Contradiction and Cognitive Dissonance as Cuba Policy

"If you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Fidel Castro and Raul Castro shake hands on December 10, 2013

Conventional political opinion of the political elite in the United States on Cuba suffers from cognitive dissonance. This manifests itself in a US Cuba policy with contradictory attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that are also in conflict with reality. Since 1977, with the Carter administration's drive to normalize relations with the Castro regime, one finds a series of mental gymnastics among policy makers, and some activists, to reconcile the repeated failure of detente and the desire to double down and continue with regime engagement. 

This is due to several factors:

First, the failure to identify the nature of the regime that exists in Cuba mislabeling it as authoritarian leads to self-deception. The fact is that the Castro dictatorship is a communist totalitarian regime with an ongoing revolutionary tradition which means that it has a mission to transform non-communist countries to communism. Over the past 20 months first with North Korea then with the Peoples Republic of China the Castro regime was twice exposed attempting to smuggle arms and munitions.

Secondly, myopic policy makers in Washington, DC see the behaviors of the Castro regime through the prism of reacting to the United States. This leads to the absurd claim made by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton  back in 2010:

"It is my personal belief that the Castros do not want to see an end to the embargo and do not want to see normalization with the U.S., because they would lose all of their excuses for what hasn't happened in Cuba in the last 50 years." 

Clinton is not alone in making this claim, but it is a textbook example of cognitive dissonance. The Castro regime's international campaign against the embargo, they argue is not to get rid of sanctions but to explain their failures. This also necessitates ignoring:  Castro regime's recruiting of state officials, members of congress, and corporations to lobby to end the embargo in the United States; that every Castro agent uncovered by the United States over the years infiltrated in government and academia has been working for the lifting of the Cuban embargo.

Third, the attempt to normalize relations with an abnormal regime while at the same time maintaining policies in place to prevent the brutal and lawless nature of the regime showing itself and undermining engagement leads to incredible contradictions.  For example, on February 25, 2015 the Obama administration announced the "Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to Cuba" which states:

The Cuban government has not demonstrated that it will refrain from the use of excessive force against U.S. vessels or aircraft that may engage in memorial activities or peaceful protest north of Cuba.

On the same day the State Department announced that on Friday, February 27, the Department of State would host the second round of talks to re-establish diplomatic relations a Senior State Department official responded to press questions on Cuba's status as a terror sponsor stating:

Well, let me start off with the state sponsor of terrorism list. It’s important to know that those – these two processes are really separate. The process of review of the state sponsor of terrorism list is a separate process from that of restoration of diplomatic relations, and we don’t link the two. Obviously we’re moving forward on the review of Cuba on that list as quickly as we can, and we hope that we will have that completed very soon.

Let that sink in for a moment. While the State Department is defensively explaining why it can't go any faster in taking the Castro regime off the list of state sponsors of terrorism the Obama White House is saying that it believes that the Castro regime is still willing to destroy unarmed, civilian aircraft or vessels in international airspace or waters if they "engage in memorial activities or peaceful protest." 

Current Cuba policy does not: 1) recognize the nature of the regime; 2) identify regime objectives; and 3) offer a coherent voice on the threat poised by the regime to American lives and property. Conclusion: This will end in tears.

Bloody Tuesday in Burma

Students and monks brutally beaten down today in Burma

Students in Burma have been protesting a new education law that they say limits academic freedom in their country. Today the students were brutally beaten down by police along with monks and journalists. Police detained more than 100 people while dispersing demonstrators who had been protesting for more than a week.

More than 100 students and monks beaten and detained today in Burma

 The Burmese regime needs to drop all charges against the arrested students, and unconditionally free any students still in detention. There also needs to be an investigation that holds accountable those responsible for the violence today and institutionalize nationwide measures to prevent recurrence of similar incidents.

Commemorating 56th anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising Day

In solidarity with a Free Tibet.  

The Tibet Society - the world's first Tibet support group founded in 1959 - has released a press release outlining the significance of the day:

Tibetans and Tibet supporters around the world [1] are marking the 56th anniversary of the 10 March 1959 uprising in Tibet - a time when hundreds of thousands of Tibetans protested China’s illegal invasion and occupation of their country.

The Central Tibetan Administration is commemorating the 56th anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising Day at Tsuglagkhang, Dharamsala, India today via live stream today, March 10, 2015, from 9:00 am (Indian standard Time) onward.

Technology's double-edge sword in a democratic struggle

In a conversation over twitter on February 8, 2015 expressed the following controversial and perhaps counter-intuitive idea: "Experience with activists in Egypt left me skeptical of the technology panacea." Below is the case for my skepticism. Today, a version of this essay was published in The Canal, the Panam Post Blog 

Raul Castro, Hosni Mubarak, and Ban Ki-Moon at Non-Aligned Movement

Listening to U.S. officials discussing Cuba one is struck by the simultaneous discourse of expanding support for civil society using high technology while appearing to deemphasize the role of political opposition activists. This policy is not unique to Cuba. It has also been seen elsewhere, Egypt being a recent high profile example. Furthermore the emphasis on internet technology overlooks the role that companies such as Yahoo and Google have played in China to censor information and target dissidents for the dictatorship there in order to conduct business.

The United States in 2012 initiated Civil Society 2.0 which promotes blogging, texting, building a website, and operating in social networks as "capacity building." However in countries such as Egypt and even more so in Cuba where the vast majority of Cubans do not have access to cell phones (only 15% out of 11 million), much less internet (only 5% out of 11 million) how does this initiative build up the capacity of civil society to mobilize democrats?

