dialogue or ties.
(Image: Spain’s push for a policy change is led by its foreign minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos. AP.)
Jerry Bremer, CEO of Criminal Justice International Associates via Mexidata.com asks whether Cuba continues to pose a security risk to anyone in the Western Hemisphere:
Cuba’s Interior Ministry reportedly consists of approximately 20,000 officials assigned to their security and intelligence apparatus, along with an estimated 50,000 Cuban nationals in various official missions in Venezuela.
Castro’s resource starved revolution has been nurtured generously by President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. The Castro brother’s personal wealth has been estimated as “combined — easily worth $2 billion.” The Chavez Frias family in Venezuela “has amassed wealth on a similar scale since Chavez’s presidency began in 1999.”
[...]
Cuba had been getting approximately $5 billion a year from Venezuela in “oil, cash and kind.” It is further believed that Bolivarian organized crime groups entrenched within Chavez’s administration “have skimmed about $100 billion of the nearly $1 trillion of oil revenues PDVSA Oil has earned since 1999.”
[...]
Both Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez continue to telegraph nervous vibes to true democratic and free nations with their vociferous support of Iran, Syria and North Korea, among others named as state sponsors of world terrorism, this as well as denouncing Israel and the U.S. The Castro and Chavez revolutions are indeed suspect, insofar as neither appears to benefit the suffering of the Cuban nor Venezuelan people.
Cuba is much less armed and resourced to defend a revolution by itself. If the Castro brothers and Chavez truly want to stand up factually to defend a benign threat to the hemisphere, as well as lead their people to a higher standard of survival and living conditions, they must aggressively denounce terrorism, drug trafficking, and related death and violence. Their actions in this positive step might show some genuine sincerity.
European Union’s foreign relations ministers will begin debating early next week the consequences of the recent release of political prisoners in Cuba. [Europa Press]
Germany demands of Havana “true reforms,” i.e. free elections and respect human rights. [Clarín]
Dominican president Leonel Fernández meets with Army General Raul Castro and both countries sign agreements on diplomatic exchanges. [PL]
Ricardo Alarcón (Cuban parliament president) is in France meeting with French parliamentarians and socialist politicians. [CubaMinRex]
US diplomatic mission in Cuba convened a meeting with relatives of political prisoners who are refusing an offer to leave emigrate to Spain. [AFP]
Cuba has said it is ready to release more political prisoners, in addition to the 52 it announced it would free earlier this month. The releases are part of a deal between Cuba, the Catholic Church and Spain, which is taking in many of the men after their release. But the US has said prisoners who do travel to Spain will no longer be eligible for asylum in America, where many have relatives. [BBC]
The man behind the operation that broke up the most important organization involved in falsified documents in the United States was a double-agent who worked for Cuba and the United States. His codename was Lázaro.
In statements to EFE, Lázaro (whose real name is Robert Kelly) described the principal goal of “Tag Operation,” which was to prove Islamic terrorists used false documents sold by a [Mexican] group, however, the operation could not be completed because there was a lack of cooperation between U.S. security agencies.
Kelly (63-years old) is writing a book titled, Non Official Cover: The History of Lázaro (Sin cobertura oficial: la historia de Lázaro), where he relates his first mission was to infiltrate the Cuban General Directorate of Intelligence (Dirección de Inteligencia de Cuba) at the end of 1999 when he created a web page called La Voz de Cuba to defend the return of Elián González to his father.
He also asserts in his book that he was involved in the sale of SAM missiles in Nicaragua and in the defection of a Cuban scientist to the United States.
The 73-year-old great grandson of Alexander Graham Bell was sentenced to life in prison without parole for quietly spying for Cuba for nearly a third of a century from inside the State Department. His wife was sentenced to 5½ years. Retired intelligence analyst Kendall Myers said he meant his country no harm and stole secrets only to help Cuba’s people who “have good reason to feel threatened” by U.S. intentions of ousting the communist Castro government. [AP via Atlanta Journal-Constitution]
(Image: Artist rendering of Kendall Myers and his wife in U.S. Federal Court. The couple shared an admiration of the Cuban revolution. By Getty Images.)
UPDATE 20100716 @ 1548: I received an email from Jorge Piñon (Visiting Research Fellow with the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University and former president of Amoco Oil Latin America) pointing out that the Russians are not in deep waters, in fact, they are in two blocks of shallow waters as seen in the map (click image to expand further).
20100714 @ 0825: Russian state oil company Zarubezhneft plans to drill a shelf near Cuba in 2011. Zarubezhneft and the Cuban national oil company, Cubapetroleo, signed four contracts in November 2009 to conduct geologic explorations and hydrocarbon production. The contracts were the first long-term contracts between Russia and Cuba in the last 20 years. [RIA Novosti]
Christopher Sabatini, senior director of policy at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas and editor in chief of Americas Quarterly, argues for lifting the communications embargo on Cuba in the July/August 2010 issue of Foreign Policy magazine:
This leaves Washington in a quandary. Last week’s release of the 52 prisoners — independent journalists and human rights activists rounded up in the March, 2003 Black Spring crackdown — may have reduced the number of political prisoners rotting in Cuban jails to the lowest level in decades, but it was still, at best, a superficial act. Restrictions and state control over freedom of association and expression remain and there are still scores of prisoners being held for the inventive and uniquely Cuban offense of peligrosidad — “dangerousness” — often used to round up opponents under vague accusations of espionage. In addition to the now-estimated 120 political prisoners held in Cuban jails, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contractor Alan Gross, arrested in December for distributing laptops and cell phones to Cuba’s small Jewish community, remains in prison without formal charges brought against him.
Given this, it would be a mistake for Washington to overreact, engaging Havana with open arms over what was, in effect, a publicity stunt by the Castro brothers. On the other hand, intentionally antagonizing the regime by ramping up demands or dismissing the gesture would be equally damaging.
But the United States can respond to this gesture in a way that benefits Cuban society and individuals without legitimizing the regime or provoking a hostile reaction by the anti-Castro lobby in the United States. Ironically, that means doing what President Barack Obama has promised to do all along: follow through on his pledge from last April to loosen restrictions on U.S. telecom activities in Cuba and assist U.S. business in providing the tools for Cubans to communicate beyond the prison walls of the Castros’ island nation.
Unlike lifting the trade embargo on Cuba, which would require an act of Congress, these changes could be made by executive order, avoiding a politically costly battle with pro-embargo legislators. But more importantly, granting greater scope for U.S. telecom companies to sell cell-phones, software, and laptops in Cuba and establish the necessary infrastructure to make them work — such as cell phone towers and routers — would look generous, while loosening the Castro regime’s control over its people.
Earlier today the pro-dialogue/anti-embargo Cuba Study Group founded by Cuban-American businessman Carlos Saladrigas in collaboration with Americas Society/Council of the Americas, and Brookings Institution released a 48-page report on empowering the Cuban people through technology with recommendations for private and public sector leaders.
(Image: Cuban telecommunications monopoly ETECSA telephones. By Ecopolis.)
A day after giving a rare television interview, Cuba’s revolutionary leader Fidel Castro made a public appearance at an economic think tank in Havana, state-run television said, showing his photos. [AFP]
Newsweek magazine on the new tactics for an aged regime:
But Havana has already turned the concession to quick advantage. By taking the most obvious human-rights issue off the table, Raúl Castro has driven a new wedge between U.S. and European policies. Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos, who helped broker the deal, crowed that European negotiation, not American confrontation, had triumphed. Besides, the prisoner release is more symbol than substance. Cuba continues to detain critics, often for short periods, with no formal charges. Harassment and censorship have proved adequate to control the populace. Despite growing discontent over corruption, public protest is almost unknown. The Castro regime may be broke, but it’s firmly in control.
The faceless capitalists of Wall Street have long considered Venezuela a “sell” – the oil producing country’s foreign currency bonds are considered almost twice as risky as Greece’s. But might even Cuba’s revolutionary gerontocracy now believe the same?
