Cuba, Spain and EU Policy
J. Ignacio Torreblanca
October 30, 2009
For the last 50 years, two policies towards Cuba have been essayed: containment and engagement. The US and Spain are possibly the best representatives of each trend. The truth is that both have failed. The US has tried to topple the Castro regime but in fact it has strengthened it and, what is more, contributed to worsen living conditions for Cuban. Since the regime does not care about the material or rights’ deprivation of its citizens, it is immune to pressure from abroad so US policies have resulted in nothing other than a sort of collective punishment for the Cuban people. But for Spain and others, who have tried to engage the regime, the scoreboard looks no better. Since the mid eighties, Spain has been seeking to export its successful model of democratic transition to Cuba, with no results. Spain’s success goes back to the 1959 stabilization plan, which ended up autarky, liberalized trade, made the currency convertible etc. This triggered massive social and economic changes which ultimately led to political changes. This is the model Spain has been trying to promote, with no success. Castro knows the script and knows that a market economy creates pressures for a liberal democracy. Whether they may envy China, they do not know how to get there: the Castros seem to be real communists who do not want a thriving economy and a middle class. They’d rather have a poorer but egalitarian society with rationized food. Concerning Spain, I think there was a time in which the Socialist government though that you could engage the regime in a quid pro quo process: exchanging trade and investment for progressive changes in economic regulation which would improve the life of ordinary Cubans. The attempt to change the EU common position reflects this,. The problem is that it is not based on empirical evidence: the regime simply does not accept conditionality. What is worse, even if there are no sticks, they do not accept that there will be more or less carrots or that carrots will be withdrawn if the step up the repression, as they did with the 73. So Spain’s attempt to change the Common Position and look for a trade agreement is a costly exercise (the EU position is made by unanimity) which is likely to fail even if it succeeds in changing it (which I doubt). Cuba can get his deals done with Latin America, China and Russia, who do not impose conditionality, rather than with the EU. So, I guess, some in Spain are tempted to forget about conditionality and have a policy merely consisting on “just being there to see what happens”.
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