Chinese Radio International discussion of President Obama's Visit to Cuba

Chinese Radio International (English) Discussion of US President Barack Obama's Historic Visit to Cuba:

Harry Targ,Purdue University

Dr. Wu Hongying, Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies at the Beijing-based China Institute of Contemporary International Relations
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http://mod.cri.cn/eng/features/pik/2016/03/0322pik.mp3

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S VISIT TO CUBA: TWO QUOTES AND A FABLE

Harry Targ

Two statements from articles in the New York Times

At the heart of Mr. Obama’s policy is a gamble that the thaw will eventually force changes on Cuba’s communist government by nurturing the hopes of its citizens, particularly a younger generation more interested in Internet access and business opportunities than in Cuba’s grievances against the United States. (Julie Hirschfeld Davis, “Obama Hopes Cuba Visit Can be Harbinger of Political Change,” New York Times,, March 19, 2016.

Elizardo Sanchez flew to Havana from Miami on Saturday, looking forward to meeting President Obama with other Cuban dissidents invited to the United States Embassy here on Tuesday. But at the airport, Cuban officials decided he would have to wait.” (Damien Cave and Frances Robles, “Cuba’s Message to its People: Be On Your Best Behavior for Obama,” New York Times, March 20, 2016.

A Fable

The presidential plane touched down at the Havana airport early in the afternoon, Sunday, March 20. A full plane of dignitaries, politicians of both political parties, business people and State Department personnel eagerly lined up to exit the aircraft and stand on Cuban soil, many for the first time. Among the dignitaries were representatives of a variety of U.S. groups, who for years had lobbied, protested, educated, and demanded an end to the economic blockade of the island which was initiated by President Eisenhower in the summer, 1960.

The President, his wife, and daughters disembarked, walked over to embrace the welcoming Cuban dignitaries. The President spoke very briefly indicating that he was truly excited to be reestablishing a long broken relationship. The President suggested that while he was in Cuba he would be discussing pressing diplomatic matters--ending the embargo, closing the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, and opening up a new era of close collaboration that might mend the historic animosities that have divided the United States and most of the countries of Latin America.

The entourage drove from the airport to the city, viewing thousands of Cubans exuberantly welcoming their guests. The visiting party registered at the historic Hotel National, where Hollywood stars, gangsters, and other former prominent members of the Hemisphere elite tied to Cuban dictators had resided in the past. The President and his family then began a brief tour of the exciting historic 500 year-old city.

First stop was Old Havana, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Presidential family met with members of Old Havana cooperatives who are engaged in renovating the old city. Some earnings from tourism are used to rehabilitate old buildings. Schools in Old Havana educate young people in renovation studies.

As the party walked through Old Havana, they were told that the Cuban government, in consultation with literally hundreds of thousands of Cubans, decided in 2011 to begin shifting the Cuban economy from one dominated by the state sector to the private sector. The private sector would consist of two elements: small entrepreneurs and workplace cooperatives. 

While Cubans differ on which directions the economy should pursue, many Cubans are beginning to participate in cooperative forms of enterprise ownership and decision-making in the cities as well as the countryside. Some regard the work cooperatives as the centerpiece of a 21^st century socialism. They expect cooperatives to continue the revolutionary project launched in 1959; creating economic equality, political participation, and continuing the society’s commitment to access to health care, education, adequate housing, sensitivity to the environment, and combatting existing racism and sexism. The President praised the vision and noted that the United States is far from achieving these goals and might take back some ideas from the Cuban experience that could be adapted to circumstances in the United States.

The President told his tour guides that he had heard a lot about the Cuban health care system. He particularly wanted to visit the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM). Since 2005, 23,000 students graduated from ELAM mostly from poor countries around the world. Currently there are 10,000 medical students at ELAM, with small numbers from the U.S. Students participating in the free medical training are encouraged to return to their home country and apply their skills to treat underserved populations. One newly credentialed U.S. doctor trained in Cuba has committed herself to provide health care for African American males in Cook County jail in Chicago.

Visiting ELAM the President confirmed how impressed he was with the youthful enthusiasm, commitment, and international solidarity described by the students he met. The President made it clear that ELAM was one excellent example of Cuban international solidarity.

After stopping in various communities across Havana, chatting with residents, the family returned to the Hotel National for a well-deserved rest and the President’s final drafting of his speech.