For those who like to look at the world through the lens of financial conspiracies, that’s one tentative reading of why Cuba pledged last week to release 52 political prisoners. Yes, the issue was attracting unwelcome international attention. But it is also true that throughout its history, Cuba has been a master at playing its geo-strategic cards. The US and the USSR used to play the role of sugar daddy to the country before. Lately it’s been President Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela. But Venezuela’s economy, like Cuba’s, is now in a mess.
Any move that suggests Cuba wants to improve ties with the US – and freeing political prisoners is one step that could ease the US travel ban and, ultimately, the embargo – therefore represents a hedging of Cuba’s geo-strategic bets. Looked at another way, it is also a tacit recognition by Havana that Caracas, despite its similar ideological outlook and oil wealth, might now be, in traders’ parlance, an “underperform”.
The list of reasons of why Cuba – or Wall Street – might think so is long and growing. Venezuela this year tightened capital controls as it no longer has sufficient reserves to sustain the capital flight of the last year. Oil sector output – according to independent estimates – has fallen considerably over the past decade due to a lack of investment. And the country also faces a large and rising contingent liability in the form of unpaid compensation owed to private business that have been nationalised by Mr Chávez.
There are currently 11 lawsuits and arbitration claims totalling $43.5bn lodged with the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement on Investment Disputes. The bulk of this relates to a $10bn claim by ExxonMobil and a $30bn claim by ConocoPhillips. Looked at another way, according to local consulting firm Ecoanalitica, Mr Chavez has announced nationalizations of some $23bn since 2006, and of that amount, the authorities have paid almost $9bn, leaving $14bn owing.
Lately, brokers only tend to recommend buying Venezuelan bonds on the basis of how long they need to hold them and not lose money. (About 4 years, assuming current 15 per cent yields and a recovery rate of 30 cents on the dollar.) With the largest oil reserves outside the Middle East, and a relatively comfortable foreign reserves position, Venezuela certainly can pay, should it wish to. The question for investors in a country where the government calls its private brokers a “tumor” is: how long will it? The Castro brothers may have given a clue.
(Image: Fidel Castro is seen on 18 June, 2008 in Havana during a meeting with Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez and his brother Raúl Castro. By AFP/GETTY Images.)
For decades, the Castro government has been very effective in repressing dissent in Cuba by, among other things, preventing its critics from publishing or broadcasting their views on the island. Yet in recent years the blogosphere has created an outlet for a new kind of political criticism that is harder to control. Can it make a difference? [New York Review of Books Blog]
Foreign Policy magazine lists the bottom 20 countries and territories (Cuba is among those twenty) with the least freedom on Earth from Freedom House’s 2010 Freedom in the World report.
Spanish oil company Repsol YPF SA, said it plans to drill off Cuba, about 60 miles south of Key West, Florida, early next year. If successful, this would likely kick off a spate of exploration. Only one deepwater well has been drilled in Cuban waters, by Repsol in 2004. The effort found oil but not enough to justify commercial development. [Wall Street Journal]
(Image: Repsol offshore oil exploration rig. Spanish oil giant Repsol YPF has contracted with a unit of Italian oil company Eni SpA for a drilling rig that some sources said was bound for operation in Cuba’s still untapped offshore fields. 5 May 2010.)
China could help Cuba cover its banking system’s liquidity deficit with a multibillion dollar loan. Havana has already asked for a $3B loan. The cause of the liquidity crisis is attributed to lack payments by Cuban banks worth between $600M and $1B in 2009 according to United Nations’ CEPAL data (pdf). [ANSA]
Jorge Castañeda’s (former Mexican foreign minister and NYU professor) piece on geopolitics in Latin America and the two competing regional blocs: “Americas-1″—nations neutral to the conflict between the United States and Venezuela/Cuba or are openly opposed to the “Bolivariano” governments of Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela; and “Americas-2″—radical left nations moderately retreating but able to support their positions and defeat any attempts to cut their influence.
Cuba scored 80.6 and ranked 76 overall in 177 states.
The rank order of the states is based on the total scores of the 12 indicators: Demographic Pressures, Refugees/IDPs, Group Grievance, Human Flight, Uneven Development, Economic Decline, Delegitimization of the State, Public Services, Human Rights, Security Apparatus, Factionalized Elites, and External Intervention.
The island nation is in danger of becoming a failed state.
FP and FfP quantify a failed state as having several attributes: “One of the most common is the loss of physical control of its territory or a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Other attributes of state failure include the erosion of legitimate authority to make collective decisions, an inability to provide reasonable public services, and the inability to interact with other states as a full member of the international community.”
Cuba and the United States begin a third round of talks over immigration, and on background, the detention of Alan Gross, a U.S. contractor accused of spying by Havana. [EFE]
Bernardo Pericás, Brazil’s ambassador in Cuba, met with Army General Raúl Castro before ending his mission to the island. [Prensa Latina]
Chinese ambassador in Cuba, Liu Yuqin, confirmed the participation of Chinese oil companies in petrol-chemical projects in the island. [El Financiero]
The Cuban government has accepted Rolando Drago Rodríguez’s designation as Chile’s new ambassador in Cuba. [Cooperativa]
The U.S. State Department released a report earlier this week on trafficking in persons for 2010, and leveled against Cuba:
Cuba is principally a source country for children subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically commercial sexual exploitation within the country. Some Cuban medical professionals have stated that postings abroad are voluntary and well paid; however, others have claimed that their services “repaid” Cuban government debts to other countries and their passports were withheld as they performed their services. The scope of trafficking within Cuba is difficult to gauge due to the closed nature of the government and sparse non-governmental or independent reporting.
The Government of Cuba does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so. In a positive step, the Government of Cuba shared information about human trafficking and its efforts to address the issue. However, the government did not prohibit all forms of trafficking during the reporting period, nor did it provide specific evidence that it prosecuted and punished trafficking offenders, protected victims of all forms of trafficking, or implemented victim protection policies or programs to prevent human trafficking.
(Image: Josefina Vidal Ferreiro, director of the Cuban Foreign Ministry’s North American affairs office, who issued a statement by the Cuban gov’t regarding the U.S. State Dept.’s human trafficking report. Prensa Latina.)
Simon Romero of the New York Timesreports on Venezuela’s military ties with Cuba:
But the quiet expansion of Cuba’s military role here has raised a particular concern among critics of Mr. Chávez, who maintain that the military is being retooled — with Cuba’s help — into an institution that can be used to quell any domestic challenge to the president.
[...]
Carlos A. Romero, a political scientist at the Central University of Venezuela who researches military ties with Cuba, estimates that there are 500 Cuban military advisers in the country, including an elite group of about 20 officers operating from Fuerte Tiuna, the country’s main garrison.
[...]
Some changes in military strategy here already reflect the Cuban model, including an emphasis on preparing for an eventual invasion by the United States; the growth of the Bolivarian militia, an armed civilian force similar to Cuba’s Territorial Militia; and a focus on forging military policy within the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, the regional political group led by Venezuela and Cuba.
[...]
Mr. Chávez has also made it clear that any rumbling within the military, over Cuban advisers or other issues, would have consequences. He rarely loses a chance to remind other military branches of the growing might of the militia, which has some 300,000 reservists and is designed to operate at his command. At a recent parade of reservists, Mr. Chávez called on them to “sweep away the bourgeoisie” if he were assassinated.
Vatican Foreign MinisterArchbishop Dominique Mamberti will begin his five-day visit to Cuba tomorrow.
Reuters characterizes the Catholic church, in its wire story of the visit, as “flexing its political muscle and calling for change on the communist-led island”:
The concessions by the Cuban government have raised hopes that more prisoners will be freed in a gesture to Mamberti, who is the third Vatican official to come to Cuba since Raul Castro succeeded older brother Fidel Castro as president in 2008.
Mamberti is scheduled to meet with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, as well as take part in a church conference where Cuban intellectuals, including several exiles from the United States, will discuss key issues on the island.
His official reason for coming to Cuba is to mark the 75th anniversary of the start of Vatican-Cuba diplomatic relations.
