When, at the end of December of 1991, the Soviet Union, or USSR, ceased to exist, and its component parts established with the Russian Federation a Commonwealth of Independent States, there would have been much speculation that its Caribbean partner, Cuba, would have to proceed to consider its own status, given the tight integration that existed between the USSR and the Caribbean communist state.
The abandonment, soon afterwards by Russia, of the system of state control of the national economy, with the country becoming essentially an entity run on capitalist practices, obviously soon raised substantial discussion, first on the response that the Cuban leadership would have to make, involving what would replace the substantial economic dependence of the country on the Soviet Union; and secondly, on the consequences of Cuba’s loss of the comfort of its presence in the USSR’s extensive international geopolitcal network. For that network was obviously critical to Cuba’s standing in the global geopolitical system, up to then defined as the Cold War.
That the challenge was a strategic one, requiring a new response by Cuba, has obviously constituted a major and continuing challenge to the leadership of the country, eventually clearly signalled by the country’s Minister of Foreign Trade and Investment, Rodrigo Malmierca Díaz, when he recently urged the American Congress to lift the geo-economic embargo in place against Cuba since the early 1960s. And, in a sense, the American response was hinted at in a recent statement by the country’s Transportation Secretary that the United States would permit airline flights to Cuba after a period of fifty-three years.
The diplomatic dance between the two countries has been careful but persistent, and, it is fair to say, speeded up by the assumption of the presidency of the United States by Barack Obama, by Raúl Castro’s deliberate statements on the necessity for an end to the economic isolation of Cuba by the US, and on the need for a resumption of diplomatic relations. And it became clearer with meetings between Castro and Obama at the last Pan American Summit in April last year, and at the United Nations General Assembly in September, these events following what had become recognised as a decisive but quiet diplomatic intervention by Pope Francis to seek to construct a rapprochement between the two countries
In effect, it was becoming clearer that the Cuban government had responded to increasing international opinion that the stalemate in US-Cuban relations had become moribund, and not responsive to the objective of Cuba, particularly in respect of the regime’s economic development goals.
In addition, it was becoming clearer that Raúl Castro was determined to pursue economic reforms which, in the nature of post-Cold War developments, inevitably necessitated the resumption of economic relations between Cuba and the United States, a factor which seemed to be becoming increasingly recognized in Cuba itself.
It is clear that President Obama, on his assumption of office, himself accepted the change in opinion among most governments of Latin America, that the isolation of Cuba could not be acceptable to themselves. But it will also be recalled that the then four independent Caricom countries (Guyana, Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad & Tobago), some not noted at the time for radicalism at home, can be said to have kept the challenge of the necessity for rejection of Cuban isolation alive, by their joint establishment of diplomatic relations with the country in 1972.
This diplomatic line has been persistently maintained by Caricom as it became increasingly obvious that Caribbean governments could not isolate themselves from general Latin American opinion, a factor becoming increasingly accepted as the governments involved themselves in the sphere of Latin American diplomatic relations. The establishment of Celac and Unasur has consolidated this posture over the years, blending the necessity for normalization of relations within the hemisphere as a necessity, in an atmosphere of the diminution of the significance of ideological contentions within the area.
There can be little doubt that the line of policy of involvement and integration within the hemisphere has, over the years, become more acceptable to the Cuban government, recognizing, as it has had to do, that the dissolution of the two-bloc world has led to the existence of a ‘one-world economy’ from which countries cannot exclude themselves or be excluded by others. This would appear to have been a fundamental position of President Obama and, in an important sense, it became legitimized by the diplomatic intervention of Pope Francis, himself of Latin American origin.
The Government of Cuba too, would appear to have come to a similar conclusion and, it can be bluntly said, has accepted that the country could no longer depend on the exclusion of the large, proximate economy of the United States, given that that country in effect dominates the one-world economy now in existence.
President Obama’s leadership of the United States government, has legitimized the proposition of Cuban-US rapprochement in full recognition of widening opinion in Latin America in particular, that American leadership in the hemisphere can no longer be based on deliberate diplomatic or economic exclusion. But there will also have been a recognition that the Cuban regime, even while sustaining one-party dominance and its implications, has also accepted that the economic survival of the system requires an acceptance of global economic relations which, in effect implies participation in a global capitalist economy led by the United States.
The recent proposition of Cuban officials that “we don’t want to be dependent on one market” reflects a learning experience on the part that country, stemming, no doubt, from the disintegration of the Soviet Union and what was referred to as the ‘world socialist system.’
The gross domestic product (GDP) of the Cuban economy is reported as having grown at a rate of 4% in 2015, with its economy based on sugar production, manufacturing, construction and tourism. And arrangements now being pursued by American business would appear to indicate that there is an active desire to participate in what they now believe to be an inevitable liberalization of the economy based on a recognition by the Cuban authorities of the necessity for acceptance of the principles on which American investment functions, even as they insist that relations must be “respectful, constructive and productive”.
There can be little doubt that the point which Cuban-American relations have reached, suggests that President Obama has been willing to accept that line of argument, though clearly, it is doubtful that the terms of investment in the Cuban economy are likely to differ substantially from those prevailing in other countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.
At the same time, the inevitable changing of the guard in Cuba which is based on the dominance of the Communist Party doesn’t seem to leave room for multi-party arrangements, though President Obama may well feel that an opening of the Cuban economy, based on arrangements with the most powerful country in the world, may well come to make a difference in what evolves politically.
