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 (THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE APPEARED IN THE WINTER 1995 EDITION OF THE JOUNRAL "THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY", VOL. 16, NO. 4, 1995, PAGES 631- 647. ALL CITATIONS SHOULD BE APPROPRIATELY CREDITED TO THE AUTHOR AND TO THIRD WORLD QUARTERLY.)

BY: WILLIAM I. ROBINSON

* - William I. Robinson is a Research Associate at the Center for International Studies of the Central American University in Managua, Nicaragua, and Instructor in Sociology at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, USA. This article is a modified version of a paper presented by Dr. Robinson at the Conference on Democracy and the U.S.-Cuban Dispute, held in Havana, Cuba, in April 1994 under the joint sponsorship of the Centro de Estudios sobre America (Havana) and CRIES (Managua). Robinson is author of several books an articles on U.S. policy towards the Third World and North-South relations, including A Faustian Bargain: U.S. Intervention in the Nicaraguan Elections and American Foreign Policy in the Post-Cold War Era (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992). The themes raised in this paper are explored at greater length in Robinson's forthcoming book, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, U.S. Intervention, Global Society and Hegemony (Cambridge University Press). Direct all correspondence to: Department of Sociology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, N.M. 87131.

ABSTRACT: There has been a change in U.S. policy towards Cuba in recent years to what policymakers refer to as "democracy promotion." This change reflects a broader reorientation in U.S. policy towards the Third World, from backing authoritarian regimes to promoting "democracy" (polyarchy). This shift may be conceived theoretically, in the Gramscian sense, as signalling new forms of transnational control accompanying the rise of global capitalism. Specifically, behind this shift is an effort to replace coercive means of social control with consensual ones in the South within a highly stratified international system, in which the U.S. plays a leadership role on behalf of an emergent transnational hegemonic configuration. U.S. "democracy promotion" in the Third World has major implications for international relations, and particularly, for North-South relations in the "new world order." What is emerging is a new political model of North-South relations for the 21st century.

Since the late 1980s, U.S. policymakers have argued that the basis of the long-running U.S. dispute ith Cuba is the lack of "democracy" in the Caribbean island nation. The Clinton administration has made it clear that its policy, including any eventual normalization of relations, will be based on democratization inside Cuba. Yet, from the triumph of the Cuban revolution in 1959 to the late 1980s, the U.S.-Cuba conflict was presented in Washington as a product of Cuba's "security threat," emanating from Cuba's foreign policy of active engagement in the international arena, including its support for Third World national liberation movements and its alliance with the now defunct Soviet bloc. Therefore, the current assertion in Washington that the dispute is over democracy represents a little-perceived yet very significant change in the U.S. policy towards Cuba.

This shift in policy, from an emphasis on external "security" factors conditioning U.S.-Cuban relations, to the emphasis on internal factors - that is, on Cuba's internal political system - is important on two accounts. First, it is central to an analysis of current U.S.-Cuba relations and to prognostication on how these relations will unfold in the coming years. Second, it reflects an essential change in U.S. foreign policy that dates back to the 1970s, came to fruition in the 1980s, is now being consolidated, and promises to play a major role in U.S. foreign policy in the "new world order." This change has been described by policymakers, scholars and journalists, as a shift towards "democracy promotion." The State Department now defines "democracy promotion" as one of the three basic planks of U.S. foreign policy, along with the promotion of "free markets" and the maintenance of a U.S. military capacity around the world. "Support for democracy," declares one State Department policy document, "is becoming the new organizing principle for American foreign policy."

This change is largely unexplored. Many have applauded "democracy promotion," with a surprising shallowness in theoretical analysis, as a positive and long-overdue change for the better in U.S. policy. Those who have opposed U.S. intervention abroad, while more skeptical regarding U.S. intentions, have tended to view "democracy promotion" as merely a continuation, under new rhetoric, of the same U.S. interventionism of the past. In fact, both positions are off the mark, and reflect the failure to appreciate the profound changes at every level that are accompanying the rise of global capitalism, including changes in international political relations and transnational class formation.

I will present a theoretical argument in this paper which runs contrary to conventional wisdom and mainstream thinking on U.S. "democracy promotion," yet one which, I believe, will elucidate not only the context in which U.S. Cuban relations will unfold into the 21st century, but also the general dynamic of U.S. foreign policy in the "new world order." This paper is divided into five parts. First, I will discuss in historic perspective the shift to what policymakers describe as "democracy promotion." Second, I will give brief theoretical treatment to the concepts of democracy, and define exactly what U.S. policymakers mean when they say they are promoting "democracy" in Cuba and elsewhere. Third, I will provide an explanation for this shift. Fourth, I will analyze the concrete mechanisms, in particular, "political aid" programs, through which this shift is taking place. Finally, I will link this analysis and the theoretical discussion to the case of Cuba and speculate on how U.S.-Cuban relations might unfold. It must be stressed that space limitations preclude a full exploration of the theoretical and analytical issues at hand. What follows is by necessity a simplification of complex issues and concepts.

