The bells ring for change in Cuba

The bells ring for change in Cuba
Posted By Ian Bremmer Thursday, April 7, 2011 - 2:38 PM Share
By Risa Grais-Targow

By all rational measures, Cuba is effectively irrelevant to the United
States. The island is small, its economy is about the size of New
Hampshire's, and since the collapse of the USSR it poses no strategic
threat. Yet the Castros have a habit of popping up in the headlines. In
part, that is because of the inevitable fascination with a small country
that has been a foreign policy irritant for the United States since 1959
and, more recently, its outsized role in Florida politics. But change is
coming to Cuba, slowly but surely, and with change comes the possibility
of unexpected volatility.

Cuba is gearing up for the first Cuban Communist Party (CCP) congress in
14 years, to be held April 16-19. Much of the event will be focused on
formalizing Raul Castro's small steps toward economic liberalization
(e.g., trimming the state's workforce and allowing more room for
entrepreneurs) outlined in a November 2010 wish-list of 300 reforms.
Another, perhaps more important, development will be the identification
of the next generation of leaders, including the appointment of a new
second-in-command for the CCP (the second most powerful position in
Cuba). The long delay since the previous CCP congress suggests that
there has been much internal wrangling over that issue.

The Castros are clearly on the way out (Fidel is 84 and Raul is 79), and
the CCP has promised that the congress will usher in a new generation of
leaders. Just how new and young they will be remains to be seen. On
March 25, Raul Castro announced that the 50-year-old Economy and
Planning Minister Marino Murillo, who has been the architect of much of
the economic reform agenda, would now oversee its implementation as a
sort of economic czar, signaling Raul's devotion to the reform process.
The CCP may, however, simply shuffle senior party members into new
positions rather than appoint younger reformers.

Such developments could also be important for the U.S. and perhaps trade
with Cuba. Unless Congress decides to revisit the issue, the
Helms-Burton Act of 1996 stipulates that the Cuban embargo cannot be
lifted while the Castro regime is still in power. A shift in the
leadership could also open the way to dealing with other potential
concerns. For example, Cuba is actively exploring for oil in the Gulf of
Mexico, raising U.S. concerns about how it would handle disasters
similar to the 2010 Macondo well blowout.

But the CCP faces deeper challenges than this round of leadership
refreshment. Most young Cubans are disenchanted with the regime. They
have spent most of their lives in post-Soviet Cuba dealing with grinding
economic hardship. Finding true believers among that generation is
likely a difficult task and the regime's ability to implement meaningful
reforms will affect the stability of Cuban politics further down the line.

Risa Grais-Targow is an analyst in Eurasia Group's Latin America practice.

http://eurasia.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/04/07/the_bells_ring_for_change_in_cuba