Chris Slee did not carefully read what I wrote in my article on the likely transition in Cuba. I explicitly stated that a U.S. invasion of Cuba could not entirely be ruled out “if, for example, a chaotic civil war, which U.S. neoliberal transition policies might have helped to bring about, confronted Washington with the immediate prospect of a massive refugee wave headed towards the coasts of Florida.” I also argued that a U.S. military invasion was otherwise unlikely because Cuba had, relatively speaking, lost a great deal of its previous importance for U.S. foreign policy. This is true not only because the Soviet Union and its missiles are no longer in existence but also because the Cuban government has modified its own international behavior since the demise of the USSR. The Department of the Americas, headed by Major Manuel “Redbeard” Piñeiro, which used to provide material help to insurgent movements in Latin America was dissolved in the nineties, and Cuba withdrew its troops from Angola shortly before the collapse of the Soviet bloc. These military challenges were far more worrisome to the U.S. imperialists than any doctors that Cuba may send abroad today.

While talk of imminent invasion serves the Cuban government's purpose of stifling domestic and international criticism, there has been and continues to be a very real U.S. imperialist policy of continual economic and political harassment trying to make life as difficult as possible for the Cuban government and people with the aim of hastening the internal collapse of the regime. This, contrary to what Chris Slee believes, is not necessarily the preferred policy of most of the U.S. corporate ruling class, particularly the Western and Midwestern agricultural and food processing industrialists and their bipartisan congressional allies. These people would rather trade and invest in Cuba, hoping to make handsome profits and, in the process, subvert the existing Cuban system through the mechanisms of the capitalist marketplace. It is interesting to note in this context that Larry Craig, the right-wing Republican senator from Idaho, recently proposed an “exception” to the blockade to allow U.S. capital to invest in the oil explorations that the Cuban government and foreign capitalists are currently conducting in the Gulf of Mexico. Craig's trade “exception” is backed by the American Petroleum Institute, a lobbying group representing several companies including Exxon Mobil and Chevron. These capitalist forces will be strengthened now that Raúl Castro, an open admirer of the Chinese road, has “temporarily” succeeded his older brother Fidel. Instead, the criminal blockade is maintained by an alliance of the powerful Cuban right wing in the electorally very closely divided state of Florida with a section of the American Right allied with Bush and headed by such ideologues as Roger Noriega and John Bolton.

The real sympathy for the Cuban government that exists in Latin America is based, for the most part, on an anti-Bush and anti-imperialist sentiment and not on an admiration for the ruling political and economic system in Cuba. Many people appreciate the material help that the Cuban government provides to Left governments in Latin America, but it is the promise of the open and fluid situations existing in countries like Bolivia and Venezuela that makes people hopeful that “another world is possible” where working people may be able to control their own lives. This is hardly the case for the sclerotic “socialist” monarchy ruled by the thoroughly undemocratic Cuban one-party state where workers, peasants, and their allies neither have control of their society nor are they allowed to organize independently from the state. We should be on the alert and oppose any and all forms of U.S. interference in the internal affairs of Cuba, but this does not mean that “the enemy of my enemy is necessarily my friend,” and that we should be apologists for the current system in Cuba.