"We have 50 percent of the world's wealth, but only 6.3 percent of its population...In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment," noted George Kennan in 1948, one of the most important architects of post-World War II United States foreign policy. "Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will allow us to maintain this position of disparity," said the then-Director of Policy Planning of the Department of State. "We should cease to talk about the raising of the living standards, human rights, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better."

Kennan's candid statement, contained in a top-secret document which discussed U.S. strategy in the aftermath of WWII, is highly instructive on two accounts. First, it underscores that the strategic objective of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War was less battling a "communist menace" than defending gross inequalities in the international order (inequalities which were seen as under challenge by the spread of socialism) and the tremendous privilege and power this global disparity of wealth brought for the United States as the dominant world power. Second, Kennan's statement suggests that democracy abroad was not a major consideration for the United States in the formative years of the post-WWII order.

Four decades after Kennan's 1948 counsel, Carl Gershman, the President of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a new agency in the U.S. foreign policy apparatus created in 1983, admonished in a speech to the American Political Science Foundation: "In a world of advanced communication and exploding knowledge, it is no longer possible to rely solely on force to promote stability and defend the national security. Persuasion is increasingly important, and the United States must enhance its capacity to persuade by developing techniques for reaching people at many different levels." Gershman went on to stress in his speech, in sharp contrast to Kennan, that "democracy" abroad, should be a major consideration for the United States, in its effort to "enhance its capacity to persuade" around the world.

The East-West prism in which Kennan and his generation had cast the North-South divide in foreign policy dictates evaporated with the end of the Cold War. Yet, as Gershman's statement suggests, the fundamental objective of maintaining international asymmetries in an unjust global system, to which Kennan alluded nearly half a century earlier, did not change with the collapse of the Soviet system. What has changed are the methods and strategies for securing this objective. What U.S. policymakers term "democracy promotion," and the ideological dimensions it entails, is being developed as an effective instrument of "persuasion," in contrast to - or more often, alongside force - in assuring "patterns of relationships" that protect U.S. interests (and, increasingly, the collective interests of the North) in an unjust international system. In other words, this shift from "straight power concepts" to "persuasion" is predicated on the development of a new component in U.S. foreign policy - "democracy promotion."

The United States had risen from the ashes of World War II as the dominant world power, and policymakers had set about to conceive, develop and defend an international order largely under U.S.-led Western domination. From WWII to the end of the Cold War, the United States employed military force across its borders more than 200 times, became embroiled in large scale wars in Korea and Indochina, in "small wars," counterinsurgency campaigns and covert operations throughout Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Europe, including, as is well documented, against Cuba. Global interventionism was rationalized by the Cold War and the need to confront communism. But perceived competition from the former Soviet Union, while significant, was not the driving force behind foreign policy. Behind the "communist threat" there has always been another, more fundamental threat: any challenge to "patterns of relationships" which underpinned domination by the U.S.-led bloc of core capitalist powers in the international system and prerogative derived from privileged position in an asymmetric international order.

National Security Council (NSC) Memorandum 68, one of the key U.S. foreign policy documents of the post-WWII era, stated that post WWII policy embraces "two subsidiary policies." One was to foster "a world environment in which the American system can survive and flourish," and the other was "containment of the Soviet Union, which "seeks to foster the seeds of destruction within the Soviet system." The Memorandum went on: "Even if there was no Soviet Union we would face the great problem" of achieving global "order and security." Revealingly, a major focus of NSC-68 was not the Soviet Union at all, but on securing U.S. and Western access to the raw materials, markets and labor power of the Third World, and on assuring a political environment propitious to the operation of an increasingly international capital. Behind East- West relations, therefore, North-South relations were always intrinsic and central to the whole Cold War era.

Although "democracy" often entered the foreign policymaking vocabulary for reasons of convenience, or under the circumstances of specific moments, it was not the principal political form which the United States promoted in the Third World in the post WWII years. In fact, as the historic record shows, the principal form was the development of strategic alliances with authoritarian and dictatorial regimes. The outcome of intervention, whether intentional or an incidental byproduct, was the establishment and defense of authoritarian political and social arrangements in the Third World. The United States promoted and supported a global political network of civilian-military regimes and outright dictatorships in Latin America, white minority and one-party dictatorships of post-colonial elites in Africa, and repressive states in Asia (the Batista regime was but one example). Authoritarian political and social arrangements were judged to be the most expedient form of assuring stability and social control in the Third World required for the free operation of international capital. However, by the 1970s, mass popular movements were spreading against repressive political systems and exploitative socioeconomic orders established during the years of the Cold War. The structures of authoritarianism and dictatorship began to crumble, above all, in U.S. client regimes, and a general crisis of elite rule in the South began to develop. As the "elective affinity" between authoritarianism and U.S.-led Western domination began to unravel, "democracy promotion" substituted "national security" as the vernacular in Washington. A "democracy promotion" apparatus was created from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, including new governmental and quasi-governmental agencies and bureaus (including, but not limited to, the NED), policy studies and conferences by government and private policy planning institutes to draft and implement "democracy promotion" programs. Where it had earlier supported dictatorship, such as in Chile, Nicaragua, Haiti, the Philippines, Panama, Southern Africa, and elsewhere, the United States now began to "promote democracy."

