The High Cost of Doing Business in China

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." - Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

Presidents Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter meet with Deng Xiaoping in 1979

Normalizing relations with China and engaging it both diplomatically and economically is often given as an example of the inconsistency of a human rights based policy in Cuba. This fails to look at the negative consequences of China policy not only for the United States but the world. Swedish human rights defender Peter Dahlin was taken in China by state security on January 3, 2016 and today was paraded on television to make a scripted confession. In Hong Kong the long reach of the Chinese communist regime has led to five book sellers disappearing because they sold books critical of the dictatorship.  The Free Cuba Foundation in an open letter replying to Cuban American businessmen advocating engagement with the Cuban dictatorship summarizes some of the costs of this policy on the world stage:

Human rights and democracy have been in retreat for the better part of a decade emboldening dictators and terrorists to challenge the international order turning it into something cruel and indifferent to human aspirations for freedom and dignity. We are witnessing today in Venezuela the attempt by the Maduro regime to undermine the results of a democratic election while at the same time rejecting calls for an amnesty to free Venezuelan prisoners of conscience. This change poses a challenge for a democratic Cuba in the future.

This new reality is in large part due to unprincipled engagement with Communist China by Western Countries, including the United States. Corporations shifted manufacturing away from their free markets, labor unions, and environmental protections toward Communist China were workers are paid slave wages, work in terrible conditions and where environmental regulations are non-existent. The world today is dirtier, less free, and human dignity has been debased to the point that organ trafficking is a common practice and the bodies of dissidents are put on display for the amusement and curiosity of paying visitors around the world.   

 Dr. King's epigram "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere" can be seen in action in China. The decision to continue the China policy initiated by Nixon and Kissinger in a Cold War context with the Soviet Union when it had a basis in realpolitik but ended with the collapse of the Soviet empire (1989 - 1991). The decision to continue based on narrow economic self-interests has had negative consequences not only in China but around the world. It is long past time for the United States and other democracies to advance a principled human rights policy in China and elsewhere. This also does not mean going to war that often has made things worse but doing the right thing. This is the third way, that neither engages in preemptive wars or appeasing brutal tyrants, and is the best hope to a world of freedom and justice which is necessary for a lasting peace.

Correcting the historical record: The Clintons and The Castro brothers

Why friends of a free Cuba should be protesting against the Clintons.

Clinton and Kerry: No friends of Cuban democracy activists

 Hillary Clinton is going to Florida International University tomorrow to make a foreign policy speech in which she will apparently call for the end of the embargo on the Castro dictatorship. What is surprising is that this is news because back in June 2014 in her book Hard Choices, Hillary Clinton wrote that she had been urging President Obama to end the embargo on Cuba. Unfortunately, when advocates of normalized relations in 2015 claim that the sanctions policy has been in place for 55 years and that diplomatic relations have been nonexistent they overlook some key facts that get in the way of their narrative.

First, Jimmy Carter in 1977 negotiated with the Castro regime the opening of Interests Sections in their respective countries that for all intents and purposes have functioned as embassies until April 20, 2015.

Secondly, Bill Clinton in 1994 initiated regular contacts between the U.S. and Cuban military that included joint military exercises at the Guantanamo Naval base. ( Despite his rhetoric George W. Bush continued the practice during his presidency.) Despite this improvement of relations the 1990s saw some of those brutal massacres of Cubans that are rightly remembered such as the July 13, 1994 "13 de Marzo" tugboat massacre and the February 24, 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down. The shoot down involved two planes blown to bits over international airspace by Cuban MiGs killing three American citizens and a Cuban resident who were engaged in the search and rescue of Cuban rafters. Gerardo Hernandez, one of the Cuban spies freed by Obama on December 17, 2014, was serving a life sentence for conspiracy to commit murder for his role in these killings.  Jose Basulto, one of the survivors, who escaped in a third plane accuses the Clinton administration of complicity in the killings. Listen to what he has to say here:

Thirdly, since 1996 was an election year and the destruction of civilian airplanes in international airspace could at a minimum be considered an act of state terrorism and at maximum an act of war the Clinton administration had to do something. They had two options a military strike on Cuba or toughening economic sanctions. This is how the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act of 1996 became law that toughened sanctions.

