The inspiration here comes – as it so often does these days – from a tweet:

RT @news_suisse Let's swap: Fidel #Castro will only free spy suspct in xchng 4 5 #Cuba spies held by US "like w/Russns" http://bit.ly/bu900P

July 31, 2010 10:06 am via Futuretweets V2ReplyRetweetFavorite

@EuroSavant

EuroSavant

The reference is to this article in the Swiss paper 24 Heures about ancient Cuban strongman Fidel Castro recently emerging in public to rail against his old bugbear, the US. Turns out the authorities there have been holding an American businessman for eight months now, whom they are still “investigating.” How convenient: maybe to get him back the US government would be willing to exchange five already-convicted Cuban spies, namely the so-called “Cuban Five” who were dispatched to Florida to infiltrate Cuban exile organizations, one of whom was then found guilty of “conspiracy to commit murder.”

Any six-year-old marble-trader (not to mention The Doors) could tell you what’s wrong with that deal: they want five of ours for just one of theirs! And why would Fidel believe that the US would even consider such an unequal transaction? Because no less than a month ago the Obama administration did accept precisely that in sending ten suspected spies back to Russia in exchange for only four in return! Shortly thereafter, VP Biden tried to downplay this disparity by asserting that “[w]e got back four really good ones.”

But anyone can see that that is far from true. In fact, all you need to do to disprove Biden’s assertion is examine the case of but one of those Russians, Anna Chapman (which, strangely, is precisely what Biden and his talk-show host Jay Leno then proceeded to do!). From the considerable value-added that has been derived from her already – like this, and also this – it’s clear that, in fact, Ms. Chapman alone should have been worth the return of ten of our own spies from Russian jails – at least.

But apparently Obama has rather less trading-savvy than any man-on-the-street, so the Russian spy exchange went through and Anna Chapman was gone – oh so irretrievably gone! That’s what makes Fidel think he can dangle a similarly lopsided sort of deal in front of US authorities and that they’ll go for it as well, but this sort of soft-headedness in the spy-horse-trading market has got to stop!

P.S. Interestingly, the latest English-language coverage I’ve been able to find so far on this Cuban spy issue, like this recent piece from the Associate Press, completely misses the agent-exchange point by focusing instead on Castro’s characterization of the treatment of one of those imprisoned Cuban spies by US authorities as “torture.”

That’s ridiculous! The United States does not “torture” – not like they do on the island of Cuba! Why, I can distinctly remember the last President, George W. Bush, saying precisely that.

                          

Perusing L’Humanité will further inform you – as looking at the Fox News article will not – that the paper that originally broke this story, appropriately enough, was Spain’s El País. So let’s go there and take a look: we can also handle the Spanish beat here on EuroSavant, though we don’t do it often.

There are but a few additional factual bits to add to the story from the El País treatment, by the paper’s correspondents in Havana, Miguel González and Mauricio Vicent, although they are interesting enough. Like perhaps the reaction to Obama’s initiative from Cuban President Raúl Castro, as conveyed afterwards by the Spanish Foreign Minister (who met with him for three hours)? Remember, now: we’re in the realm of diplomat-speak here. Moratinos: “Raúl Castro received Obama’s election positively, and has great respect for him, and has also greeted in a satisfactory manner certain actions and decisions he [Obama] has taken.” That’s it.

Otherwise, there’s the interesting tidbit that Moratinos actually had the chance to speak with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after Obama and Zapatero had met in the Oval Office, but before he went to Cuba; strangely, the two foreign ministers spoke of the situation in the Honduras and the Middle East, but not about Cuba. (I think that right there shows you how serious an initiative this was meant to be by Obama, namely not very: it was really only something that simply occurred to him when he was meeting with Zapatero and learned that his foreign minister would soon have talks with Castro.) Also, Moratinos took the occasion of his visit in Havana to announce that Spain would make it one of its priorities, during the six months as EU president that will start in January, to bring about an “association agreement” between the EU and Cuba.

That is easier said than done, and the El País piece does provide some good background about this whole issue of Cuba vis-à-vis the EU. For the EU, Cuba is supposedly not a matter of foreign policy, but rather domestic, claim González and Vicent, I suppose because of the great interest Spain holds in it. Yet it will be hard for Moratinos to fulfill his “association agreement” promise, for at least two reasons: 1) Several EU countries are not willing to concede so much to Cuba as long as it holds political prisoners and abuses human rights. (Germany, Sweden, and the Czech Republic are specifically named here); and 2) Spain might not get its EU presidency next year anyway, since the Lisbon Treaty – if ratified in time – will do away with country-presidencies and substitute instead an actual one-person “President of the European Council,” elected by EU member-states (represented by their governments) for a two-and-a-half-year term.