"Democracy promotion" promises to play a vital role in shaping a new international system. Under the rubric of "promoting democracy," the United States has developed new modalities of engagement abroad in order to intervene in the crises, transitions and power vacuums resulting from the breakup of the old order and to try to reshape political and economic structures as a "new world order" emerges. These modalities constitute precisely those newfound "techniques for reaching people at many different levels" to which Gershman referred. "Democracy promotion," as analyzed below, is a way to relieve pressure from subordinate classes for more fundamental political, social and economic change. The impulse to "promote democracy" is the rearrangement of national political systems in the South so as to maintain elite based status quos in an unjust international system and to suppress mass aspirations for more thorough-going democratization of social life in the new world order. In more theoretical terms, the shift from backing authoritarianism to promoting "democracy" represents the replacement, in a transnational setting, of coercive means of social control with consensual ones.

"Democracy promotion" has a crucial ideological dimension, given that democracy is a universal aspiration and the claim to promote it has mass appeal. The term "democracy" is thrown around very loosely. But definitions can, and should, be precise. What U.S. policymakers mean when they use the term democracy is actually what political scientist Robert Dahl has termed polyarchy, a system in which a small group actually rules and mass participation in decision-making is confined to leadership choice in elections that are carfully managed by competing elites. The polyarchic definition of democracy, building on early 20th century elitism theorists such as Gaetano Mosca and Vilfredo Pareto, developed in U.S. academic circles closely tied to the policymaking community in the United States in the post-World War II years. According to Samuel Huntington, this "redefinition" of the classical definition of democracy as rule, or power (cratos) of the people (demos) to make it more "realistic" and "compatible" with "modern society," culminated in Dahl's 1971 study, titled Polyarchy. By the time the United States rose to world power after World War II, the polyarchic definition of democracy had become established in Western academia. When U.S. officials speak of "promoting democracy," what they really mean, therefore, is the promotion of polyarchy, or what has elsewhere been referred to as "low-intensity democracy."

It must be stressed that "democracy" is what philosopher W.B. Gallie has termed an "essentially contested concept." This refers to a concept in which different and competing definitions exist, such that terms themselves are problematic since they are not reducible to "primitives." Each definition yields different interpretations of social reality. In this context, any attempt to address the issue of "democracy" and the U.S.-Cuban dispute runs up against the following problematic: one particular definition of democracy, that of polyarchy, has achieved, in the Gramscian sense, hegemony among scholars, journalists, charismatic figures, policymakers, and diplomats, not just in the United States, but in the international community and publc discourse in general. As an essentially contested concept, the polyarchic definition competes with the concept of popular democracy. The various views on popular democracy are traceable to the original Greek definition of democracy and rooted in Rousseauian-Marxist traditions. Popular democracy posits a disbursal throughout society of political power through the participation of broad majorities in decision-making or forms of paricipatory, or direct, democracy, linked to representative forms of government and formal elections. Popular democracy is seen as an emancipatory project at whose heart is the construction of a democratic socioeconomic order. Democratic participation, in order to be truly effective, requires that democracy be a tool for changing unjust social and economic structures. In sharp distinction to polyarchy, popular democracy is concerned with both process and outcome. Elitism theories claim that democracy rests exclusively on process, so that there is no contradiction between a "democratic" process and an anti-democratic social order punctured by sharp social inequalities and minority monopolization of society's material and cultural resources. Thus, under the polyarchic definition, a system can acquire a democratic form without a democratic content or outcome. Popular democracy, in contrast, posits democracy as both a process and as a means to an end - a tool for change, for the resolution of such material problems as housing, health, education, land ownership, social inequalities, and so forth. (It should be stressed, however, that, although there is an abundance of literature on the concept of popular democracy, there is no fully elaborated theory. Such a theory would have to address the much-discussed issue of the institutional structures of popular democracy and the relation between process and outcome in a popular democracy. )

Polyarchy's emphasis on process and disregard for outcome flows, in turn, from the theoretical premise of structural- functionalism that different spheres of the social totality are independent and linked externally to each other, and that the political sphere of the social totality, therefore, is separate from the social and economic spheres. U.S. social scientists Larry Diamond, Juan J. Linz, and Seymour Martin Lipset, in their introduction to a widely circulated, four-volume series funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and titled Democracy in Developing Countries, explain: "We use the term democracy in this study to signify a political system, separate and apart from the economic and social system...Indeed, a distinctive aspect of our approach is to insist that issues of so-called economic and social democracy be separated from the question of governmental structure."

