Wikileaks Cable: U.S. Should Look Within Cuban Government, Not to Dissidents, for Post-Castro Leadership
The lastest Wikileaks cable on Cuba offers up hard truths that sound an awful lot like what experts outside of government have been saying for years. Reuters' Havana Bureau Chief Jeff Frank reports on the cable, which was published Thursday by El Pais:
U.S. Interests Section chief Jonathan Farrar said [in the cable] the dissidents deserved backing as the "conscience of Cuba," but Washington "should look elsewhere, including within the government itself, to spot likely successors to the Castro regime.""We see very little evidence that the mainline dissident organizations have much resonance among ordinary Cubans," Farrar said. Without changes, he said, "the traditional dissident movement is not likely to supplant theCuban government."
Farrar's comments, made in a cable dated April 15, 2009, raise questions about the wisdom of the United States' longtime policy of supporting Cuban dissidents as an alternative to the Communist government that has ruled the island since a 1959 revolution put Fidel Castro in power.Despite claims they are supported by thousands of Cubans, Farrar said "informal polls we have carried out among visa and refugee applicants have shown virtually no awareness of dissident personalities or agendas."He described the dissident movement as largely ineffectual, due to factors including internal conflict, outsized egos, preoccupation with money, outdated agendas and infiltration by the Cuban government."The greatest effort is directed at obtaining enough resources to keep the principal organizers and their key supporters living from day to day," Farrar wrote.
Who knows whether this is the message Farrar gives to Congress when he visits Washington (and he's sure to get an earful about it from the incoming House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen), but the information revealed in this cable could have a significant impact next year on the sliver of the federal budget that Cuba programming occupies. With this cable in hand, along with stack of embarrassing Government Accountability Office assessments, longtime opponents of funding such as USAID and Radio/TV Marti programming for Cuba may find allies among axe-wielding deficit hawks next year.
Ros-Lehtinen and her allies are likely to push back against Farrar's findings and accuse the Obama administration of lacking concern for Cuba's dissidents. But that's because the alternative, admitting that Cuba's future may come from within the very system U.S. policy has long sought, without success, to bring down, is surely more than embargo adherants can bear.
Cuban dissidents may have a hard time making ends meet - as do millions of other Cubans - but to the new class of Republicans, most of whom campaigned on cutting wasteful government spending, what Farrar is describing could sound a lot like an American welfare program 90 miles off U.S. shores.
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About the Author
Anya Landau French is the Director of the New America Foundation’s U.S. – Cuba Policy Initiative and the editor of The Havana Note. Previously, Landau French was a Senior Fellow with the Lexington Institute, where she published Options for Engagement: A Resource Guide for Reforming U.S. Policy toward Cuba.