Archbishop Mamberti’s visit coincides with a four-day conference organised by the Catholic Church in Havana and its current agenda includes issues that go beyond Church questions, e.g. the economy, migration and the relations between Cubans at home and abroad.
Cuban-American academics Carmelo Mesa-Lago and Jorge Domínguez are allowed to attend, while Dagoberto Valdés and Oswaldo Payá are not.
Mary Anastasia O’Grady of the Wall Street Journal details Brazilian President Lula da Silva’s trend toward defending despots:
The repressive Iranian government is only the latest example. There is also Lula’s unconditional support for Cuba’s dictatorship and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. In February, Cuba allowed political dissident Orlando Zapata to starve to death the same week Lula arrived on the island slave plantation to hobnob with the Castro brothers. When asked by the press about Zapata, Lula dismissed his death as one of many by hunger-strikers in history that the world ignored. He obviously never heard of the Irish militant Bobby Sands.
(Image: Lula da Silva meets with Fidel and Raúl Castro in Havana on 24 February 2010. Juventud Rebelde.)
In early May, the Brookings Institutionpublished a study on U.S.-Cuba environmental cooperation when dealing with the potential risks of oil exploration in shared ocean waters:
As Cuba continues to develop its deepwater oil and natural gas reserves, the consequence to the United States of a similar mishap occurring in Cuban waters moves from the theoretical to the actual. The sobering fact that a Cuban spill could foul hundreds of miles of American coastline and do profound harm to important marine habitats demands cooperative and proactive planning by Washington and Havana to minimize or avoid such a calamity. Also important is the planning necessary to prevent and, if necessary, respond to incidents arising from this country’s oil industry that, through the action of currents and wind, threaten Cuban waters and shorelines.
(Image: Repsol offshore oil exploration rig. Spanish oil giant Repsol YPF has contracted with a unit of Italian oil company Eni SpA for a drilling rig that some sources said was bound for operation in Cuba’s still untapped offshore fields. 5 May 2010.)
U.S. Army War College‘s Strategy Research Project released earlier this year two unclassified student reports on U.S.—Cuba policy.
Both reports characterize U.S. foreign policy of the last half-century towards Cuba as a failure. Thus, these reports give an inkling to the mindset of officers from the U.S. Army War College about the strategy of fostering democratic transition in Cuba.
The first report, “United States Security Strategy Towards Cuba,” is written by Lieutenant Colonel Sergio M. Dickerson (U.S. Army). Lt. Col. Dickerson questions whether Cuba poses a security threat to the United States, and contends:
Although Cuba poses no traditional threats to the U.S., geographically, their 90-mile proximity should concern us. Our proximity to Cuba assures U.S. involvement, be it voluntary or involuntary, in a major crisis. Consider a disease outbreak that begins in Cuba over a break down in hygiene, government pollution or other misfortune attributable to economic strife. The disease has no boundaries and quickly reaches the Florida shores via travelling Cuban American citizens. This scenario could be mitigated or even preventable under the auspices of better relations. Aside from the obvious medical benefits a partnership provides, established communications with Cuba would likely prevent an uncontrolled spread in the U.S.
Regarding U.S. policy, he suggests:
Building American and Congressional support for engagement…establish a formal infrastructure establish a formal infrastructure that communicates to Cuba and the International Community at large that we’re serious about diplomatic engagement with Cuba. Finally, we must loosen embargo restrictions and expose Cubans to U.S. open markets, business opportunities and 21st Century living.
Colonel Lance R. Koenig (U.S. Army) wrote the second report, entitled: “Time for a New Cuba Policy.” Col. Koenig writes:
Nearly fifty years of attempts to isolate Cuba through economic sanctions, travel restrictions, and broken diplomatic relations has not provided the results the United States policy towards Cuba aimed to achieve. It is time for the United States to pursue its national interests with regard to Cuba and implement a completely new policy in order to improve regional security and economic stability in Latin America.
He recommends:
The option with the greatest possibility of success and reward for the United States is to support the Cuban people, but not the Cuban government.
Lift completely the economic embargo. Establish banking and financial relationships to facilitate the trading of goods and services between the two countries.
Lift completely the travel ban to allow not only Cuban-Americans with relatives but also all other Americans to travel to Cuba. This interaction of Americans with Cubans will help raise the awareness of Cubans about their northern neighbor.
Lift completely the travel ban to allow not only Cuban-Americans with relatives but also all other Americans to travel to Cuba. This interaction of Americans with Cubans will help raise the awareness of Cubans about their northern neighbor.
Col. Koenig also briefly addresses the issue of property restitution:
This leaves the issue of compensation for United States companies and individuals whose property was expropriated by the Cuban government. With the embargo lifted, the United States should enlist the assistance of the European Union and Canada to apply pressure to Cuba as well as to assist in negotiations with the World Trade Organization to address issues with illegally confiscated property.
“I regret that, in spite of its clear invitation, the government of Cuba has not allowed me to objectively assess the situation of torture and ill-treatment in the country by collecting first-hand evidence from all available sources,” he declared.
Nowak has made several fruitless attempts to visit the island since 2005.
ABC (one of Spain’s national newspapers) on the fall of Hugo Chávez’s popularity that is sparking reinforced presence of Cubans in the Venezuelan military to consolidate his totalitarian project.
The Obama administration has allowed an oil delegation travel clearance to Cuba out of fear that drilling efforts in Cuba’s Gulf of Mexico could result in another toxic oil rig blowout.
The International Association of Drilling Contractors, which represents the global drilling industry, will send the United States’ first oil delegation to Cuba in order to enlighten that country’s emerging oil industry about safe offshore drilling practices. Cuba is only 90 miles from Florida’s coast, and any Cuban oil spill would feed directly into the Gulf of Mexico’s Loop Current, which would carry it up the Gulf Stream current onto the Florida Keys and other Florida beaches.
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“The Cubans actually have approached us numerous times over the past decade asking if they could join the party, could they join IADC, could we come to them,” an IADC VP said.
The title of the book is derived from the Chinese proverb: “He who rides a tiger can never get off or the tiger will devour him.”
In his book preview editorial in La Razón, Botin writes, “In the shadow of his brother Fidel, the political life of Raúl Castro has been dark and hard; he has been the executive arm of the maximum leader’s desires.”
Interesting tidbits from the editorial:
GAESA (Grupo de Administración Empresarial, S.A.), the Cuban Armed Forces’ holding company (managed by Raúl’s son-in-law Luis Alberto López Calleja), controls almost 70% of the country’s economy through transient businesses that generate almost 90% of exports, 60% of tourism revenues, around 25% of services revenues, 60% of currency revenues and more than 65% of all minor commerce in currency exchanges. The volume of annual profits surpasses $1B;
Raúl’s daughter Mariela Castro has taken the family’s monies out of the country with ease of travel as she is accompanied by her Italian husband, Paolo;
Raúl Castro visited Italy (after Fidel fell ill in 2006) to deposit millions of pesos, affirms exiled Cuban General José Quevedo;
Leninist machismo enjoys good health in Cuba as the perks of Raulistas within the military working in GAESA companies. They are a privileged class with higher incomes and a much higher standard of living not only to the civilian population but to their own comrades in arms serving a strictly military function in locations far away from the resorts.
In his national column, CIA Examiner, Robert Morton proposes tongue-in-cheek that the US outsource its domestic spying to the Chinese resulting from a recent ruling on a domestic surveillance program as being unconstitutional by a federal judge.
Why the Chinese? Well, they have a super-secret monitoring base in Bejucal, Cuba.
An excerpt from his piece:
Ever since a domestic surveillance program was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge, I pose three reasons why Beijing should pick up the slack. First, our Asian friends have the opportunity to do it for us…in Cuba, China operates a super-secret complex that eavesdrops on our satellite-based military transmissions, the messages contained in our home and business faxes and e-mails…even the toppings we order on home-delivered pizzas!