The next morning, bright and early, the Presidential party traveled to the huge Plaza of the Revolution, a vast open space that sometimes holds a million Cubans. On one building is a several story image of Che Guevara and across the plaza a statue of iconic hero Jose Marti stands boldly in front of a museum honoring him. As hundreds of thousands of Cubans assembled President Raul Castro approached the podium at the base of the Marti statue. He marked the historic visit of the president and indicated that while each country has some differences of values and priorities, the two have had a vast, complicated and intimate historic relationship. He welcomed unraveling the relationship, recognizing the common histories of descendants of Africans who play such a prominent role in the history of both countries.

The President was introduced, stepped to the podium, and presented a long and eloquent speech part of which is reproduced here:

“Mr. President, Ministers, and my Cuban Companeros and Companeras, I appreciate your welcome to the President of the United States. We have had many disagreements over the last sixty years and frankly the United States bears responsibility for most of them. Along with our repeated efforts to overthrow the Cuban government, led so passionately by Fidel Castro, we have engaged in an economic blockade of Cuba for most of that time. We are here to send a message to the Cuban people and to all the peoples of our hemisphere that the United States will now be embarking on a new foreign policy. I call it “A New Good Neighbor Policy,” named after the program announced by former President Franklyn Roosevelt many years ago. Only this time the policy will be different and will be sustained long into the future.

I have visited a few of your health care facilities and one of your medical schools, I’ve walked in your communities, and strolled along your beautiful coastal highway, the Malecon. I have talked with some of you personally and I see that you are a proud people. While you desire greater access to goods, improved housing, more resources to travel, I realized that you are proud of your revolutionary heritage. We may not always agree with you, or your friends in other countries, such as Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. However, from this time forward we declare our commitment to you that we will not take away what every man and woman desires, the power to decide their own destiny. The United States has failed in this before, but I am here to promise you that we learned the lesson of your stubborn resistance to our interference and it will not happen again.”

In closing I remember the words of your poet and patriot Jose Marti: “Patria es humanidad.”   

  

HILLARY CLINTON AND THE DECLINING AMERICAN EMPIRE

Harry Targ

I think President Obama made the right decision at the time. And the Libyan people had a free election the first time since 1951.And you know what, they voted for moderates, they voted with the hope of democracy. Because of the Arab Spring, because of a lot of things, there was turmoil to follow.”(Hillary Clinton quoted in Conor Freidersdorf, ‘Hillary Defends Her Failed War in Libya,” The Atlantic, October 14, 2015, theatlantic.com).

Nearly three and a half years after Libyan rebels and a NATO air campaign overthrew Muammar al-Qaddafi, the cohesive political entity known as Libya doesn’t exist.” ( Frederic Wehrey quoted in Conor Friedersdorf)

Building an Empire

In a recent book by distinguished diplomatic historian Lloyd Gardner (“Three Kings: The Rise of an American Empire in the Middle East After World War II,” The New Press, 2009), the author describes the last day of the historic Yalta Conference just before the end of World War II in which the leaders of the allied powers met: President Franklin Roosevelt, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

The President informed his colleagues that he had to leave the next day to fly to Egypt. Stalin, according to Gardner, protested saying that there was still unfinished business to discuss (The Yalta Conference in February, 1945 was the last conference the three leaders held before the end of World War II in Europe. In it they were deciding on the shape of the post-war international system).

Gardner reports that FDR explained his surprising departure by saying that he had “three kings waiting for him in the Near East, including Ibn Saud.” Churchill correctly believed that the premature departure and visit to Egypt was part of a United States plan to, in Churchill’s words, develop “some deep laid plot to undermine the British Empire in these areas” (16). And Gardner goes on: “It did not take a suspicious mind to observe that World War II had provided the United States with economic and political weapons—starting with the prewar Lend Lease Act—for Uncle Sam to commence rearranging remnants of the old European empires into an American-styled world order” (17).