What theoretical or historical justification exists for the separation of the political system from socioeconomic matters is not clear. What is clear is that, owing to the hegemony enjoyed by the polyarchic definition of democracy, scholars, journalists, diplomats, and so on, routinely refer to Latin America as "democratic" in the wake of the 1980s "transitions" (with the exception of Cuba). Yet, if we replace the polyarchic definition with the popular definition of democracy, we could argue, as U.S. political scientist Carl Cohen does, that democracy is not a "constant" (either existing or not) but a "variable" (more or less of it), and democracy can be measured along the three dimensions of "breath, depth and range" of mass participation in societal decisions, voting for representatives being only one aspect of participation in decision-making. In this framework, Cuba is less of a democracy at one level than the United States (e.g., lack of multiparty elections), but is a deeper democracy at other levels, measured by the breath, depth and range of mass popular participation in decision-making, and by a much more democratic socioeconomic order that contrasts sharply with the gross inequalities in power and wealth that characterize the United States and the vast majority of "democratic" states in Latin America and the Third World. Although Cuba falls short of the model of popular democracy in many respects - the subordination of civil society to the state, a weak development of mechanisms in which state officials are held directly accountable to mass constituencies, a lack of multi-party pluralism, and so forth - the point here is that it is not particularly meaningful, either theoretically or in any practical sense, to judge democracy or the lack of it in Cuba by the polyarchic conception applied by the United States.

The implications of substituting the literal (or classic) definition of democracy with the institutional definition embodied in polyarchy are vast. It means that such issues as whocontrols the material and cultural resources of society, in whose interests is society organized, and so forth, become irrelevant to the discussion of democracy. What is relevant is simply political contestation among elite factions through procedurally free elections, no more no less. It means that asymmetries and inequalities both among groups within a single nation and among nations within the international order bear no relation to democracy. The notion that there may be a veritable contradiction in terms between elite or class rule, in which wealth and power is monopolized by tiny minorities, on the one hand, and democracy, on the other hand, a contradiction which would flow from the original Greek definition of power of the people, does not enter -- by theoretical-definitional fiat -- into the polyarchic definition, rooted in the pluralist model of power and structural-functionalist theory.

It should be clear that popular democracy, including mass participation, social justice, economic equalities, and national sovereignty, challenges an unjust international social and economic order, and a threat to U.S. interests. Behind contested concepts are contested social orders. Popular democracy is antithetical to the "low-intensity democracy" which the United States seeks to promote. Popular democracy threatens elite status quos and U.S./Northern domination. In Haiti, in Chile, in the Philippines, in South Africa, and elsewhere, people have been struggling to replace dictatorships - sustained by strategic alliances between local elites and the United States - with emancipatory projects along the lines of the model of popular democracy. In crucial moments in these struggles, Washington stepped in, through various forms of "democracy promotion" programs, to seek polyarchic outcomes. And in Nicaragua under the Sandinistas and Haiti under Aristide, "democracy promotion" and other forms of U.S. intervention sought to effect transitions from experiments in popular democracy (irregardless of the deficiencies and weaknesses internal to these experiments) to elite-based polyarchies. I will argue below that U.S. policy towards Cuba seeks a similar outcome.

Struggles for popular democracy around the world are profound threats to the privileges of U.S.-led Northern elites and their junior counterparts in the South. (I view the United States, in the age of globalization, not as acting on behalf of a "U.S." elite, but as playing a leadership role on behalf of a transnational hegemonic configuration representing transnational capital - but such a discussion is beyond the scope of this article.) Yet the methods and policies pursued during the Cold War years to confront these challenges have proved increasingly ineffective and untenable. This process has led U.S. policymakers to initiate a shift in the dominant form through which the United States seeks to assure stability in a world system under Northern elite hegemony, from promoting authoritarian to promoting "democratic" political and social arrangements in Third World countries. Both polyarchy and authoritarianism/ dictatorship, as distinct forms of elite rule and social control, stand opposed to popular democracy. The shift in U.S. foreign policy from promoting authoritarianism to promoting polyarchy is a shift from coercive to consensual methods of social control in the South, intended to address the post WWII crises of elite rule. This assertion requires an expansion of the theoretical discussion.

The defining features of our epoch, which frames the shift from authoritarianism to polyarchy, is the emergence of a capitalist global economy. The emergence of a global economy brings with it the material basis for the emergence of a singular global society, including the transnationalization of civil society and of political processes. The old units of analysis - nation states - are increasingly inappropriate for understanding the dynamics of our epoch, not only in terms of economic processes, but also social relations and political systems. "Promoting democracy" can only be understood as part of a broader process of the exercise of hegemony, in the sense meant by Antonio Gramsci, within and between nations in the context of the transnationalization of the economy, political processes and civil societies. "Low intensity democracy" is a structural feature of the new world order: it is a global political system corresponding to a global economy under the hegemony of a transnational elite which is the agent of transnational capital. The shift from authoritarian to consensual mechanisms of social control corresponds to the emergence of the global economy since the 1970s and constitutes a political exigency of macroeconomic restructuring on a world scale.