Almost immediately after being re-elected Bill Clinton sought to undermine sanctions and normalize relations with the Castro dictatorship. The first sitting president to shake hands with Fidel Castro on September 6, 2000 was Bill Clinton. One month later he signed  Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act (TEFRA) that opened trade between the Castro regime and U.S. companies. Opposition in congress led to that trade not being subsidized by U.S. taxpayers by not providing government backed credits ensuring that business would be cash and carry.

Thankfully the future of Cuba depends on what Cubans do and not the vageries of U.S. Cuba policy because as the above history would indicate the Clinton administration sided with the dictatorship not the Cuban people. Prior to Bill Clinton, Cubans fleeing the Castro regime were received into the United States. It was on his watch in 1995 that Cuban refugees were declared migrants and began to be seized on the high seas and deported to communist Cuba.

Unfortunately, among past presidential candidates who ended up in key positions in the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton is not the worse on Cuba policy, that prize would go to John Kerry. Secretary of State Kerry while running for President in 2004 when asked by a reporter what he thought of the Varela Project, an initiative in which tens of thousands of Cubans called for democratic reforms, his response was that it was "counterproductive." Eleven years later the daughter of the man who initiated the Varela Project now martyred was treated shabbily by the Kerry's State Department spokesman. Let me also be fair and report that this is a bipartisan affair and individuals such as Henry Kissinger are equally horrible on human rights in Cuba.

Tomorrow at 9:45am I will be at Florida International University with my poster not only protesting Hillary Clinton's position on Cuba but also her husband's horrible record. It seems that every twenty years when the Castro regime is in a moment of crisis an American president comes in to bail out the dictatorship in the name of stability only making things worse and extending the life of the dictatorship.

History Rebukes Getting into Bed with Dictatorship

Appeasement Strategy with Cuba Has Been Tried, Already Proved a Failure

Presidents Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter meet with Deng Xiaoping in 1979

Originally published in The Canal

History demonstrates that biology does not necessarily take care of totalitarian regimes that have enslaved entire peoples. The Soviet Union founded in 1917 did not implode until 1991 when three generations had passed through that brutal system and finally brought it down nonviolently.

Likewise, China has been gripped by Mao’s totalitarian regime for 66 years and shows no signs of liberalizing, quite the contrary. Maoism is being reintroduced in the education system, and the dictatorship is flexing its economic and political muscle around the world. Sadly the US policy of normalized relations, since Richard Nixon and  Henry Kissinger went to China, has empowered the dictatorship more than the people.

When Chinese students rose up in 1989, demanding democratic reforms and an end to corruption, the United States and much of the West paid lip service in their favor. While they were massacred, western nations privately assured the Chinese communist leadership that relations would not be effected, and business would carry on as usual.

Since then, Chinese nationals have been subjected to new totalitarian controls over there lives with the help of American companies such as Google and Yahoo. Google,to be able to operate in China, censored its search engines and Yahoo went further and actively tracked down dissidents who had been sending out e-mails critical of the government, leading to their imprisonment and torture. A similar process has played out in Vietnam.

Unfortunately it seems that on more than one occasion individuals of good will have confused a people with a particular party and a culture with a particular political ideology and this can be a slippery slope that ends up empowering and prolonging the life of a dictatorship which is the anti-thesis of helping people.

In the current debate over engagement with Cuba, it is important to differentiate between Cubans and the dictatorship that oppresses them. Furthermore, if one wants to be a force for real and lasting change, then one should remember that truth, memory, and justice are necessary elements for a real and lasting national reconciliation that involves forgiveness.

Pope John Paul II understood firsthand what Cubans had suffered, and in his World Day of Peace message on January 1, 2002, he offered a solution to situations such as Cuba’s:

"How do we restore the moral and social order subjected to such horrific violence? My reasoned conviction, confirmed in turn by biblical revelation, is that the shattered order cannot be fully restored except by a response that combines justice with forgiveness.… But in the present circumstances, how can we speak of justice and forgiveness as the source and condition of peace? We can and we must, no matter how difficult this may be … In fact, true peace is “the work of justice."