What is called the Middle East today for centuries had been the cross-roads of civilizations and the center of worldwide religions. From the thirteenth to the twentieth century much of the area was dominated by the Ottoman Empire, of which Turkey is the current survivor. That empire, weakened and destroyed during World War I, was replaced by the declining British and French empires. After the war Britain and France secured “mandates” to divide up and rule the countries formerly under the yoke of the Ottoman Empire. The Sykes-Picot agreement (a secret arrangement between these countries) divided up the region such that France would dominate Syria and Lebanon while Britain would control Palestine, Iraq, and Transjordan. The British already had influence over Egypt, Iran, and Aden (Yemen). Minor power Italy occupied Libya in 1911. The British also promised European Zionists that Palestine would become a homeland for Jewish people in the Balfour Declaration and Arab leaders that Arab peoples would have sovereign control of their own lands. The British influenced the rise of Gulf States and military/political forces in the region led to the emergence of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the 1930s. Central to the competition for empire was the discovery of massive reserves of oil in the region.

Roosevelt’s announcement that he was leaving Yalta early to visit Middle East dictators presaged a major thrust of United States foreign policy. The vision was not only to weaken the influence of the Soviet Union but to replace the declining European empires as the hegemonic world powers. To achieve that goal required control of oil and the Middle East and the Persian Gulf states had the world’s largest reserves of that natural resource.

Defending an Empire

To build the American empire after World War II the United States reached out to construct alliances with pliable Middle East elites, made deals with those who were modestly independent, or undermined, invaded, and overthrew regimes which represented a threat to US hegemony.

First, President Roosevelt constructed an informal alliance in perpetuity with Saudi Arabia whereby guarantees of military security, arms sales, and trade would be exchanged for Saudi oil and support during periods of instability in the region. 

Second, the United States overthrew the regime of the elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran because he had nationalized his country’s oil resource. In his place, a pliant autocrat, the Shah Mohammad Pahlavi was installed and seven United States oil companies gained control of forty percent of Iran’s oil. When the Iranian people overthrew the Shah in 1979, the United States tilted toward Iran’s hostile neighbor, Iraq. During the 1980s, the United States provided arms, including weapons of mass destruction, to Iraq, as an eight-year war ensued, leading to a million Iranian/Iraqi deaths.

Third, Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, mistakenly believing the United States would support its action. Changing sides, President George Herbert Walker Bush, built a coalition to launch Gulf War I. The Iraqi military was forced from Kuwait, and subsequently a long economic embargo was imposed on Iraq followed by repeatedly bombing targets in that country. 

Fourth, the United States supported the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and by the late 1960s made the latter its number one military and economic aid recipient on a per capita basis. President Eisenhower in a 1957 speech labeled the Eisenhower Doctrine declared that the Middle East was vital to US national security. American policymakers opposed secular nationalism in Egypt and Syria, particularly Egyptian President Nasser’s attempt to form a United Arab Republic with Syria in 1958. The Carter Doctrine enunciated in 1980 just one year after the Iranian Revolution, proclaimed the Persian Gulf region another area of prime concern to US security. The United States continued to stand on the side of Israel in military conflicts with Palestinians, encouraging the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982.  During the Reagan years, the United States tilted toward Iraq and in 1986 bombed targets in Libya with the clear intention of killing that country’s leader.

In sum, since President Roosevelt’s symbolic meeting with Middle Eastern leaders, the United States has engaged in a consistent foreign policy designed to replace the historic empires—Ottoman, British, and French—with its own; using diplomacy, economic ties, subversion, and force. 

Confronting an Empire in Decline

The construction of an empire in the Middle East has been confounded by multiple challenges over the years. The overthrow of the Shah of Iran in 1979 was one. Another was the periodic emergence of leaders in countries who based their popularity on appeals to nationalism; that is the rejection of control from old or new empires. Nasser in Egypt was an example as were Qaddafi in Libya and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. When leaders emerged who claimed to be supportive of building secular states, American policymakers sought to network with theocratic opponents, such as Osama bin Laden in the case of Afghanistan in the 1980s. To justify support from the American people, policies were explained by referring to the communist threat, the perils of national security, the threats against Israel, facilitating economic development, and building democracies in the region. The most dramatic grassroots opposition to dictatorship at home and empire abroad was the 2011 Arab Spring; encompassing popular protest from Tunisia, to Bahrain, to Egypt.  Arab Spring would be used one year later not to support the grassroots in the region but as a rationale for the US war on Libya.