The global economy has been well-researched and a discussion is beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to point out here that over the past several decades the world has been moving from a situation in which nations have been linked via capital flows and exchange in an integrated international market to the globalization of the process of production itself. This involves the restructuringof the international division of labor and the reorganization of productive structures in each nation, and has major consequences for the social and political texture of each society. As Cuba has discovered, no single nation state can remain insulated from the global capitalist economy or prevent the penetration of the social, political and cultural superstructure of global capitalism. Globalization, made possible by several post WWII waves in the in "scientific and technological revolution," is transforming the very nature of the industrial production process and, along with it, the role of human labor. It has allowed for the decentralization across the globe of complex production processes simultaneous to the centralization of decision making and management of global production, that is, the complete separation of the site of management from the site of production and the geographic fragmentation of production and of capital. Capital now has the means to move with total mobility across the globe in the search for the cheapest labor and the most congenial conditions for the different circuits in the process of production and distribution, without regard for national borders. In this reorganized world economy, the rich countries of the North are increasingly based on control of technology, information and services in a "global factory," whereas the labor-intensive phase of international production is shifted to the South through the "comparative advantage" of abundant, cheap labor. The globalization of production, which involves a hitherto unseen integration of national economies, brings with it a tendency towards uniformity, not just in the conditions of production, but in the civil and political superstructure in which social relations of production unfold. The agent of the global economy is transnational capital, managed by a class-conscious transnational elite based in the "center" countries of the world system, and led by the United States.

The accelerated concentration of capital and economic power around this transnational elite in center countries has profound effects on arrangements between existing social groups, class constellations, and political systems in every country of the world system, including a redistribution of quotas of accumulated political and economic power towards new groups linked to transnational capital and the global economy. In every region of the world, from Eastern Europe to Latin America, states, economies and political processes are becoming transnationalized and integrated under the guidance of this new elite. This transnational elite has its exact counterpart in each nation of the South, in a new breed of "technocratic" elite in Latin America, Africa and Asia who are the local counterparts to the global elite, and who are overseeing sweeping processes of social and economic restructuring.

This transnational elite has an economic project and a political counterpart to that project. The economic project is "neo-liberalism," a model which seeks to achieve conditions which permit the total mobility of capital. This model includes the elimination of state intervention in the economy and the regulation by individual nation states over the activities of capital in their territories. The neo-liberal "structural adjustment" programs currently sweeping the South seek macroeconomic stability (price and exchange-rate stability, etc.) as an essential requisite for the activity of transnational capital, which must harmonize a wide range of fiscal, monetary and industrial policies among multiple nations if it is to be able to function simultaneously, and often instantaneously, between numerous national borders. In turn, the political project of this transnational elite is the consolidation of political systems which function through consensual mechanisms of social control, that is, of polyarchic political systems. It is precisely these new elites in the South who have entered into alliances to "promote democracy," or to develop "democratic" consensual forms of social control in their countries in contrast to the earlier forms of authoritarian or dictatorial control. It is in this context that "democracy promotion" and the promotion of free markets through neo-liberal restructuring has become a singular process in U.S. foreign policy. The Agency for International Development (AID) explains that promoting democracy in the latter part of the 20th century "is complementary to and supportive of the transition to market-oriented economies."

But why consensual over coercive mechanisms of control? Authoritarianism and dictatorship had become a fetter to the emergent patterns of international capital accumulation corresponding to the global economy. Globalizing forces have been disintegrating previously embedded forms of political authority. Transnational capital has become sufficiently disruptive and intrusion so as to break down all the old barriers that separated and compartmentalized groups in and between societies, while mass communications is integrating what were once secluded social and cultural experiences of different peoples within the world system. The communications revolution has penetrated even the most remote and isolated regions of the world and linked them with an increasingly global civilization. The globalization of social life has brought with it new socil movements and revolutions in civil society around the world. In short, people have been pushed by the global economy into new roles as economic and social protagonists, and in this process, have been demanding the democratization of social life.

This is what the Trilateral Commission, in its landmark 1975 report The Crisis of Democracy, referred to as "the explosion of social interaction, and correlatedly a tremendous increase of social pressure." Social and economic developments in the world over the past several decades "have made it possible for a great many more groups and interests to coalesce...the information explosion has made it difficult if not impossible to maintain the traditional distance that was deemed necessary to govern." The report went on to note that "democracy ethos make it difficult to prevent access and restrict information, while the persistence of the bureaucratic processes which have been associated with the traditional governing systems makes it impossible to handle them at a low enough level."

In other words, authoritarian political systems are unable to manage the expansive social intercourse and fluid social relations associated with the global economy. Social interaction and economic integration on a world scale are obstructed by the political framework of authoritarian or dictatorial arrangements; under the hegemony of transnational capital, it requires consensual arrangements. The imperative for "democracy" as far as elite interests are concerned, lies in the view that "democracy" is the most effective means of assuring stability. The interest is not "democracy," but stability, the former seen as but a mechanism for the latter. This is in contrast to prior periods in U.S. foreign policy history - and correlatedly, to the historic norm in center- periphery relations predicated on coercive modes of domination, such as in the colonial era - when military dictatorships or authoritarian client regimes were seen as the best guarantor of stability.

