Consequently, Trump, a few months after beginning his term, has again taken up the objective of changing the Cuban regime, irresponsibly cancelled by Barack Obama in April 2015, as announced by the former president during the Panama Summit, although, contradictorily, Obama had the courtesy to meet with Cuban dissidents who had traveled from the island, a symbolic gesture that deserves thanks.
Why has Trump reprised the strategy of “containing” Cuba, as Cold War jargon put it? Because Trump and his advisers, guided by the experience of Senator Marco Rubio and Representative Mario Díaz-Balart, real experts in the topic, believe that Raúl Castro has not renounced confrontation, which recommends that he be deprived of funds.
Very much in consonance with the imprint left by Fidel to his brother and his regime, the Cuban revolution continues to be an enemy of the ideals and interests of the United States, as if the USSR continued to exist and Marxism had not been totally discredited more than a quarter of a century ago. To Cuba, the Cold War did not end. To them, “the struggle continues.”
That is shown by the Cuban alliance with North Korea, which includes clandestine supplies of war material prohibited by the United Nations, even as Raúl negotiated a “thaw” with Washington. It is evident in Cuba’s backing for Syria, Iran, Belarus, Putin’s Russia and for any dictator or “strongman” who confronts the Western democracies. Proof of this is its permanent hostility toward the State of Israel but, above all, it is most clear in Raúl Castro’s behavior in the case of Venezuela.
If Obama thought that the Cuban dictatorship, in exchange for good relations, would help the United States to moderate the behavior of Chávez’s and Maduro’s Venezuela, he was flat wrong. Raúl Castro’s Cuba is busy pouring gasoline into the fire that devours that country, so as not to lose the subsidies generated by its huge South American colony.
The Cuban top brass provide the essential backing for the dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro, a character formed in the Ñico López School for Cadres of the Cuban Communist Party. They furnish intelligence and training to their Venezuelan colleagues so they may cruelly repress the democrats in the opposition. Cuba’s very skillful political operators, formed in the tradition of the KGB and the Stasi, advise the Chavists and give form and sense to the alliance of the five pathologically “anti-yanqui” South American countries: Cuba itself, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador.
President Trump is right when he affirms that Barack Obama (despite his beautiful speech in Havana defending democracy) should not have bet all the American chips without asking Raúl Castro to make fundamental concessions for the benefit of the Cuban people and its right to freedom and democracy. That’s what Trump is now trying to correct.
*Carlos Alberto Montaner journalist and writer, author of numerous books, including Perromundo, La Trama, La mujer del coronel, Otra vez adiós y Tiempo de canallas. His articles appear in dozens of publications around Europe, Latin America and the United States. Carlos Alberto is an associate researcher at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS).
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