CIA agents in Cuba grew suspicious when large numbers of names like Yang Chow and Yo-Yo Qian booked into hotels in Havana in the late 1990′s. Sure enough, a Chinese electronic espionage facility sprang up. In return, Beijing gave Castro electronic countermeasures to block Radio Martí from carrying pro-U.S. Radio~Miami and TV broadcasts into Cuba from Miami.
[...]
So, let’s entice their cloak-and-dagger operation near Bejucal, a small town south of Havana, to reprogram their orbiting satellites and ground based, state-of-the art signals intelligence hardware. Like a vacuum sweeping up dust particles off a carpet, they already suck up satellite-based U.S. military communications, along with business and personal computer e-mails, telex and fax messages. So, what’s the big deal about letting them inspect messages sent out from the U.S. to Al Quaida-friendly countries?
Morton further adds, “My outrageous outsourcing proposal underscores how legally and morally handcuffed our counter-intelligence services are. They need more help, but not from China.”
Esquire magazine takes a look at the statistics of countries that ban gays from serving in the military and that also embrace the death penalty.
Cuba, along with 16 other countries (see above infographic), ban homosexuals from serving in the military and also execute people.
The others are: China, Egypt, Iran, Jamaica, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Uganda, United States, and Yemen.
Aon Corporation (a leading global provider of risk management services) in partnership with Oxford Analytica (an international consulting firm) produces a yearly Political Risk Map that “provides an indication of overall levels and types of Political Risk in more than 200 territories worldwide.”
Cuba has been identified with high political risk for 2010 by Aon/Oxford Analytica. The island nation received the same rating in 2009.
The rating is based on measures of Cuba’s risk of currency inconvertibility and transfer; strikes, riots and civil commotion; war; terrorism; sovereign non-payment; political interference; supply chain interruption; and legal and regulatory risk.
(Images: Aon Corporation, Political Risk Map 2010.)
Jerry Bremer, C.E.O. of Criminal Justice International Associates (a global risk mitigation firm headquartered in Miami, Florida) asks in his piece, “Cuba’s Agenda in Latin America Remains Clearly Nebulous,” via Mexidata.info, whether Cuba is a conventional military threat to anyone, which perhaps they are not, however. In the intelligence sphere, especially in Latin America, they apparently are so:
The history of Cuba’s Castro regime shows that they have trained thousands of communist guerrillas and terrorists, and sponsored violent acts of aggression and subversion in most democratic nations of the southwestern hemisphere. U.S. government studies within the intelligence community documented a total of 3,043 international terrorist incidents in the decade of 1968 to 1978. Within that study, “over 25 percent occurred in Latin America.”
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Recent reports by the U.S. DIA [Defense Intelligence Agency] show that Cuba has been expanding intelligence operations in the Middle East and South Asia.
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…Cuba’s current intelligence and spy apparatus has been described and reported to be an active “contingency of very well-trained, organized and financed agents.”
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Cuba has also maintained a well-organized and ruthless intelligence presence within Mexico, as have the Russians. Much of their activity involved in U.S. interests that include recruiting disloyal U.S. military, government, and private sector specialists.
The report presents evidence that the FARC moves freely in Cuba and Venezuela with precise information on guerrilla camps and supposed alliances to export the Bolivarian project in Colombia.
Moreover, there are 28 FARC encampments and 1,500 FARC men in Venezuela.
In relation to the FARC’s presence in Havana, the document identifies the geopolitical and geoeconomic activities of the group, e.g. in August 2007 there were solidarity brigades with the Cuban people and meetings in which representatives of the Latin American left as well as FARC delegates Liliana López Palacio, alias Olga Lucía Marín and Orlay Jurado Palomino, alias Hermes Aguilera were present.
(Image: Ivan Marquez, a member of the FARC central command, with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez during talks in Caracas, November 2007. By JusticeforColombia.org)
Andres Oppenheimer’s piece on Cubans running Venezuela:
Cuba is increasingly worried about Chávez’s political future in light of Venezuela’s growing food shortages, electricity blackouts, massive corruption and Latin America’s highest inflation rates. Fearing that it could lose the 100,000 barrels of subsidized oil a day that Venezuela sends to the island, Cuba is on a rescue mission to help manage Venezuela’s inefficient and corruption-ridden government offices.
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Venezuela’s growing alliance with Cuba — “Venecuba,” or “Cubazuela,” depending on which country you believe has the upper hand — is a marriage of convenience that may backfire for Chávez.
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Chávez, who has made a religion of “national sovereignty,” may be playing with fire by allowing Cuba to run his country.
But to many others, including this newspaper, he has come to embody a new, post-cold-war model of authoritarian rule which combines a democratic mandate, populist socialism and anti-Americanism, as well as resource nationalism and carefully calibrated repression.
[...]
In Mr Chávez’s case, that claim has been backed up above all by oil. On the one hand, he has deployed oil revenues abroad to gain allies, and to sustain the Castro brothers in power in Cuba.
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He has been elected three times, and won four referendums. He has hollowed out Venezuela’s democracy, subjugating the courts, bullying the media and intimidating opponents. But he has been unable, or unwilling, to disregard or repress opposition to the same degree as Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or even Russia’s Vladimir Putin, let alone the Castro brothers in Cuba.
(Photo: Army General Raúl Castro greets Venezuela President Hugo Chávez upon his arrival in Havana, 20 FEB 2009. AP.)
In last month’s piece for the Wall Street Journal, Trinklein wrote: “Mid-19th century proposals to make Yucatan and Cuba into states, for example, were predicated on fear that foreign governments might establish a presence too close to the U.S. This turned out to be a prescient prediction, all too well-understood by anyone who lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis a century later.”
The above image is taken from his Flicker stream maps of proposed U.S. states. He captions the map with: “Cuba’s strategic position meant it was considered for statehood on multiple occasions.”
Trinklein wrote in his blog “Cuba was quite seriously considered for statehood in the early 1900s.” Adding,
“Today, in the post-Castro world, statehood has been raised once again. A 1998 Time article makes a compelling case—Cuba has great beaches, and lots of pent-up consumer demand. The idea actually has a lot of support in the American business community.
And just imagine a Major League Baseball franchise in Havana.
Martin Arostegui writes in tomorrow’s Washington Times:
A U.S. intelligence official said that Cuban intelligence officers also have been planted throughout Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry and that Venezuelan ambassadors posted overseas have been identified as Cuban intelligence officers.
Intelligence officers in Colombia, who have kept a close eye on Venezuela because of guerrilla activity at the borders and constant threats from Mr. Chavez to wage war on Colombia’s U.S.-backed government, have said that Cuba has established a “parallel chain of command” within the military.
U.S. Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM) has published its Joint Operating Environment (JOE) study for 2010, which “provides a perspective on future trends, shocks, contexts, and implications for future joint force commanders and other leaders and professionals in the national security field.”
The JOE report provides two sentences on Cuba and stating the obvious for the island nation’s future:
Cuba needs money, spare parts for Soviet military equipment and a sense of alliance with a heavyweight player. During President Dmitry Medvedev’s November 2008 visit, Fidel declared that Russia and Cuba were natural partners because both were “constantly threatened by the same adversary of peace.”
A senior U.S. official has stated that Russia “has strategic ties to Cuba again, or at least that’s where they’re going.” Some say the Russians want to refit the listening post in Lourdes, outside Havana, which they abandoned in 2002, for use in cyber-espionage and cyber-warfare. Or the Russians might want a refueling base for their naval vessels and their bombers, which have resumed aggressive patrolling. (Right after Medvedev’s visit, Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Security Council, as well as Alexander Maslov, head of Russia’s air defense, also visited Havana.) But these are secondary, tactical considerations.
Russia’s No. 1 foreign policy objective is to keep Ukraine out of NATO. At the moment, NATO membership hardly seems imminent. Disappointed in liberalism, Ukraine is becoming more pro-Russian, and Europe is relieved not to deal with that troublesome country for the time being.
Babalú Blog has posted a video report from Sean Hannity’s America on Fox News Channel which exposes the Cuban government’s alleged chemical and biological weapons program.
