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00:14Welcome to A Round and A Side, A Diplomatic Journey.
00:22We have a very distinguished guest today, a former diplomat of Cuba for 42 years.
00:31It is very easy for me to remember his postings because many of them were mine too.
00:38We work together in Washington, in Vienna and also in Slovenia and we are meeting 20
00:45years afterwards.
00:47Welcome to the studio.
00:48Welcome.
00:49Thank you very much.
00:50Ambassador Jose Ramon Cabanas Rodriguez is his name.
00:55Most Cubans have the mother's name, the father's name and their own name.
00:59So here we'll call him Ambassador Cabanas.
01:03And news editor of Asianet is joining us today.
01:08How interesting is it from your perspective?
01:11If you ask the same questions to many scholars, most of them will tell you we are in a transition
01:17period.
01:18And you have heard many times the word multipolar world, not one pole anymore.
01:26The United States losing the capacity to do whatever they want.
01:32It's a one man pole.
01:34That's right.
01:35And we coming from a small countries.
01:38I mean, in the case of Cuba, we told people putting some emphasis in multipolar world, we
01:44said, well, you know what?
01:45We prefer multilateral world, because that would mean that no matter what, you are big or small,
01:52but we are equals.
01:54But again, with different approaches, we are living in a transition moment in which we know
02:00that the old system doesn't work anymore.
02:02And the former hegemons cannot play all roles.
02:08But at the same time, we haven't arrived yet to a new moment in that transition.
02:13In that period, then you have specific situations, like who is coming to power in the United States,
02:21that in many cases we talk more about what they are doing in foreign policy.
02:27But in a situation like this one we are living through, it's important to link what they are
02:32doing in foreign policy with what is happening domestically in the United States.
02:36And for all countries, domestic politics is related to what they do and what they offer
02:41in foreign policy.
02:43And I would say that the United States as a country is also in a transition moment.
02:49We cannot talk about the Republican Party anymore.
02:53It's a tribe.
02:54They have a leader, but no structure, no people with other responsibilities.
02:59It's a group of fellows following a so-called leader, more or less happening the same thing
03:05in the Democratic Party, the Democrats, they don't offer any option.
03:11In one way or the other, the last elections, it's not only that the Republicans won, it's
03:17basically that the Democrats lost.
03:20Yes.
03:20And also he won all the, you know, the Congress, the Senate and the majority votes, general majority
03:29too.
03:29This has never happened before.
03:30Yes, but when, when you compare the numbers in the last elections with the previous one,
03:35the difference is not that because he increases people voting on him.
03:40It's the difference comes from how many Democrats and Independents didn't go to, to vote because
03:45they, they, they saw no options between the two candidates.
03:50But now his popularity has dropped by about 40%.
03:52Dramatically.
03:53Dramatically.
03:54And.
03:54So this transition period, unfortunately, has come at a time when there is an unpredictable
04:00president.
04:01It is.
04:01Isn't that the, isn't that the sadness of the situation?
04:04That, and his priorities, no matter what he's doing outside, this, as we speak, you have
04:11many scholars and journalists in United States that are saying that his real aim is mid, mid-term
04:18elections.
04:19Yes.
04:19Yes.
04:20Because for all counts, he will lose both houses, technically speaking.
04:25At least Congress he will lose.
04:27Yes.
04:27He will lose a majority completely.
04:31He knows that if that's the scenario, then the probability for impeachment, at least the
04:38process, you know, the, the final outcome grows.
04:41He would like to avoid it.
04:42And one of the ways to avoid, for avoiding that is to create a domestic crisis and international
04:49crisis.
04:50And as he has said already, we are living in an exceptional moment and we need to postpone
04:56elections, whatever.
04:58I mean, the, the, the, the whole idea is how to handle.
05:01If the elections take place, well, going to, uh, uh, the legal, uh, part of it, trying
05:09to announce and the, how many votes were stolen, if the elections were rigged.
05:15We know.
05:15Like he did last time.
05:16We know the, we know the, the whole story.
05:19It is not an evolution or a transformation.
05:22No.
05:22Something completely.
05:23Iran issue we dealt with together.
05:25Yeah.
05:25Remember, they started in 2002, I think.
05:29And at that time, Iran, of course, having been a, uh, you know, signatory to the NPT.
05:35Our, the line we had taken was they must have fulfilled their obligations under the NPT.
05:40And therefore we had a difference with the Iranians.
05:42Those are good friends of ours.
05:43But then they accepted the inspection by the IAEA.
