European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - September 06, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse Tuesday septembers 1994 commentary. Stars and stripes Page 13 William f. Buckley the Cuba mess reminds us that the primary engine in human behaviour is Pride. The events after the end of the Berlin Wall in 1989 were disastrous to Fidel Castro in two ways. What he lost first was the basis for his Public life. The International communist movement was definitively discredited and then abandoned. For Castro this was the equivalent of the College of cardinals meeting to declare that Jesus Christ was a fake but then too there was the awful material Conse Quence. There was no longer the economic subsidy from the soviet Union to sus Tain Castro s Luna cies. All he had left was his Pride. It pays to remind ourselves at this juncture that Castro is an abominable human being. The meaning of Castro is right there at the Public Library in the Book against All Hope by Armando Valladares. It is his account of the 20 years of torture to which he was subjected As punishment for merely raising the question of human rights. It is an indication of Cas Tro s insensitivity to the kind of thing they talk about at the United nations. Stalin could have driven through gulag Hitler through Auschwitz Castro through Lospinoso without feeling anything distinguishable from what one might expect to feel visiting a sausage factory. But whereas some forms of cruelty Are Complete unto themselves Castro is of the fraternity that needs the in his Case to be on the Side of marxist history that instructs us that whatever you do is justified if it accelerates the historical process ushering the world into happiness. When Marx Lenin failed him he was left with his own resources and they Are not enough to sustain his slave kingdom. All that he is left with is his Pride. That requires him to ignore reality and to pull the Tail of the Tiger for Public distraction. Whenever Castro is in trouble he in Vokes the colossus of the North As the cause of All his problems. Arid Here we Are. Now Pride is not exclusively the property of Fidel Castro in this situation. It moves president Clinton and the Washington establishment and indeed most americans. We have suffered Many indignities at the hands of Fidel Castro. He came Over Here in 1959 promising Freedom and democracy for his liberated people and we cheered him. Two years later we decided we had to overthrow him and he humiliated us at the Bay of pigs. A year later he was the instrument through which a world War was very nearly precipitated during the mis Sile crisis we received into the United states one tenth of the population of Cuba incidental victims of our failed statecraft. It is entirely understandable that our default position As the computer Folk would put it should be to hell with Castro the More he suffers the better. But we need to Rouse ourselves to acknowledge the new historical perspective. It is that Castro continues to be an enemy of civilized thought but he is no longer a strategic enemy. While he served As a salient of soviet communism Castro and Castro s Cuba warranted the full energies of our strategic defense mechanisms. In 1962, when head 40 nuclear missiles in place he was As much the enemy As Nikita Khrushchev s soviet Union. That s Over. He is now one More Bloodthirsty Caudil h. Our concern is purely humanitarian. But whereas the boat people in Vietnam were direct victims of . Military ineptitude refugees from Cas Tro s Cuba Are not our responsibility. The object of our policy then must be to expedite their repatriation and to satisfy our own Pride merely by acknowledging the strategic nothingness of Fidel Castro. All that 35 years of him has accomplished is human misery not a convulsion in the balance of world Power. Concretely then we should riot object to meeting with Castro s representative at the United nations. Although Cuba is no longer our problem its Citi Zens should be the beneficiaries of Pur Good offices. What Castro wants is economic Aid. This we correctly deny him for reasons of a justified Pride. But to sus Pend the blockade is merely to treat Castro As we treat other tyrants in China and elsewhere. Our negotiators need to Bear in to end the blockade now is not retroactively to discredit it. It is to acknowledge fresh perspectives. If the cuban people overthrow Castro that is the end for which devoutly we Pray. But if they do not he is their problem. C Universal press Syndicate Glinton must grab Chance to make cuban deca the Clinton administration May yet stumble to a Success in dealing with Cuba. The problem in t that hard and Fidel Castro is helping in his fashion. The first requirement of policy is to keep Faith with refugees fleeing communism. This was a Standard cold War policy and the right one for a country like ours that Speaks for Liberty. It brought a million cubans to Miami Over a period of 30years. The end of the cold War was bound to dim the urgency of Rescue and to give a sharper profile to for instance Florida s carrying capacity. But in Cuba the cold War survives in the form of an Anoma Lous and discredited but still live communist tyranny. This imposes a continuing obligation on the United states to care for cuban refugees. Not gracefully but effectively presi Dent Clinton is meeting this obligation by offering cuban refugees Safe Haven at Guantanamo Bay. Safe Haven is denigrated in some quarters As an immoral reversal of the traditional automatic Asylum. But the recipients of Safe Haven Are not being thrown Back to Cuba and they Are living under an american Flag. It is an adequate expedient to buy a bit of time. The question is How to use that time. Here Clinton has had difficulty in moving past mindless nationalist assertions to the effect that Castro will not be Allowe djo dictate american immigration Stephens. Rosenfeld someone should have told him that Castro by generating refugees in the first place through re pression and by his openings and closings of the emigration tap has been dictating american Immi Gration policies practically since this revolution took Power in 1959. Until soviet communism went under most americans regarded the flow As a Burden they were proud to sustain. But never mind. Castro is saving Clinton from his slogans by of Fering to negotiate emigration. This is the focus of the talks that opened in new York on thursday. A Deal sits waiting to be confirmed. Cuba would discreetly pen up the illegals who Are now setting out dangerously on rafts to Florida. The United states would agree to increase numbers of legals. There is a strained Quality to Clinton s approach to Havana. Even As he enters talks that offer a Promise of personal re Lief to some thousands of cubans he tightens the embargo pressures that inflict further suffering on some millions of cubans. This is an inconsistency and consid ering the human costs a pity. It is due As far As anyone can Tell to Clinton s Kow towing to the cuban emigration s right Wing a faction he started courting during his Campaign for the White House. Cuba of course is no longer any sort of Security any event the talks begun in new York Are eventually More Likely to go Castro s Way into Broad political discussions than to stay tightly focused on technical emigration matters As Clinton says he seems to me the logic of events. Castro seems to understand it better than Clinton is not out to embrace the United states and its ways. Better than any one however he understands that his re Gime is failing now that Moscow no longer supports it. This is what has led him to take the huge risk of starting to bargain for lifting the american Embar go. His release of some of his citizens to the rafts put one of his few available cards in play. Strangely Clinton evidently fears that Castro will outsmart him in political talks and that the cuban Leader will end up re placing soviet subsidies with american subsidies for his otherwise sinking enter of Clinton s Domestic critics share this apprehension. But Imose everyone else realizes there is a second broadly political Deal that Clinton is in a position to United states would phase out the embargo. Cuba would introduce demo cratic elections. End of the Cuba prob Lem. ,. Why would Castro accept an approach that puts him on the Slippery slope of negotiations that May Cost him Power there is a whole Industry of peo ple who try to get inside Castro s head. Some believe him to be obsessed if not by Power then by rage at the unite states and hence an unlikely candidate for a political Compromise. But having come this far How can a . President shy away from supporting a plan that satisfies the two fundamental considerations of american democratic principle and cuban National Pride the Clinton administration regularly asserts that it favors a peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba. But its actual policy of unrelieved pressure and isolation snows a glint of the old american Prem ise that in the right circumstances the cuban people will revolt and throw Cas Tro out. This is the belief that led presi Dent Kennedy to launch a disastrous in Vasion of cuban exiles at the Bay of pigs in 1961. No imaginable now. But a Trace of an underlying american resent ment at an upstart Cuba May remain from the earlier period of american Colo Nial Hegemony. The Trace is faint to us but perhaps not so faint to some number of cubans whose nationalism Castro shrewdly stirs. With respect the United states can steal that card. C Washington Post
