Cuba and the Security Doctrine of the United States
Sept. 11, 2001, produced a change on a global scale after which all of us became more insecure.
Exactly one year later, as part of its exercise of global hegemony, the United States made public its new National Security Directive, later known as the Bush Doctrine, whose essential elements are:
1. Preemptive attack, whereby [the U.S.] attributes to itself the right to intervene rapidly and decisively in any country it considers to be a potential threat to its security.
2. Regime change, as a practice to overthrow governments [the U.S.] does not like and to impose, in the name of democracy, regimes that guarantee the interests of the occupying power.
Despite the setbacks in Iraq, the empire has not changed the warlike tone of its discourse and reiterates its adherence to the principles of neoconservative ideology regarding the imposition of "democracy" and the aggressive use abroad of U.S. military might to achieve those goals. The "propagation of democracy" is an essential mission for this school of thought, and regime change is its true outcome.
In the case of Cuba, ever since the Bush administration came to power, constituted by the most right-wing sectors of the United States' political oligarchy, with a predominance of neoconservatives and with the support of the most extremist sectors in Miami, it has been designing the preparation of a "Cuba case" that eventually will serve to justify U.S. military aggression, utilizing for that purpose four principal elements. Cuba as: (1) A violator of human rights; (2) A promoter of terrorism; (3) A threat to the national security of the United States; (4) A factor of destabilization in the region.
(1) The pressures to place Cuba before the International Community as one of the worst violators of human rights are the principal objective of this effort. Directed at this is the obsessive effort to condemn Cuba in Geneva and [Cuba's] inclusion in every report prepared by the State Department, from a condemnation of the alleged lack of religious freedom to the traffic in humans, with an accusation of being a "major destination for sexual tourism."
(2) The yearly inclusion of Cuba on the list made up by the State Department of the countries it designates as terrorist countries. Secretary of State Colin Powell has been most categorical about the meaning of the list: "We have told Cuba, through that report, that those attitudes are not tolerable and that we shall act. We did it in Afghanistan and we did it in Iraq."
(3) The development of a systematic campaign to present the Island as a threat to the National Security of the United States because of an alleged capability to produce biological weapons. Included in this campaign are, among others, the repeated statements by John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, none of which have been rejected by the principal spokesmen of the Administration, although they lack any basis.
Bolton, a prominent figure in the neoconservative movement, states that "Cuba's threat to the security of the United States has been underestimated" and in March 2004, while addressing the Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives, stressed Cuba's specificity because [the island] is 90 miles from the U.S. mainland and because of "its condition as a violator of human rights, being on the list of terrorist countries, and sheltering terrorists." He added that "the Administration believes that Cuba remains a terrorist and biological weapons threat to the United States." State Department officials said those statements were endorsed by the Intelligence Community.
(4) Cuba's ability to destabilize the region, undermine the democratic process and promote anti-Americanism is the most recent accusation that seeks to augment the dossier of "threats" and to attract the support of other governments in the area.
In January of this year, Under Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere Roger Noriega declared that the United States had information about Cuban complicity in the toppling of governments. Secretary of State Powell supported this view a few days later when he opined that "Cuba has tried to do everything possible to destabilize part of the region." National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice joined in to say that the island continued to stir up trouble in other parts of the region.
Later, in testimony before the House Committee on the Armed Services to evaluate hemispheric security, Gen. James T. Hill of the U.S. Southern Command viewed this as an emerging threat and warned that "some leaders in the region exploit the deep frustrations over the failure of democratic reforms and reinforce their radical positions, fuel anti-American feelings and undermine our interests in the region."
A "regime change" always has been the policy of the United States regarding Cuba. The difference after September 11 is that its actions were carried out covertly in the past, while now it is openly proclaimed as the official policy of a government that already has put it into practice in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In the case of Cuba, the U.S. has gone from the euphemism of supporting a "transition to democracy" to the need to act "in a swift and decisive manner ... to end once and for all all vestiges of the regime and prevent the succession," a process that Washington links directly to the disappearance of Fidel.
Within that framework and following the same political logic, the U.S. government has produced the plan "to assist a Free Cuba," which attempts to give international legitimacy to the right of the United States to overthrow the Cuban government and impose a regime that responds to its hegemonic interests.