The source of the allegation is former chief of Medical Services of the Cuban Armed Forces, Colonel Roberto Ortega Morales, who served in that post from 1984 to 1994. Ortega first made his assertions in an interview with El Nuevo Herald and the Miami public affairs television program – A Mano Limpia, in 2007.
Also interviewed is Dr. Manuel Cereijo, a lecturer of Engineering at the University of Miami, who has written about Cuban telecommunications and Cuba’s national security threat to the United States.
The United States has struck an agreement with the Cuban government to send medical evacuation flights with victims from the Haiti earthquake through restricted Cuban airspace, an official said, reducing the flight time to Miami by 90 minutes, reports the New York Times.
Along the Malecon has background on Alan P. Gross (apparently a beltway insider), the U.S. contractor arrested in Cuba and accused by the Cuban government of working for U.S. intelligence. Gross, who in fact according to American officials, had gone to Cuba to provide communications equipment to Jewish nonprofit organizations.
Cuban bloggers hold meeting called Blogger Journey in May 2009. (Image: Generation Y)
A new revolution is making headway in Cuba. Discreet but unstoppable. Slick and irreverent. It’s called the alternative blogosphere and it is making the Castro brothers nervous, whom last Friday reached 51 years in power. The protagonists are hundreds of young men and women (and some who are a lot older) that have proposed to break a siege of censorship and to ventilate a closed society on the island for half a century. Their weapons are computers and memory sticks. And despite all the obstacles, are managing to weave a network of rebellion that begins to move from cyberspace to the streets. (via El País)
The Obama honeymoon with Cuba is over. The tenor in Havana has changed considerably, and Mr. Obama, whose election was broadly celebrated by Cuba’s racially diverse population, is now being portrayed by the Raúl Castro government as an imperialistic, warmongering Cuba hater, reports the New York Times.
Latinobarómetro published this week its current survey on the state of democracy in Latin America, however, the Cuban population did not take part in it, but the perception of the regime is object of analysis.
Latin Americans give Cuba a 4.1 on a scale of 10, the lowest score given to the countries measured.
Evaluation of leaders
Fidel Castro is the worst rated leader scoring 4 on a scale of 10 (0 being the worst; 10 very good), only ahead of Hugo Chávez.
Cuba hit back at 60 prominent U.S. black leaders who challenged its race record, with island writers, artists and official journalists calling the criticism an attack on their country’s national identity.
The five-page signed statement, distributed by Cuban government press officials in an e-mail, defended Cuba’s progress in providing social and personal opportunities for blacks and people of mixed race.
Brigade General Rafael Moracen Limonta receiving promotion from Fidel Castro. Image: Granma
Cuban Embassy military attaché in Angola, Brigade General Rafael Moracen Limonta, on Wednesday in Luanda highlighted the continuity of the co-operation between the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) and the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA), as well as between FAR and countries of the southern African region in various sectors.
The diplomat spoke during FAR’s 53rd anniversary celebration ceremony.
BBC Mundoreports on espionage in Latin America and Cuba’s role in it.
And of course there is Cuba.
“Both China and Russia’s services have a close relationship with the intelligence community there in an advisory role,” says Mr [Robert] Munks of Jane’s Intelligence Review.
Experts say this “advisory role” that Cuba has with Russia and China is spreading to other parts of Latin America.
Cubans are bracing for hard times in 2010 as President Raul Castro slashes imports and cuts government spending to get Cuba out of crisis — and they are growing impatient with the slow pace of economic reform.
Hurricanes, the global recession, U.S. sanctions and the inability of the communist-run island’s command economy to maneuver have put an end to recovery from the 1990s crisis that followed the Soviet Union’s demise.
Soviet Delta II Submarine. Artwork by Edward L. Cooper (1987). A Delta II could fire the nuclear-tipped SS-N-18 Stingray ballistic missile from 16 launch tubes. Image: dia.mil
The New York Times reports today on the National Security Archive (George Washington University) releasing a two-volume study, Soviet Intentions, 1965-1985, conducted in 1995 by BDM Corporation (a Pentagon contractor) which drew unique interview evidence with former Soviet military officers, military analysts, and industrial specialists, covering a wide range of strategic issues, including force levels and postures, targeting and war planning, weapons effects, and the role of defense industries.
Andrew Marshall, former director of the Office of Net Evaluation at the Defense Department was the sponsor of the study.
Fidel Castro in the 80s, according to the study, recommended to the Soviets a tougher stance against the United States:
During the early 1980s, according to the interviews, Fidel Castro recommended to the Kremlin a harder line against Washington, even suggesting the possibility of nuclear strikes. The pressure stopped after Soviet officials gave Castro a briefing on the ecological impact on Cuba of nuclear strikes on the United States.
The Pentagon study attributes the Cuba revelation to Andrian A. Danilevich, a Soviet general staff officer from 1964 to ’90 and director of the staff officers who wrote the Soviet Union’s final reference guide on strategic and nuclear planning.
In the early 1980s, the study quotes him as saying that Mr. Castro “pressed hard for a tougher Soviet line against the U.S. up to and including possible nuclear strikes.”
The general staff, General Danilevich continued, “had to actively disabuse him of this view by spelling out the ecological consequences for Cuba of a Soviet strike against the U.S.”
That information, the general concluded, “changed Castro’s positions considerably.”
To read the summary of General Danilevich’s interview, click here.
RAND describes Chinese global activism as “continually changing and has so many dimensions that it immediately raises questions about its current and future intentions and the implications for global stability and prosperity.”
Moreover, the study “examines how China views its security environment, how it defines its international objectives, how it is pursuing these objectives, and the consequences for U.S. economic and security interests.”
Chinese expanded strategic interests (including business interests) in Latin America and Cuba is accelerating at a fast pace.
As this study points out:
China is building political relationships to diversify its access to energy and other natural resources, with a focus on Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. Energy security encompasses diversifying both suppliers and supply routes.
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China’s expanding involvement in Latin America is primarily (but not exclusively) driven by economic considerations: gaining access to markets, investments, and resources. The growth in China’s merchandise trade and investment in the region offers strong evidence of Chi- na’s economic motives. Trade between China and Latin America and the Caribbean has rapidly increased over the last several years, and as a result, this region has become more important to China. From 1999 to 2006, total merchandise trade increased from $8.2 billion to close to $70 billion, an almost tenfold increase. In 2006, Latin America and the Caribbean accounted for 4 percent of China’s total world trade, increasing its share by 1.7 percent since 1999.
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China’s investments in Latin America are growing as well. China currently has projects in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, the Domini- can Republic, Guyana, and Venezuela, among other nations. China’s investments in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Venezuela are mainly focused on facilitating access to such natural resources as iron ore, copper, and oil (in the case of Venezuela); as such, its investments have been in the mining, transportation, manufacturing, and petroleum sectors.
Jon Basil Utley, a former South American correspondent for Knight Ridder, demarcates Third World dictatorships in his article published in Reason magazine.
He briefly discusses the time he lived in Cuba (1958) during the Batista period, noting: “Batista never used the type of brutality Fidel Castro later imposed, but his government was corrupt, and was dependent on cronyism and upon its police, who were in turn corrupted by power.”
Utley best illustrates with the following observation:
Understanding how such dictatorships actually function would help Washington to avoid more foreign policy disasters. If Americans better understood the weaknesses of most foreign tyrannies, we’d be less inclined to see them as great threats. Also, we would have to face the reality that administering them effectively would mean establishing a permanent corps of occupation forces on the British or Roman model. Even then modern communications and weaponry might make our rule fail. Tribal societies cannot be easily converted into democracies.
China provided Cuba $600 million dollars in loans and grants Wednesday during a visit to strengthen ties by the Asian giant’s parliamentary head Wu Bangguo, diplomatic sources said.
Chinese legislator Wu Bangguo begins his official visit to Cuba today, further promoting the growing exchanges between the two countries. This will be the first visit of a high-level Chinese legislative delegation to Cuba after the one made in January 2007 by then NPC Standing Committee Vice Chairman Cheng Siwei, reports Xinhua.
While Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez is on a three day visit to China. Rodríguez is scheduled to give a speech today at the Chinese Social Sciences Academy. He will also meet with several high-ranking Chinese government officials during his visit.
China is Cuba’s second commercial partner with a balance in 2008 of $2.2 billion.
It looks like the EU diplomats who visited the wife of dissident Darsi Ferrer have hit a raw nerve with the Cuban government. Ferrer was arrested last month on charges of buying bags of cement on the black market. More on the Cuban regime’s reaction.
Cuba delivered a formal protest today to diplomats from five European Union embassies who visited the home of a jailed dissident. The Ministry of Foreign Relations summoned the diplomats from Sweden, Great Britain, Hungary, Poland and Germany to denounce the visit, according to two of the officials. Staffers at foreign embassies often have contacts with the families of jailed opposition activists, sometimes drawing rebukes from Cuba which sees the visits as meddling in its internal affairs…It was the European Union’s first contact with a top opposition activist since last summer, when it lifted five years of sanctions imposed for Cuba’s arrest of 75 leading dissidents.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said the country’s foreign policy seeks more convergence between Iran and Latin America in all spheres. In a farewell visit with Cuban ambassador to Iran Fernando Garcia Ricardo, Mottaki said the two countries’ massive potentials particularly in medical and health areas can help strengthen bilateral relations. He also called Tehran-Havana relations “strategic”. Also Fernando Garcia Ricardo said expansion of ties with Iran is among Cuba government’s priorities.
University of Florida Professor José Alvarez has authored a fact sheet on Cuba’s food rationing system.
Despite the fact that rationed products are sold at subsidized prices (fixed throughout the country), their supply always falls short. Since, according to the majority of Cubans, the rationed items are not enough to feed a person for the entire month, those who can afford it are forced to fulfill their needs for the remainder of the month (usually about two weeks) through purchases in other outlets where prices are much higher and/or where the purchases must be made with U.S. dollars.
Alvarez has conducted several studies assessing Cuba’s agriculture, which includes markets, sugar, and pre-revolutionary statistics.
A pair of nuclear-powered Russian attack submarines has been patrolling off the eastern seaboard of the United States in recent days, a rare mission that has raised concerns inside the Pentagon and intelligence agencies about a more assertive stance by the Russian military.
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The submarines are of the Akula class, a counterpart to the Los Angeles class attack subs of the United States Navy, and not one of the larger submarines that can launch intercontinental nuclear missiles.
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According to Defense Department officials, one of the Russian submarines remained in international waters on Tuesday about 200 miles off the coast of the United States. The location of the second remained unclear. One senior official said the second submarine traveled south in recent days toward Cuba, while another senior official with access to reports on the surveillance mission said it had sailed away in a northerly direction.
Associate Professor of Political Scientist Javier Corrales who teaches at Amherst wrote a report titled “Petro-Politics and the Promotion of Disorder,” for one of the workshops where he analyzes how Venezuela’s windfall of profits from oil production/sales has been the “Chávez government’s principal tool for exerting influence beyond Venezuela’s borders,” which has been instrumental in the dismantling of democracy within the Venezuelan state and propping anti-democratic forces in bordering states.
Corrales focuses on the Cuba-Venezuela economic relationship in the following paragraphs:
Among Venezuela’s authoritarian allies, Cuba is probably the most important for the regime’s self-image, and the relationship is distinguished by a unique exchange of financial support for ideological endorsement. From Cuba’s perspective, Venezuela has replaced the Soviet Union as its main sponsor, supplying handsome oil subsidies that allow the island state to reexport as much as 40 percent of the fuel it receives. This allowance is provided with almost no political or other conditions, unlike any aid or investment Cuba might obtain from international organizations or democratic countries. In return, Cuba serves as the issuer of a certificate of good “radical” credentials, permitting Chávez to flaunt his anti-imperialism and score points among the most extreme elements of the left in Latin America. Cuba also provides tangible assistance in the form of almost 40,000 technical experts, including doctors, nurses, teachers, coaches, and military and intelligence personnel.
Since Raúl Castro became president of Cuba, there has been speculation that the Cuban government is growing wary of the island’s dependence on its new benefactor. There are rumors, for instance, that Castro does not like Chávez personally, and that he is pursuing ways to diversify the country’s economic ties. Nevertheless, there are reasons to believe that the special relationship between Cuba and Venezuela will endure. Each country is providing the other with assets that are cheap for the donor and valuable to the recipient. Venezuela’s subsidy to Cuba consists of a small fraction of its oil production, while Cuba has a surplus of trained technical experts. The ideological endorsement, of course, costs Cuba nothing.
Mijéiev recalled that Russia is developing a network of aircraft maintenance services (for MiG-21, MiG-23 and Su-22 planes) abroad, particularly in Latin American nations like Cuba, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela where maintenance and repair centers have been or will be installed shortly.
It looks like the ousted president of Honduras reportedly asked President Obama to revoke the diplomatic visas of members of interim President Roberto Micheletti’s de facto government.
NightWatch, a nightly executive intelligence recap produced by AFCEA, sagely opines on US blunderous policy toward the Honduran political crisis:
The US bullying of Micheletti risks a blowback effect in which he becomes the latest Latin American hero to stand up to the US. If the Bolivarians experience such an epiphany, they and the Cubans will turn against the US Secretary of State on this issue as fast as a serpent.
Imagine the socialists and communists supporting the free enterprise democrats in Honduras against the US; almost as crazy as the US State Department aligning with the socialists and communists against one of America’s most steadfast allies in Latin America. That would be condign punishment for misrepresenting the facts.
Heretofore, the Carter Administration was renowned for beating up US allies over human rights violations while coddling the communists and socialists, even inviting them to the White House.
Readers would be justified in suspecting that some people at State are covering up their judgmental blunders, indicated by the Department’s persistent distortion of the facts of the Honduran situation. The evidence is overwhelming — and not refuted by Zelaya or the State Department — that Zelaya attempted a political coup to usurp the Honduran constitution by means of a referendum that had been ruled unconstitutional by the Honduran Supreme Court.
His gambit failed when the armed forces refused to carry out illegal orders to distribute ballot boxes for the referendum and when the Congress and Supreme Court staged a successful political counter-coup by ordering the army to give him the boot.
If State could commit to rule of law, it might support the coming election in November which is on track and on schedule as the best mechanism for taking the pulse of the Honduran electorate. It might even suggest accelerating the election timetable.
For now a sharply declining number of Hondurans seem to care that Zelaya is absent. They have more important and immediate problems, such as survival.
Last September, Gen. Michael Hayden (Director, Central Intelligence Agency) addressed the ODNI Open Source Conference in Washington, D.C. about the importance of open source intelligence collection.
General Hayden made an interesting anecdote (as follows) about his visit to a Key West open source facility wherein he watched a Cuban program and observed what analysts were able to extract from broadcasts on the island.
“In addition to that, we made a special effort to visit the outposts in the open source enterprise as well, and I think I we’ve got four of those already in terms of notches on my belt. One stop that meant a great deal to me was designed to be a courtesy call. I was in Key West, not on business. (Chuckles.) And there is an open source facility there that looks at that island about 90 miles just off the southern marker buoy there.
It was going to be a 20-minute courtesy call. I was there for three hours because, talk about time on target, the people in this little cinderblock shack on the extreme southern reaches of Key West knew so much about what was happening in Cuba. And for me as the Director of CIA to sit with them and watch Cuban soap operas and have them tell me what they were extracting from watching these soap operas was quite remarkable.
They gave me a videotape, DVD, of a program that they had captured from the Internet. And it had a Cuban soap-opera star starring in it, and there are only two other players. And his name is Nicanor (sp) and he’s making a fine brew of coffee and there’s a knock at his door. And it’s two individuals from the security service to install the microphones. (Laughter.)
