What now for Cuba?
Posted by cabalamat on 2008-Feb-19
Castro steps down:
Cuba’s ailing leader Fidel Castro has announced he will not accept another term as president, ending the communist revolutionary’s 49 years in power.
Either the Communist Party will stay in power, or there will be some reform, leading to multi-party elections. Especially in the latter case, the question is which of the world powers will have most influence there:
Washington has called for Cuba to hold free elections, and said its decades-long embargo would remain. A senior US state department official, John Negroponte, added that the 1962 embargo would probably not be lifted “any time soon”.
The European Union said it hoped to relaunch ties with Cuba that were almost completely frozen under Mr Castro, while China described Mr Castro as an old friend and said it would maintain co-operation with Cuba.
Europe has two advantages over the USA and China: (1) unlike the USA, Europe hasn’t been harming Cuba with a trade embargo, and (2) Cubans are linguistically and culturally a European people. So if the EU doesn’t do anything incompetent, it will have a lot of influence over the new Cuba. Maybe it could offer Cubans the status of an EU colony — like Bosnia and Kosova currently are in effect — in return for a fast-track to EU membership?
