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By George Friedman
It is now apparent that Fidel Castro is dying. He is 80 years old, so that should not be surprising. The Cubans are managing his death as if it were a state secret -- hiding the self-evident -- but that is the nature of the regime, as it is the nature of many governments. The question on the table is whether the Cuban government can survive Castro's death -- and in either case, what course Cuba will follow.
The Communist regime, as we have known it, cannot possibly survive Castro's death. To be sure, Fidel's brother Raul will take over leadership; the Cuban Communist Party, the military and intelligence system, and the government ministries will continue to rule. But the regime that Castro created will be dead. It will be dead because Castro will be dead, and whatever survives him cannot be called the same regime. It will have been fundamentally transformed.
Fidel Castro's departure from the stage, then, leads to two questions. First, what will the future hold for Cuba? And second, will that matter to anyone other than the Cubans?
The Death of a Dream
Under Fidel, the Cuban regime had an end beyond itself. Fidel believed -- and, much more significantly, enough of his citizens and international supporters believed -- that the purpose of the regime was not only to transform life in Cuba but, more important, to revolutionize Latin America and the rest of the Third World and confront American imperialism with the mobilized masses of the globe. Fidel did not rule for the sake of ruling. He ruled for the sake of revolution.
Raul was a functionary of the Castro regime, as were the others who now will step into the tremendous vacuum that Fidel will leave. For Raul and others of his class, the Cuban regime was an end in itself. Their goal was to keep it functioning. Fidel dreamed of using the regime to reshape the world. His minions, including his brother, may once have had dreams, but for a very long time their focus has been on preserving the regime and their power, come what may.
Therefore, on the day that Fidel Castro dies, the regime he created will die with him and a new regime of functionaries will come into existence. That regime will not be able to claim the imaginations of the disaffected and the politically ambitious around the world. The difference between the old and the new in Cuba is the difference between Josef Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev. It is not a difference in moral character but of imagination. Stalin was far more than a functionary. He was, in his own way, a visionary -- and was seen by his followers around the world as a visionary. When the Soviet Union fell into the hands of Brezhnev, it fell into the hands of a functionary. Stalin served a vision; Brezhnev served the regime. Stalin ruled absolutely; Brezhnev ruled by committee and consensus. Stalin was far more than the state and party apparatus; Brezhnev was far less.
Brezhnev's goal was preserving the Soviet state. There were many reasons for the fall of the Soviet Union, but at the core, the fact that mere survival had become its highest aim was what killed it. The Soviets still repeated lifelessly the Leninist and Stalinist slogans, but no one believed them -- and no one thought for one moment that Brezhnev believed them.
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