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By Arthur I. CyrScripps Howard News Service
On Sunday, the National Assembly of Cuba decided to play it safe. Fidel Castro's legacy was reaffirmed through the selection of his brother, Raul, as president of the nation, formalizing the role of acting president the younger sibling has been playing.
There was some speculation that communist party representatives might turn instead to Vice President Carlos Lage. Raul Castro is 76 years old; Lage is 56.
Along with generational transition, choosing Lage would have indicated that economic pragmatism was more important than ideological commitment. He has been very closely identified with modest reform toward market economics.
By general consensus, Fidel Castro has possessed a unique leadership style. His singular charisma above all has facilitated the regime's half-century in power. Though retiring from the presidency, he remains head of the communist party, and doubtless will continue to play a very influential role.
After Havana was captured and the despised dictator Fulgencio Batista fled in early 1959, Raul Castro handled bloody mass executions with efficient dispatch, and since has provided effective leadership of the military and a pervasive domestic security operation.
Nonetheless, he does not equal his brother in popular appeal.
This provides an opportunity for U.S. foreign policy. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggested as much in a formal public statement that not only endorsed the desirability of ``peaceful, democratic change" in Cuba but also suggested that the ``international community" work with the people of Cuba.
Soon after taking power, the brothers Castro ended hopes for representative democracy and nationalized major industries, including U.S. corporate assets.
Fidel Castro highlighted an alliance with the Soviet Union by joining Nikita Khrushchev in a remarkably raucous 1960 visit to the United Nations in New York, punctuated by the Soviet leader publicly pounding his shoe on a desk.
The Eisenhower administration began a clandestine effort to overthrow the increasingly radical regime. The successor Kennedy administration very drastically escalated such efforts, under the intelligence label ``Operation Mongoose," after the disastrous, failed Bay of Pigs invasion in the spring of 1961.
In the current situation, the United States should encourage a U.N. role in dealing with Cuba. Bringing the world agency, which has suffered problems of corruption as well as inefficiency, together with the problems of poverty and corruption in this surviving workers' ``paradise" could be a healthy experience for both sides.
We should explore human and cultural exchanges with the island. President Dwight D. Eisenhower initiated such programs with the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War, to great benefit.
The highly punitive Helms-Burton Act, passed during the Clinton administration as an effort to court the fiercely anti-Castro Cuban population of Florida, nevertheless does not prohibit these exchanges. Over the weekend, conservative Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas publicly advocated better relations with Cuba, indicating the time may be right for such initiatives.
Above all, Uncle Sam should keep a healthy distance from any efforts directly to undercut the Cuban regime. Intervening in Cuba in the past too often has meant big trouble, and for many years has provided the Castro brothers with the benefit of fanning hostility to the Yankee power to the north.
Arthur I. Cyr is a professor at Carthage College and author of ``After the Cold War." He can be reached at acyr@carthage.edu. For more stories, visit Scripps Howard News Service (www.shns.com.)
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