The so-called "Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba" prepared a plan aimed at depriving Cuba of its independence and sovereignty through the intensification of economic and political aggression, so as to provoke internal destabilization and propitiate direct military intervention. Its purpose is to revert the Revolution, restore capitalism in a neoliberal form and perpetuate imperial domination over the Cuban nation.
The United States' plots against Cuba have been diverse: economic war, invasion, plots to assassinate Fidel and other leaders, acts of terrorism, constant propaganda aggression, the promulgation of new laws. The current plot attempts to integrate all previous plots and contemplates both the actions to topple the Cuban government and the organization of Cuban society under U.S. intervention.
The report defines how [the Bush administration] envisions the functions of the state, its repressive mechanisms, the political system, social organization, judicial order, the economic structure with its privatization process and what it considers a "key element" for all this: the process to return all properties. All this is directed, regulated and controlled by the occupying power. It's something like a broadened Helms-Burton Law with a recycled Platt Amendment.
Some people have limited the significance of the plan to Bush's election interests in Florida, but it would be a grave error not to assess in all its dimensions what constitutes the plan's main objective: to wrest from the Cuban nation its independence, to deprive it of its sovereignty and to proceed to the annexation of the country.
The President of the United States asked the Commission to identify additional means to put a rapid end to the Cuban regime. When he established the Commission, he said clearly that the U.S. was "not just waiting" for the Cuban government to fall but that it was "already working" toward that end. To do this, the U.S. would, among other actions, set aside $59 million in the next two years. These are the funds assigned openly under Section 109 of the Helms-Burton Law. The funds distributed under Section 115 through the CIA and other agencies are much larger but secret; perhaps we shall learn about them in 20 or more years, when that information is declassified.
Chapter 1. 'Hastening Cuba's transition'
This chapter is devoted to the "regime change" with a policy that is "more proactive, integrated and disciplined to undermine the survival strategies of the Castro regime and contribute to conditions that will ... hasten the dictatorship's end."
The authors point out that in the past the policies toward Cuba were applied independently from each other. The economic war was waged without simultaneously lending all the support needed by the subversion; this, in turn, was not linked to illegal broadcasts and the international work to bring others aboard that policy. For this reason, the authors undertook to articulate a strategy that would integrate the different instruments at their disposal, structured as a "national commitment," to put an end to the Revolution.
This chapter identifies six interrelated tasks whose principal components are the development of subversive activities within the national territory and the strengthening of the "opposition" through its promotion, training and financing, plus a substantial increase in the funds assigned to its agents for those purposes.
Other tasks are to impede the continuity of Cuban leadership as provided by the Constitution, to intensify the blockade to reduce the ingress of hard currency and to develop new methods to carry out illegal broadcasts, to organize a wide campaign of disinformation abroad and to foment the Revolution's international isolation through multilateral efforts.
To achieve its purposes, the government of the United States would appoint a Transition Coordinator at the State Department, who would take charge of the planning and coordination of the actions of the various government actions for the execution of this plan.
The appointment of this proconsul is one of the examples of the expansion of the Helms-Burton Law, which, in Section 203, established the figure of a coordinating official who would be appointed whenever the President of the United States determined that power [in Cuba] was held by a counter-Revolutionary government on a "democratic" stage.
In Iraq, Paul Bremer was appointed as such an official after the military occupation. Cuba's Bremer would act, starting now, to put and end to the Revolution and to direct the ensuing process.
The immediate deployment of a military plane to perform illegal broadcasts constitutes one of the most provocative and dangerous actions. A measure like this has previously been taken only during war conditions and represents a clear violation of Cuban sovereignty, of international law and of the rules of the International Telecommunications Union.
A notable aspect of the presidential plan is the direct attack on the Cuban family through further restrictions on the trips by émigrés to their country of origin and the remittance of economic aid to their relatives. In addition, [the plan] assumes the right to define what constitutes a family and what doesn't, excluding therefrom any aunts, uncles, cousins and other "distant" relatives.
Chapter 2. 'Meeting Basic Human Needs in the Areas of Health, Education, Housing and Human Services'
Beginning with this chapter, the report devotes itself entirely to outline the measures the U.S. government would take after it begins to administer the colony, under occupation, and implement a capitalist restoration.
Cuba is living proof of how much can be achieved in health care, education and social welfare, despite the material limitations caused by the United States' criminal blockade. Cubans enjoy access, equally and freely, to assistance in these fields, an assistance that would be a dream to most Third World countries and to tens of millions of people in the United States itself.
