Bush's Comments on Cuba Make Me Think

Bush was all over the totalitarian regime over in Cuba that can't get cars from this century let alone weapons that could hurt us. I'm all for decrying totalitarian dictators, really I am. What I wonder is why China is immune from this type of criticism. They hold sham elections, don't they? They have great restrictions on the press and personal freedoms, right? The state legislates how many kids you can have, right? Religion is pretty much outlawed there, right?

It took me a minute, even though it should be the answer to every question regarding why America does what it does in foreign diplomacy matters.

Money.

Cuba is pretty much worthless from a market standpoint. Yeah you can make a little money off cigars, but there aren't that many Cubans over there to roll enough of them to meet the demand. China on the other hand, is the biggest market in the world. It's been protected for thousands of years by a big wall and a tradition of not trusting foreigners (with good reason). Corporate interests have been wanting in for a long time. Some are in a bit already. Their penetration into the market place is still partially dictated by a somewhat planned economy. A mishmash of free market and planned economies. But you don't here anyone complaining that they should be able to do what they want. They're so greedy, they will jump through whatever hoops possible, even if that means giving up some political protesters to the police for trying to get something more of what we have over here, there (no, not Starbucks and The Gap, but the ability to freely practice religion, freedom to politically protest without fear of being jailed).

So Cuba, since the country and people aren't worth much to American interests, remains an old political punching bag to remind people when we were once in an ideological struggle against some communist dudes that wouldn't let us privately buy up property there to sell foreign people our stuff.

China on the other hand, is a country we're trying to meaningfully engage and coax them out of their not-so-good ways. They aren't evil, just a little misguided and a little gentle nudging without harsh rhetoric about staged elections and totalitarian states might go a long way into persuading them into letting us buy more of their land privately to sell their vast amount of people our stuff.

The dichotomy makes all the rah-rah stuff about American values and the value of spreading freedom seem hollow when America strategically differs their approach to countries that have a different ideology based on how much more can they fill American pockets.

I thought Bush's foreign policy was supposed to spread democracy. Perhaps China's communists are more polite than Cuba's communists. I don't know. I haven't heard any guys from China saying, 'Hey, thanks for setting up that Wal-Mart and KFC, we've thought about it and we're gonna open up every market and hold some elections next week! Oh and what the hell, let them have church!' It isn't happening. It seems it's causing China to crack down even more, and using American corporate interests there to help them, I'm guessing with a 'You help us or you'll be asked to leave.'

The example above is used more to underscore that helping China isn't nudging it towards democracy, but enabling China access to more resources to enable it to become more authoritarian, and I don't want to get into the part of how they own our debt and the trade imbalance. We are so predictable they've used America's lust for a dollar against itself, then they'll use it against us.

Anyways, the part of me only concerned with my personal safety prefers the poor, communist China. They are having enough trouble feeding their own people to come halfway across the world to force communism on me.

Foreign Policy

We don't care about the Chinese people. America cares about it's ability to access the Chinese market. Our ability to allow us to sell stuff to Chinese people for a profit. If America's interest in China were about the freedom of Chinese people, here's how the diplomacy would go:

Us: Hi, Chairman of the People's Republic of China, we think a western style democracy would benefit the welfare of your people.

China: Well, we're not western and we have no history with democracy, so how does this help us?

Us: All the cool countries are doing it, Chairman. Caucuses and fundraising are the shit!

China: No, thanks. That sounds like a lot of work when all I have to do is orchestrate an election and not have to travel around and stuff.

Us: O.K., I understand that's hard, but think of your people. Look, I'm so sure Democracy and capitalism would benefit your country and it's people's standard of living I'm willing to trade you X billion dollars of capital investment that you keep and use to build roads, schools, you know, stuff for the people that you commies are always talking about and in return you allow people to write whatever they want in media and ease off that 'religion is hooey' stuff you keep making them watch and hear on their t.v.'s and radios. Sound like a deal? If you like that we can trade more investment for a removal of the ban on religion in a few years or so if the free press thing seems to be working out, o.k.?

But this isn't what we do. What America does is trade capital investment in China for access to their markets in the form of the ability to do business there. We aren't doing any favors for the Chinese people, we just want to generate more profits by selling them Lattes and Big Macs. There is lip service given to saying we urged them to give their people more personal freedoms, but nothing ever comes of it and we're spoon fed garbage about how us selling things there may eventually lead to freedom. Umm...how unless you barter for it?

(I should condense that section, but screw it.)


Our "values" versus what we actually do on the world stage show what a brazen hypocrite our country is. I think the guy that calls us out on it most is Hugo Chavez. Bush can't call him a communist (because he isn't), or a dictator (because his elections are certified), so he calls him a demagogue. I'm going to call irony on this one because it clearly isn't just a coincidence.

America is watching out for #1, us. It seems what our leader says about spreading democracy is really a euphemism for getting what we want, which is money, by force from little countries that conflict with our interests and don't want to cut a lopsided deal in favor of our corporations, or by subtle coercion from bigger countries who's policies conflict with our economic objectives.

If we really stand for freedom and democracy shouldn't we put our money where our mouth is? I'm not for spreading democracy at all really. If people are upset enough with their government they eventually rise up against it. And I'm not advocating this approach to China or any other nation. The press here should compare what the administration does to what it says, analyze the results of the administration's policies, compare that across all the countries the U.S. engages and conclude whether their actions match their stated goals. It's not that hard, journalists. Stop feeding us the government's line.