In response to the mass murders committed at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the George Walker Bush Administration launched a “war on terrorism.” This trope which would guide popular defense of US foreign policy ever since would justify aggression as a necessary response to claimed threats of foreign and domestic enemies. The Bush Administration invaded Afghanistan, and, based on lies, initiated the war on Iraq. With these two wars, stability in the region began to deconstruct. Although most United States troops were withdrawn after President Obama assumed office, interventions continued all around the region  using private armies, military aid, and increasing drone warfare. US military operations were carried out in Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Syria and a military command structure called AFRICOM was established to send US troops into African countries. In each of these locations terrorists groups emerged and grew in response.

 

Then came the war on Libya, a war against the Qaddafi regime that was enthusiastically endorsed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The United States secured a United Nations Security Council resolution authorizing using air power to protect dissenters opposed to the regime. The United States and its NATO allies used the authority of the United Nations resolution to launch a massive bombing campaign that destabilized Libya. The brutal bombing campaign facilitated the destruction of the regime. Qaddafi was captured and killed. In the aftermath of the US/NATO war on Libya competing political forces emerged destroying the social fabric of the country. As Frederic Wehrey suggests “the cohesive political entity known as Libya  doesn’t exist.”

And Now the 2016 Election

While Hillary Clinton offers her active support for the Libyan War as proof of her experience and wisdom in guiding foreign policy, the years since 2011 have shown just the opposite. A Libyan government no longer exists. Hundreds of thousands of Libyans and migrants from elsewhere have been forced to flee. Terrorist organizations, not there before 2011, have operations in that country, launching assaults across North Africa and the Persian Gulf, and the relative stability and wealth of the country have been destroyed. 

In addition, it has become clear that US policy toward Libya was not about “democracy,” what some call “humanitarian interventionism,” but forestalling Qaddafi’s efforts to build a new, vibrant, independent African Union that would oppose US troops on the continent  (AFRICOM), limit US corporate investments in natural resource extraction in the Sahel, and encourage growing Chinese commerce in Africa.

The Sanders campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination has been correctly based on opposition to the excessive consolidation of wealth and power in the United States. The issues comprising this agenda are vital to the health, well-being, and future of the American people. The future also is dependent upon the abandonment of the United States empire. The rise of the military/industrial complex and the tragic loss of life and treasure are inextricably tied to a foreign policy motivated by the vision of US global hegemony. 

There is a direct lineage between President Roosevelt’s early departure from the peace conference at Yalta to visit Middle East dictators and candidate Hillary Clinton’s prideful defense of the overthrow of the regime in Libya. The results of this historic drive for empire have been and continue to be growing anger in the region, terrorism, mass migrations, enormous human suffering, and a bloated commitment to military/spending and pro-war sentiment in the United States. 

THE AMERICAN LEGISLATIVE EXCHANGE COUNCIL (ALEC) AND THE THEORY OF THE "DEEP STATE"

Harry Targ

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was founded in 1973 by Paul Weyrich, other noted conservatives such as Senator Jesse Helms, and the billionaire Koch Brothers, to raise money and to coordinate the creation of a counter-revolution in the American political system. Its vision was one of deregulation, privatization, weakening workers’ rights, and the facilitation of the unbridled accumulation of private wealth. The result of these policies would reverse positive government; the idea that for societies to function public energies, resources, and commitments are needed to create and maintain institutions to serve the people. 

ALEC established a network of prominent politicians at the national and state levels, created well-funded lobby groups,  supported “research” to justify reactionary public policies, and funneled money to conservative political candidates running for office virtually everywhere and at all levels of government. ALEC created “model” legislation to be introduced verbatim in legislative bodies everywhere on subjects including right-to-work, charter schools, and privatization of pensions. While politicians pay dues to join ALEC, over 98 percent of ALEC’s  budget comes from corporate contributions from such economic and political influentials as Exxon/Mobil, the Koch Brothers, the Coors family, and the Scaife family. 

ALEC claims to have 2,000 legislative members and over 300 corporate members. Corporations which have benefited legislatively from their affiliations with ALEC include but are not limited to Altria/Philip Morris USA, Humana, United Healthcare, Corrections Corporation of America, and Connections Academy.

One of ALEC’s prominent projects is the creation of the “State Policy Network,” a collection of think tanks in almost every state (funded up to $83 million) to generate research “findings” to justify the rightwing model legislation generated by ALEC. SPN studies have been disseminated on education, healthcare, workers’ rights, energy and the environment, taxes, government spending, and wages and income equality (Center For Media and Democracy, “Exposed: The State Policy Network,” November, 2013, p.6, alecexposed.org).