According to the plan designed [by the U.S.], health and education services would be privatized and would stop being universal and free. In the field of health, the plan contemplates the possibility that some private enterprises and charitable institutions help pay part of the expenses for the "basic" care of people who can't afford it. In the case of education, the plan would reopen the old, elitist schools and facilitate the development of private education and its spread to all levels of education. It would also establish that public education must be paid for.
This chapter proposes the elimination of the Social Security system, because "the Cuban economy and government budget after transition may not be able to sustain the level of unearned benefits and the lax requirements for eligibility that the communist system permitted."
The cost of social services would be financed with funds not only from the intervenient government and the contractors who would suck dry the country's resources "but also from ... philanthropic foundations, nonprofit expert organizations and businesses interested in investing in Cuba's future."
Chapter 3. 'Establishing Democratic Institutions, Respect for Human Rights, Rule of Law, and National Justice and Reconciliation'
This is one of the most all-encompassing chapters in the project of domination, involving the police, the army, the government (all the way to the local level), the judicial system, the Parliament, political parties, labor unions, the churches and religious organizations, civic and professional associations. Nothing escapes the empire's foresight.
Anticipating the repudiation the proposed measures would elicit, the authors assign the organization of repression prominence above all other matters. Thus, they define as "an immediate priority" the organization by the U.S. government of "a professional police force." They consider this to be the "key variable" upon which "will depend, more than any other, the possibility of a regime change."
The administrative power of the new colony intends to change laws and regulations, appoint judges, design an electoral system and finally write a new Constitution that will consecrates the rights of the occupier and its puppet government.
Chapter 4. 'Establishing the Core Institutions of a Free Economy'
The reestablishment of private property rights is conceived in the report as "one of the biggest challenges of the transition period," especially the process of property restitution, which [the authors] consider to be "extremely complex," particularly as it relates to residential property, which they describe as a "Gordian Knot."
Among the claimants are included not only U.S. citizens but also the former Cuban exploiters who later acquired U.S. citizenship, even those who remain [in the U.S.] as residents or citizens of other countries.
The restitution of properties is presented as the "key element" to initiate an economic recovery, because, according to the report, "potential investors will be reluctant to get involved in Cuba as long as questions of ownership, property rights and restitution remain unsettled." Consequently, "the longer this issue remains open, the longer it will take for Cuba's financial and economic recovery."
The report defines the various types of property subject to restitution -- commercial, agricultural and residential -- and, based on the experience of the former socialist countries, it proposes "solutions."
To take away the Cubans' homes and land, [its authors] create a U.S. Government Commission on the Restitution of Property Rights (CRPR) so "an expeditious process may be carried out." They admit that "the situation involving residential property will be extremely complex" because it "raises the potential for major political dissatisfaction by a large segment of Cubans," but say the process should be accomplished in less than one year.
They will form a U.S. Government Standing Committee for Economic Reconstruction (SCER) that will be in charge of returning Cuba to a market economy with the neoliberal prescriptions that have caused so much misery in Latin America and other regions of the world. This committee, among other tasks, would establish a new fiscal and monetary policy, would free price controls, including the controls on energy prices, would eliminate cooperatives, totally privatize the economy and deliver the country to the international financial institutions.
The promises of economic recovery through the restoration of a capitalism with an extreme neoliberal bent cannot avoid admitting that the process will be "slow and uneven" and recall that in other countries the so-called transition to a free-market model has been "slow, painful and politically sensitive."
The neoliberal adjustment includes a "radical overhaul" of the national budget, which implies "determining the economic need and viability of Cuba's numerous social programs."
[The authors] conclude that "the reconstruction effort will be long and costly ... and the burden need not fall completely on the shoulders of the United States." "It will take time to build national institutions," so they propose sharing with the international community of donors, the international financial institutions, and the development organisms of the United States the high costs they foresee for their new possession.
Chapter 5. 'Modernizing Infrastructure'
To carry out the country's conversion, it will become necessary to modify the economic infrastructure. The solution the authors propose is the privatization of public services, assistance from the World Bank and similar institutions, the sale of U.S.-made equipment and the intervention in every branch of Cuba's economy.
The imperial greed encompasses everything: aviation, airports, maritime operations, railroads, highways, energy, public transport, mining, telecommunications, hydraulic resources and many other sectors.