05:49And that is how the crisis was averted.
05:51So now, of course, the IAEA has always been saying, we cannot certify that they are not
05:56making nuclear or not enriching uranium.
05:59At the same time, they have no evidence to say that they were making a bomb.
06:03This was the situation.
06:04Mm-hmm.
06:04But after that, things have moved so far that now, President Trump is asking for the elimination
06:10of the whole nuclear weapon program.
06:12All enrichment, et cetera.
06:13So, that is a new element into this whole thing.
06:16And therefore, it is not the nuclear issue anymore.
06:19It is an issue by which he wants to dominate Iran and change the government and make it like,
06:25make it another Venezuela.
06:26Well, you remember that that same period, it was the invasion of Iraq.
06:33Yes.
06:34A little bit earlier.
06:35A little bit earlier.
06:36But we were together on the same plenary where the American delegations came to say,
06:41we didn't find any weapon of mass.
06:45I'm raising that example because sometimes, you know, arguments are not important anymore,
06:51or reasons.
06:51I mean, you built a narrative to create the conditions to invade or to attack a country.
06:58And later on, you get rid of the argument and you don't use it anymore.
07:01No, it eventually turned out that they had no nuclear weapons at all.
07:05They didn't.
07:06Yes.
07:06Well, yes.
07:07It's just a story.
07:09And it's good that you raise that example because through diplomacy, through negotiations,
07:18through the strong presence of the non-aligned movement chapter in Vienna that didn't exist,
07:23and we created that around the so-called Iranian case, we came together.
07:31Remember that at that time, many authorities from Iran came to Vienna to explain, I mean,
07:37top-ranking ambassadors, the people of the government.
07:40We were invited to go, the non-aligned movement leadership was invited to go and visit the
07:48facilities as a way to demonstrate that they were open-minded and that they were open to
07:55listen from others.
07:57And at that moment, it has to do also with changing power domestically in United States
08:03and the way they behaved.
08:06And how the Bolton's agenda, to say the least, because at the time it was against Iran,
08:12it was against Cuba and many others, and they went through a new cycle of events.
08:18Then we are talking about 20 years and plus ago.
08:24They have been pushing in that direction since then.
08:29But the surprising thing is, he waged this war when they were on the point of agreeing, you know.
08:34That's it. Oman had already predicted that.
08:38Yeah, yes.
08:39Actually, Oman, a minister, already was telling the international media that Iran had agreed
08:47to destroy all that uranium and to diversify it and stop all the enrichment.
08:54And in spite of all that, he attacked.
08:58Indeed, again, he has many objectives.
09:03One of them domestically, we covered that.
09:06The other thing is related to oil and oil reserves.
09:09And in one way or the other, we have to connect what happened with Venezuela,
09:17what is happening now with Iran.
09:20At some point, Greenland is related to that as well.
09:24We are talking about natural resources and we are talking about Arctic routes,
09:31where currently he cannot compete.
09:35I mean, the leadership for Arctic routes are coming from China and Russia.
09:38They have the technology and the kind of chips that they can.
09:42And they know that the country or the group of countries that could exercise that leadership,
09:49they have a tremendous advantage.
09:53How to cope with that?
09:55Well, it seems that they feel, or at least the leadership feel, that the only way is by force.
10:04If you read the previous two, they were wondering how to catch up with China's leadership.
10:10And they suggested different paths, you know.
10:13Remember the decoupling, which is to dissociate from…
10:19Then de-risking.
10:20And afterwards, when they realized that decoupling was not possible,
10:24then they decided on the risking.
10:26And again they realized it was not possible.
10:30They are too intertwined in many sectors.
10:33And the previous document, what's that?
10:36I mean, the last one, when they were really thinking about that,
10:39they said, you know what?
10:41To catch up with the productivity, efficiency, innovation, all of that in China,
10:46we have to do two things.
10:49Have availability of more funds from the federal budget.
10:53I mean, to look for some space in the federal budget.
10:58And to decide from the federal government where to invest this money, which is socialism.
11:05I mean, it's basically, they have complained that all the most important decisions,
11:10for example, in Cuba, are taken from the central government and blah, blah, blah.
11:14Well, they were suggesting the same thing.
11:17They didn't find any other way to compete.
11:20I'm talking by the end of Biden administration.
11:24That's what is said in that strategy.
11:29And they couldn't.
11:30And then Trump comes with a completely different logic.
11:34I tell people, and you know, you were posted there.
11:38The best document to understand US foreign policy is the budget.
