Castro’s Exit Could Cause Morning-After Headaches

After the Berlin Wall crumbled and communism collapsed across Eastern Europe, the governor of Florida set up a commission to ponder the impact of a similar, sudden downfall of President Fidel Castro’s Communist regime in Cuba.

The commission predicted that Miami’s large Cuban-American community would keep the police busy with a long night of riotous jubilation. Then it offered a sobering morning-after scenario:

Free at last to leave the island and driven by post-Castro poverty and disorder, boatloads of Cubans would wash ashore in south Florida in a “rapid, chaotic, uncontrolled mass migration.” The trauma, it warned, could far exceed that of the Mariel Boat Lift in 1980, when 128,000 Cubans landed here over a five-month period and put severe burdens on local schools, welfare services and law enforcement.

“We’d have the largest set of social problems in our history,” said Bruce Jay Colan, a Miami lawyer serving on the commission.

Since he seized power in 1959, Castro has haunted eight successive U.S. administrations with Cold War nightmares from the Cuban Missile Crisis to guerrilla wars in Africa and Latin America.

But three decades of U.S. hostility, coupled with the demise of his Soviet and East European patrons, has so weakened Cuba that Washington now faces the prospect of a Pyrrhic victory.

Mark Falcoff, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, sums up the irony facing U.S. policy-makers in an article for a forthcoming issue of Strategic Review. “The problems for the United States posed by the end of Castroism,” he writes, “are probably potentially as great as its indefinite perpetuation.”

As they focus increasingly on life after Castro, Cuba specialists differ on whether his one-party, centrally planned system can survive its current economic free fall, the worst crisis of the Cuban Revolution. They say it is impossible to predict how long the 65-year-old ruler will last, how he will go or who will replace him.

But nearly all agree that the inevitable departure of such a dominant figure from such a debilitated island could confront the United States with political instability 90 miles off its shore, an influx of refugees and drug traffic and appeals for hundreds of millions of dollars in emergency aid.

In addition, they say, a violent end to the Castro era would be viewed in much of Latin America as Washington’s doing. The United States would find itself at odds with governments throughout the region if it tried unilaterally to shape a post-Castro regime.

Barring All Commerce

For 30 years, Washington has barred all commerce and most travel between the United States and Cuba. The embargo was imposed to punish Cuba’s shift to the Soviet orbit, and was later justified for adventures Havana has since abandoned--its efforts to overthrow other Latin American governments, its dispatch of troops to defend Soviet-backed socialist regimes in Africa.

Last May, with Cuba all but finished as a Cold War threat, President Bush set new conditions for “a significant improvement” in U.S.-Cuban relations--Havana must join the rest of Latin America in allowing free, internationally supervised elections, freedom to organize political parties and free access to the media for opposition groups.

Thanks in part to the Soviet empire’s willingness to prop up his regime, Castro survived the embargo--until the empire fell apart. The Cuban economy has shrunk at least 25% over the past two years as Havana lost much of the petroleum, canned food, machinery and economic subsidies once guaranteed by Moscow and its European satellites.

This year Cuba expects as little as a third of its pre-crisis supply of oil. The shortage has crippled public transport and farm equipment, threatening the harvest of sugar, Cuba’s most valuable trade commodity. Food, soap and other necessities are tightly rationed to an increasingly tense and restless population.

Unwilling to meet Bush’s conditions, Castro has responded with cries of “socialism or death.” His survival strategy, a search for Western investment and new trading partners, has yielded meager results, in part because of U.S. pressure on other countries to shun him.

The Shifting Debate

The end of the Soviet Union has shifted the focus of debate over the wisdom of Washington’s Cuba policy. Having argued for years that the embargo was too ineffective to sway Castro, many of its critics now worry that it might be too effective--pushing Cuba toward an explosive upheaval that will keep the island in turmoil long after his departure.

Bush Administration officials argue that such an eruption is not preordained.

“The future in Cuba depends on how the transition is carried out,” Bernard W. Aronson, the assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, said in an interview. “If there’s a peaceful evolutionary change, your chances of creating pluralism and democracy and open markets are greatly enhanced. If there’s some kind of traumatic, violent change, it depends on who comes out on top and what their agenda is.”

But many insist that the only way Washington can foster peaceful change is by easing the embargo as a first step, then engaging Castro in negotiations to open Cuba’s economy and political system while he is still in charge.

“The question is, do you want to keep following an approach that bankrupts the country in order to save it,” said Jorge Dominguez, a Harvard University professor of political science. “That didn’t work too well for us in Nicaragua or in Panama,” he added, noting the fragility of pro-American regimes brought to power two years ago after U.S. economic embargoes.

Administration officials counter that Castro has shown no willingness to make concessions and, until he does, easing the embargo would only permit him to claim victory over “U.S. aggression.”

“I think the question is, how do you promote democratic change in Cuba?” Aronson said. “And there’s no evidence that providing trade relations or diplomatic relations would do anything at this point but strengthen the capacity of the Castro regime to control its own people.”

Some Cuba specialists concede that there is little Washington can do to shape a future without Fidel. Given his intransigence, they say, the goals of forcing Castro out and engineering a smooth transition might be incompatible.

“By shaping a policy to deal with a Cuba after Castro, you may never get rid of him,” said Susan Kaufman Purcell, vice president for Latin American affairs at the Americas Society, a private institution in New York. Falcoff at the American Enterprise Institute concurs. “I doubt there’s a policy that will cause a plane to land smoothly,” he said, “when the pilot doesn’t want to come down.”

But other analysts say the Administration could take steps, without easing its economic pressure, to prepare for Castro’s departure. They suggest that exchanging military attaches, accepting Cuba’s offer to cooperate in narcotics control and promoting other official contact might help Washington cultivate potential future allies in the Communist leadership.