The report foresees the implementation of these measures within the first 90 days of the new regime, legally supported by the drafting of agreements between the interventor and the appointed government to achieve the appropriation of natural resources, guarantee juicy contracts for U.S. companies and thus control the country's economic life in its entirety.
Chapter 6. 'Addressing Environmental Degradation'
The report considers that "the poor environmental protection policies that have been in effect are evident in the quality of land, water, air, and natural habitats that exist on the island today."
This chapter is an example of the manipulation and absolute ignorance of the United States about Cuba. In this field, as in many other parts of the document, the empire's thinking stopped in 1959, ignoring the institutionalization in [Cuba] of the protection of the environment through laws, programs and concrete projects. Besides, Cuba has signed 26 conventions, treaties and protocols related to biological diversity.
CONCLUSIONS
We are looking at a plan by the government of the United States that shows the lengths to which the empire is willing to go to deprive the Cuban nation of its independence and sovereignty. It is obvious that, toward that end, military intervention is required, as well as the installation of an occupation government that will execute the detailed plans made for what would become -- from that moment on -- [the empire's] protectorate.
To fulfill its designs toward Cuba, the U.S. government accompanies its actions with a broad propaganda plan of "public diplomacy," for which it has budgeted an additional sum of $5 million. This plan portrays Cuba as a country that violates human rights, shelters terrorists and carries out espionage in the United States, promotes instability in Latin America and produces biological weapons for mass extermination, with which it threatens the national security of the United States.
They try to present an image that delegitimizes the Cuban government in the international community and depicts a country that brutalizes its citizens and functions on the margins of the international community; thus, they would create the conditions that justify armed aggression.
The chairman of this Commission, Secretary of State Colin Powell, recently summarized the essence of the policy against Cuba. When asked why the U.S. did not "liberate" Cuba the way it did in Iraq, he answered that "military options are not always used immediately" and said those options were preceded by other instruments: "isolation, sanctions, pressures, economic activity," although he made it clear that "sometimes there is no appropriate solution other than the use of military force."
Some weeks ago, Army Gen. [John] Abizaid, commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command, asked a group of soldiers returning from Iraq not to quit the Army. "We need your experience in the global war against terrorism," he said, and added: "The country is going to face more wars like this in the years to come."
Miguel Álvarez Sánchez
Exactly one year later, as part of its exercise of global hegemony, the United States made public its new National Security Directive, later known as the Bush Doctrine, whose essential elements are:
1. Preemptive attack, whereby [the U.S.] attributes to itself the right to intervene rapidly and decisively in any country it considers to be a potential threat to its security.
2. Regime change, as a practice to overthrow governments [the U.S.] does not like and to impose, in the name of democracy, regimes that guarantee the interests of the occupying power.
Despite the setbacks in Iraq, the empire has not changed the warlike tone of its discourse and reiterates its adherence to the principles of neoconservative ideology regarding the imposition of "democracy" and the aggressive use abroad of U.S. military might to achieve those goals. The "propagation of democracy" is an essential mission for this school of thought, and regime change is its true outcome.
In the case of Cuba, ever since the Bush administration came to power, constituted by the most right-wing sectors of the United States' political oligarchy, with a predominance of neoconservatives and with the support of the most extremist sectors in Miami, it has been designing the preparation of a "Cuba case" that eventually will serve to justify U.S. military aggression, utilizing for that purpose four principal elements. Cuba as: (1) A violator of human rights; (2) A promoter of terrorism; (3) A threat to the national security of the United States; (4) A factor of destabilization in the region.
(1) The pressures to place Cuba before the International Community as one of the worst violators of human rights are the principal objective of this effort. Directed at this is the obsessive effort to condemn Cuba in Geneva and [Cuba's] inclusion in every report prepared by the State Department, from a condemnation of the alleged lack of religious freedom to the traffic in humans, with an accusation of being a "major destination for sexual tourism."
(2) The yearly inclusion of Cuba on the list made up by the State Department of the countries it designates as terrorist countries. Secretary of State Colin Powell has been most categorical about the meaning of the list: "We have told Cuba, through that report, that those attitudes are not tolerable and that we shall act. We did it in Afghanistan and we did it in Iraq."
(3) The development of a systematic campaign to present the Island as a threat to the National Security of the United States because of an alleged capability to produce biological weapons. Included in this campaign are, among others, the repeated statements by John Bolton, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, none of which have been rejected by the principal spokesmen of the Administration, although they lack any basis.