11:43You take the federal budget, and for sure, the numbers tell you the priorities.
11:48Defense expenditure, for example.
11:50That's right, allocation of funds.
11:54Which is the last one?
11:56Zero for health.
11:57Here, zero for sciences.
11:59Zero for education.
12:01All of that goes to war.
12:03Coming to Cuba, what is your situation now?
12:05You are going through a tough time.
12:07And that is engineered by the Americans.
12:09Absolutely, yes.
12:11It's the longest embargo or blockade against any nation in recent history.
12:17This is the most serious situation since 1959, right?
12:21Yes.
12:21Well, we have had through different cycles, to say the least.
12:26You have the longest experience of fighting the Americans.
12:29Yes.
12:31We are the longest fiasco.
12:33They have been doing wrong things for 67 years, and they try again.
12:37Now, in the 60s, immediately after the Cuban Revolution, Cuba was practically isolated from the rest of Latin America and
12:46the Caribbean.
12:47We had diplomatic ties only with Canada and Mexico.
12:50The CIA and other federal agencies were involved directly inside Cuba with so-called rebel groups and people with weapons
13:03and killing citizens and with terrorist attacks on facilities and all of that.
13:09And still, we hadn't developed the kind of relationship we had later on with the Soviet Union and the socialist
13:16so-called camp.
13:18Not to forget 1962.
13:20They almost came to a nuclear war between the United States.
13:24You are right.
13:24You are right.
13:24You are right.
13:25And we were this close because all generals around President Kennedy were suggesting to have an impact on Cuba, and
13:32he was the only one in those meetings saying, no, let's wait, let's negotiate, let's talk.
13:36Okay.
13:37But how do you withstand all this, such a small country?
13:40The Cuban Revolution meant a lot for the Cuban people.
13:44Immediately, the effects on the population came immediately.
13:50I was putting the example in a presentation today in the morning that literacy campaign in Cuba, we had at
14:00the time 60% of illiteracy in Cuba.
14:02It's impossible that you get a whole population involved in a political process without any capacity to read and write.
14:09I mean, it's the basis of it.
14:11We solved that.
14:12I mean, the Cuban Revolution solved that in a few months.
14:16How?
14:16Inviting the students to go and teach families all over the country, and they were hosted by the families.
14:23It was a massive movement.
14:24And people felt for the first time sovereignty, freedom, a capacity as a country to decide on the future.
14:34Remember that our economy was driven by American interests all the time.
14:39They reacted with the embargo on Cuba and the blockade.
14:43We reacted, nationalizing the property.
14:46We were always open to compensate that.
14:50They opposed, and that's the basis of the legislation on the blockade on Cuba.
14:56But what happened to Obama's agreement to normalize relations?
14:59Well, let me finish the first idea, because we have a second cycle in the early 90s.
15:05When the Soviet Union disappeared, we went alone in this world.
15:10Hugo Chavez was not in power yet.
15:13And then there were difficult years for the Cuban economy.
15:18We lost 80% of our trade overnight.
15:22Our GDP went down 35%.
15:25Then if you follow those numbers, it was a dead country, basically.
15:30But still, people recovered, Fidesz and other leaders.
15:36And we found a way to survive and develop afterwards.
15:40Then, if we talk about cycles 30 years later, it's basically what we have.
15:49And now, going to your question, with the narrative that this government is having these days,
15:55people tend to forget about what we accomplished between 2015 and 2017.
16:00We signed 22 MOUs in those years, and the main benefit for both countries
16:07was not under Obama's government, because the impact was under Trump.
16:14If you follow the larger numbers of people visiting both countries, above a million people on both sides,
16:23they came and went 2017, 2018, early 2019, when the flights and the cruises were suspended overnight.
16:34We had a lot of cultural exchange, scientific exchange under Trump.
16:39Now, the scenario changes when the new national security team decide on having Venezuela as a priority,
16:48and they relate Cuba to that scenario.
16:51You remember the Lima Group, the Y2 plan, all of that.
16:55And then, suddenly, the whole narrative towards Cuba changed.
17:00I can tell you, 2018, December 2018, I was called to the State Department to renew the bilateral meetings
17:09on the, what we called at the time, political commission.
17:11Obama goes, Trump arrives.
17:15We kept basically the same exchange.
17:19We had basically technical meetings, law enforcement guys coming and going.
17:25Those issues that you have to manage between two neighbors, because we are too close.
17:31But again, they realized that probably we had to renew the so-called political commission.
