A true giant of the people has passed. Fidel Castro Ruz took his last breath on November 25th, 2016. The millions of people in a state or mourning around the world indicate that what Fidel stood for will continue to breathe life into future generations. Fidel Castro is known to many in the US and West as a tyrant and a dictator. Yet the future of humanity rests on what a new generation of activists and organizers in the US and West must learn from the so-called dictator’s position on issues of war and peace.
US and Western imperialism is currently in a state of permanent war that threatens to send the world into a global confrontation. The Washington consensus between Obama Administration, the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party has pushed the planet to the brink of world war. Over the course of two terms, President Obama has strengthened NATO's presence along the Russian border. NATO has stationed thousands of troops, armed with high-tech nuclear weaponry, in countries like Romania and Poland. The Obama Administration has also spent much of its tenure "pivoting" toward a war with China through the development of military partnerships with Japan, South Korea, and Australia.
Washington has also spent its bloated war budget on "smaller" wars that compliment the larger aim to destabilize Russia and China. The US African Command (AFRICOM) has expanded under Obama to encompass all but two nations on the African continent. US Special Forces are now deployed in over 135 countries. Drones and proxy mercenaries are spreading terror across the Middle East and North Africa. A global military confrontation between the three largest powers in the world looms in the horizon should the US policy of endless war continue on uninterrupted.
What does any of this have to do with Fidel's passing? Fidel Castro leaves a long legacy of internationalism that must be emulated by any anti-war activist seeking to bring the US war machine to a halt. Few in the US are aware of Fidel's internationalist vision. The image of Cuba as a totalitarian state has been accepted as fact due to the continuous lies spread about Cuba by the US media and state. However, under Fidel's ideological leadership, the Cuban people have developed a society that puts the idea of solidarity into practice.
Cuba has expressed solidarity with struggling people all over the world on many different fronts. The small nation of about 11 million is best known for its global healthcare assistance. Cuba has sent upwards of 50,000 doctors around the world to work in nations such as Haiti and Brazil. Cuban healthcare has restored site for an untold number of people, including Che Guevara's assassin. Fidel spearheaded missions to Haiti and Pakistan to assist the people after devastating earthquakes destroyed vital infrastructure. Cuba also extended a hand of solidarity to Black Americans who were trapped in the lower 9th ward in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, only to be rejected by the Bush Administration.
Lesser known is Cuba's military assistance to national liberation struggles worldwide, especially in Africa. Cuba provided military assistance to Amilcar Cabral and the PAIGC in the struggle against Portuguese colonialism in Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. Fidel also deployed hundreds of thousands of Cubans to African nations such as Mozambique and Angola beginning in 1975. Cuba's military assistance was critical in the 1987-88 battles between Angola and South Africa in Cuito Cuanavale. These battles severely weakened the Apartheid South African regime and eventually led to its demise.
Cuba's support for African liberation reflects Fidel's broad commitment to internationalist solidarity. Such solidarity extends to every corner of the globe. Fidel was an outspoken critic of Israel's colonization of Palestine, breaking diplomatic relations with the Zionist state in 1973. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Cuba provided extensive military assistance to armed resistance groups in Palestine. Cuba also provided military assistance to Syria during Israel's offensive in the region following the 1967 war. Although the fall of the Soviet Union reduced Cuba's military capacity to militarily assist liberation movements, Cuba has maintained its international posture with medical and diplomatic assistance.
The age of Trump raises critical issues of war and peace that make it necessary for an anti-imperialist resistance in the US to deeply study Cuba's history of worldwide solidarity. Cuba's socialist revolution created a new system based on the international principles of mutual assistance and fraternity. Unlike the US, Cuba has not once chosen between its domestic needs and the needs of the people worldwide. The Cuban people see their fate as intimately connected to the fate of humanity as a whole. It was Fidel who was instrumental in the development of this consciousness. Such an internationalist orientation needs to be adopted by the US left if it is going to build power in the midst of a chaotic period in Washington.
For too many years, the US left has only spoken out against wars carried out by Republicans. Trump, while no agent of peace, has promised his constituents to end regime change efforts in Syria and to develop closer ties with Russia. However, the President elect has done so on the basis of a more antagonistic position on Iran and China then even the war-mongering Obama Administration. Such a contradiction cannot be reconciled in the policy arena. Trump will try to balance the interests of his base and the war machine, but it is the war machine that currently possesses the institutional power to determine the trajectory of US foreign policy. The challenge for US left is to forge a steadfast resistance to all US wars in a period where broad sections of the nation oppose them.
There is much to learn from Fidel in this regard. The Cuban Revolution never waited for the Soviet Union's permission to intervene in Africa, nor did it ask for permission from anyone to fulfill what it saw as its duty to the people of the world. The US left should not wait for Trump to fulfill his promises within a state that requires endless war in order to enrich the corporate executives in control of it. The oppressed in the US need to make war a priority now, but not merely on the basis of opposition to one of the two corporate parties. War must become a priority based on the principle of solidarity with the oppressed worldwide. Fidel's life embodies what it means to commit to this principle for a lifetime.
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