Bolton, a prominent figure in the neoconservative movement, states that "Cuba's threat to the security of the United States has been underestimated" and in March 2004, while addressing the Committee on International Relations of the House of Representatives, stressed Cuba's specificity because [the island] is 90 miles from the U.S. mainland and because of "its condition as a violator of human rights, being on the list of terrorist countries, and sheltering terrorists." He added that "the Administration believes that Cuba remains a terrorist and biological weapons threat to the United States." State Department officials said those statements were endorsed by the Intelligence Community.
(4) Cuba's ability to destabilize the region, undermine the democratic process and promote anti-Americanism is the most recent accusation that seeks to augment the dossier of "threats" and to attract the support of other governments in the area.
In January of this year, Under Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere Roger Noriega declared that the United States had information about Cuban complicity in the toppling of governments. Secretary of State Powell supported this view a few days later when he opined that "Cuba has tried to do everything possible to destabilize part of the region." National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice joined in to say that the island continued to stir up trouble in other parts of the region.
Later, in testimony before the House Committee on the Armed Services to evaluate hemispheric security, Gen. James T. Hill of the U.S. Southern Command viewed this as an emerging threat and warned that "some leaders in the region exploit the deep frustrations over the failure of democratic reforms and reinforce their radical positions, fuel anti-American feelings and undermine our interests in the region."
A "regime change" always has been the policy of the United States regarding Cuba. The difference after September 11 is that its actions were carried out covertly in the past, while now it is openly proclaimed as the official policy of a government that already has put it into practice in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In the case of Cuba, the U.S. has gone from the euphemism of supporting a "transition to democracy" to the need to act "in a swift and decisive manner ... to end once and for all all vestiges of the regime and prevent the succession," a process that Washington links directly to the disappearance of Fidel.
Within that framework and following the same political logic, the U.S. government has produced the plan "to assist a Free Cuba," which attempts to give international legitimacy to the right of the United States to overthrow the Cuban government and impose a regime that responds to its hegemonic interests.
The so-called "Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba" prepared a plan aimed at depriving Cuba of its independence and sovereignty through the intensification of economic and political aggression, so as to provoke internal destabilization and propitiate direct military intervention. Its purpose is to revert the Revolution, restore capitalism in a neoliberal form and perpetuate imperial domination over the Cuban nation.
The United States' plots against Cuba have been diverse: economic war, invasion, plots to assassinate Fidel and other leaders, acts of terrorism, constant propaganda aggression, the promulgation of new laws. The current plot attempts to integrate all previous plots and contemplates both the actions to topple the Cuban government and the organization of Cuban society under U.S. intervention.
The report defines how [the Bush administration] envisions the functions of the state, its repressive mechanisms, the political system, social organization, judicial order, the economic structure with its privatization process and what it considers a "key element" for all this: the process to return all properties. All this is directed, regulated and controlled by the occupying power. It's something like a broadened Helms-Burton Law with a recycled Platt Amendment.
Some people have limited the significance of the plan to Bush's election interests in Florida, but it would be a grave error not to assess in all its dimensions what constitutes the plan's main objective: to wrest from the Cuban nation its independence, to deprive it of its sovereignty and to proceed to the annexation of the country.
The President of the United States asked the Commission to identify additional means to put a rapid end to the Cuban regime. When he established the Commission, he said clearly that the U.S. was "not just waiting" for the Cuban government to fall but that it was "already working" toward that end. To do this, the U.S. would, among other actions, set aside $59 million in the next two years. These are the funds assigned openly under Section 109 of the Helms-Burton Law. The funds distributed under Section 115 through the CIA and other agencies are much larger but secret; perhaps we shall learn about them in 20 or more years, when that information is declassified.
Chapter 1. 'Hastening Cuba's transition'
This chapter is devoted to the "regime change" with a policy that is "more proactive, integrated and disciplined to undermine the survival strategies of the Castro regime and contribute to conditions that will ... hasten the dictatorship's end."
The authors point out that in the past the policies toward Cuba were applied independently from each other. The economic war was waged without simultaneously lending all the support needed by the subversion; this, in turn, was not linked to illegal broadcasts and the international work to bring others aboard that policy. For this reason, the authors undertook to articulate a strategy that would integrate the different instruments at their disposal, structured as a "national commitment," to put an end to the Revolution.