The extremes of military regimes and highly unpopular dictatorships, such as Somoza in Nicaragua, the Shah in Iran, Marcos in the Philippines, the Duvaliers in Haiti, and Pinochet in Chile, engendered mass-based opposition movements that became transnational in their significance as globalization proceeded and that threatened to lead to more fundamental social, economic and political changes and were no longer guarantors of social control. Thus the challenge in promoting polyarchy is to remove dictatorships and preempt more fundamental changes. The Iranian revolution, followed shortly afterwards by the Nicaraguan in July 1979, were compelling events that brought home this lesson to U.S. policymakers. Polyarchy is seen as the preferred means of confronting, or at least controlling, popular sectors and their demands - or as Kennan would say, their "envy" and "resentment" - in the framework of an unjust world system. Supported upon the foundations of what Gramsci referred to as ideological hegemony, consensual arrangements are at play for the resolution of conflicts within the parameters of a given social order. On the one hand, says Gershman, "traditional autocrats simply cannot adapt to the pace of change and conflicting political pressures of the modern world." On the other is "the declining utility of conventional military force in the contemporary world." In this context, "competition is likely to continue to shift from the military to the political realm, and it will become increasingly important for the West to develop a sophisticated and long-term strategy for democratic political assistance." Formal democratic structures are therefore seen as more disposed to diffusing the sharpest social tensions and to incorporating sufficient social bases with which to sustain more stable environments under the conflict-ridden and fluid conditions of emergent global society. This new political intervention is more sophisticated than earlier forms of intervention by the United States and other former colonial powers. The process tends to be less a crude design hatched in Washington and other Northern capitals than a complex convergence of interests among an increasingly cohesive transnational elite headed by a U.S.-led Northern bloc and incorporating elite constituencies in the South. The demands, grievances and aspirations of the popular classes tend to become neutralized or redirected less through direct repression than through ideological mechanisms, political cooptation, and the limits imposed by the global economy and the legitimizing parameters of polyarchy.

The distinction between authoritarianism and polyarchy should not be belittled, either in a normative or a theoretical sense. However, the trappings of democratic procedure in a polyarchic political system do not mean that the lives of those in nations where the U.S. is "promoting democracy" become filled with authentic or meaningful democratic content, much less that social justice or greater economic equality is achieved. Seen in the light of popular democracy, U.S. "democracy" and "democratization", have nothing to do with meeting the authentic aspirations of repressed and marginalized majorities for political participation and for greater socioeconomic justice. But polyarchy may prove to be a more durable means of social control. U.S. "Democracy promotion," as it actually functions, sets about not just to secure and stabilize polyarchy but to have the United States and local elites thoroughly penetrate not just the state, but civil society as the locus of a Gramscian hegemony, and from therein assure control over popular mobilization and mass movements. In other words, seen through the lens of the promotion of polyarchy, the composition and balance of power in civil society in a given Third World country is now just as important to U.S. interests as who controls the governments of those countries. This is a shift from social control "from above" to social control "from below" (and within), for the purpose of managing change and reform so as to preempt any elemental challenge to the social order. This explains why the new political intervention, conducted by the NED and other agencies, does not target governments per se, but groups in civil society itself - trade unions, political parties, the mass media, professional guilds, peasant associations, women's, youth, student and other mass organizations.

The policy shift from promoting authoritarianism to promoting polyarchy has been a lengthy process drawn out over several decades. As well, it involved the development of new modalities, instruments and agencies for actually accomplishing the transition, in intervened countries in the Third World, from authoritarian to polyarchic political and social systems. This reorientation entailed, in particular, the introduction and expansion of an underdeveloped and underutilized instrument in U.S. foreign policy, political aid, which has come to supplement the two main tools of U.S. foreign policy since World War II, military and economic aid programs.

"Programs to strengthen friendly political movements in other countries are one of the foreign policy arms of a modern great power," noted two participants in Project Democracy, a semi-secret program launched in the early 1980s under the auspices of the National Security Council (NSC) to develop "democracy promotion" programs. "Until this century, there were three instruments for such efforts: diplomacy, economic, and military. This triad retains its primacy today, but it has been supplemented by two additional instruments," they explained. "One is propaganda...The other new policy instrument - aid to friendly political organizations abroad - (...) helps build up political actors in other polities, rather than merely seeking to influence existing ones."

Between World War II and 1990, the U.S. spent some $400 billion in such foreign military and economic "aid" (over a trillion dollars at 1990 dollars). The purpose of military aid was to bolster local repressive forces which could suppress dissent and maintain social control. U.S. economic aid programs, beyond gaining political influence, were intended to integrate the economies of recipient countries into the world capitalist market. The policy shift has not in the least bit eclipsed the two traditional foreign policy instruments; to the contrary, they have been refurbished and widely deployed. However, the key ingredient was still missing. It was the introduction of this third category which would be play a centripetal role in facilitating the shift in policy.

