Will Cuba become the new Panama?

Suffice it to say there’s a lot going on in U.S.-Cuba relations today.

There is the loose talk by U.S. President Donald Trump that he will have “the honour of taking Cuba” and his recent order to deploy the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and its strike group just off the coast of Cuba. Then there’s the tightening of the U.S. economic blockade against the island, the imposition of a crippling oil embargo, and a U.S. federal indictment against former Cuban president Raúl Castro on four murder counts.

Recently, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio — the main driver of U.S. Cuba policy — has poured cold water on any possible diplomatic solution between the two countries. And he has made it abundantly clear that the Cubans will not “be able to wait us out or buy time.” Does that leave U.S. military intervention as the only viable alternative?

As U.S.-Cuba talks have essentially stalled, the Pentagon has provided the White House with a list of options for attacking Cuba and the CIA has initiated a new task force that specifically targets Cuba.

Ever since diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana were severed in early 1961, the U.S. has wanted to topple Cuba’s revolutionary government. Though the exact goal lines have always shifted (and that remains the case today), the broad outlines of desired U.S. changes have largely remained the same. Besides a U.S.-friendly government in Havana, successive U.S. administrations have publicly made two fundamental objectives non-negotiable — that is, the installation of democratic pluralism and multi-party elections and, second, an open economic system and capitalist markets.

Rubio continues to say as much every chance that he gets to stand before a microphone.

“Their system doesn’t work right; their economic system does not work. It’s broken, and you can’t fix it with the current political system that’s in place,” he said in late May.

Of course, how exactly the concepts of democracy and markets are operationalized in Cuba would have to be determined by the Trump White House and Rubio — and most assuredly not by Cubans.

It might not be a perfect fit, but I believe that the country of Panama — with America’s history of extensive economic, political and military involvement — is illustrative of what may await the Cubans. Both countries have had to deal with U.S. colonial rule, repeated military and political intervention, economic dependence on America and bouts of intense nationalism and anti-American sentiment. Having spent a few weeks in Panama talking to people and observing things on the ground in May, I have been thinking about this question of what U.S.-styled democracy and marketization could look like in Cuba.

In Panama today, the country is still economically dependent on the U.S. (it even imports all of its petrol from American sources), uses the U.S. dollar as its national currency and you can’t miss the multitude of U.S. retail outlets (and lots of English signs in a Spanish-speaking country): Starbucks, McDonald’s and Texaco gas stations.

In terms of any blatant anti-Americanism, the visceral reaction of many Panamanians to any reference to Donald Trump (don’t even mention the Panama Canal) says it all. And while the 20-plus U.S. military bases in the country may be gone, as per the late-1970s treaties, that doesn’t mean the U.S. has given up its strategic interests in Panama.

As for the democracy side of the equation, that remains an open question. For much of the 1990s, Washington was responsible for installing many of Panama’s civilian governments — and removing them if they failed to follow the master’s orders. The whole sordid situation around Manuel Noriega, Nicolás Barletta, Eric Delvalle and Guillermo Endara (who was installed after the December 1989 U.S. invasion) speaks volumes about U.S. dominance and pseudo-democracy in Panama.

I will never forget my conversations about democracy, elections, human rights and corruption with several ordinary Panamanians. There was always a sense that democratic development was not exactly something they put a whole lot of faith in. As one Panamanian told me pointedly: “Democracy. Well, more or less.”

With official corruption always lurking, you could tell that a flourishing democracy in Panama was more aspirational than real (think Venezuela today). One keen observer acknowledged that there are plenty of political parties in Panama, but they are mostly all the same — to wit, they only care about gaining power through whatever means possible and then forget about the people who elected them. Another person even laughed out loud when I asked him about the professionalism and credibility of the Panama City-headquartered electoral tribunal, which oversees national and state elections in the country.

We need to remember that Cubans understand very well what it was like when the U.S. controlled much of what happened in the country. They witnessed, up close and personally, American control of their economy, the absence of democratic, equality and labour rights and the crushing economic marginalization, racism and discrimination. If Rubio were to get his way today, and the U.S. does intervene militarily, why would things be any different?

Peter McKenna is professor of political science at the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlottetown.