In Antwort auf:

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The Mother of All Reforms

Juan Antonio Blanco

While there is much speculation regarding Raul Castro’s will to implement reforms in Cuba, nothing is being said about the most pressing change required to guarantee Cuba’s governability: namely a new defence and security doctrine.

For over a decade militaries and governments in the Western Hemisphere have been moving towards a multidimensional approach to security. Meanwhile, the Cuban Armed Forces, the Ministry of the Interior and the Cuban government as a whole have remained entangled in a narrow-minded military defence doctrine that dates back from the Cold War.

The Cuban government’s approach to national defence consists of a doctrine which subordinates every aspect of the Cuban society—economy, politics, laws, information, culture—to a national security rationale, defined as control from a military perspective.

This doctrine of security and defence rests on two premises. First is the belief that no major internal conflict can arise from the Cuban reality. The socialist society is a peaceful and harmonious commune disrupted only when subversion is introduced by a foreign enemy, i.e. the United States, exploiting weaknesses in the State’s system of controls. If the youth, for example, are prone to embrace the enemy’s cultural messages or if socialist businessmen fall prey to corruption, it is because of “weaknesses” in the mechanisms of political indoctrination and control over these sectors. The second premise is that the first duty of the State is to protect the country against a powerful foreign enemy threatening its independence and sovereignty; therefore it becomes necessary to respond with a national security doctrine that subordinates every aspect of society to the logic and needs of this national defence.

As result of these premises, the idea that underpins the organization of the Cuban society is not one of sustainable human development that leads to prosperity, but of vertical micro-management that fosters inefficiency and social asphyxia in daily life. This model of social organization is there to serve the needs of the national security doctrine first and foremost rather than to foster social development. This militarized conception of the national and international reality relies on effective control of access to national information and the means for its broadcast or reception (TV, Internet, radio and press outlets); civil society institutions or organizations, effectively removing their autonomy or neutralizing them—as in the case of churches—via police infiltration, bribes of various sorts, and the imposition of arbitrary legislation and procedures regulating their work; all cultural, educational and academic activities; and all economic activities, precluding self-employment from generating spaces of economic autonomy from the State.

The outcome of this national defence and security doctrine has been the perpetuation of a development paradigm that has reached its historical limit. It can no longer work in a world characterized by a transition towards a civilization of information societies, the globalization of production and finance, and multi-polar geopolitics. Very soon the Cuban economy will face the aging of its population in a context of low productivity, obsolete technologies and infrastructure, and where the creation of local capital is non-existent. It remains a country that is highly dependent on a handful of foreign markets and investors. Cuba is not immune to paradoxes: today the American "enemy" is its main supplier of food products, and remittances from the demonized Cuban exile community provide an important safety net against the danger of social explosions.

Domestic governability calls for a new paradigm of development that allows, in the economic realm, access to markets and capital, as well as the introduction of high productivity technologies; in the political sphere, the diversification of its international alliances, the implementation of political and cultural mechanisms for constant consensus building, non-violent resolution of a wide spectrum of conflicts, and the eradication of corruption. However, the current national security doctrine and the mindsets of those associated with it thwart these possibilities.

This paralysis is compounded by the enormous contradiction between Cuba’s professional capacity and an authoritarian development paradigm based on vertical integration and state monopoly that precludes any independent political or economic initiative. Nevertheless, this paradigm is maintained against all sensible logic because the current security doctrine cannot operate within any other system of social organization.

Governability in Cuba will not be ensured by prohibiting satellite dishes and short wave radios, blocking Internet access, penalizing the freedom of academic and journalistic research, removing the autonomy of civil society organizations, prohibiting the freedom of expression or imposing limitations on the citizens’ right to free movement. Neither will it be ensured by centralizing investments, preventing self-employment and the capitalization of remittance resources, harassing potentials migrants and obstructing relations with the Diaspora, which is denied the possibility of assisting in national development.

Paraphrasing Marx, we could say that the security doctrine has determined the configuration of a system of social relations that today impedes the development of productive forces in Cuban society and fosters systemic crisis. The biggest threat to the country’s governability and independence stems from its own security and defence doctrine. The Cuban elite should conduct a dispassionate analysis of its options to turn this situation around in a constructive fashion. The repercussions of not doing so might be felt even in the very short term. Time is not running in favour of Raul Castro and his colleagues but against them. The most pressing reform required in Cuba is that of its defence and security doctrine. This is the mother of all reforms.

Juan Antonio Blanco is on the Board of Directors of Citizen Digital Facilitation, a Canadian based non-governmental organization that fosters the empowerment of civil society in the Americas and promotes non-violent conflict prevention, resolution and transformation strategies

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