                          

That was a necessary step, but not sufficient: there is considerable opposition among the Czech electorate to the building of the radar, so that agreement might not gain the necessary ratification in the Czech parliament. Further, there is also considerable political uncertainty in Poland about going ahead with the plan. (I think all the Central European leaders involved know full well that, although this is a pet Bush administration project, it is by no means guaranteed to be something an Obama administration will be very enthusiastic about – so why not just wait and see how things develop on the American side before sticking your neck out too far? But that’s a discussion for another day.)

Nevertheless, new Russian president Dimitri Medvedev made clear in public statements that his government would be upset even at just the signing of the accord with the Czechs, and would definitely be coming up with counter-measures if that went ahead. And here is counter-measure number one: according to the Danish business daily Børsen (USA Warns Russia About Cuba), the news service Izvestia recently reported that Russian military authorities were contemplating having their Tu-160 long-range bombers (nicknamed according to Børsen the “White Swan”) land on Cuba for re-fueling, as a way to increase their capabilities to patrol and project a presence generally in the North Atlantic. (The Le Figaro article adds that the Tu-95MC “Bear” bomber could also take advantage of this.)

This has brought a stern reaction from a key American official, namely US Air Force General Norton Schwartz, about to become Air Force Chief of Staff, who declared before a Senate committee (convened to examine his nomination for the Air Force’s highest post; the following is translated back to English from French) “If they do that, I think that we should remain firm and indicate that that would be something that crosses a threshold, that would cross a red line for the United States of America.”

Now, no Russian nuclear bombers have yet been sent to re-fuel in Cuba – but the agreement with Prague is signed, so that the anti-missile-shield process is going ahead. Will those Russian bombers soon show up?

                          

What’s “System D”? It’s nowhere explained in the article’s text, but that really isn’t necessary. Any Frenchman will recognize that “D” for “se débrouiller,” French for “making do.” At an average monthly wage of the equivalent of $15 for an office-worker ($45 for a hospital director; $50 for the head of state, Raúl, himself), and with widespread shortages, every Cuban has to engage in a continuing struggle to “make do.” Take Marina, for example, an IT engineer, in Cuba not the best career choice: “Here, you wake up rubbing your computer so that some genie will give you an Internet connection. . . . It’s having to buy the obligatory white socks for a school uniform when there are no more to be found. The explosion of divorces from three generations having to live under the same roof because of the housing shortage. The permanent resort to healing yourself even when Cuba produces the greatest number of doctors per-capita, but exports them to the world, etc.”

So how do people cope? As you would expect: Everyone has to turn to the “informal sector” to make ends meet, doing an odd-job here, engaging in some barter there, whatever it takes, and especially if it means getting hands on some precious hard currency. Fortunately, some $800 million to $1 million-worth of that arrives each year from Cubans living abroad, somehow making it through the web of restrictions the American authorities have in place to try to throttle that sort of thing. Also, Hugo Chavez now provides the country with the equivalent of $5 billion annually – about the same as the old Soviet Union subsidy used to total – in exchange for Cuban doctors and other service-providers coming to Venezuela. You could even say that Cuba finds itself in its “Venezuelan era” where for almost thirty years it enjoyed a “Soviet era” – while during the in-between interval, termed the “special period,” the national economy dipped so low that some people actually starved.

The upshot is that Cuba could never make it on its own as a viable economy if left only to what hard-currency-producing products as it can offer: nickel, tourism, medicines, rum, and cigars. (Strange that sugar did not figure on that list.) For all their bombast, Cuban leaders will always be hopelessly dependent on some foreign big brother willing to pay to support the Revolution – and even then adjustments to the prevailing socialist orthodoxy will be necessary to keep other flows of hard currency coming, such as “très chic” boutique Landal describes in the middle of Old Town Havana – for dogs! Clearly not meant for the locals, then. Or that persistent rumor that won’t go away: When Fidel finally goes, Ronald McDonald will arrive to set up shop on Havana’s Revolution Square.