Holding the Castro regime accountable, denouncing new crimes, and pursuing justice is the work of peace and can be judged by its fruits. In the above cited speech, Pope John Paul II also observed that “the guilty must be correctly identified, since criminal culpability is always personal and cannot be extended to the nation.”

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has pursued a  policy of appeasement, that in practice has ignored the above council, since 2009 that has given Castro a green light to murder several opposition leaders including Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero (July 22, 2012) along with rising levels of repression.

The Carter Administration was the first to lift the travel ban and hold high-level negotiations with the Cuban dictatorship, and both sides opened Interest Sections in their respective capitals between 1977 and 1981. Then from 1981 to 1982, the Castro regime executed approximately 80 prisoners, which was a marked escalation when compared to 1976. Furthermore, during the Carter presidency, Fidel Castro took steps that resulted in the violent deaths of US citizens.

During the Mariel crisis of 1980, when over 125,000 Cubans sought to flee the island, the Cuban dictator sought to save face by selectively releasing approximately 12,000 violent criminals or individuals who were insane into the exodus. According to his bodyguard, “with the stroke of a pen,” Fidel Castro personally “designated which ones could go and which ones would stay. ‘Yes’ was for murderers and dangerous criminals; ‘no’ was for those who had attacked the revolution.”

In Latin America, this warming of relations coincided with the arrival of the Sandinistas to power in Nicaragua in 1979 and a widening civil war in Central America, all with Cuban backing.

The second to seek engagement was  the Clinton administration in the 1990s, similarly coinciding with brutal massacres. That included 37 Cubans in the “13 de Marzo” tugboat sinking (1994) and the murder of four in the Brothers to the Rescue shoot down (1996). Despite all of this, President Clinton shook hands with Fidel Castro in 2000 and opened up cash-and-carry trade that formed a pro-Castro lobby in the United States. In Latin America, this warming of relations coincided with the arrival of Hugo Chavez to power in Venezuela in 1999 — with Cuban backing that has had negative consequences throughout the region.

People of good conscience must reject hatred and revenge while embracing justice and forgiveness. At the same time one must be careful not to become frustrated with the slow pace of change, and not to confuse helping an oppressed people with assisting a dictatorship. Otherwise, one could just be contributing to lengthening the life of the Castro regime and the suffering not only of Cubans but also of the peoples of neighboring countries, including the United States.

Castro, Kissinger, Carter, Clinton, Obama and the Long Game

The New Cuba Policy: How did we get here?  Pt. 3

Carter and Clinton have done more than Obama to normalize relations

 President Barack Obama's claim on December 17, 2014 that he was making "the most significant changes in our policy in more than fifty years" is patently untrue when he says that they would begin the normalization of relations with the Castro regime. The two men who have achieved the most significant changes on Cuba policy to date are Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. President Obama still has a way to go in terms of policy but has achieved one significant and shameful change: swapped three of the Castro regime's terrorist spies (one of which was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder of four Americans) for Alan Gross, an innocent man who should have never been arbitrarily detained for five years in a Cuban prison.

Fidel Castro and Jimmy Carter

On March 19, 1977 President Jimmy Carter allowed the US travel restrictions to lapse. Six months later on September 1, 1977 Carter opened the U.S. Interests Section in Havana where the old U.S. Embassy had been and the Castro regime opens an Interests Section in Washington, DC. If  Jimmy Carter had been re-elected President in 1980 he would have completed normalizing relations with the Castro regime. American voters decided differently and elected President Ronald Reagan in 1980 who on April 19, 1982 re-established the travel ban and tightened trade sanctions against Castro regime. Restoring full diplomatic relations would entail changing stationary, business cards and appointing an Ambassador in practical terms. Jimmy Carter did all the heavy lifting 37 years ago. None of this changed the behavior of the Castro regime which succeeded in overthrowing the Somoza regime in Nicaragua and installing the Sandinista regime, a Marxist dictatorship while at the same time assisting in a genocide in Ethiopia. Twenty five years later Jimmy Carter was the first president to visit Fidel Castro in Cuba.