Those arguing for the introduction of political aid, including a commission supervised by the NSC under Project Democracy to create the NED, made broad reference to the conclusions of a 1972 book by William A. Douglas, Developing Democracy. In his study, Douglas reviewed the debates in U.S. intellectual and policymaking circles over whether authoritarianism or "democracy" is best suited to meet U.S. interests. Douglas coined the term regimented democracy to describe the type of political system the U.S. should promote in place of authoritarianism. Comparing the populations of developing nations with "children," and underdevelopment as a result of their "traditional attitudes," Douglas argued that the peoples of the Third World required "tutelage," "regimentation," and "social control," but that "democracy" could achieve these goals more effectively than authoritarianism. "That a firm hand is needed is undeniable," but "democracy can provide a sufficient degree of regimentation, if it can build up the mass organizations needed to reach the bulk of the people on a daily basis. Dictatorship has no monopoly on the tutelage principle." Douglas went on to develop detailed recommendations on how "political aid" programs should be introduced. Just as economic aid addressed economic underdevelopment, reasoned Douglas, political aid "should address political underdevelopment" He stressed: "We should undertake an active policy of political aid, for both developmental and security reasons." The trick, said Douglas, was to devise the correct "transplanting mechanisms" for establishing polyarchy in the Third World. Included among the recommendations was: the establishment of a specialized agency (later to become the NED); the participation of the private sector in "democracy promotion" abroad; and the modification of existing government institutions and programs so as to synchronize overall foreign policy with "political aid." Two decades after his study, the "transplanting mechanisms" and "insulating devices" which Douglas called for became embodied in the new "democracy promotion" programs. Douglas himself went on to become a senior consultant to the NSC's Project Democracy, which led to the creation of the NED. The operation and concrete mechanisms of "democracy promotion" operations in intervened countries have been well-documented in a growing body of empirical studies. The point to stress here is that political aid, administered through the NED, the AID, and other channels, has become a sophisticated instrument for penetrating the political systems and civil society in other countries down to the grassroots level.

NED president Gershman has categorized U.S. political intervention programs into those aimed at "long-term democratic political development," and those aimed at securing a "democratic transition," that is, a change of regime. The first category signifies programs to stabilize and consolidate polyarchic political systems in societies already considered "democratic" by bolstering elite forces in political and civil society, and by inculcating what the operatives and theoreticians of the new political intervention consider to be the "political culture" of polyarchy. Programs under this category in the 1990s include most Latin American nations, as well as the former Soviet bloc countries, all of which were considered "democratic." Regarding the second category, "transitions to democracy," U.S. policymakers identify two types of transitions: from authoritarian or right-wing dictatorships, to elitist civilian regimes; and from left-wing, popular, nationalist or socialist regimes considered adversaries, to elitist regimes allied with the U.S-led transnational elite. Chile, Haiti, Paraguay, and the Philippines, fell under the first type in the 1980s, and in the 1990s, many African and several Asian nations fall under this type. Nicaragua fell under the second, as did programs in Haiti under Aristide and current programs against Cuba.

The change in U.S. policy towards Cuba, from an emphasis on external "security" concerns to internal "democratization" focus, is the combined product of the shift to "democracy promotion" and the end of the Cold War and U.S.-Soviet competition. The U.S. objective in Cuba since 1959, beneath and beyond real or perceived security concerns, has been to recover historic U.S. domination over the country and to neutralize the threat that Cuba represented (a threat due to Cuba's foreign policy practice and to the revolutionary example it set, and thus a political as well as an ideological threat). This objective has not changed under the Bush or Clinton administrations. The destruction of the Cuban revolution will remain the U.S. goal throughout the 1990s. In the early 1990s, a remarkable, if largely unnoticed, consensus emerged in Washington across the mainstream political spectrum, from liberal to conservative, regarding a shift in Cuba policy towards "democracy promotion." This consensus was expressed in a series of high-level policy reports, and has since been affirmed in actual policy. The following observations are presented, by way of conclusion, as a synopsis of the U.S. "democracy promotion" strategy towards Cuba. However, it should be stressed that Cuba is a special, enigmatic and exceptionally complex case.

The operationalizing assumption in Washington is that the Cuban revolution can, and will, be undermined over the mid-term, and that Washington stands a better chance than ever in the 1990s of reimposing its historic domination over the country (this distinguished the current conjuncture with that of the late 1970s, when U.S. and Cuban officials dabbled in negotiations over a real modus vivendi). But this goal will be pursued in the context of the new policy of "democracy promotion." The banners of anti- communist and national security have already been discarded. The new policy focus involves a shift from aggressive destabilization from without to political penetration and cooption from within, in which the target is as much Cuban civil society as it is the Cuban state. The undertaking will be largely along the lines of the "Nicaragua model." In that model, U.S. objectives changed dramatically from 1987 and on, from an attempt to militarily overthrow the Sandinistas through an externally-based counterrevolutionary movement seeking an authoritarian restoration to new forms of political intervention in support of an internal "moderate" opposition. This opposition, organized and trained through large-scale U.S. political aid programs, operated through peaceful (non-coercive) means in civil society to undermine Sandinista hegemony. The shift from hard-line destabilization to "democracy promotion" in Nicaragua, culminating in the 1990 electoral defeat of the Sandinistas, a conservative restoration and the installation of a polyarchic political system, the reinsertion of Nicaragua into the global economy, and far-reaching neo-liberal restructuring, has bee well-docmented elsewhere.

