my parents came back from cuba recently. for my father it was his first time back since 1979. many of the following are his observations.
right now, when you buy something in cuba (any product or service) there are no receipts. this is not a good thing. receipts (comprobantes) are an essential part of running any economy, planned or not.
this basic flaw is a symptom of a far greater loss of control. on a macro-economic level there is no oversight. for example, there are vast warehouses of Soviet spare and junk parts. and these warehouses are not always registered in government records. (saddam’s fictitious stockpiles* come to mind.)
but the most frightening aspect of the current state of affairs is that the cubans who run the state know they haven’t a clue what to do next.
this is not the Cold War of faint radio programs, week-old newspapers and regional television signals. this is Age of the Internet. the current regime of Cuba has full access to the Internet. let me repeat that.
the current regime of Cuba has full access to the Internet. they know exactly what is happening in Tehran and yesterday’s closings on Wall Street. MJ’s funeral? check. keyboard cat? sí, señor.
but they do not have the human capital – the know-how – to implement more efficient policy. having lived on alms throughout the Cold War, they lack the experience required to produce effective economic policy. and having operated as a proxy state (pawn) throughout the Cold War, they lack the experience required to fine-tune a realistic diplomacy.
the problem with cuba is not the leadership. but the lack thereof. the island is adrift, rudderless. its inhabitants stranded, listless.
* About those fictitious stockpiles, realpolitik and bluffing:
The closer the inspectors got to the truth that Iraq didn’t have weapons, the more the Bush hawks asserted that only war would uncover weapons. Their threats to Saddam made him bluff that he had the weapons that they said he had.
”Most intelligence failures are about missing something happening,” said a former Bush official. ”What’s so bizarre about this is, they thought something was happening that wasn’t. This is right up there with Pearl Harbor and Bay of Pigs.”