In March of 2013, I suggested this idea for our policy toward Cuba:
“Let’s end the embargo. Right now. Completely – except, of course, for things the government could use to repress the Cuban people. We let Americans visit, however they want to. We let our businesses trade with Cuba and invest in Cuba. We basically take away the excuse the Castros have used for decades to justify the problems in Cuba.”
That wasn’t the whole idea, though. In the spirit of Vaclav Havel, who said: “We can talk to every ruler, but first of all it is necessary to tell the truth,” I also said this:
“[We need to] start telling the truth about Cuba. Not yelling it; not being self-righteous. Just telling the truth calmly and firmly. Support the Ladies in White. Urge the Cuban government to allow real free elections. Support the right of Cubans to access the Internet, all of it, whenever they want and to say whatever they want.”
What this would mean in practice is this: When our diplomats meet Cuban diplomats, we talk about human rights. We ask about members of the Ladies in White who have been arrested. We protest about political prisoners and limits on Internet access. The Cubans won’t like this. They will accuse us of doing the same things. They’ll bring up CIA torture and NSA spying. But that’s okay because we try to fix our mistakes. They just keep it up.
Cuba’s friends around the world won’t like it, either. They will tell us that this isn’t the way to improve relations. Once again, I don’t care. If Cuba freezes our relations because we tell the truth about them, that’s Cuba’s decision. We haven’t had diplomatic relations with Cuba for over 50 years. If Cuba doesn’t want to upgrade our relations because we’re talking about their record on human rights, we can wait.
A short aside: For those who think it doesn’t do any good tell the truth like I am suggesting, I give you the story of Natan Sharansky. Natan Sharansky was a human rights activist in the Soviet Union and a spokesman for the Moscow Helsinki Watch Group. In 1977, he was arrested and charged with being a spy. He was sentenced to thirteen years in jail. In 1983, while he was in jail in Siberia, Sharansky and other political prisoners heard that Ronald Reagan had called the Soviet Union an evil empire. All over the world, President Reagan was criticized and ridiculed for saying such a thing and for being so naïve. All over the world, that is, except in the jails of the Soviet Union, where, Natan Sharansky tells us, political prisoners silently cheered what President Reagan said. Because somebody was finally telling the truth.
What is likely to happen as we open up to Cuba, whether in the somewhat limited way that President Obama is doing or the more expansive way that I suggested? Unfortunately, in terms of freedom and democratization, not much. In spite of President Obama’s statements on how we are going to push for human rights in Cuba, it’s not going to work (at least for a while). That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t open up our relationship with Cuba – or that we shouldn’t tell the truth about the government of Cuba. It just means we need to be realistic about what we can accomplish.
Look at two examples: Vietnam and China. We normalized relations with Vietnam in 1995. Now we are trading with Vietnam; Americans are touring Vietnam; Americans are investing in Vietnam. Everything that President Obama would like us to do in Cuba. And Vietnam is still a dictatorship, just like it was in 1995. On a scale of 1 to 7, with “1” being the most free and “7” being the least free, Freedom House ranks Vietnam as “5” on civil liberties and “7” on political rights.1 That is a slight improvement from Vietnam’s “7” and “7” of twenty years ago, but not much.
The same is true with China. President Nixon went to China in 1972. Mao Zedong was still in charge, and China was a “7” and “7” with respect to civil liberties and political rights. Forty-two years later, China is “6” on civil liberties and “7” on political rights. Once again, trade, tourism, investment, etc., everything involved in normalization of relations, haven’t resulted in freedom for the Chinese people. (One difference with respect to China, though. President Nixon never told us normalization of relations with China would result in freedom for the Chinese people. He wasn’t doing it to free the Chinese. He was doing to counterbalance the Soviet Union and to stop China from aligning with the Soviet Union against the United States. But then Richard Nixon knew what he was doing in foreign affairs.)
Does that mean the situation in Cuba is hopeless? No. Things have gone differently elsewhere. For example, Eastern Europe. But even the successes in Eastern Europe give only hope, not a guarantee. And they teach that we need to temper our hopes with realism.