17:38And they were talking about having that meeting in Washington, and they were talking about calling
17:45again for the migratory talks that we have had every six months since the early 90s.
17:52That's December 2018.
17:54January 2019, I'm calling it to the State Department.
17:58And they say, what about the 20,000 Cuban troops in Venezuela?
18:02I'm almost laughing, you know.
18:05What are you talking about?
18:06Other people.
18:06Yeah.
18:07No, because Maduro is there because of your support, blah, blah, blah, blah.
18:10And then, what I'm trying to say is then they created a new narrative to make an argument
18:17that they needed to be hatched on Cuba, that the Bolivarian Republic was there because of Cuba's support.
18:27Without Cuba, it's impossible, Venezuela.
18:30And they created the so-called Lima Group, and all the money, you know, went through
18:35in order to support the so-called Venezuelan opposition.
18:39There's been a talk in the Western media that Trump is trying to take over the Western hemisphere,
18:45recenter his interests, diversify from Europe and coming to Western Hemisphere.
18:51Well, it's a difficult task to follow his thinking, if we can call it this way.
18:56They call it the Monroe Doctrine, renamed as Dunro Doctrine.
18:59Well, now you have many people in Latin America talking about the Dunro.
19:03Yes, exactly.
19:04He said it.
19:04He said it's a Dunro.
19:05Dunro Doctrine.
19:07He's trying to recycle and recreate that doctrine, which is another signal of crisis.
19:14When you try to put in force something that was implemented 200 years ago in a completely different world,
19:21you're unable to produce any new thinking, you know.
19:25So the fear that after he finishes the war with Iran, the next target will be Cuba.
19:31Well, if we follow what they have been saying these days, probably they want to do it in parallel.
19:36But one day is about imposing the blockade.
19:41Next day is an army solution.
19:43Yesterday morning was to deliver a package of economic measures.
19:49You never know.
19:50They have been talking for weeks about so-called talks with Cuba.
19:55We don't know.
19:56I mean, we have said many times, our president, our Minister of Foreign Affairs, that there are no such talks.
20:02And they talk about secret talks, which is a contradiction.
20:06When you have secret talks, as we had in the past with them and other people, you never talk publicly
20:13about secret talks.
20:14You need to protect the process.
20:17So you're bracing for a crisis in any case.
20:20Already there is a crisis.
20:21We are going through difficult times in terms of resources, availability.
20:26We have to… we have had to take specific measures to limit, for instance…
20:31But he has not imposed any condition on Cuba.
20:34There is nothing that he wants from Cuba.
20:36No.
20:37Like in the case of Iran.
20:39Like Venezuela.
20:39A few weeks ago…
20:39Like Venezuela.
20:41It was… weeks ago, it was a regime change.
20:45Trying to use the same wording that you have in the Hans Borton legislation.
20:51I think it's difficult to understand how that thinking, if we can call it that way, is a structure.
20:58The real purpose is to make our people suffer.
21:01The real purpose is to try that… they know they cannot talk about Cuban opposition.
21:09I mean, the Cuban opposition is in Miami.
21:11It left many years ago.
21:13They don't have any desire to return and they don't want to fight by themselves.
21:19They want someone else to do the fight for them.
21:22Well, Ambassador, we are coming to a conclusion of this conversation.
21:26But we cannot do that without talking about India-Cuba relations.
21:29How is it now?
21:31In a good moment, we have exchanged several delegations.
21:35We just had our minister for IT in Delhi.
21:42We agreed on a bilateral commission to develop that field.
21:47Our presence in Kerala is part of that will of local institutions in Kerala to develop.
21:53We are following many processes now with the presence of Cuba.
21:58Part associated with the BRICS and your leadership in BRICS is a good example of bilateral religion between two countries.
22:08And the global south.
22:09And to make that concept alive.
22:14Many people talk about the global south, but concrete projections, concrete projects, we are missing that.
22:20In the case of our countries, we know each other very well.
22:23There is a history, symbols on both sides, names of your patriots in Cuba and vice versa.
22:30Schools.
22:33It is a unique bilateral relationship considering the asymmetries.
22:39I mean, you are too weak.
22:40And it has survived all these changes and it will continue.
22:43Absolutely.
22:44And no matter who is in power.
22:46I mean, no matter the changes in government, political parties, there is a friendship and a solidarity within our countries.
22:52Thank you very much Ambassador.
22:53My pleasure.
22:54Great to have you in Australia.
22:55My pleasure.
23:21My pleasure.
23:22Eye of the
23:29Namaskara.
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