Transcript 0:00 [intro music] Welcome to Trend Lines, a podcast on global affairs brought to you by World Politics Review. My name is Peter Durrie. 0:15 We take a closer look at Cuba this week, together with Ted Henken, president of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy. 0:26 But first, I'm joined, as always, by Judah Grunstein of World Politics Review for this week's briefing on world affairs. You covered some really interesting stuff together with Freddy last week, Judah. 0:37 What was going on over the last few days? Well, this week we started with a briefing by Magnus Nordman on the challenges facing NATO in the run-up to its July heads of state summit. 0:51 A- as you know, the alliance has been in the spotlight recently due to Donald Trump calling it obsolete. 0:57 Now, in all fairness, he's not the only one that has criticized NATO, uh, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had been its, its reason for existing. 1:10 Now, after, after 9/11, NATO added out of theater operations, which m- meant mainly Afghanistan, uh, as a justification for its continued existence. 1:24 The, the problem was that the, the results of the, of the Afghanistan war were so disappointing that it, it really did damage the alliance, and there were also, uh, other, other aspects, including, uh, problems or, or tensions over various definitions of rules of engagement by various alliance members that caused a lot of tensions within the alliance. 1:50 M- Magnus explains why right now the a- the alliance is actually getting a second wind, uh, and it has to do with two developments in particular. 2:00 The first is Russia's resurgence as a perceived threat in the East, pr- uh, primarily due to the Georgia War in 2008, and more recently in Ukraine. 2:13 And that's really felt most acutely, obviously, in the East, but especially by the Baltic states, which were former Soviet republics, and have large Russian-speaking minorities, which, uh, Moscow has used in the past as, as a reason, uh, the defen- the defense of Russian-speaking minorities as a reason for intervening in Ukraine. 2:33 Uh, the, the second development that Magnus underlines is the instability in the Mediterranean region, uh, especially North Africa and the Middle East, and that's been demonstrated by the refugee crisis in Europe as well as the threat of terrorism. 2:49 So he looks at the likely outcomes of the summit, which include boosting deterrence measures in the East, including by, uh, rotating deployments of, uh, of 3:02 alliance forces, but also the, the creation of a multi- multinational, uh, brigade or battalion. And at the same time, he underlines the two major challenges that the alliance continues to face. One is... 3:15 Or, or, or faces. One is longstanding, the other is a little more recent. 3:19 The longstanding one is this question of burden shar- burden sharing, which Donald Trump had underlined, uh, namely in terms of defense spending by European allies. 3:28 That's been, uh, something that American defense secretaries and presidents have been raising the alarm about over the past decade and a half. 3:38 And the other is the divergence right now, more recently, of threat perceptions along this, this sort of east-west and north-south axis, with the eastern alliance members being most, most threatened and focused on Russia, and the southern alliance members being most concerned about the instability in the Mediterranean. 3:59 And this tension in terms of trying to address both of those concerns simultaneously is going to be a major challenge. 4:06 We also ran a briefing by Andrew Green on the most recent developments in South Sudan in terms of the agreement, uh, the power sharing agreement to end that country's very brutal civil war that's lasted over the past few years. 4:21 Yes, and I think that the South Sudan Civil War, which started in 2013, is part of this thought on threat that, uh, the European countries are afraid of at the moment. 4:34 It produced a huge number of internally displaced people, and, uh, these could, of course, become, uh, refugees at some point who want to reach Europe. 4:45 And as Andrew points out, the conflict may be officially over, uh, with Riek Machar, the former rebel leader, coming back into the fold of a government of unity as vice president under, uh, President Salva Kiir. 5:00 Uh, but by all that we can tell, that these two persons can't stand each other. They hate each other's guts, and, uh, the conflict may be over on paper, um, but it can re- re-erupt at any point. 5:17 I think that the conflict has only moved, uh, to another level, so to speak. It's now, uh, back, for the most part, in the political realm, uh, but it can really quickly devolve, uh, back into, uh, widespread violence. 5:33 And indeed, you can see that in parts of South Sudan, uh, between certain groups, uh, the violence hasn't even stopped yet. 5:41 In a country that, the, the newest country in the world, that a lot of, that, that was formed as an effort to resolve a civil war within Sudan. But as many people, as many observers were warning, the, 5:57 the Progress in terms of nation building and state building, 6:02 uh, left a lot to be desired and in, in some ways i- if the brutality of the civil war couldn't have been anticipated, the actual f- failure of South Sudan, South Sudan to solidify as, as a state was not that big a surprise to people who had been paying attention. 