Prior to the uprising in Egypt in 2010 I had blogged to raise awareness on the plight of bloggers, activists and journalists who had been arbitrarily detained. In late 2011 and early 2012 over the course of a month in Egypt, observing the first and third round of parliamentary elections, meeting with different stake holders ranging from: academics, human rights defenders, and bloggers to opposition political figures, revolutionaries in Tahrir Square, and the military the picture that emerged was not the popular narrative circulating in the press at the time.

Activists on twitter and bloggers were successful in generating attention internationally on what was taking place in Egypt, but in conversations with activists on the ground the role of cell phones and Facebook were not as advertised by some. Egyptian state security monitored the cell phones and communications over social media. These patterns of espionage utilizing high technology to target activists is not unique to Egypt. Activists understanding this provided disinformation via these channels while using low tech means to reach out and mobilize Egyptians that were not as susceptible to monitoring. 

However this was not the greatest oversight by policy makers and activists on the ground, but the failure to provide capacity training to democrats on how to mobilize effectively and the training on how to conduct an effective political campaign. This failure to work with the democratic political opposition in Egypt left a vacuum that was filled quickly by the well financed Muslim Brotherhood and the Nour Party ( an even more extreme Islamist party backed by Gulf Arab states) that dominated in the parliamentary elections. The Egyptian military stepped back and allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to rule in an increasingly undemocratic manner alienating vast sectors of Egyptian society leading to another round of mass protests in June of 2013 that ended in the restoration of military rule in a coup and the outlawing of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Technology is neutral, and repressive regimes have contracted Western companies to place draconian controls on the internet that are used to target activists. Amnesty International identified "Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Nortel Networks, Websense and Sun Microsystems" as having "provided technology which has been used to censor and control the use of the Internet in China." These repressive applications of new technologies have been transferred to other dictatorships.

Many experts, like the ones apparently operating in the State Department, argue of the importance of conditions such as: a large middle class, internet penetration or some minimum annual level of income.

However, Srdja Popovic, a cofounder and key figure in the Serbian resistance movement “Otpor!” that toppled Slobodan Milosevic nonviolently in 2000 disagrees with the above line of argument and makes the case that the most important thing that you can do is to build up the skills of activists because they are the ones who make the change. Conditions are important to take into consideration when activists are formulating their strategy but they do not define success.

The Obama administration's Cuba policy focused on credits, micro-enterprises, travel and internet will not lead to a democratic opening in Cuba either in the short, medium or long term. Instead it will serve as a distraction that will prolong the life of the dictatorship in Cuba and the Castro regime's power and influence abroad. At the same time democratic opposition leaders who are a threat to the dictatorship will continue to be targeted and eliminated. When the day arrives and the Castro regime enters an existential crisis the lack of support for political opposition activists will guarantee the failure of the stated policy goal of the United States: a nonviolent transition to democracy.

Furthermore, If democratic US leaders continue the example set by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi - who led a Congressional delegation last month and met with high-level officials of the dictatorship, but did not meet with Cuban democrats or human-rights defenders - then they will be undermining democrats and legitimizing autocrats. As was the case in Egypt, under-trained democrats with few resources will be no match for the anti-democratic, authoritarian, or totalitarian alternatives that present themselves with the backing of outside powers such as Russia or China that have strategic interests in Cuba.

Needless to say, that will not serve the just interests of the United States, nor of any other democracies in the region.

Rep. John Lewis remembers the "Bloody Sunday" in Selma 50 years ago that changed America

Some people love the world, but they don't love people. You have to respect the dignity and worth of every human being. Love everybody. - John Lewis, over twitter on March 5, 2015

Two Minute Warning, Police readying to attack marchers in Selma on 3/7/65. Spider Martin

 Remembering the power of nonviolence in Selma fifty years later 

The American civil rights movement had several nonviolent moments such as Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott, and another took place fifty years ago this month in Selma, Alabama.They have been captured on film as it happened and dramatized on film over the decades because they transformed America. Which leads to an obvious question: What is a nonviolent moment? The MettaCenter reproduces the definition originated by Yehudhah Mirsky of a nonviolent moment:

[A] climactic event in a campaign when all of the resistors’ forces are pitted against all of the oppressor’s forces in an open confrontation. The oppressor has two choices: escalate the oppression in a way that is repugnant to the rest of humanity, or back down and concede. Historical examples include the Dharasana Salt Raid during India’s anti-colonial struggle, the EDSA confrontation during the Philippines People Power movement, and Dr. King’s Selma march.

 The Library of Congress described one of the first flashpoints in the Selma conflict began on March 7, 1965 with John Lewis and Hosea Williams leading marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge that became known as Bloody Sunday:

On Sunday March 7, 1965, about six hundred people began a fifty-four mile march from Selma, Alabama to the state capitol in Montgomery. They were demonstrating for African American voting rights and to commemorate the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, shot three weeks earlier by an state trooper while trying to protect his mother at a civil rights demonstration. On the outskirts of Selma, after they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the marchers, in plain sight of photographers and journalists, were brutally assaulted by heavily armed state troopers and deputies.

Thanks to press on hand the world saw in video and photographs the brutality visited upon nonviolent demonstrators that day who maintained their nonviolent discipline in spite of the brutal attacks on them by the local authorities in Selma. It would lead through a protracted struggle into a march from Selma to Montgomery on March 25, 1965 led by Martin Luther King Jr. and would serve to usher in the 1965 Voting Rights Act for African Americans in the United States signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on August 5, 1965. Fifty years later Congressman John Lewis would meet with Cuban dissidents currently engaged in civil disobedience in Cuba inspired by his struggle half a century ago. The positive fruits of nonviolence knows no bounds.

Below is a playlist of videos beginning with John Lewis's reflection on Selma at 50 which he uploaded on March 3, 2015. This is followed from video footage of the protests, marches and repression from a half century ago.