A power struggle in Cuba?

Is this the end of Castro?

In the communiqué through which he handed power over to his brother, Fidel Castro specifically put three institutions under the control of Raúl while leaving other responsibilities to various cronies. Those three institutions—the Communist Party, the Council of State and the armed forces—are the ones that, in the vacuum likely to follow the demise of Castro's five-decade-old messianic leadership, could come into open conflict.

Recent signs were already pointing to a power struggle. The most telling is a law passed by the National Assembly on June 9 and largely missed by foreign analysts. It gives subordinates authorization to impugn the decisions of their leaders if they “contravene” communist law. A few weeks later, Raúl Castro gave a speech in which he said that, should his brother be unable to continue, it would fall upon the “Communist Party” to take the lead—a way of reaffirming the subordination of the generals to the ideologues. Considering that Raúl was the minister of the Armed Forces, it is particularly interesting that he needed to remind his generals in public that they are under communist rule.

Many experts expect Raúl Castro to follow the Chinese model. They point to the fact that he has traveled to Beijing on a number of occasions and that he expressed, as early as 1997, admiration for the combination of ruthless political control and market economics. They also think the signals he sent in 2001, hinting at some form of “normalization” of relations with the U.S., betray a closet pragmatist. Carlos Alberto Montaner, leader of the Cuban Liberal Union, an exile group, believes “Raúl has no choice but to start to move in the direction of a transition.” William Ratliff, a scholar at Stanford’s Hoover Institution who has closely followed Cuba and China and conducted extensive interviews with top leaders in both countries, told me “the survival strategy will come into play”—meaning that Raúl and his cronies, conscious of the fact that Cubans will not be easy to control with Fidel out of the picture, will play the Chinese card and try to generate a measure of prosperity in order to survive. “I wouldn’t bet my pension on what Raúl does, but I would consider putting up maybe half of it.”

This perspective carries much weight, and many elements would seem to point in that direction. However, I tend to think the more likely scenario is a power struggle in which Raúl Castro will try to prevent change. The outcome of that struggle is uncertain, but it will make even a partial opening up of the system too risky for Raúl and others. The struggle will probably pit traditionalists against a faction clever enough to see that only a transition to democracy and a market economy makes any sense for them and everybody else.