Why all eyes are on a bankrupt island.
By Moisés Naím | NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Jun 22, 2009
Bill Clinton and George W. Bush recently had a face-to-face debate in
Canada to discuss current affairs. The only Latin American nation
mentioned in their conversation? Cuba. In April the heads of state of
the Americas met in Trinidad. The central theme? Cuba—the only country
not invited to the summit. Last week the Organization of American States
(OAS) had a summit in Honduras. What thorny problem dominated the
discussions of the -foreign-affairs ministers, including Hillary
Clinton, who had to divert her attention from the North Korean nuclear
test and the crises in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan to
travel to the summit of the OAS? Cuba, of course. A few months ago, the
Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, convened a meeting to
discuss the situation in Cuba. The room was overflowing. A few days
later it held a far-less-attended meeting. The subject? Brazil.
The obsession with Cuba is not exclusively American. It is as intense in
Europe. It would be natural to conclude, there-fore, that no other Latin
American country matters more to the rest of the hemisphere, or indeed
to the rest of the world, than Cuba. Unless, of course, one looks at a
map—or at some statistics. Brazil occupies almost half of South
America's land mass and is the fifth largest country in the world. Its
territory is nearly 80 times larger than that of Cuba. More people live
in just one Brazilian city, São Paolo, than in all of Cuba. Brazil's
economy is the ninth largest in the world and one of the most dynamic—it
is also 31 times larger than that of Cuba. Trade between Brazil and the
rest of the world is 25 times that of Cuba. There are 10 times as many
Brazilians in the military as there are Cubans in the island's armed
forces. In global negotiations on the environment, trade, nuclear
proliferation, financial regulation, energy and poverty alleviation,
Brazil is a major player.
Why the Cuba obsession, then? Why is more attention given to this
bankrupt Caribbean island than to a continental giant and global player
like Brazil?
The usual explanation is that Cuba has a unique symbolic allure. It is
the small country that confronted the U.S. empire and has survived
despite the attempts by all U.S. presidents since to subdue its
communist government. It is the island with iconic leaders like Fidel
Castro and Che Guevara, and the Latin American country that in the
language of revolutionaries everywhere embodies the struggle of
socialist humanism against the materialism of capitalist societies.
Cuba is also the small nation that in the past sent its troops to die in
faraway lands in Latin America and even Africa fighting for the poor
(and to further the interests of the Kremlin, but that's another story).
And it is also the country whose progress in health care and education
for the majority became the stuff of legend. It is the small country
that the United States has unsuccessfully tried to isolate for decades
through a variety of means—including an absurd and useless embargo that
hurts the United States more than Cuba. The embargo is the perfect
example used by anti-Americans everywhere to expose the hypocrisy of a
superpower that punishes a small island while cozying to dictators
elsewhere.
But Cuba is not just the David that stands against Goliath.
Unfortunately, it is also a country where people are willing to risk
their lives and take to the sea in rickety rafts to escape from material
deprivation, brutal repression and political suffocation. It is a
country whose economy cannot survive without the handouts from its
allies and where food shortages and hunger are common. It is also the
country where, for more than half a century, power has been in the hands
of the same family.
Meanwhile, in Brazil?.?.?.?a labor-union leader who was democratically
elected twice and enjoys the world's highest levels of popularity has
presided over an amazing period of social and economic progress. It is
also one of the few countries that have successfully managed to reduce
economic inequality at a time when everywhere else inequities are
deepening. Successive Brazilian governments, of rival political parties,
have succeeded in improving education, health and the living standards
of millions of impoverished citizens who have now joined a growing
middle class. Brazil has an energy policy that has spawned the world's
most vibrant biofuels industry and is the global gold standard in the
fight against HIV/AIDS. In 1995, 15 percent of Brazilian school-age
children did not go to school. In 2005, this fell to 3 percent, and
today Brazil has practically achieved universal basic education.
And so the answer is obvious: there are no reasons why this country
should be of greater interest to the policymakers and journalists than
the bankrupt Caribbean island.
Naím is Editor in Chief of Foreign Policy magazine.
Moises Naim On The Obssession With Cuba | Newsweek International |
Newsweek.com (17 June 2009)
http://www.newsweek.com/id/201752
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