CUBA’S DICTATORSHIP SEEKS TO REVIVE THE COLD WAR IN ORDER TO SURVIVE

Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
Publicado May 2, 2019

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) Cuba’s Castroist dictatorship agonizes, as was confessed by its dictator Raul Castro.  A parasitic, predatory and unproductive regime that besides destroying Cuban economy and society, survived due to the Soviet Union’s (USSR) subsidies until the latter broke up leaving it in a crisis that would have been terminal had it not been for Hugo Chavez.  They created the Castroist Chavist system with which Cuba’s dictatorship expanded, to the point of controlling, today, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia.   After taking Venezuela to a humanitarian crisis and losing that resource for its survival, Cuba’s dictatorship now agonizes, but is developing the strategy to revive the Cold War in order to survive.

The 60 years of Cuba’s dictatorship can best be presented in three specific time frames: 1. “During the Cold War” from 1959 to 1991, that is since the taking of power by Fidel Castro until the break up of the USSR, period in which it survived in the shadows of the Cold War with the subsidies from communism, blood-staining the Americas and Africa and with crimes such as; narcotics’ trafficking, kidnapping and terrorism in order to produce additional revenue; 2. “The Special Period” from 1991 to 1999, from the break up of the USSR until the ascent of Hugo Chavez to power in Venezuela with his immediate alliance with Fidel Castro; 3. The “Castroist Chavist” period from 1999 to the present in 2019, in other words from the time Cuba begins to benefit from the oil and resources from Venezuela and expands itself to the point of leading Latin America even with the backing of U.S. foreign policy, until Venezuela’s humanitarian, political, and economic crises develop, literally eating away the goose that lays the golden eggs.

The “Cold War is the name given to a historic period marred by strategic dispute and indirect conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union for the political, economic, and military dominance of the world” and covers the period of time from the end of the Second World War in 1945 to the time of the break up of the USSR in 1991.

With Fidel Castro at the helm of power, Cuba progressively became the USSR’s Soviet Communism’s most important operator in the region against the United States with ensuing critical situations such as; the missile crisis of 1962, the guerrilla uprisings, the urban guerrilla movements, the advent of narcotics’ trafficking, and more.

On 10 April of 2019, Raul Castro in his speech to proclaim what he calls “Cuba’s new constitution”, confessed the state of agony and bankruptcy of his country, asking all “Cubans to prepare themselves to endure an economic crisis” backing Venezuela’s dictator Nicolas Maduro and stating that “this is not, going back to the acute phase of the Special Period in the decade of the nineties of the past century following the end of the Soviet Union, today the scenario is different as far as the economy’s diversification, but we have to be prepared for the worst of possibilities”.

The Cuban dictatorship knows that it cannot survive without Venezuela’s oil, without the flow of bribes from corrupt overpriced projects such as that of the “Port of Mariel”, without the monies from “human trafficking” disguised as medical and technical cooperation efforts, without the funds generated by tourism promoted with stolen resources delivered to transnational corporations, without the unlimited remittance of monies sent by exiles in the United States, without the flow of resources generated by criminal operations with the FARC and the narco-states of Venezuela with Maduro and Bolivia with Morales, and without the political force it was able to muster in the 21^st century.

The Castroist dictatorship agonizes, additionally, because it cannot revert the annihilation that it has caused of Venezuela’s economy, it can no longer continue the simulation of democracy that “vote-catching dictatorships” that control Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia pursue, it can no longer hide evidence of neither the narco-states it has created in Venezuela and Bolivia, nor of its growing threat to the United States.  It agonizes because it has lost control over Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Panama, El Salvador, the Caribbean States and the OAS, albeit it keeps its conspiracy and destabilization efforts as a constant.

Is obvious that the Cuban dictatorship has undertaken a strategy to “revive the Cold War” meaning; to create a new cold war in which it can survive by -once again- becoming the main, and most important, operator of the enemies of the United States in the Americas.   Towards that end, it is trying to quickly assemble a block of allegiance with Russia, China, Iran, North Korea and whoever else it can bring-in around the dictatorships from Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia, around these countries’ natural resources and strategic interests, to create a block or two against the United States and survive under the shadow of a new era of global confrontation.

Published in Spanish by Infobae.com on Sunday, April 28th. 2019

Translated from Spanish by; Edgar L. Terrazas, member of the American Translators’ Association, ATA # 234680.