Bill Clinton and dictator Fidel Castro shake hands in NY

Bill Clinton shook hands with Fidel Castro in September of 2000 and a month later signed the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act and opened cash and carry trade with the Castro dictatorship at the end of his Administration.  At the time of its passage,  Fidel Castro said "his country would not buy 'even a grain of rice' under the current terms."  The Cuban dictator ended up buying much more than a grain of rice under those terms. Between 2000 and 2013 American companies have sold $4.689 billion dollars in goods to the Castro regime on a cash and carry basis.

According to Raul Castro in a December 2008 interview with Sean Penn under the Clinton Administration a new relationship was initiated between the Castro regime's military and the United States military : "We've had permanent contact with the US military, by secret agreement, since 1994." Not only contacts but joint military exercises. Again the source is Raul Castro:

"It is based on the premise that we would discuss issues only related to Guantánamo. On February 17, 1993, following a request by the United States to discuss issues related to buoy locators for ship navigations into the bay, was the first contact in the history of the revolution. Between March 4 and July 1, the Rafters Crisis took place. A military-to-military hot line was established, and on May 9, 1995, we agreed to monthly meetings with primaries from both governments. To this day, there have been 157 meetings, and there is a taped record of every meeting. The meetings are conducted on the third Friday of every month. We alternate locations between the American base at Guantánamo and in Cuban-held territory. We conduct joint emergency-response exercises. For example, we set a fire, and American helicopters bring water from the bay, in concert with Cuban helicopters.

On Clinton's watch the Castro regime shot down two civilian planes in international airspace in a premeditated and calculated conspiracy that allegedly included members of the Clinton Administration and the Cuban Wasp spy net work that would be broken up on September 12, 1998 when it was discovered that they had planned acts of sabotage and terrorism on American soil, including the murder of an alleged CIA agent living in Bal Harbour Florida. During the Clinton Administration a threat assessment was prepared by the Department of Defense that reported Cuba was no longer a threat to the national interests of the United States, but in 2001 it was discovered that the main author of the report, Ana Belen Montes, was a long time agent of  the Castro regime. Fulton Armstrong, a harsh critic of U.S. pro-democracy programs suspected of leaking information to the Associated Press was a close confidante of Castro's spy at the Pentagon.

President Barack Obama and dictator Raul Castro

 Despite the 2003 crackdown on dissidents known as the Black Cuban Spring where the Bush Administration tightened sanctions on being able to travel to Cuba and set limits lower on remittances sent to the island. However, nothing was changed in the cash and carry sales made by U.S. companies to the Castro regime.Towards the end of the Bush Administration in August of 2008 the Cuban government announced that the United States was its fifth leading trading partner. Despite the rhetoric the joint military exercises continued through out the eight years of the Bush Administration, and not surprisingly have continued under the Obama Administration. In 2009 President Barack Obama loosened embargo restrictions and four years later shook hands with Raul Castro at Mandela's funeral in South Africa on December 10, 2013 while human rights defenders in Cuba were being beaten up and arbitrarily detained on International Human Rights day.

Dictator Fidel Castro and Vice President Richard Nixon

Ironically, the first U.S. president to shake hands with Fidel Castro was Richard Nixon on April 5, 1959 when he was President Eisenhower's Vice President. Nixon met with Fidel Castro for two and a half hours in what was supposed to be a 15 minute meeting. Fidel Castro described the meeting as "very friendly." Ironic because after Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974 to avoid impeachment in the Watergate scandal it was his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger who made a serious attempt to normalize relations with the Castro regime during the Ford Administration.

Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller

At the time Secretary  Kissinger was engaged in diplomatic outreach in 1975 with the Khmer Rouge who he himself recognized were murderous thugs he was also advocating lifting the embargo on Cuba and normalizing relations with Fidel Castro.  Kissinger has also had a close relationship with David Rockefeller, a man who always opposed sanctions on Fidel Castro and hosted the Cuban tyrant at a dinner at the Rockefeller family's Westchester County, N.Y., estate in 1995. 