6:18 Yes, and I s- think that the example of South Sudan is really interesting because, uh, the conflict parties are not really fighting a- along ideological or even ethnic lines. It is really more of an economy of violence. 6:32 So there's a lot to unpack here, and as Andrew points out, uh, this isn't the last we heard about this conflict in South Sudan. Uh, we will hear f- about this for month and years to come. Sadly. 6:44 Another story about which we will continue to hear for month and years to come is, of course, North Korea. Yes, and Charles Armstrong took a look at North Korea's Seventh Party Congress, which just concluded Monday. 6:58 It was the first, uh, such gathering in 36 years, so a major news event, and at the same time, not a huge amount of surprises. 7:09 Its major outclome- outcome was to confirm Kim Jong Un as the uncontested ruler of the country, and while that had been increasingly clear, uh, it, it, if you look back at 2011 when he first took power, uh, there were, there were some people who wondered whether because of his youth he might end up being a figurehead, uh, after succeeding his father, or maybe even shunted aside by some of the old guard rulers, especially in the military. 7:40 Since then, however, he conducted a pretty ruthless purge to consolidate power, and the Party Congress is the, is the sort of the culmination of that process. 7:51 It also confirmed the major thrust of Kim Jong Un's policy agenda to date, which is namely the, the, the simultaneous pursuit of economic development and nuclear weapons. 8:03 Now, now that's a shift from his father's policies, Kim Jong Il, which gave the priority exclusively to military development in order to consolidate his rule at a time, uh, of, of great difficulty, economic difficulty, and a famine in North Korea. 8:22 And that shift, that, that, that sort of lowering of the priority of the military was one reason why there was some question about whether it might cost him the loyalty of the armed forces, whether it might cost Kim Jong Un the, the armed forces' loyalty as he took power. 8:39 Now, besides confirming Kim Jong Un, uh, as really the uncontested ruler and his policies, uh, the Party Congress really didn't give any reason to believe there would be significant changes, uh, upcoming, which is contrary to what some of observers had anticipated. 9:00 But Charles explains why, in fact, some of the rhetoric that Kim used, particularly with regard to North Korea's nuclear posture, can be interpreted as subtle gestures toward outreach to the US. 9:12 Um, the, the problem being that the, the Congress comes on the heels of this year's s- what have become sort of ritualized tensions between the North and the South and the US, uh, with North Korea having conducted nuclear missile tests and the US and South Korea just completing their very large-scale military e- exercises, uh, annual military exercises. 9:36 So between that and the upcoming US election, it's pretty unlikely the Obama administration will respond favorably to what is admittedly a very nuanced, uh, offer of dialogue from North Korea. Okay. Thank you very much. 9:52 Thank you. It's been a pleasure as always. [Instrumental music] What has changed in Cuba after President Obama's historic visit recently? 10:02 Ted Henken takes a closer look at how Cuba's regime, the opposition, and private entrepreneurs react to changing international and domestic dynamics. My name is Ted Henken. 10:17 I am the President ex officio of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, and I am also an associate professor of sociology and Latin American studies at Baruch College, City University of New York. 10:33 Well, everyone seems to be talking about Cuba these days, and some people assume that everything has changed, and other people argue that nothing has changed. 10:43 And what we try to do is point to the very significant changes in 10:49 the international sphere, uh, especially between Cuba and the United States, and the process of normalization of relations that they are, um, pursuing together. But we also try to point to and pivot towards 11:04 analyzing Cuba's domestic reality. Often people assume that the domestic reality is monolithic 11:12 and monochromatic, and we like to point out some of the things that have not changed in terms of the government policy that is still very heavy-handed and restrictive in terms of civil liberties and political freedoms, but also highlight the very significant and innovative things that are being done within that civil society, especially in terms of 11:37 what's happening among the new generation of Cuban dissidents, some of them cyber dissidents, also people who, uh, have started independent media enterprises and platforms. 11:50 And finally, we look at the world of Cuban entrepreneurship and the emergence of more than a half a million Self-employed workers and small business owners, in addition to some people who 12:05 I- we call dot commies, people who have started up enterprises that are based on innovative uses of digital technology, apps for your cellphone, connecting customers, uh, both foreigners and domestic customers, with a new crop of businesses that are being run privately on the island. 