For the Sake of the People, Let’s Stop the Game
Most ardent Cuba watchers probably read Dan Erikson’s book The Cuba Wars when it first came out in 2008. Beset by many other commitments, I only got around to reading it after Dan gave me a copy a month or so ago when I appeared on a Cuba panel he hosted at the Inter-American Dialogue where Dan is a Senior Associate. In between The Iraq Papers (an excellent compilation of documents related to the 2003 invasion of Iraq) and Joseph Stiglitz’s Freefall, I squeezed in Dan’s superb narrative about modern U.S.-Cuba relations.
As I read, I was well-pleased with the book’s balance, i.e., calling a spade a spade whether the cards were in the Cuban dictatorship’s hand or in Washington’s. Or, too frequently in the hands of those who virtually own U.S. Cuba policy, the tiny but powerful Miami/Dade County crowd.
There are at least these three groups sitting around this poker table and a passive fourth, the bulk of the American people, observing the play on occasion but most often oblivious to the entire game. A fifth group, the eleven million people of Cuba, have the patience of Job and probably, for the most part, don’t like poker.
One of the spokesmen whom Dan calls upon to illustrate what this poker game does to the real people in Cuba is Arturo Lopez-Levy, a member of the small Jewish community in Cuba who finally gave up on the Castros and came to the U.S. and whom Dan interviewed on the campus of the University of Denver.
In the course of that interview, Lopez-Levy illustrated dramatically what I mean by “balance†and by the analogy of the poker game.
Here’s Dan and Lopez-Levy together for example:
Lopez-Levy’s sense of betrayal extended to both sides of the Straits of Florida. ‘These people in both places put their interests before the pragmatic necessities of solving the problems of the country. And I think the problems of the country are the problems of the Cuban people.’
Like I do, Lopez-Levy seems to believe that none of the players in the poker game care about anything but the game. There is no interest whatsoever in the Cuban peopleâ€â€lots of high-toned rhetoric addressed to them and about them but no substantive concern whatsoever. If there were such concern, the game would have ended long agoâ€â€at the end of the Cold War, for example, when Cuba stopped exporting revolution and began to export low-cost and high-quality medical care for poor people.
Perhaps the most surprising indicator of this insidious nature of the poker game occurs in another spot in Dan’s book. It’s when he quotes from Raúl Castro’s speech on July 26, 2007, his last major address to the Cuban people before he was elevated to the presidency. Raúl is looking forward to the 2008 presidential election in the United States and he says:
"[T]he elections will also have taken place in the United States and the mandate of the current president of that country [George W. Bush] will have concluded along with his erratic and dangerous administration.†(As a member of that administration, I can confirm Raul’s characterization of it, whether one wants to talk wars of aggression, torture, failure to enforce the law, ignoring the Constitution, or sheer criminal activity.)
Raúl goes on to make an offer related to the poker game. As Dan describes it, quoting from the speech, “He reasserted the Cuban government’s ‘willingness to discuss on an equal footing the prolonged dispute with the government of the United States, convinced that this is the only way to solve the ever more complex and dangerous problems of the world.’â€Â
Quite an offer to, if not end, at least suspend the poker game and get down to real business, the standard of living of the Cuba people.
Unfortunately to date, the lackluster response from the Obama administration has left that offer flailing in the wings as, on stage, the poker game continuesâ€â€with Ileana and Mario and Lincoln and a few others of the tiny group that owns U.S. Cuba policy claiming they hold all the aces, hearts, spades, clubs and diamondsâ€â€and from time to time a fifth or a sixth of the devil knows what suit that they magically conjure from their sleeves.
Dan sums it this way in his Afterword: “It remains an open question whether Raúl Castro and Barack Obama will be able to heal the tormented relationship between their countries.â€Â
The Cuban peopleâ€â€far and away the most important aspect of this “tormented relationshipâ€Ââ€â€are waiting for the answer to that question.
About the Author
Lawrence Wilkerson is the Visiting Pamela C. Harriman Professor of Government at the College of William Mary, as well as Professorial Lecturer in the Honors Program at the George Washington University. His last positions in government were as Secretary of State Colin Powell's Chief of Staff (2002-05), Associate Director of the State Department's Policy Planning staff under the directorship of Ambassador Richard N. Haass, and member of that staff responsible for East Asia and the Pacific, political-military and legislative affairs (2001-02). Before serving at the State Department, Wilkerson served 31 years in the U.S. Army, including as Deputy Executive Officer to then-General Colin Powell when he commanded the U.S. Army Forces Command (1989), Special Assistant to General Powell when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989-93), and as Director and Deputy Director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College at Quantico, Virginia (1993-97). Wilkerson retired from active service in 1997 and then worked as an advisor to General Powell.