We’re here to install the microphones. He says, what do you mean, microphones? And it goes for about 17 minutes of some of the most subtle satiric commentary on a totalitarian state I have ever seen. He mentions that they have to decide where to put the microphones and they can t put them in the kitchen because it s too noisy and the bedroom air conditioner interferes with it. So, finally, they say, we have to put the microphones in the bathroom. (Laughter.)
So he says, when I criticize the government, I must go into the bathroom? (Laughter.) And he said, why don’t we put another microphone over here? And then they begin to criticize him. What kind of person are you? There are only a limited number of microphones in Cuba! (Laughter.) There’s a family down the street that criticizes the government day and night. They have 11 kids and they’re only allotted one microphone.
It gave me a new appreciation for life and thought and the situation on the island.”
It looks like Gen. Hayden is referring to Monte Rouge, a Cuban satirical short, which spoofs state security. (Click video above to see the short.)
An audience of Russian generals and colonels and members of the NATO Mobile Education Training Team at the General Staff Academy in Moscow listens to lectures. Image: NATO
Lt. Gen. Maples testifying before Senate Armed Services Committee in 2007. Image: AP
DIA Director Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, US Army, testified today before the Committee on Armed Services of the United States Senate delivering his Annual Threat Assessment.
With regards to Latin America, he stated: “The United States presently faces no major conventional military threats across Latin America, a number of concerns endure.”
Lt. Gen. Maples covered several Latin American countries (Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia) in his written statement and in addition too opined on Cuba with the following:
The broad support that Cuban President Raul Castro receives from the military, security services and the Communist Party will likely enable him to maintain stability, security, and his own position. The Cuban military
Rodriguez (l); Lage (c); Perez-Roque (r). Image: AP
Via AP:
Cuba abruptly replaced some of its most powerful and visible officials on Monday, including Vice President Carlos Lage and Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque.
The surprise shakeup, involving about 10 top officials, was announced at the end of the midday newscast by Cuba’s supreme governing body, the Council of State.
Among others replaced is Economy Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez.
Lage, 57, was one of five vice presidents below Raul Castro and had served as a de-facto prime minister. He was credited with helping save Cuba’s economy by designing modest economic reforms after the Soviet Union collapsed.
Perez Roque, 43, was previously personal secretary to Fidel Castro and a former leader of the Communist Party youth organization. He had been foreign minister for almost a decade.
Developing…
1640Z – Official Note from the Council of State announcing replacements and structural changes.
USS TARAWA at SEA (Aug. 14, 2008) A 32-ship armada led by the amphibious assault ship USS Tarawa (LHA 1), manuever off the Panamanian Coast as part of the multi-national training exercise Fuerzas Aliadas PANAMAX 2008. Image: U.S. Navy
The Joint Forces Quarterly 2nd Quarter 2009 issue is now available and focuses on a strategic global outlook thematic. The journal is published by the National Defense University Press for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and is the Chairman’s flagship joint military and security studies journal.
One of the articles in this issue titled, “Time to Improve U.S. Defense Structure for the Western Hemisphere,” is written by Dr. Craig A. Deare, Professor of National Security Affairs at the National Defense University, which addresses “U.S. defense policy toward the region as it seeks to explain the primary structural shortcomings associated with both the formulation and execution of policy.”
The article gives a snapshot of concerns for the Department of Defense (DoD) such as transnational threats including terrorism, insurgency and drug trafficking in the hemisphere.
A series of priority countries, e.q. Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil are mentioned in the article including Cuba.
Dr. Deare summarizes Cuba as:
“The question of what happens when the Castro brothers disappear from the scene remains open. This land, the size of Pennsylvania and with 11 million people, is at what the National Security Strategy would describe as a
A permanent concern for Raul Castro’s government is how will it sustain feeding the populace as aliments continue to diminish due to shortages and the costly purchases of increasing imports, which poses a security dilemma for the regime.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of Global Analysis published a report last year titled: “Cuba
Raul Castro has ascended three of his government ministers – Ramiro Valdes (Communications Minister), Ulises Rosales del Toro (Agriculture Minister), and Jorge Luis Sierra (Transportation Minister) – to vice-presidents of the Council of Ministers. According to an official note published in the state media, the objective of the appointments is to make “more effective the control and coordination” of government.
Col. Crowther discussing how the war in Iraq will affect U.S.-Latin America Relations at George Washington University. Image: GWU
Colonel Alexander Crowther, a Research Professor of National Security Studies in the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, has written an editorial titled: “Kiss the Embargo Goodbye” for SSI’s monthly newsletter calling for the end of the U.S. embargo against Cuba.
He has written prior editorials and papers on Cuba and its military.
Col. Crowther outlines the reasons that have supported the embargo and why it should be lifted.
On the support of:
we need to continue pressuring the regime to motivate it to reform;
the Cuban community in Miami wants us to continue
And the reasons for its lifting:
the cost to the Cuban people
the embargo is the only excuse that the Castro regime has to maintain its tyranny
to show the world that we are willing to try a new approach to motivate the Cubans to move towards democracy
to open up the Cuban market to the United States
He further goes on to say: “To maintain the status quo is to continue failing to engender reforms in Cuba and to continue empowering the dictatorship.”
Admiral Dennis Blair USN (Ret.), new Director of National Intelligence, testified today before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence outlining the annual assessment of national security threats to the United States.
The following section of his written testimony includes Cuba:
Avoiding a social explosion is foremost on the minds of the Cuban nomenklatura. "El Maleconazo" which occurred on the streets of Havana's famous seawall in August, 1994 was the most significant demonstration of social unrest in the island.
A chorus of those sympathetic to the Cuban regime and/or part of the nomenklatura are voicing their opinion about the need to reform Cuba’s system or else social instability caused by a lack of change to the status quo will lead to political destabilization through violence.
A member of said chorus is Ignacio Ramonet (penned an autobiography of Fidel Castro and was editor-in-chief of Le Monde Diplomatique) who wrote a revealing article last week giving a purview of the current situation in Cuba.
Ramonet states: “Raul Castro and his team have dedicated themselves to three pressing problems: food, public transportation, and housing. Three domains where shortages, poverty, and dysfunctions favor permanent unrest of the population.”
The Economist takes a look at the last 50 years of the Cuban revolution:
Half a century on, the euphoria is long gone. Everyday life in Cuba is a dreary affair of queues and shortages, even if nobody starves and violent crime is rare. It is the only country in the Americas whose government denies its citizens freedom of expression and assembly. Cuba
“Cuba is the key to the Gulf of Mexico, and also controls three entrances to the Caribbean-the Yucatan, Windward and Mona passages…between the three possible bases for attempted control of the Caribbean, no doubts can remain that Cuba is the most powerful, Jamaica next, and the Antilles least.” -Alfred Thayer Mahan, “Strategic Features of the Gulf of Mexico and The Caribbean,” in Allan Westcott, ed., 1943. Mahan on Naval Warfare. Boston: Little Brown and Company. p. 108.
I came across the aforementioned quote during my research on geostrategy in the Caribbean. Mahan was a U.S. Navy flag officer and geostrategist. His groundbreaking book is The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, which is based on naval warfare. Mahan, along with Sir Julian Corbett, has shaped the United States’ thinking about naval power.
Cuban police have detained 100 dissidents this week in Cuba to avoid their participation in marches commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights according to an announcement made by the Cuban Commission of Human Rights – Comisi
Lt. Sarah C. Rhoads of the US Naval War College wrote a paper earlier this year exploring the supporting role of USSOUTHCOM in a Post-Castro Cuba.
An abstract of the paper:
Since the overthrow of the Bastista regime by Fidel Castro nearly fifty years ago, Cubans have been subjected to the authoritarian rule of a Communist dictator. As Fidel and his brother Raul age, the days of Castro rule are drawing to an end. This end will mark a new beginning for the people of Cuba. Although the Communist Party has a cadre of loyal supporters throughout the country, the passing of the Castro brothers will provide the United States an opportunity to aid in the democratization of Cuba. An effective way for this to happen is proper coordination of joint, combined, and interagency efforts. The U.S. military, especially the United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), will play a crucial supporting role to the Department of State. The key to success in this supporting role is a well defined Cuba Theater of Operations (CTO) command construct with a robust Combined Joint Interagency Coordination Group (CJIACG). The desire of the Cuban people, combined with the support of the U.S. government, military, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), will allow for a peaceful transition to Cuban democracy.
