Please Note: This publication was made possible through support provided by the Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean, U. S. Agency for International Development, under the terms of Award No. Edg-a-00-02-00007-00
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Foreign Relations At the time of the 1989 events, Iliescu is said to have asked Soviet military help but been cut short by Army Chief of Staff, and known staunch nationalist General Gusa. To what extent the possibility of a Soviet intervention against Ceausescu was real at the time, we will never know. What is likely is that the threat of such intervention had a major role in the Romanian generals’ decision to preempt it by supporting the anti - Ceausescu forces. No post-Castro regime in Havana could hope to be legitimate if seen as a puppet of Washington, and that is even more so the case with FAR. Whether internal instability and riots will lead senior FAR officers, fearing an American intervention, to imitate their Romanian counterparts’ preemptive approach, has to remain a matter of speculation, but is an issue worth further exploration. Post –1989 Romania had to adapt to the requirements (legal, human rights, etc.) of the European Union, which it needs economically, and NATO, which it needs security wise. With a traditionally pro – Western, indeed pro – American populace, none of those outside pressures were politically dangerous. A post-Castro Cuba will face a different set of problems: a pressing economic need to seek membership in regional and international financial organizations and some accommodation with Washington to obtain access to the American market will create tensions with two other competing realities: that a significant section of the society, especially the middle aged and elements of the military are distrustful, to say the least, of most things American; and that in most Cuban eyes is hard to distinguish the role of the enormous diaspora from the American interests. Indeed, just as Cuban policy is also a domestic American issue, the reverse is true in Havana, and likely to remain so. It is also true, however, that the regional environment during a transition has a direct impact on both internal and foreign policy decisions, and indeed on political culture as such. To the surprise of many, the Romanian institution that first established a good cooperation with its Hungarian counterpart was the military. Obviously, the hope of joining NATO was decisive for both sides. Similarly, despite territorial and minority rights disputes, Romania signed treaties with Ukraine and Russia – again, hopes for future NATO and EU membership overcoming historic and popular hostility. In Cuba’s case the influence of Latin American states, such as Mexico and Venezuela could help in a decision to seek close ties with Washington. They could also help on issues such as the retraining of judges, new civil and penal codes and the media, all matters in which Romania’s transition was helped by the Europeans.
How much should we expect from the Romanian post -1989 experience to apply to Cuba? The answer is - some, not all, and more specifics than generalities. There are many valuable lessons, but their applicability ultimately depends on how the transition in Havana takes place : if by popular participation in riots, then the FAR would face the same dilemma of repression vs. popular representation as the Romanian military did in December 1989, and then analogies will be stronger, and so will other questions. Such as:
None of this could be known, of course, but developments similar to those that occurred in Bucharest in and after December 1989 are highly plausible in Havana, and should be taken seriously in the assessment of both the transition itself and its later manifestations. Ultimately, the point of this essay is not to advise the US Government as to what IT should do in a post - Castro Cuba, but, in light of the Romanian experience, what to avoid doing, and who it should support – or not.
1Notes Many of the issues discussed in this paper have been covered in the author’s previous work, “Collapse or Decay? Cuba and the East European Transitions from Communism,” Endowment for Cuban American Studies, Miami, 1997. 22Nor did the many foreign (mostly Arab) trainees in Romania come to the regime’s assistance (claims of “Arab terrorists” doing all the shooting against civilians in Bucharest, Timisoara, and Brasov notwithstanding: none have ever been identified). The similarly disorganized Latin American revolutionary veterans in Cuba may offer just such a disjointed opposition – with no better results than the still mysterious Romanian “terrorists” of December 1989 – but enough to increase the human cost and confusion during the transition process. By contrast, as an aside, there are still many thousands of Cuban-trained and indoctrinated Latin American (and generally “Third World”) revolutionaries in Cuba, most of them older and married to Cubans, but all threatened by the likelihood of any post-Castro discovery of their dossiers in other countries. Unlike the Third World trainees of Ceausescu’s Romania and their largely fictitious “terrorist” contribution to the 1989 events, the Latin Americans have personal, as well as ideological, reasons to fight for Castro’s revolution. Are the many Argentine, Chilean, Uruguayan, Brazilian, and other superannuated ex-revolutionaries in Havana with potentially criminal pasts prepared to submit, or will they fight for Castro and all that he represents? That is one more difference between Romania and Cuba. 33See note 1. |