Quickly, on what the Western policy toward Cuba should be:
Consider the following:
1) Castro is a bastard.
2) Castro is not just a bastard because he’s a bastard to his own people, but also because he inspires others (Chavez, Morales et al) to be bastards.
3) Castro is a problem for the West not because he’s a bastard, but because people he makes people think that things only bastards do (collectivism in a horribly poor country like Cuba, not letting people emigrate) are in fact good things, and thus encourage those bastardly things to be replicated.
Thus:
4) The point of any anti-Castro campaign isn’t to remove Castro, it’s to fundamentally diminish the appeal of his bastardly ideas and make people realize that these ideas are, indeed, bastardly and wielded only be very bad bastards.
Add to that the following realities:
5) We are not likely to decrease the appeal of his bastardly ideas if we forcibly or coercively remove them; it would just be perceived as unfair play and subversion.
6) Most people who seriously disagreed with Castro the bastard have generally been able to have something of a reasonable shot at leaving Cuba, even despite his bastardly emigration restrictions
7) By deduction from 6, vast majority of people who are left in Cuba actually don’t disagree seriously with Castro’s bastardly ideas.
8) By deduction from 7, if they actually abide by Castro’s bastardly ideas, and indeed in lots of cases benefit from them (this includes anybody leaving in houses forcibly expropriated from Cuban exiles), then they should take full responsibility for the range of consequences from such bastardly ideas
9) By deduction from 8, that means we have no obligation to rescue the current Cuban population from the Castro yoke, especially as an internal democratization would mean the end to any possibility of exiles’ properties being returned, even if only in reasonably part, which, to me at least, is absolutely necessary if any legitimacy is to exist in any post-Castro Cuban civil society.
Thus:
10) Given 4 and 9, it seems to me that Western policy toward Cuba should be oriented toward these lines:
They are:
11) Continued refusal to engage in any civil, commercial, or political contact with official Cuban government organizations and government-owned businesses unless legitimacy in civil society is restored: which is to say, assets are returned, at least partially, to their rightful owners, or more likely, appropriate compensation is made by Castro to Cuban exiles.
12) However, allow private Cuban individuals to conduct any commercial exchange they like with American society, as long as they can prove that either a) no profit has been illegitimately been earned upon the expropriated assets of Cuban exiles, or, far more likely, that b) their profits are earned on such assets, but the private individuals have agreed to make appropriate royalty payments to the appropriate Western government to be given to the relevant Cuban exile, as rent on capital. You reject a liberal society with respect for property rights? Fine! We’ll construct exactly such an order without you. We’ll make you superfluous. (For example, we can open up trade with Cuba, impose a fixed tariff depending on product and industry, and then refund the entirety of the tariff to relevant Cuban exiles for each product or industry.)
13) As a result, any business Cubans do with the outside world will be grounded on a legitimate basis and can thus be the basis of further legitimization in Cuban society independent of the bastardly Castro regime. We talk too easily of liberalization and democratization, but it’s important that we don’t lose sight of legitimacy. And in this case, I don’t think it’s even wise in world-peace terms to give the Cuban population a free pass on this. It is imperative to impress upon them that the Castro order is fundamentally illegitimate rather than just bad in a generic way, that the world doesn’t give a fuck if the outcomes are good, because the means are illegitimate; this is what the Congress of Vienna did with respect to Napoleon, and this is what we must do now. If this concept doesn’t get drilled home we are just going around in circles. Laxity about a legitimate order in situ is basically an invitation for foreign policy to be gamed. To give but one example, if we don’t insist on continuous legitimacy, every time there’s a change of regime Western bondholders would lose their shirts.
14) Continued inaction in regard to the Castro regime personally, as anything in that direction diminishes the legitimacy of ending his regime and increases the appeal of his bastardly ideas
15) Apply a carrot-and-stick strategy with regard to his bastardly ideas. Automatically grant refugee status to persons of professional skill or property in any Latin American country that falling under the spell of Castro’s bastardly ideas, to demonstrate our commitment to legitimacy. You can have socialism, but let’s see how well you can run socialism when all your managers, lawyers, doctors, and other men of importance choose to exit such a diseased society. The important thing here is to allow people to vote with their feet.
16) The general principle here is: we allow people to vote with their feet. Voting with ballots is often a sham, and is occasionally a tyranny of numbers. Voting with one’s feet can never be so.
TBC, and to be also further edited.