12:25 [upbeat music] Take a look at how capitalism is taking root in Cuba. This is the first market that does not belong to the state since Fidel Castro's revolution. People gather here to buy and sell food. 12:41 This market is an example of everything that has changed in Cuba in the last year since the government implemented a series of economic reforms and legalized a broad range of small businesses. 12:55 So the Cuban government's agenda is, has been very clearly stated. 12:59 They have stated, uh, repeatedly that they are not abandoning socialism or the revolution, that their changes, to the extent that they are significant and effective, are aimed at updating socialism and making Cuban socialism both prosperous and sustainable. 13:17 Those are the words that they always use. 13:20 They've been trying to do this really since Raul Castro took over preliminarily in 2006 and then definitively in 2008 as president from his ailing and elderly brother, Fidel Castro. Then in 2010, 13:37 Raul Castro introduced a whole set of economic reforms. Again, they don't refer to them as reforms. They call them actualizaciones or updatings. And they also issued in 2010 a preliminary list of 13:55 lineamientos, uh, or guidelines. These guidelines were issued in 2010 and approved in 2011. 14:02 They were almost all economically focused, although there were some that had to do with, uh, Cuban social life and certain civic issues. 14:12 Um, and that eventually included the, uh, restoring the right to Cubans, uh, in most cases to travel abroad without permission from the government. 14:23 But the economic changes were fairly significant if you compare them to the tight control over the economy and the centralization of the economy in the hands of the state that existed under Fidel. 14:38 Raul is in some ways downsizing the, the, the state to make it more efficient and productive and allowing a greater role for what he calls the non-state sector. 14:49 He, again, doesn't like to refer to it as the private sector. And so this has unleashed a bunch of, uh, Cuban entrepreneurs and innovators to try to take advantage of this opportunity. 15:01 And so many Cubans are taking advantage and have been taking advantage of this new opportunity even before the rules were changed in the underground economy, the black market. 15:10 But now many of those people have come out of the closet, so to speak, and started to get licenses, hire employees, uh, produce goods and services in a, in a much more open and, um, constructive way, 15:28 uh, participating in the economy, uh, unapologetically, uh, providing, you know, jobs and, um, and, and, you know, and, and really making the economy much more dynamic and productive. 15:39 However, the government still has, uh, many, uh, restrictions on the exercise, the free exercise and the economy of these, uh, micro entrepreneurs. Their, um, their interest essentially is to do better than survive. 15:54 Now, many of the occupations are medieval and aimed at s- sheer survival, and the government is kind of trying to in some ways, 16:04 uh, have people take care of themselves so the government doesn't have to take care of them anymore. 16:08 But, but these people, uh, by and large, uh, aim to be entrepreneurial and to live a better life, to, uh, provide for their family, um, to be able to maybe occasionally travel abroad. 16:21 They're also aim, aiming at innovating in the economy, uh, providing goods and services, uh, that are much more modern, dynamic, um, creative, um, than, than is just the standard. 16:37 Gracias, uh, President Castro para- Thank you, President Castro, for your hospitality here in Havana... hospitalidad en La Habana. And, uh, thank you. 16:45 Por favor, señor And please, sir ¿Por qué tiene prisioneros políticos cubanos? Why do you have political, Cuban political prisoners? Why do you have Cuban political prisoners? 16:53 Why do you have Cu- ¿Y por qué no los suelta? And why don't you release them? Sí. Did you ask if we had political prisoners? Preguntó si hay presos políticos. Did you ask if we had political prisoners? 17:06 ¿Por qué tiene prisioneros políticos cubanos? I wanted to know if you have Cuban political prisoners. Y bien, y por qué no los suelta? And why you don't release them. 17:14 Dame la lista ahora mismo de los presos políticos y los soltaré. Give me a list of the political prisoners and I will release them immediately. Menciona ahora- Just mention a list... de presos políticos. 17:23 What political prisoners- Dime el nombre... give me a name- O los nombres... or names. O cuando concluya la reunión me da una lista de los prisioneros. 17:29 Or when after this meeting is over, you can give me a list of, uh, political prisoners- Y si hay esos presos políticos, antes de que llegue la noche van a estar sueltos... 17:34 and if we have those political prisoners, they will re- be released before tonight. Una pregunta. 17:43 In terms of the opposition, and the opposition is quite new and diverse in Cuba, the first thing that is probably significant about the Cuban opposition or the political dissidents is that they are nonviolent. 