U.S. policymakers have acknowledged that a strategic weakness in their policy over the past 35 years has been an emphasis on hard-line destabilization from abroad, without concern for establishing and stabilizing any viable alternative to the revolution. In this sense, Washington is learning what revolutionaries have always argued: in order to overthrow a regime and install a new system, two factors must be met. First, the existing regime and its system must be in crisis (this is the approximate situation in Cuba). Second, a viable alternative must be in place, ready and capable of taking over and mounting a new system (this is the U.S. challenge).

This shift implies an effort to transfer the nucleus of anti- Castro opposition forces from Miami to Cuba in order to ensure that the opposition becomes headquartered - physically and institutionally - inside Cuba. This shift also requires a greater flow of human, material and financial resources and communications between the United States and Cuba. It means transferring U.S. support from the extreme-right political and paramilitary groups, such as the Cuban American National Foundation and Alpha 66, towards opposition groups considered moderate and centrist, and even leftist, by U.S. standards. In this regard, the U.S. strategy might lead to quiet negotiations on specific "line-item" points, such as immigration and telephone lines. But such bargaining should not be confused with a U.S. intention to negotiate a modus vivendi.

"Promoting democracy" in Cuba, to date, has involved large sums of "political aid," mostly for Cuban groups located outside of Cuba. These "political aid" programs have been handled to date mostly by the NED, and have involved some $20 million between 1986 and 1993. The objective of these programs is to create the "in- country" agents of a transnational project for Cuba. Through the new modalities of political intervention it has developed, Washington has already begun to foment a national opposition network inside and outside of Cuba, backed by a broad international support network, and includes human rights groups, political parties, trade unions, communications media, youth and women's groups, civic associations, and so forth, along the same lines as the "Nicaragua model." These "political aid" programs would strive to provide this opposition network with a political action capacity and a public projection among the Cuban population. Such an opposition network would be inter-locking in its leadership, sharing a common program. It will not be a covert or violent opposition. Its public discourse will be moderate, even nationalist, and it will not call for the overthrow of the Cuban government but for dialogue a political opening, and peaceful change. It will raise sensitive issues among the Cuban population, emphasizing the current economic hardships and the aspirations of Cuba's post-1959 youth generation. U.S. strategists will attempt to cultivate a social base for a political opposition among those among the Cuban population tied to the emergent external sector of the bifurcated economy, exploiting incipient internal social stratification, resentments, and legitimate grievances. It should be stressed in this regard that leadership and supporters of these opposition groups in Cuban civil society should not be depicted as mere "puppets" of U.S. intervention but as Cuban constituencies whose endogenous pursuits are incorporated through U.S. policy into a larger strategy which manipulates problems and limitations stemming from objective condition and from weaknesses internal to the Cuban revolution.

The tremendous constraints imposed on Cuba by the global capitalist economy makes more favorable the terrain on which the U.S. will pursue its objective. Irrespective of particular U.S. policies, Cuba, like most other nations in the world, has little choice but to insert itself into the global capitalist economy under terms which are largely dictated from the principal Northern capitalist powers and their transnational economic and political instruments. The United States is playing the role of leadership in the emergence of a new transnational historic bloc, and Cuba's insertion into the "brave new world" of global capitalism is thoroughly linked to U.S.-Cuban relations.

In this regard, the economic embargo of Cuba is an essential ingredient in overall U.S. policy. If it is lifted, it will be in exchange for such Cuban concessions as permitting the free flow of U.S. support for internal groups. And it will probably not be lifted in the short, or even mid-term. The U.S. strategy is to seek to arrest Cuba's efforts at reinsertion into the world economic and penetration of capitalist markets, so as to perpetuate economic attrition. The entire strategy rests on assuring the continuity of Cuba's severe economic crisis, at preventing recovery, since the underlying strategy is to convert an economic crisis into social discontent, and then to give a political expression to this discontent - that is, to foment a "critical mass." This is predicated on maintaining the embargo, while simultaneously achieving a "demonstration effect" and a sense of "relative deprivation" among the Cuban population through mass communications, image creation and symbolic manipulation. The policy shift will help reduce the long-standing tactical differences over how to confront the Cuban revolution that has existed between the dominant groups in the United States, on the one hand, and the dominant groups in Western Europe and Latin America, on the other. The call for Washington's version of "free and fair elections" will be ongoing. Nevertheless, the efforts to foment an internal political opposition will move forward with or without multiparty elections in Cuba. Washington will rely heavily on "third-country" participation in its policies. For instance, support for internal opposition groups will be channeled through other Latin American countries, and the call for "free and fair elections" will be made through multilateral forums.

Despite the claim that it is only interested in process and not in outcome, the United States is actually interested, in Cuba and elsewhere, in outcome. In Nicaragua, the 1984 elections were impeccably free and fair as regards process, but were rejected by Washington because of their outcome: a Sandinista electoral victory. In 1990, the elections were again impeccable in process, but this time the United States welcomed the process because it obtained its desired outcome: the removal of the Sandinistas from power. Similarly, we should not assume that U.S. hostility would cease and relations would normalize if Cuba were to hold elections tomorrow which were procedurally correct if the outcome were a ratification of the current government, since the United States is concerned with outcome in Cuba, not process.

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