Fidel Castro and David Rockefeller

President Barack Obama's new Cuba policy is neither brave nor the "most significant" in the past half century but part of the Establishment's long game to normalize relations with the Castro regime that stretches back at least 39 years.

This is the third of three reflections (The New Cuba Policy: How did we get here?) in a multifactorial analysis of what is taking place on Cuba policy today. The first part looked at the state of the United States in 2014 and why it would be susceptible to the machinations of the campaign underway. The second part provided an overview of totalitarian networks and why democracies have difficulty defending themselves from them.

Solidarity: Wear Yellow for Hong Kong and Carry an Umbrella

" People talk about the impatience of the populace; but sound historians know that most tyrannies have been possible because men moved too late. It is often essential to resist a tyranny before it exists." - G.K. Chesterton, "Eugenics and Other Evils"

Protestors hold up their cellphones in a display of solidarity (AFP/Getty)

Today, in Hong Kong huge numbers of residents are taking to the streets in nonviolent protest because according to Yang Jianli, president of Initiative for China, Teng Biao, a human-rights lawyer, and Hu Jia , winner of the Sakharov Prize, "Beijing is reneging on the 'One Country Two Systems' principle laid out in the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984 and the Basic Law, Hong Kong's constitution." The people of Hong Kong, according to the nongovernmental organization Human Rights in China "are rejecting the August 31, 2014 decision of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee on the “selection” of the Chief Executive, which requires candidates to be endorsed by a majority of a Beijing-controlled nominating committee. In the face of threats and Beijing’s hardline stance, the students, supported by Hong Kong labor unions and the public, have resorted to civil disobedience—class boycotts and peaceful sit-ins—to press for meaningful universal suffrage."

Whats taking place in Hong Kong has some similarities to Venezuela ( and this has generated some confusion in a video that went viral). In both places totalitarians are tightening controls over a free people, who are rising up nonviolently in defense of their freedoms.

The Chinese dictatorship has responded threatening a crackdown on protesters and their exists the possibility of another Tiananmen Square like massacre but this time in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, big money interests and lobbyists for the Peoples Republic of China, such as Henry Kissinger are known to disregard human rights embracing the worse of regimes for narrow interests. Listen to the students who took part in a week long boycott of classes and were interviewed on September 22, 2014. No doubt many are now out in the mass demonstrations:


Twenty five years ago in June the international community turned its back on demonstrators in Beijing and following the slaughter continued business as usual led by the United States with the Chinese regime that had murdered thousands of its own citizens and jailed thousands more for nonviolently demonstrating for an end to corruption and democratic reforms. Economic interests trumped human rights. The legacy of the crackdown has been succinctly described by Human Rights in China:

In 1989, millions of democracy and labor activists and other citizens throughout China demanded reforms. The leaders responded with tanks and violence and then attempted to silence demands for political reform with the benefits of economic liberalization. What the Chinese people got are unsustainable and inequitable development, growing social conflicts, and massive environmental and human costs.

The movement in Hong Kong is nonviolent and international solidarity and support needs to be nonviolent in order to have a positive impact. Solidarity demonstrations are being held around the world in Delhi, Washington DC,  New York City, and a college student, Heather Pickerell, has called on students to wear yellow in solidarity with demonstrators in Hong Kong on October 1st. More information is available on the campaign's facebook page and on tumblr.

Tomorrow I will be wearing yellow and carrying an umbrella in solidarity with protesters in Hong Kong. Hope to see you doing the same.

The Khmer Rouge, the Killing Fields, U.S. Relations and Justice

"You should also tell the Cambodians (i.e., Khmer Rouge) that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won’t let that stand in our way. We are prepared to improve relations with them. Tell them the latter part, but don’t tell them what I said before.”  - Henry Kissinger, The Secretary's Dining Room, November 26, 1975

“We will burn the old grass and the new will grow.” - Pol Pot, leader of Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge (1975 - 1979)

Victims of the Khmer Rouge

Today, August 7, 2014 two of the most senior surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge dictatorship, Khieu Samphan, and Nuon Chea, were found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to life in prison. 