When Willy Brandt became Chancellor of West Germany in 1969, he instituted a new policy with respect to East Germany. It was called “Ostpolitik” or “Neue Ostpolitik” (German for “new eastern policy”). The purpose of Ostpolitik was to foster German-German encounters and to increase trade between the two Germanys. The proponents of Ostpolitik felt that the previous policy had failed to either undermine the Communist regime in East Germany or help the East German people.2
As part of Chancellor Brandt’s new Ostpolitik, West and East Germany each established a “permanent mission” in the capital of the other. (They couldn’t be called “embassies” because West Germany refused to officially acknowledge East Germany as a separate state.) West Germans got the ability to travel to East Germany. Trade between the two parts of Germany increased.
Ostpolitik probably did improve the living standards of the East Germans, but it did nothing for their freedom or rights. In 1972 (the first year of the Freedom House ratings) East Germany was a “7” in both political rights and civil liberties. Sixteen years later, East Germany was a “6” in civil liberties and a “7” in political rights.
But what about 1989 and the fall of the Wall? The key to what happened in 1989 was less Ostpolitik than what happened in East Germany itself. Three things were critical for what happened in East Germany in 1989. All of them were necessary, but none of them was sufficient on its own. The first was that the East German people began to protest. While there were protesters before 1989, the protests finally grew in size in 1989. However, by themselves, the protests wouldn’t have done it.
The second thing was that the Soviet Union stood down. The Soviets had crushed revolts in East Germany in 1953, in Poland and Hungary in 1956, and in Czechoslovakia in 1968. The fear of Soviet intervention caused Polish communists to impose martial law themselves in 1981. What changed? In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union.
In 1985, the Soviet economy was in a mess. Gorbachev needed to focus on fixing it. He instituted perestroika and glasnost in an effort to get things working. He basically told the East Europeans that they were on their own.3 Soviet troops weren’t going to intervene to protect local Communist governments. Once again, this was a necessary condition, because the Soviet Union could have stopped the protests in East Germany, but the Soviet Union’s backing off was not enough by itself.
The third thing that was necessary was an unwillingness on the part of the East German leadership to use force to stop the protests. If the East German police and army had used force in the fall of 1989, they could have stopped the protests. The Chinese did it in Tiananmen Square in June of 1989.
In 1989, Erich Honecker was General Secretary of the Central Committee of the East German Communist Party. Honecker was part of the first generation of leaders in East Germany. In 1946, he founded the Free German Youth, the Communist Party group for young people. In 1961, he was in charge of building the Berlin Wall. In 1971, he became General Secretary. In September and October of 1989, Honecker was willing to use force to stop the protests. However, he didn’t want to do it until after 40th anniversary celebrations for the founding of East Germany, which were held on October 6 and 7. The world press was there. Mikhail Gorbachev was there. Honecker did not want anything to interfere with his celebrations.
With the celebrations over, Honecker ordered the security forces to stop the protest march in Leipzig on Monday, October 9, 1989. But the size of the protest that night was bigger than anybody expected, and local officials in Leipzig ordered the security forces to pull back.4 By October 18, Honecker was out, replaced by his deputy, Egon Krenz.
Krenz was part of a new generation in East Germany. Born in 1937, he joined the East German Communist Party in 1955. He was not part of the first generation. He was less of a true believer and more of a careerist. He wouldn’t, or at least he didn’t, order the security forces to use force to stop the protests. And so, the protests continued. Finally, as Mary Elise Sarotte shows in her book, The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall, the Wall was breached when officials wouldn’t open fire on their own people.5
The key here is that, when it came time to push back against the protesters with force, those in charge didn’t do it. Erich Honecker, a member of the first generation of East Germany leaders, wanted the security forces to use force to stop the demonstrations. In June, he praised the Chinese communist leaders for what they did in Tiananmen Square. But that didn’t happen in East Germany. Lower level officials, who were not part of the first generation of the East German Communist Party, didn’t follow through on Honecker’s orders to stop the protests on October 9.
In final analysis, what happened in East Germany required a combination of three factors: (i) enough protesters; (ii) non-involvement of the Soviet Union; and (iii) a new generation in the East German Communist party, at least some of which were not willing to order the East German security forces to attack their own people to maintain Communist control. These three factors came together at the crucial moment to allow the revolution in East Germany to succeed.
