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There is a big difference between a state-directed foreign relations policy and political pandering. The Truman Doctrine was the established American foreign policy that sought to contain the advancement of Soviet communism. It ran, approximately, from the end of World War II until 1981. It was replaced with the more aggressive policy of rolling back communism. The Berlin Wall did not just “fall.” It was torn down by the Reagan Doctrine.
There is an ongoing war of liberation going on right now, thirty minutes from the Florida coast. Biden is ignoring a golden opportunity to help liberate Cuba.
The Soviet Union’s collapse, an endgame of America’s socialism reversal Cold War strategy, brought about communism’s mutation. Three reformulated Marxist-Leninist models ensued following 1989. Asian communism, the Leninist state with a hybrid economy such as the “China model”, is what has prevailed in China, Vietnam, and Laos. North Korea, existing as a full-fledged China dependency, has had the luxury of maintaining its stalwart Stalinist prototype. In functional democracies, cultural Marxism — following the Gramscian-Frankfurt School amalgam of cultural hegemony and Critical Theory variants — was the tool that replaced the Comintern.
In Latin America, Castro-Communism spearheaded the reformulation of socialism at the São Paulo Forum. This would be a republican simulation whereupon seizing all the democratic institutions, Marxist tyranny would ensue under the cosmetic guise of a pseudo-democracy.
Following the disappearance of the U.S.S.R., America, and the free world for that matter has become myopic and burdened with stupidity when confronting socialism’s new vestiges. The Castro dictatorship has benefitted from this misunderstanding of 21st Century Marxist-Leninist despotism. Recently lost opportunities in Venezuela and Nicaragua, where American and regional forces had a favorable set of circumstances to demonstrate solidarity and help captive nations find freedom.
The July 11th Cuban Uprising offers another host of historic variables that any American presidency with a freedom-conscious moral mindset would take advantage of. The Biden administration is showing signs of blundering a formidable chance to rid the Western Hemisphere of its worst menace.
On Friday, July 30th, President Biden sat down with a group of Cuban Americans in a much-heralded meeting touted as important by Democratic Party operatives. Perhaps except for Yotuel Romero, one of the coauthors of the viral musical hit “Fatherland and Life” (“Patria y Vida”), most of the Cuban Americans present at that meeting were supportive of the infamous Obama-Castro diplomatic reproachment. This monolithic view of U.S. relations with communist Cuba does not represent the majority view of the over two million Cuban Americans in the U.S., or of the Cubans on the Island protesting.
“The United States is taking concerted action to bolster the cause of the Cuban people,” are some of the things Biden has said. The American president has also stated that “Cuba is a failed state,” and that “We support the Cuban people in their quest for freedom.” These words, however, without effective state action, are naked gestures of political pandering to the Cuban American voter. Everyone knows how valuable Florida is in elections. Now the third-largest state in the union, the Sunshine State is seminal. Of the Cuban exiled nation, over one and a half million live and vote in Florida.
So far, the Biden administration’s weaponry to aid the Cuban freedom fighters in Cuba is nonsensical. It does not remotely deal with the problem. Developing a task force to study how to get remittances into the Island without the Cuban dictatorship, a totalitarian regime, shaving off most of it, is one of the Biden Cuban policy focuses. Staffing the American embassy in Cuba is another. Expanding internet coverage is a third study option. Targeting, uselessly, a select group of thugs with sanctions has been the other (these few people have no assets in the U.S.). None of these, except high-speed internet amplification, has anything tangibly to do with the expressed purpose of the popular liberation effort underway in Cuba now.
Internet extension, as part of a conscientious plan to facilitate communication between the Cuban people challenging tyranny today, would bear a great resemblance to what the Reagan administration did when it facilitated the Solidarity movement and other opposition forces in Poland, with fundamental tools to conspire and fight for freedom. Most of those protesting in Cuba were not complaining about a shortage of remittances, or visas to leave the country. This is something that the Cuban American “engagement” and remittance/travel lobby wants. It is also what the Castro government’s staunchest allies and apologists have been asking for. It is not, however, what the Cuban people are fighting for.
The American government, with Biden as its president, has an opportunity to remedy past historical wrongs regarding Cuba. Two examples are the Bay of Pigs betrayal by the Kennedy Administration and Eisenhower’s state department mishaps of miscalling Castroism’s communist ties and facilitating its ascension to power by levying an arms embargo on the previous authoritarian regime.
Now is the time to act. Cuba wants freedom, not material handouts. Remember history. America would not exist as a nation, without France’s generous belligerent and financial solidarity. Helping free Cuba is the right thing to do.
Julio M Shiling, political scientist, writer, director of Patria de Martí and The Cuban American Voice, lecturer and media commentator. A native of Cuba, he currently lives in the United States. Twitter: @JulioMShiling // Julio es politólogo, escritor, director de Patria de Martí y The Cuban American Voice. Conferenciante y comentarista en los medios. Natural de Cuba, vive actualmente en EE UU.