The paper calls for the creation of a Cuba Theater of Operations Construct: “USSOUTHCOM will have the primary responsibility of leading and coordinating all military related operations supporting the democratization of Cuba…The first task USSOUTHCOM must accomplish is to establish a command and control construct for U.S. and coalition forces. An assumption is that coalition forces will participate due to the amount of economic interest some nations have already established within Cuba. This construct must include a liaison cell, such as a proposed Combined Joint Interagency Coordination Group (CJIACG) to coordinate with non-military departments, agencies, and coalition forces. The overarching premise of the construct is the supporting role USSOUTHCOM would play to civilian government agencies, primarily the U.S. State Department.”
Cuba’s former leader Fidel Castro said on Thursday his country could talk to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama, in Havana’s latest overture to the incoming Democratic administration in Washington.
His remarks followed comments from his brother, President Raul Castro, who told a U.S. magazine he could meet Obama in a “neutral place” to try to end the Communist-run island’s four-decade conflict with the United States.
“With Obama, talks could happen anywhere he wants,” Fidel Castro, America’s longtime Cold War enemy, wrote in the latest of a series of columns he has published in state-run media since falling ill in 2006.
A defamation suit has been filed against Lt. Col. Chris Simmons (US Army Reserve Counterintelligence Officer) by Silvia Wilhelm (executive director of Puentes Cubanos, Inc. and Cuban American Commission for Family Rights), reports Cuaderno de Cuba. On October 8, Simmons accused Wilhem as being an alleged agent of the Cuban Intelligence Service on A Mano Limpia, a public affairs program televised in Miami.
U.S. Joint Forces Command (USFCOM) released its Joint Operating Environment 2008 today outlining a strategic framework that forecasts possible threats and opportunities that will challenge the future US joint force.
USJFCOM is one of US Department of Defense’s nine combatant commands and has several key roles in transforming the U.S. military
The Economist Intelligence Unit has published its Democracy Index for 2008 and there’s bad news for the spread of democracy: it has come to a halt. This has been a decades-long global trend in democratisation. The dominant pattern in the past two years has been stagnation.
For Cuba, EIU classifies the nation as an authoritarian regime and ranked 125th in the index with an overall score of 3.52.
Cuban police motorcyclists patrol the streets of Havana. Image: AFP/Getty
La Jornada (Mexico) reports Cuba’s black market “could place in jeopardy the revolution’s very existence,” whereby the national police has hardened its vigilance against the underground economy which could become a high priority mission, according to an official communique released Sunday.
“There is a war without barracks against illegalities and crime,” the unsigned communique published in the Havana weeklyTribuna.
Reported were raids executed in the last two months in the capital including operations against 100 factories, 60 shops and 200 clandestine warehouses.
The campaign started in September in the aftermath of the hurricanes including a system of searching passengers in police checkpoints throughout roadways.
China National Petroleum Corp., the nation’s largest oil explorer, and Cuba’s state oil company agreed to jointly develop oil and gas fields.
The companies signed an agreement on Nov. 25 to cooperate in oil field engineering services and oil equipment trading, the Beijing-based company said in a statement on its Web site today.
The Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces has announced the Day of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) will be celebrated throughout Cuba this weekend with National Defense Days.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev concluded his visit to Havana. He met with Fidel Castro and said that a new bilateral accord will be waiting for President Raul Castro when he visits Russia. Medvedev and Raul Castro signed mining and oil exploration deals and discussed “military technical cooperation.”
Raul Castro said that he is willing to meet with President-Elect Obama on “neutral ground”
The National Intelligence Council (NIC) is the center for midterm and long-term strategic thinking within the United States Intelligence Community (IC). Yesterday, NIC released a report titled: “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World,” which attempts to “stimulate strategic thinking about the future by identifying key trends, the factors that drive them, where they seem to be headed, and how they might interact.”
Latin America, according to the report, will have “moderate economic growth, however, with continued urban violence.” Cuba in specific, along with Venezuela, “will have some form of vestigial influence in the region in 2025, but their economic problems will limit their appeal.” Furthermore, “Absent support from Venezuela, Cuba might be forced to begin China-like market reforms.”
Cuban President Raul Castro will visit Russia next year, the Kremlin said on Tuesday, in a new sign that Moscow is reviving a Cold War-era trade and military alliance. “Next year we await … Raul Castro in our country and this will be yet another contribution to the development of ties,” Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque in Moscow.
Both nations have signed a series of bilateral trade and economic accords. The accords (covered the automobile, nickel and oil industries, as well as the supply of wheat to Cuba) were signed during a visit to Havana by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin.
Russia Today (English-language news channel broadcast from Moscow) – Spotlight: Russia returns to Latin America
A Russian military delegation began their visit to Havana yesterday to review with their Cuban counterparts training and upgrading air defenses on the island.
The visit further reinforces a Russian resurgence while making its presence known in the United States’ own backyard – Latin America.
"Kvadrat" ADM system. Image: NIIP
RIA Volsti reports on Gazeta.ru‘s story: “According to the Russian Defense Ministry, this is a planned visit aimed at discussing the maintenance and repair of the Russian-made Igla, Osa, Kvadrat and P-18 and P-19 air defense systems. They are used to protect airfields and longer-range air defense systems, such as S-300 and S-400. Russian military analysts say Russia is unlikely to limit its assistance to Cuba to repairs of obsolete systems. Anatoly Tsyganok, head of the Military Forecast Center at the Institute for Political and Military Analysis, said the visit was connected to U.S. missile defense plans for Europe. Alexander Pikayev, an expert at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences, echoes this view:
“Although it will be denied officially, Russia’s actions are clearly a reply to the deployment of U.S. ballistic missile defense systems in the Czech Republic and Poland, and to NATO’s decision to help Georgia restore its air defense system.”
For some Latin American countries, Russia’s return to the continent is a welcome development that limits US dominance. But for others, it bodes ill as they fear deliveries of Russian arms to the region may tilt the military balance, if not lead to a Cold War on the continent.
Chief of the Battle Antimissile Defense Staff of the RF Armed Forces General-Lieutenant Alexander Maslov visits Cuba October 27 through November 3. Maslov goes to Cuba together with the delegation of Russia
If proven true, U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba will change dramatically with the next presidential administration on the prospect of a viable strategic source of oil in close proximity to U.S. shores.
The state-owned Cuban oil company says the country may have more than 20bn barrels of oil in its offshore fields – more than double the previous estimate.
Cubapetroleo’s exploration manager said drilling in the offshore wells would begin as early as the middle of 2009.
Such reserves would place Cuba among the top 20 oil producing nations.
Cubapetroleo’s estimates are based on comparisons to known oil reserves found within similar geological structures off the coasts of the US and Mexico.
The company said Cuba had undersea geology “very similar” to that surrounding Mexico’s giant Cantarell and Poza Rica oil fields in the Bay of Campeche.
‘More data’
Cuba’s share of the Gulf of Mexico was established in 1977, when it signed treaties with the US and Mexico.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) recently estimated that as much as 9bn barrels of oil and 21 trillion cubic feet of natural gas could lie within that zone, in the North Cuba Basin.
The following list 1 provides the number of Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officer visits to Cuba, from 2001 through 2008:
Vatican
The 
Spanish journalist 
GDP to increase in 2011
5 September 2010 at 1409 in Commentary, Economy, Government by Armando F. Mastrapa 3d
The Economist Intelligence Unit forecasts for Cuba, “fiscal retrenchment will limit growth to only 2% in 2010. In 2011 policy relaxation will allow growth to pick up to 3.7%.”
Tags: Cuba, economist intelligence unit, Economy, eiu, GDP