REVIEW BY FEDERICO FUENTES
Cold War: Warnings for a Unipolar World
Interview with Fidel Castro
Published by Ocean Press in association with the Office of Publications, Cuban Council of State, 2003
76 pages, $13.00
Order through Ocean Press at <http://www.oceanbooks.com.au>
On the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, Fidel Castro argues: "If Kennedy or Johnston or any of those who followed had not honoured the verbal promise of not invading Cuba, the Soviets would have done absolutely nothing because they were not willing to take the risk of a nuclear war to defend Cuba ... The defence of our country would simply be our people's task. It would be a hard and costly struggle but we already had millions of organised, trained and armed men and women. The entire people were prepared for a long, endless resistance, that would end only with a complete enemy withdrawal."
Conducted as part of the CNN/BBC series The Cold War in March 1998, this interview with Castro covers the ideas behind the Cuban Revolution, Cuba's relationship with the Soviet Union, Cuba's support for Third World liberation struggles, the Allende government in Chile and Castro's views on the possibility of socialism today. As always, Castro took up the opportunity to illuminate on the revolutionary convictions that have guided him and the Cuban people in their 45-year struggle for socialism.
Castro discusses how the overthrow of the Jacobo Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954 impacted on his political thinking. The leftist Arbenz government earned the wrath of the US government after it began implementing progressive agrarian reforms that favoured the poor peasants. With the aid of trained paramilitaries and sections of the Guatemalan military itself, the US government fomented a coup that would oust Arbenz, and at the same time have a lasting impact on "all progressive forces of the hemisphere and on Latin American public opinion", according to Castro. "It proved to us the impossibility of making profound social changes in the absence of a deep revolution."
The 1952 coup in Cuba which thrust Fulgencio Batista to power had a similar impact on the political outlook of those who would lead the Cuban people in their revolution. "We had reached the conclusion that the revolution had to be achieved by gaining and holding political power and power had to be taken in a revolutionary manner because the capitalist system and society was designed to last indefinitely, and the constitutional and legal mechanisms had become an obstacle for the eventual realisation of a truly deep revolution."
The forces that it was necessary to align with in order to win were clear to Castro and his followers. "At the end of the war the total number of men we had with arms was 3000. But with the support of the people we overthrew an army, police and navy totalling 80,000 men; we took their weapons and created a new people's army, with peasants, workers and students ... Those were certainly the conditions required to make a revolution and defend it. That's why, and there's no need for further explanations, the plan in Guatemala was successful while the later Bay of Pigs invasion failed."
Whilst much of Cold War history tries to situate Cuba within Soviet communism's attempts to spread its tentacles around the world, Castro points out that at the time of the Cuban revolution they had "no time to think about the Cold War".
As the revolutionary government in Cuba began to move forward in its progressive program of land redistribution, punishment of war criminals and the recovery of embezzled goods, the spectre of a repeat of Guatemala became more ominous. "We did not involve ourselves in the Cold War but it was the Cold War that became involved in the Cuban Revolution. It was the United States or the US administration that brought the Cold War to Cuba."
In response to the suggestion of a grand "Soviet-Cuban master plan" to dominate the world, Castro reveals much about Cuba's relationship with the Soviet Union: "Look, if that Soviet-Cuban master plan had really existed, we would have won the Cold War. Unfortunately, there was no master plan, but quite the opposite. Cuba's actions at the time were in contradiction to Soviet interests. The Soviet Union was not blockaded. It had commerce with the United States, very good relations, very good trade; the two superpowers respected each other. But Cuba, a small, blockaded, harassed and threatened country remained steadfast here all the time."
Cuba's internationalism and its support for progressive and revolutionary struggles throughout the world time and time again proved "a source of constant disagreement with the Soviets". Cubans played a crucial role in supporting the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua and Angola's struggle against apartheid South Africa's military aggression. In response to the US declaration of a global war on Cuba, Castro says the Cubans "globalised the revolutionary struggle against the United States".
Yet the Cold War ended with the US as victors and the Soviet Union collapsing. Castro explains that it was not the Soviet Union, but the Third World that were the real losers, as "during the Cold War there were two big powers, you could speak of a bipolar world where there was space for the Third World countries to move".
However, Castro's belief that socialism is the only viable alternative to neoliberal globalisation remains firm. "I think that solidarity will prevail over racism, over xenophobia, over the lust for wealth and luxuries; I believe that generosity will prevail over selfishness and individualism. We are closing in on a new era."
Many of the lessons and experiences that Castro conveys in this interview can certainly help in bringing about this new era. Towards the end of the interview Castro states that the "works of Marx, Engels and Lenin are not bibles. They were anti-dogmatic, and therefore, those and other ideas will have to be developed according to new situations". In this interview Castro goes some way in developing and helping to explain the necessary ideas to change the world.
From Green Left Weekly, October 13, 2004.
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.