What do these examples tell us for Cuba? The East German example tells us that a policy of more normal relations, such as Ostpolitik in Germany, may help improve the living standards of the Cuban people, but it won’t get them freedom. For freedom and democracy to prevail, there must be three things: protests; a lack of outsiders supporting the government; and leaders who have some restraint when it comes to using force to stay in power.
Cuba certainly has the protesters. Cuba probably has more protestors than East Germany did, at least until the very end. Also, there are no outsiders to help keep the Cuban Communist Party in power. I don’t know if the Soviets would have done so before 1991 (or if Venezuela would have helped while Hugo Chavez was alive), but they aren’t around now.
In China and Vietnam, the generations after the first have been willing to use force to maintain their power. We saw that at Tiananmen Square. In East Germany, they weren’t – or at least the ones in charge at the critical times didn’t. In Cuba, the first generation is still in power. Fidel and Raul Castro still rule, and they are clearly willing to use force to put down any challenges to their power.
It is a little bit in the past, but look at what the Castros did to the Cuban people in the early 1990s. In 1991, the Soviet Union dissolved, and its subsidies to Cuba ended. What did the Castros do? With oil imports down 90%, “agriculture shifted from machines to manual labor, food rations shrank precipitously and hunger became widespread.”6 Fidel Castro called it a “special period in time of peace”. The pain to the Cuban people was irrelevant. The Castros were not going to fundamentally change. This “special period in a time of peace” shows why the U.S. embargo against Cuba hasn’t worked. The U.S. embargo tries to squeeze Cuba economically, but the Castros are willing to do whatever they have to do to stay in power.
Proponents of the embargo argue that opening up amounts to subsidizing the Castros. Maybe it does to some extent. Certainly, we shouldn’t trade in goods that their secret police can use. But if opening up our relations with Cuba improves the Cuban economy, some of that money will get to the Cuban people and make their lives better.
I understand the emotion and the concern for the Cuban people of those who support the embargo. The problem is that the embargo hasn’t worked as we hoped. The Castros have the force, and the willingness to use it, to stop any effort at freedom and democratization. Also, because we are the only country with an embargo, the embargo is full of holes. Maybe it would work if the embargo was by the whole world, but we’ve lost that battle. Unfortunately, as long as the Castros are in power, the embargo will only impoverish the Cuban people. In my opinion, we should give it up. But we also shouldn’t deceive ourselves into thinking that lifting the embargo will do anything other than make the Cuban peoples’ life under the Castros a little better economically.
Hopefully, the next generation of leaders in Cuba will be less willing to use force to keep themselves in power. That didn’t happen in China or in Vietnam, but it did in East Germany and other countries of Eastern Europe.
The last question is this: Is there anything we can do to encourage or nudge Cuba’s next generation of leaders toward the example of East Germany, as opposed to that of China and Vietnam? Probably not much. What we can do, though, is to tell the truth about Cuba7 and, in that way, support those Cubans who want freedom and democracy. In the hope that somebody their protests will succeed.
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1 All of the Freedom House ratings can be found here.
2 The previous policy was called the “Hallstein Doctrine.” Under it, West Germany said it would regard it as an unfriendly act for other countries to recognize East Germany or to maintain diplomatic relations with it. West Germany’s response to countries that recognized East Germany was to break off diplomatic relations (except in the case of the Soviet Union).
3 At one point, Mikhail Gorbachev referred to this as the “Sinatra Doctrine”; i.e., each country could do things its way, referring to Frank Sinatra’s song “My Way.”
4 See, among others, Mary Elise Sarotte, The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall (2014).
5 In her book, The Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall, Ms. Sarotte quotes Karin Gueffroy, the mother of Chris Gueffroy, the last person to be shot trying to cross the Wall, as estimating that three-quarters of the East German security forces felt some sense of restraint, while one-quarter felt none. (Page 15) Men in that one-quarter would have opened fire in Leipzig on October 9 or at Bornholmer Strasse, where the Wall first opened, a month later. Fortunately, they were not in charge at the critical times. In China, second and third generation leaders were willing to use force to maintain control. At the crucial times in East Germany, the people in charge were not.
6 Yoani Sánchez, Havana Real (2011), p. 235.
7 In February of 2009, Hillary Clinton said we couldn’t let human rights concerns “interfere” with our diplomacy with China. We should not take that position with Cuba.
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