This chapter identifies six interrelated tasks whose principal components are the development of subversive activities within the national territory and the strengthening of the "opposition" through its promotion, training and financing, plus a substantial increase in the funds assigned to its agents for those purposes.
Other tasks are to impede the continuity of Cuban leadership as provided by the Constitution, to intensify the blockade to reduce the ingress of hard currency and to develop new methods to carry out illegal broadcasts, to organize a wide campaign of disinformation abroad and to foment the Revolution's international isolation through multilateral efforts.
To achieve its purposes, the government of the United States would appoint a Transition Coordinator at the State Department, who would take charge of the planning and coordination of the actions of the various government actions for the execution of this plan.
The appointment of this proconsul is one of the examples of the expansion of the Helms-Burton Law, which, in Section 203, established the figure of a coordinating official who would be appointed whenever the President of the United States determined that power [in Cuba] was held by a counter-Revolutionary government on a "democratic" stage.
In Iraq, Paul Bremer was appointed as such an official after the military occupation. Cuba's Bremer would act, starting now, to put and end to the Revolution and to direct the ensuing process.
The immediate deployment of a military plane to perform illegal broadcasts constitutes one of the most provocative and dangerous actions. A measure like this has previously been taken only during war conditions and represents a clear violation of Cuban sovereignty, of international law and of the rules of the International Telecommunications Union.
A notable aspect of the presidential plan is the direct attack on the Cuban family through further restrictions on the trips by émigrés to their country of origin and the remittance of economic aid to their relatives. In addition, [the plan] assumes the right to define what constitutes a family and what doesn't, excluding therefrom any aunts, uncles, cousins and other "distant" relatives.
Chapter 2. 'Meeting Basic Human Needs in the Areas of Health, Education, Housing and Human Services'
Beginning with this chapter, the report devotes itself entirely to outline the measures the U.S. government would take after it begins to administer the colony, under occupation, and implement a capitalist restoration.
Cuba is living proof of how much can be achieved in health care, education and social welfare, despite the material limitations caused by the United States' criminal blockade. Cubans enjoy access, equally and freely, to assistance in these fields, an assistance that would be a dream to most Third World countries and to tens of millions of people in the United States itself.
According to the plan designed [by the U.S.], health and education services would be privatized and would stop being universal and free. In the field of health, the plan contemplates the possibility that some private enterprises and charitable institutions help pay part of the expenses for the "basic" care of people who can't afford it. In the case of education, the plan would reopen the old, elitist schools and facilitate the development of private education and its spread to all levels of education. It would also establish that public education must be paid for.
This chapter proposes the elimination of the Social Security system, because "the Cuban economy and government budget after transition may not be able to sustain the level of unearned benefits and the lax requirements for eligibility that the communist system permitted."
The cost of social services would be financed with funds not only from the intervenient government and the contractors who would suck dry the country's resources "but also from ... philanthropic foundations, nonprofit expert organizations and businesses interested in investing in Cuba's future."
Chapter 3. 'Establishing Democratic Institutions, Respect for Human Rights, Rule of Law, and National Justice and Reconciliation'
This is one of the most all-encompassing chapters in the project of domination, involving the police, the army, the government (all the way to the local level), the judicial system, the Parliament, political parties, labor unions, the churches and religious organizations, civic and professional associations. Nothing escapes the empire's foresight.
Anticipating the repudiation the proposed measures would elicit, the authors assign the organization of repression prominence above all other matters. Thus, they define as "an immediate priority" the organization by the U.S. government of "a professional police force." They consider this to be the "key variable" upon which "will depend, more than any other, the possibility of a regime change."
The administrative power of the new colony intends to change laws and regulations, appoint judges, design an electoral system and finally write a new Constitution that will consecrates the rights of the occupier and its puppet government.
Chapter 4. 'Establishing the Core Institutions of a Free Economy'
The reestablishment of private property rights is conceived in the report as "one of the biggest challenges of the transition period," especially the process of property restitution, which [the authors] consider to be "extremely complex," particularly as it relates to residential property, which they describe as a "Gordian Knot."
Among the claimants are included not only U.S. citizens but also the former Cuban exploiters who later acquired U.S. citizenship, even those who remain [in the U.S.] as residents or citizens of other countries.
The restitution of properties is presented as the "key element" to initiate an economic recovery, because, according to the report, "potential investors will be reluctant to get involved in Cuba as long as questions of ownership, property rights and restitution remain unsettled." Consequently, "the longer this issue remains open, the longer it will take for Cuba's financial and economic recovery."
