Communist regime in Cuba is not ‘accidentally’ authoritarian; it is ‘intentionally totalitarian’ | Opinion

I was among those who spoke at the House Foreign Affairs Committee roundtable held in Miami-Dade last week to mark the second anniversary of the citizen uprising that began in Cuba on July 11, 2021.

The event provided an excellent forum in which to discuss issues of vital importance to the Cuban people, as well as to the national security of the United States.

The bipartisan composition of the Congressional delegation at the event, at the Hialeah Gardens Museum Honoring Brigade 2506, shows the importance of these issues to all Americans rather than to any particular party.

The Communist regime in Cuba is not accidentally authoritarian. In fact, it is intentionally totalitarian. It did not wander into the desert of dictatorship, seeking the oasis of social justice.

From its very inception, it has relentlessly sought to overthrow the rules-based international order led by the United States and Europe.

In pursuit of this, it has repeatedly rebuffed successive attempts at engagement by U.S. administrations. What’s more, these attempts have only emboldened the regime to seek more aggressively to counter American interests and values, including direct challenges to U.S. national security.

For example, in response to the overtures extended during the Ford and Carter administrations, Castro’s regime chose to act as a Soviet proxy, sending its armed forces to intervene in the Angolan conflict as well as others. Additionally, it consolidated control over Nicaragua, once more brazenly turning a democratic revolution into a totalitarian takeover.

Through the one-sided opening during the Obama administration, the Cuban and Russian intelligence services integrated operations; the regime also reinforced its control and influence in Venezuela, and Havana served as host to facilitate the multiple sonic attacks against U.S. diplomats.

History shows that a totalitarian regime moves toward its goals without pause, irrespective of democracies’ attempts at appeasement. A current example is the relationship between the European Union (E.U.) and the Cuban Communist dictatorship.

Today, the E.U. is Cuba’s largest trading partner. Through the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement and the Club of Paris, using either direct transfers or loan forgiveness, the E.U. provides billions of dollars in subsidies to the criminal regime.

In spite of this, at a moment of European unity in the face of genocidal aggression against Ukraine, Cuba has not only acted as a diplomatic and disinformation agent for Vladimir Putin’s policies, but has also publicly announced an agreement to send notorious Black Beret Special units to Belarus for unspecified “training” as well as the presence of so-called Cuban “volunteers” in Ukraine fighting in the Russian army.

The Castro regime previously used this blatant ploy of supposed volunteers in Africa, where Cuban troops were sent as Soviet proxies. In just one day, on May 27, 1977, these troops massacred between 30,000 and 90,000 civilians in Luanda, Angola’s capital.

The regime has never respected any country’s sovereignty, not even its own. Its subordination to the Soviet Union in the past and now to both Putin’s Russia and the Chinese Communist Party has led to what amounts to a foreign occupation, as demonstrated by the number of existing and planned Russian and Chinese bases across the island.

Nevertheless, the fabricated illusion of some kind of “legitimacy of origin” for the totalitarian regime is such in policy circles in the United States and Europe that there is an unfounded belief that the totalitarian entity will evolve on its own accord toward democracy and an open economy.

The folly of engagement with totalitarian regimes is more evident than ever. However, among many policymakers, it has become anathema to speak about regime change or liberation in Cuba.

That must change. Reality must force the change.

Fidel Castro’s great victory, achieved through his apologists in academia and his spies, burrowed deep inside the U.S. government was to establish the belief that the regime was not a direct threat to U.S. national security.

This belief became the basis for the long-standing status quo that has only perpetuated the domination of the Cuban nation by a heinous dictatorship.

In my missions as part of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, I have witnessed and participated in a growing movement of parliamentarians in Europe and Canada against the status quo that supports Cuba’s totalitarian regime. Sweden’s government has been among the first in Europe to call for a review of the PDCA Agreement with Cuba’s totalitarian dictatorship.

Additionally, Lithuania’s parliament has refused to ratify this loathsome contract. In recent weeks the European Parliament has passed a set of sweeping sanctions against the Havana Regime and also called for the review of the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement.

The people of Cuba, as they clearly showed on July 11, 2021, are calling for dictatorship’s end. The United States counts on legal instruments that clearly recognize the natural, inherent right of Cuba to be free and independent: the Joint Resolution of 1898, Public Law 87-733, and the Libertad Act.

Based on these legal foundations and for the sake of the Cuban people as well as preserving the national security of the United States, it is time to end subsidies to this terrible regime and implement proactive policies that empower the Cuban people to achieve their liberation.

Orlando Gutiérrez Boronat is the coordinator of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance. He is the author of “Cuba: the Doctrine of the Lie.”