THE FOUR major candidates for the US presidency greeted Fidel Castro's decision yesterday to step down with calls for the democratization of Cuba. After 49 years in power, Castro leaves in place a well-entrenched system of control - one that will resist immediate change. Based on their gauzy statements, none of the candidates has an inkling of how US policy can make a difference on the island.
After the announcement, John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama all called for the release of Cuban political prisoners, while Mike Huckabee joined them in demanding free elections. Since the ailing Castro gave caretaker powers to his brother Raúl 17 months ago, the number of political prisoners has decreased from 316 to 234, not a high number by the standards of repressive regimes but enough to discourage dissent.
Raúl is expected to be named Cuban president next Sunday, but given the opaqueness of the Cuban leadership, his selection is not certain. What is clear is that no member of the Cuban elite has expressed any democratic inclinations. Fidel Castro's near-term successors are unlikely to shake up a system that has served them well for five decades.
Castro has built his system on the export of opponents, to the United States, Europe, and Latin America. This safety valve remains in place; just this weekend, four dissidents were freed and flown to exile in Spain. Likewise, Castro's successors will be able to use the threat and the lure of emigration to control their people and to pressure the United States, no matter who wins the White House.
"The adversary to be defeated is extremely strong," Castro wrote yesterday in the newspaper Granma, referring to the United States. "However, we have been able to keep it at bay for half a century."
Castro has been a masterful student of American politics, knowing when to goad the superpower to demonstrate his nationalism and when to offer an occasional olive branch. In 1960, the Eisenhower administration helped him out by imposing a trade embargo that did nothing to disturb his power - but gave him a half-century's worth of excuses for economic failure.
Out of habit, the State Department said yesterday that the embargo would remain in place. But Cuba is benefiting from cut-rate oil supplied by Venezuela, and enough foreign currency is coming into Cuba - from European and Canadian tourists and remittances from Cuban émigrés to their relatives - to sustain the army, security service, and Communist Party, the three pillars of the regime.
The embargo is cemented into law by the 1996 Helms-Burton Act, but a bold US president could still do much to encourage commerce between the United States and Cuba, offering Cubans a taste of what full economic relations could achieve.
As Castro fades into history, the United States needs to move beyond the antagonism he deftly fostered.