The report defines the various types of property subject to restitution -- commercial, agricultural and residential -- and, based on the experience of the former socialist countries, it proposes "solutions."
To take away the Cubans' homes and land, [its authors] create a U.S. Government Commission on the Restitution of Property Rights (CRPR) so "an expeditious process may be carried out." They admit that "the situation involving residential property will be extremely complex" because it "raises the potential for major political dissatisfaction by a large segment of Cubans," but say the process should be accomplished in less than one year.
They will form a U.S. Government Standing Committee for Economic Reconstruction (SCER) that will be in charge of returning Cuba to a market economy with the neoliberal prescriptions that have caused so much misery in Latin America and other regions of the world. This committee, among other tasks, would establish a new fiscal and monetary policy, would free price controls, including the controls on energy prices, would eliminate cooperatives, totally privatize the economy and deliver the country to the international financial institutions.
The promises of economic recovery through the restoration of a capitalism with an extreme neoliberal bent cannot avoid admitting that the process will be "slow and uneven" and recall that in other countries the so-called transition to a free-market model has been "slow, painful and politically sensitive."
The neoliberal adjustment includes a "radical overhaul" of the national budget, which implies "determining the economic need and viability of Cuba's numerous social programs."
[The authors] conclude that "the reconstruction effort will be long and costly ... and the burden need not fall completely on the shoulders of the United States." "It will take time to build national institutions," so they propose sharing with the international community of donors, the international financial institutions, and the development organisms of the United States the high costs they foresee for their new possession.
Chapter 5. 'Modernizing Infrastructure'
To carry out the country's conversion, it will become necessary to modify the economic infrastructure. The solution the authors propose is the privatization of public services, assistance from the World Bank and similar institutions, the sale of U.S.-made equipment and the intervention in every branch of Cuba's economy.
The imperial greed encompasses everything: aviation, airports, maritime operations, railroads, highways, energy, public transport, mining, telecommunications, hydraulic resources and many other sectors.
The report foresees the implementation of these measures within the first 90 days of the new regime, legally supported by the drafting of agreements between the interventor and the appointed government to achieve the appropriation of natural resources, guarantee juicy contracts for U.S. companies and thus control the country's economic life in its entirety.
Chapter 6. 'Addressing Environmental Degradation'
The report considers that "the poor environmental protection policies that have been in effect are evident in the quality of land, water, air, and natural habitats that exist on the island today."
This chapter is an example of the manipulation and absolute ignorance of the United States about Cuba. In this field, as in many other parts of the document, the empire's thinking stopped in 1959, ignoring the institutionalization in [Cuba] of the protection of the environment through laws, programs and concrete projects. Besides, Cuba has signed 26 conventions, treaties and protocols related to biological diversity.
CONCLUSIONS
We are looking at a plan by the government of the United States that shows the lengths to which the empire is willing to go to deprive the Cuban nation of its independence and sovereignty. It is obvious that, toward that end, military intervention is required, as well as the installation of an occupation government that will execute the detailed plans made for what would become -- from that moment on -- [the empire's] protectorate.
To fulfill its designs toward Cuba, the U.S. government accompanies its actions with a broad propaganda plan of "public diplomacy," for which it has budgeted an additional sum of $5 million. This plan portrays Cuba as a country that violates human rights, shelters terrorists and carries out espionage in the United States, promotes instability in Latin America and produces biological weapons for mass extermination, with which it threatens the national security of the United States.
They try to present an image that delegitimizes the Cuban government in the international community and depicts a country that brutalizes its citizens and functions on the margins of the international community; thus, they would create the conditions that justify armed aggression.
The chairman of this Commission, Secretary of State Colin Powell, recently summarized the essence of the policy against Cuba. When asked why the U.S. did not "liberate" Cuba the way it did in Iraq, he answered that "military options are not always used immediately" and said those options were preceded by other instruments: "isolation, sanctions, pressures, economic activity," although he made it clear that "sometimes there is no appropriate solution other than the use of military force."
Some weeks ago, Army Gen. [John] Abizaid, commander in chief of the U.S. Central Command, asked a group of soldiers returning from Iraq not to quit the Army. "We need your experience in the global war against terrorism," he said, and added: "The country is going to face more wars like this in the years to come."
Miguel Álvarez Sánchez
posted by R7 | 9/30/2004 07:48:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home