“A post-Castro Cuba might be a reality sooner than later, but there’s no plan right now,” said Rep. Bill Richardson, a New Mexico Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “No one in the Administration is thinking that far. Cuba is very remote from their radar screen.”

An Array of Headaches

Those who do ponder the inevitability of Castro’s departure worry about an array of new headaches it could create for the United States:

POLITICAL INSTABILITY--Cuba’s growing deprivation increases the possibility of a food riot or some similar protest swelling into an uprising that the military could not control without dumping Castro. Even his quiet exit, by natural death or secretly plotted ouster, could set off a violent struggle for succession.

“This may be a bad year for Castro to fall because there’s nothing to take his place,” said RAND Corp. analyst Edward Gonzalez. “You have weak opposition parties and a feeling among the Communist leadership that they don’t want another strongman.”

Gonzalez, who has been consulted by the Administration about Cuba, predicts that the military, or some element of it, would fill the power vacuum. In that case, the United States might face a hard decision about whether the old regime is over and whether to lift the embargo.

“Nobody really knows what currents there are in these (military) institutions,” said a senior U.S. official. “The military could be part of the solution and it could be part of the problem.”

IMMIGRATION--A violent upheaval is certain to trigger mass migration to the United States, but so could a peaceful change. Freed of Castro’s rigid travel restrictions, Cubans would flock here seeking work to raise money for starting businesses back home. In any case, Florida would get hit with the tidal wave--and most of the bills.

The United States would have to decide whether to end its current policy of granting automatic political asylum to Cubans who succeed in escaping. Even if it did, the hundreds of thousands of Cubans with relatives in this country would still be eligible to enter under Washington’s family reunification program.

“Sure, many of us will go back after Castro, but at first you’re going to see a net outflow (from Cuba),” said Pedro A. Freyre, who left the island as a child and is now a Dow Chemical executive here. “Look at Eastern Europe. That’s the model. The doors of the cage open, everybody’s got relatives here, you can get a job, so why stay in Cuba? You’ve already paid your dues, so you come out.”

DRUGS--Cuba in the pre-revolutionary 1950s was a haven for gambling, prostitution and other Mafia-controlled vices. Sprawling across the Caribbean, with 3,500 miles of coast, it looms today as the most inviting and unexploited trampoline for cocaine and heroin shipments from South America to the United States.

Some drug smuggling through Castro’s Cuba has been documented. But most specialists believe that the volume could skyrocket under a civilian democracy or a period of upheaval because the government in neither case would control the security apparatus as tightly as Castro does now.

ECONOMIC AID--”When Castro falls, we are prepared to help instantly in the rebuilding of a free and democratic Cuba,” Bush said in a campaign speech here. The prospect of political instability, mass immigration and drug traffic would add urgency to Cuba’s needs for assistance.

But American public sentiment is running against foreign aid. Nobody is willing to bet that Havana would get more than $300 million to $500 million in initial U.S. aid--roughly the same amount that much-smaller Nicaragua and Panama each received in 1990.

U.S. officials say Cuba could expect far higher volumes of private investment, especially from the wealthy Cuban-American community, reducing its need for government aid.

But if Miami money goes looking for wholesale buyouts of Cuban state property, Washington could be caught in one of the island’s deepest latent conflicts--whether the future belongs to the Cubans who left and got rich or those who stayed and sacrificed. A dispute could pit a post-Castro government seeking limits on private ownership against the Cuban American National Foundation, a wealthy lobbying group of exiled business people that has helped shape Washington’s hard-line, anti-Castro policy for more than a decade.

Intervention Option

Although Bush has ruled out initiating military action against Castro, U.S. intervention is an option, if the Cuban armed forces divide in a struggle over his survival or his succession.

“If a civil war occurs, and Cubans are being slaughtered, there will be pressure from Cubans in Miami to send in the Marines,” said a State Department official. “Will we? Who knows?”

Whatever the military outcome or political fallout in the United States, such an adventure could strain Washington’s relations with the rest of Latin America far more than the U.S. invasions of Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1989, officials in the region say.

Castro has declared an end to his own meddling abroad and is no longer feared by his Latin American neighbors. While their embrace of pluralist democracy and free markets has left him behind, the Cuban leader is still widely admired as a symbol of regional self-determination.

“A peaceful change in Cuba cannot be achieved without Fidel,” said a senior Colombian official. “And a bloody, violent change would be unacceptable for a majority of Latin Americans.”

Fearing the violent scenario, the presidents of Mexico, Colombia and Venezuela are trying to mediate between Castro and the United States. They met with the Cuban leader in October and expect to do so again by the middle of this year.

“The Latin Americans are taking the initiative now in pushing for democracy,” said Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington. “Once there’s an opening in Cuba, you’ll see a strong democratic influence from the south as well as the north.”

Times staff writer Robert C. Toth in Washington contributed to this article.

Cuba at a Glance

Capital: Havana Type of government: Communist Population: 10,732,037 Economy: Centrally planned and largely state-owned, it is largely dependent on agriculture and foreign trade Industries: Sugar milling, petroleum refining, food and tobacco processing, textiles, chemicals, metals (particularly nickel) Literacy rate: 94% Defense spending: $1.2 billion to $1.4 billion. 6% of GNP (1989 estimate)

U.S. Connection

Florida easily tops the five other leading states in the number of people of Cuban origin. Here are the states with more than 10,000: Florida: 674,052 New Jersey: 85,378 New York: 74,345 California: 71,977 Illinois: 18,204 Texas: 18,195 U.S. total: 1,043,932 Sources: 1990 census, World Factbook, 1991