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On Thursday, a year to the day after Cuban leader Fidel Castro's (so far) final public address to Cuba, his brother Raul -- younger at 76 -- addressed Cubans in Fidel's place. In his speech Raul said that should Washington be willing and civil, he stands ready to open negotiations with the administration that follows U.S. President George W. Bush's.
Formally Raul's government is only provisional, but Fidel, 81, unlikely will be returning from his botched surgery of last year to his formal role as head of government. Whether that is a "good" or "bad" thing for Cuba is an issue better left to historians and the Cuban people, but what we at Stratfor can do is pass judgment on Cuba's weight with and without Fidel at Cuba's helm.
Geopolitics is first and foremost the study of place. At Stratfor we look to geography to guide our analyses and forecasts in the belief that people's attachment to a specific geography shapes their culture, economic and political life. Amalgamated, this enables them to form nations, the building blocks of the world in which we live.
One of the simplest examples with which to illustrate this point is the United States. From the viewpoint of geopolitics it does not matter whether any particular American is a gay Hispanic hairdresser in downtown Spokane, Wash., who revels in all things New Age or a suburban Asian housewife in the exurbs of Orlando who thinks Yanni should be flayed alive.
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