17:58 So unlike the exile raids of the 1960s and '70s and, and up until, you know, fairly recently That would use revolutionary violence to aim to overthrow the revolution. The Cuban dissident community today is 18:14 pacifistic in its approach and uses politics and not violence. And the way that they use politics has to do with reaching out to people really where they live in the sense that there's been a great erosion of the 18:29 social contract in Cuba. The goods and services, the social services that people can count on as citizens has eroded greatly. 18:39 And so many of these organizations, especially one called the Patriotic Union of Cuba or UMPACU, they aim to try to not only speak to people's political needs, but to their bread and butter 18:52 needs of housing and food and things like that. This is also significant because UMPACU, like some of the other organizations, are not mainly focused in Havana, but they are a phenomenon that's more present and active 19:10 in what is called Cuba's Oriente or the eastern part of the island. This is also important because this has been an area where the government has long held much greater sway, given it's more isolated. 19:25 But it's also the area of Cuba where the most historic and important dissident movements and even revolutionary movements, including the revolution itself and the independence movement, got their start. 19:39 It also tends to be somewhat blacker or more Afro-Cuban than the western part of the island. 19:46 There's also a group called the Ladies in White who march every Sunday, starting at a church through the city of Havana and are routinely harassed and rounded up and carted off in these short-term detentions. 20:01 The government has responded to these new innovative dissident groups by ceasing the former practice of locking them up and throwing away the key, as was often the case under Fidel. 20:17 And now there's much fewer political prisoners serving long prison terms, but much more short-term, arbitrary, politically motivated detentions that take a few hours or maybe a few days without charges. 20:34 And this allows the government to intimidate, harass the opposition without leaving a legal paper trail that international organizations can then use to criticize the government. 20:47 This is probably the reason why during the infamous press conference, the joint press conference between Raul Castro and Barack Obama when Obama was visiting Cuba in March, this is why it seems that Raul was so taken aback when he was asked 21:06 by a Cuban-American journalist, no less, about political prisoners. And he claimed that there were none and that if anyone could name any, he would release them that very night. But there's a lot more of these 21:19 targets of short-term detention. And this is aimed primarily at separating the opposition from the population so that they are stigmatized and people don't join the opposition and see it just simply as 21:36 a road to harassment. However, one of the things that we've been seeing over the past couple of years is an increasing identification between parts of the population, especially the more 21:49 humble parts of the population and some of the dissidents. 21:51 And there's been a number of cases caught on video where police try to detain, arrest and cart away various dissidents and neighborhood members who aren't part of the dissident movement will actually have actually seized the people and pulled them back and forced the police to retreat. 22:13 This is kind of significant. Cultivo una rosa blanca. In his famous 22:33 In his most famous poem, Jose Marti made this offering of friendship and peace to both his friend and his enemy. Today, as the President of the United States of America, I offer the Cuban people 22:50 el saludo de paz. Bravo! Bravo! 23:05 I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas. The different groups in the civil society, in Cuban civil society and in the opposition 23:20 have had a variety of reactions to the thaw and the relationship between Cuba and the United States. There has been a group 23:27 which seems to be certainly a minority group among the population and even a minority among the dissident community that 23:37 has criticized openly the new approach that the Obama administration has in terms of engaging the Cuban government and restoring diplomatic relations and permitting more travel and even more trade and investment in certain areas. 23:54 They have argued that this is dangerous because it will only enable the Cuban government through enriching it and allow it to survive and increase its repression 24:09 of the various dissident groups and political opposition groups. However 24:16 The, another group within the opposition sees this, uh, thaw and this engagement as, as a golden opportunity for it and a challenge for it to make itself more relevant, to propose, uh, effective, uh, policy changes. 24:32 And it also allows the people who wanna criticize the Cuban government, it allows it the opportunity to say, "Hey, you know, 24:43 obviously as the United States increasingly o- uh, extends an open hand to the Cuban government, the Cuban government will be less able 24:54 to blame the problems in Cuba on the United States and will be more, uh, under more pressure both internationally and domestically to respond, to deepen the reforms, to allow for more opposition." 25:07 And so those are the kind of two major reactions. 