On July 26, 2010 Kaing Guek Eav whose revolutionary name “Duch” was obtained in the 1970s with the Khmer Rouge and oversaw the infamous S-21 prison was found guilty of war crimes in Cambodia and sentenced to 35 years in prison by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).

 Khieu Samphan, left, and Nuon Chea as their verdicts were delivered.
Photo by: Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia

The Khmer Rouge murdered a quarter of the entire population of Cambodia in under four years. Between 1975 and 1979 nearly 2 million people were killed. Thirty five years later and finally there is a measure of justice for the dead and their loved ones. Justice may have been delayed but it was not denied.

Nevertheless, for what were called strategic reasons at the time Secretary of State Henry Kissinger engaged in diplomatic outreach in 1975 with the Khmer Rouge who he himself recognized were murderous thugs and this "friendship" was maintained through the Carter years. 

Victims of the Khmer Rouge were photographed and numbered prior to execution

 President Carter's former US National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, on China and the Khmer Rouge, 1979 despite a policy supposedly predicated on human rights explained: “I encouraged the Chinese to support Pol Pot. Pol Pot was an abomination. We could never support him, but China could.” 

Chinese leader Jiang Zemin lunching with his employee Henry Kissinger in 2011

However, the true nature of the alleged realpolitik policy of the United States under the influence of Kissinger may, in fact, not have been policy decided by the United States but by the Peoples Republic of China. 

Phyllis Schlafly, who co-wrote with Chester Ward in 1975 Kissinger on the Couch, a 846 page expose on the Secretary of the State, in December of 2002 wrote a column exposing what really happened in the negotiations with the Soviets in the early 1970s:

John Newhouse's 1973 book "Cold Dawn: The Story of SALT" confirmed that every substantive provision of the 1972 U.S.-Soviet agreements was dictated secretly to Kissinger by the Kremlin without the knowledge of our U.S. negotiating team, was accepted by Kissinger, and was then rationalized by Kissinger to the President and Congress. Newhouse's book showed how Kissinger was personally and solely responsible for promising the Soviets that we would not build an anti-missile defense, even though the offensive- weapons provisions of the SALT I agreements guaranteed the Soviet Union superiority in numbers of missiles. In testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kissinger personally endorsed Newhouse and called his book "outstanding." This made Newhouse's book the authentic historic account of the Moscow agreements.

In the same way that Kissinger advanced Soviet interests while passing them off as his own ideas in the SALT I negotiations he may have done so with Mainland China. Considering that he eventually became a paid consultant of the Chinese communist government only serves to underline that the idea is not so farfetched.

Incidentally at the same time he was reaching out to Pol Pot, Henry Kissinger was also advocating lifting the embargo on Cuba and normalizing relations with Fidel Castro.  Kissinger has also had a close relationship with David Rockefeller, a man who always opposed sanctions on Fidel Castro and hosted the Cuban tyrant at a dinner at the Rockefeller family's Westchester County, N.Y., estate in 1995. 

Henry Kissinger's amoral foreign policy legacy was repudiated by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s and today in Cambodia he is considered a war criminal who should be placed on trial along side his "friends" in the Khmer Rouge.

Unfortunately, the Kissinger legacy of self interested enrichment crosses party lines and can be seen to be continued by the Clintons.

Henry Kissinger and Hillary Clinton

Below are declassified excerpts from the meeting with the Foreign Minister of Thailand were the U.S. Secretary of State expressed the desire for friendship with the Khmer Rouge while recognizing their murderous nature.


Date: November 26, 1975
Time: 1:00p.m.
Place: The Secretary's Dining Room

Subject: Secretary's Meeting with Foreign Minister Chatchai of Thailand

Participants: 

Thailand
 
Foreign Minister Chatchai Chunhawan
 [...]

US

The Secretary (Henry Kissinger)
The Deputy Secretary
Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Philip C. Habib
Mr. Brent Scowcroft, National Security Council
[...]

(At this point, the group went into the Madison Room for lunch.)

The Secretary:  What is the Cambodian attitude?

Foreign Minister: The Cambodians want salt and fish. They wanted to barter for these items.