Of particular concern to workers are the ALEC model bills that have been introduced in states including:

-right-to-work legislation

-rules increasing the freedom of governments to hire non-union contractors

-reducing pensions for government employees

-repealing minimum wage laws

- eliminating prevailing wage laws for construction workers

-encouraging so-called “free trade” to outsource work

-privatizing public services

-gutting workers’ compensation

The Deep State

The role of ALEC, the Koch Brothers, and the largest multinational corporations and banks in America suggest that politics increasingly occurs at two levels. First, at the level of transparency we observe politics as “games,” largely about electoral contests, gossip and frivolous rhetoric. News junkies avidly consume this first level glued to the television or computer.

However, Mike Lofgren, a former Republican Congressional aide has introduced the idea of another level of politics, what he calls the “deep state.” Lofgren defines the “deep state” as  “… a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern in the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process.”  (Mike Lofgren, “Anatomy of the ‘Deep State’: Hiding in Plain Sight,” Online University of the Left, February 23, 2014).   Others have referred in similar ways to invisible power structures that rule America (from C. W. Mills’ 1950s classic The Power Elite, Oxford University Press, 2000 to Robert Perrucci, Earl Wysong, and David Wright, The New Class Society: Goodbye American Dream?, Rowman and Littlefield, 2013).  

The distinction between politics as contests vs. the deep state suggest that the power to make critical decisions reside not in the superstructure of the political process; the place where competitive games are played for all to see, but in powerful institutions embedded in society that can make decisions without requiring popular approval. In domestic politics, the “deep state” apparatus such as ALEC and its network of organizational ties has initiated a resource-rich campaign--from the school board and city council to the state and nation--to destroy the links between government and the people. And the public face of the deep state includes the selective and manipulative character of experts, pundits, and major sources of news in the media. 

Indiana Politics

Perhaps the starkest fact to note in reference to the growing economic insecurity in the state of Indiana over time is that in 1970 forty percent of Hoosier workers were in unions. Today only 11 percent of Indiana workers are in trade unions. The most recent legislative defeats Indiana workers have suffered include passage of a right- to-work law and repeal of the state version of prevailing wage. The Daniels/Pence administrations have used charter schools and vouchers to destroy teachers unions. (In addition, in his first day in office in January, 2004, newly elected Governor Mitch Daniels signed an executive order disallowing state employees the right to form unions). 

In 2005 the Indiana state government (legislature and governor) passed the first and most extreme voter identification law. Michael Macdonald a University of Florida political scientist estimated that requiring voter IDs reduces voter participation by 4-5 percent, hitting the poor and elderly the hardest. In addition, Indiana law ends voter registration in the state one month before election day (the polar opposite of same-day registration). And, polls close at 6 p.m. election day, among the earliest closing times in the country. Finally, requests for absentee ballots require written excuses. 

Republican control of the executive and both legislative branches since 2010 led to redistricting which further empowered Republicans and weakened not only Democrats but the young and old and the African American community. As to the state legislature, in 2014 of 125 state legislative seats up for election, 69 were uncontested. Most shockingly, 2014 Indiana voter turnout was 28 percent, the lowest state turnout in the country.

Traditionally when Democrats were in the Governor’s mansion and/or controlled a branch of the legislature, they too tended to support neoliberal economic policies, but less draconian, and had been more moderate on social policy questions. In recent years, in part as a result of support from ALEC, the two most recent governors and the state legislature have become Republican and most of the draconian ALEC legislative agenda has been passed.

With ALEC money, some active Tea Party organizations, the growth of rightwing Republican power, and centrist Democrats, Indiana government has initiated some of the most regressive policies in the country in reference to voting rights, education, taxing, and deregulation. And the political economy of Indiana has increased the suffering of the vast majority of working families in the state including the worsening of access to health care, education, the environment, transportation, and physical infrastructure.

ALEC money, influence, and control have played a significant role in shifting state policy in a reactionary direction, weakening public institutions, redistributing wealth and income to the very few, increasingly marginalizing people of color, and threatening the foundations of democratic institutions. And perhaps most threatening for the state’s future is the fact that transparency is being subverted by the emergence of the “deep state.”

For further information see “ALEC Exposed” at www.alecexposed.org