25:10 Now, on the part of the general population, on the part of entrepreneurs, there is great excitement about the US, uh, Cuba thaw because people are really hoping that it will change their basic living situation, provide more money, uh, opportunities for income and employment, especially those people who are engaged in various ways in the tourism sector because the tourism is obviously gonna lead this, this economic, uh, growth. 25:36 But at the same time, Obama was very eloquent and, and valiant, I thought, in highlighting the very real, uh, obstacles on the Cuban side, uh, that restrict, uh, freedom of, uh, uh, expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of association. 25:52 Um, but he was also very eloquent and historic in his recognition of Cuban sovereignty and on his, 25:59 uh, on his rejection of regime change or the idea that the US is going to require or impose a specific kind of change on Cuba. It's up to the Cubans, he said multiple times. 26:12 It's been very fascinating to watch, uh, the reaction of the Cuban government both to Obama's trip, but also in the, over the next month into April, the, uh, the kind of more official reaction that took place 26:27 during the seventh, uh, congress of the Communist Party of Cuba. Um, this was, uh, uh, breathtaking in, in its contrast. I think what happened was the following. 26:39 Obama really was effective in his soft power charm offensive. He, uh, he was already very popular among the Cuban people. 26:49 Surveys done before the trip said that he had an 80% approval rate while both Raul and Fidel were under 50%, um, approval. 26:59 But after the trip, I think and during the trip, because he was so approachable, he came across as a regular guy. He interacted with people. He even spoke in Cuban 27:10 slang, um, saying a number of things, appearing on a comedy show, kind of the equivalent of the Saturday Night Live in Cuba. 27:18 Um, people were just taken aback to see one of the, uh, to see a leader who was young, who was mixed race, who was engaging, uh, who was always smiling, and who was with his family. 27:29 All of these things, and who, you know, had a very smooth back and forth with the press at the press conference. 27:36 These are all things that, you know, they had never seen from their own leaders, uh, at, at least in, in l- except when Fidel was younger in, in the '60s and did kind of a similar charm offensive of his own. 27:48 Um, they were just, I think, uh, impressed and, and, and the contrast with their own leaders and their own kind of very slow pace of opening and change was very evident. So 27:59 the Cuban leadership, starting with Fidel Castro, who wrote a letter in the days following Obama's trip, 28:05 uh, basically telling him to mind his own business and, and telling people not to be fooled by who he called facetiously Brother Obama, which is the title of his, his essay. 28:16 Then during the Congress, a whole series of Cuban leaders, uh, ex- explicitly warned people not to be fooled by this idea of empowerment coming from the US, that they be very wary of it being used as a Trojan horse to 28:33 overthrow and undermine the revolution by other means. And so this was quite significant. The other thing that came out of the Congress was that 28:42 there were great expectations on the part of many Cubans, even Cubans within the, the Communist Party, that the government would take advantage of this opportunity 28:52 to kind of roll out a generational, uh, succession, uh, putting more power within the party in the hands of 50- and 60-somethings instead of 70- and 80-somethings in terms of the age. But that explicitly didn't happen. 29:09 The other area where there was not change and no announcements of any significant change were in the very needed, uh, and, uh, um, kind of, uh, urgently expected, uh, economic reforms. 29:21 There was hope, even expectation, that the government would use the party as a way to roll out and deepen and broaden and, and even speed up its economic reforms, especially in the area of entrepreneurship. 29:35 But none of that was announced. But I think the government strategy was simply to, initially at least, send a very clear message that they're going to make sure that the revolution is not under threat. 29:49 They're going to circle the wagons and have a defensive posture. And once that's clear, then they may slowly roll out changes, but more silently and less dramatically, because this new opening 30:03 may be op- an opportunity, but it also is a big risk. 30:05 And, and, and Raul certainly doesn't want the changes to get out of control and the people to, uh, expect too much because that sets up a very difficult dynamic to, to, to react to. 30:23 Many thanks to Ted, and be sure to check out h- his feature article on the same topic, co-authored with Armando Chaguaceda. Look for the title Between Reforms and Repression: Can Cuba's New Forces of Change Succeed? 30:39 on worldpoliticsreview.com. Also on worldpoliticsreview.com, you will find the option to subscribe to our newsletter on the top of the homepage. Do so to stay up to date with WPR's coverage of world affairs. 30:55 Trendlines is produced and edited by me, Peter Durrie. 30:58 You can follow me and World Politics Review on Twitter, and you can find links to pieces covering the issues we talked about in the show notes on worldpoliticsreview.com. 31:09 Have a fantastic weekend, and see you next week for a new episode of Trendlines. 31:14 [outro jingle]