The Secretary: Did Ieng Sary impress you?

Foreign Minister: He is a nice, quiet man.

The Secretary: How many people did he kill? Tens of thousands?

Mr. Habib: Nice and quietly!!

Foreign Minister: Not more than 10,000. That's why they need food. If they had killed everyone, they would not need salt and fish. All the bridges in Cambodia were destroyed. There was no transportation, no gas. That's why they had to chase people away from the capital.

The Secretary: But why with only two hours' notice?

Foreign Minister: (Shrugs.)

The Secretary: What do the Cambodians think of the United States? You should tell them that we bear no hostility towards them. We would like them to be independent as a counterweight to North Vietnam.

[...]

We would support this. You should also tell the Cambodians (i.e., Khmer Rouge) that we will be friends with them. They are murderous thugs, but we won’t let that stand in our way. We are prepared to improve relations with them. Tell them the latter part, but don’t tell them what I said before.” 
 

More victims of the Khmer Rouge

China, Cuba, Sanctions and Hypocrisy

Chinese hardliner Jiang Zemin lunching with Henry Kissinger in 2011

WLRN's Tim Padgett has written an essay concerning Yoani Sanchez, the embargo and American hypocrisy that is a remarkable exercise in rhetorical gymnastics.  He condemns "hardliners" who support sanctions but praise Yoani Sánchez while in disagreement with her position on sanctions. At the same time Mr. Padgett acknowledges that he knows that "[s]ome Cuban dissidents do support the embargo , and I respect their arguments – especially since they, like Sánchez, are the ones on the ground in Cuba, if not in its jails."

Argument doesn't hold up
If you argue that persons who advocate a pro-sanctions policy cannot admire and respect a person who is anti-sanctions then you cannot claim the opposite that you respect persons who are pro-sanctions even though you have an anti-sanctions position. Or is it that one can only hold a respectable position by being as you say: "on the ground in Cuba, if not in its jails." With that line of argument the only voices that should be listened to are inside the island. One's position on sanctions whether in favor or against would not be based on the best case put forward but on one's geographic location.

Sanctions are the last nonviolent way of seeking to change an unjust system by refusing to cooperate with tyranny. When discussing the Cuban embargo in the mass media these two aspects are rarely, if ever, touched upon. Academics and the lobbyists for big business, such as USA Engage, often claim that sanctions never work; rather, it is economic engagement that leads towards greater respect for human rights. However, recent history in China, Burma, and Vietnam indicate otherwise. Out of the three only Burma has seen an improvement in its human rights situation and was subjected to tough sanctions while things have gotten worse in China and Vietnam despite normalized relations and trade.

When I met Yoani Sánchez and expressed my admiration for her writings while at the same time my disagreement with her position on economic sanctions she smiled, laughed gently and said that we need to celebrate differences of opinion that it is part of democracy. I am in full agreement with her on that and on the need to "decriminalize discrepancy." The meeting ended with a hug and a kiss on the cheek.

People of good will with good intentions can be found on both sides of the sanctions debate. However, people of ill will can also be found on both sides of the debate. A strategy of sanctions that seeks to harm the population into revolt is immoral as is playing the rhetorical humanitarian card to lift sanctions and enter into business with the oppressor.

America's hypocrisy
This brings me back to the issue of "America's hypocrisy."  Unfortunately, for Americans the hypocrisy is not to be found in the speck that is Cuba but in the plank that is China. June 3, 2014 will mark the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the Tiananmen Square massacre where estimates placed the number of dead at 2,600. At the time the Bush Administration announced a package of cosmetic sanctions while secretly on July 1, 1989 sending a high ranking delegation consisting of Undersecretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger and national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, who met with Deng Xiaoping in Beijing to explain "Bush's view of the importance of the long-term relationship between the US and the Peoples Republic of China." Part of the reason for this approach was a call from Henry Kissinger discarding human rights concerns as "fuzzy-headed liberals/bleeding hearts" whose successful consulting group Kissinger Associates represents companies that deal with China.

Scowcroft and Eagleburger returned to Beijing in December 1989 to "explore the possibility of developing a ‘road map’ toward better relations with Chinese leaders." In the meantime, Bush "vetoed legislation permitting Chinese exchange students to remain in the US until the Chinese government improved its human rights record."In the aftermath of Tiananmen 1,000 Chinese were sentenced to death and executed. On the "plus side" both Scowcroft and Eagleburger were either already in Kissinger Associates or soon would be afterwards and Kissinger Associates (founded in 1982) has done very well over the past twenty five years. 

Economic interests overrode human rights concerns in China and American hypocrisy over the whole affair wreaks. Twenty five years later most of the rest of the world is following the United States in ignoring human rights in China for economic gain.

Protecting Cuban dissidents
Meanwhile, in Cuba since the year 2000 American corporations have made more than 4.3 billions dollars on a cash and carry basis with the Castro regime, but they are lobbying for normalized relations so that the Castro regime, a notoriously bad credit risk can obtain tax-payer backed credits.  Finally, during the further loosening of sanctions in January of 2011 under the Obama Administration we have seen the phenomenon of high profile opposition leaders such as Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas in 2012, and Laura Inés Pollán Toledo in late 2011 dying under suspicious circumstances. 

Viewing the Castro regime through the prism of a regime with a close working relationship with both China and North Korea and a history of sponsoring terrorism normalizing relations will not help Yoani Sánchez but place her life in jeopardy. As has happened in China the dictatorship in Cuba will understand that despite the rhetoric of human rights the only thing that interests the United States government are business interests even if they are at the expense of U.S. taxpayers and workers.  At that point the lives of many more activists will be at the mercy of the Castro brothers.

Nothing can be more striking than the American government's hypocrisy: talking the human rights talk while walking the short term economic interests for influential players walk. Needless to say I don't hold the Chamber of Commerce in high regard. 

Hopefully, Yoani Sánchez and other Cuban dissidents will survive the consequences of such short sighted policies as those pursued in China if they are applied by the United States in Cuba. This is why one can wish Yoani well, but legitimately disagree with her on lifting sanctions. At the same time one can also hope that Americans will survive what the U.S. government has set in motion in China with American policy.

Tyrants Incorporated: The unusual alliance between Argentina's military junta and Cuba's communist dictatorship

Jorge Rafael Videla died in a prison of Argentina. That should be the destiny of all dictators (including those in Cuba). - Jorge Ramos, over twitter 

Reynaldo Bignone and Jorge Rafael Videla in 2011 photo: AP / Natacha Pisarenko

 Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla died today and the international Left will focus on the military junta's early relations with the United States promoted by Henry Kissinger towards the end of the Ford presidency but remain silent about the later and much longer alliance of Videla's regime with Castro's Cuba and the Soviet Union.

Beginning in 1977, President James Earl Carter took steps to normalize relations with the dictatorship in Cuba while at the same time isolating the military junta in Argentina.  Fidel Castro response was to embrace the Argentine regime at a time when thousands of Argentine leftists were being disappeared.

This embrace of the far right should not be a surprise. Formerly classified documents made public by the German intelligence service in November of 2012 reveal that Fidel Castro in the 1960s personally recruited former Nazi SS Waffen members to train Cuban troops and also reached out to Nazi operatives, Otto Ernst Remer and Ernst-Wilhelm Springer, in Germany's extreme right to purchase weapons.

Both the Argentine military junta and the Castro communist regime have a history of brutal and systematic human rights violations. The main difference between the two is that the Castro brothers are still in power killing people and have not had to answer for their crimes.

Dictators Reynaldo Bignone and Fidel Castro

Whether the cause be saving Christian civilization and the West or implanting a socialist utopia history has demonstrated that the ends do not justify the means. Recalling Mohandas Gandhi's observation on ends and means: “They say, 'means are, after all, means'. I would say, 'means are, after all, everything'. As the means so the end.” The unusual alliance between the communist Castro regime in Cuba and the anticommunist military junta in Argentina is one more example of the truth of Gandhi's statement.

In the end both regimes, although ideologically opposed, were brought together by their common inhumanity for their political adversaries. In the end the means that they chose defined them more than the ends that they sought.