In the year 2017, during my visit to Cuba, I met the famous Cuban media personality, Arlene Rodrigues, who has long experience in the field of media and who worked at one stage as a media advisor to Cuban leader Fidel Castro. In an interview with her, she surprised me by saying: Do you know that Cuba during the fifties constituted the main laboratory for the United States to implement neoconservative theories in economics and politics?
The dialogue diverged to detail how the neoconservatives applied their theories in reducing the role of the state in managing the economy and society, and in privatizing all economic sectors in the country during the era of Fulgencio Batista (1952-1959) during the period in which he ruled Cuba directly, knowing that he was the strong man in the country. From 1933 until the date of the coup that led him to power in 1952.
Cuba during the fifties: a laboratory for neoliberal policies
During his direct rule, Batista established strong relations with the circles of power in the United States, led by major corporations and mafia men, and worked to privatize all economic sectors that were dominated by American companies, such as the American Fruit Company owned by then US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother Alan Dulles, director of intelligence. The US Central, which controlled Cuban agricultural production, the US Telephone Company, which controlled the communications sector, the US carriers, which controlled the transport sector, etc.
Rather, the privatization also affected the marine fishing sector, as it granted American fishing companies the exclusive right to catch types of fish, including “Blue Marlin”, which abound in the Caribbean region, and which were in great demand in the East Asian region because the wealthy Japanese and Chinese believed that the fins of this fish possess materials considered sexual tonics.
Even the novel The Old Man and the Sea written by the American novelist, Ernest Hemingway, who was living in Havana, was inspired by an incident that actually took place in Cuba. An old fisherman who wanted to support the children of his deceased son had caught the “Blue Marlin” fish that was covered by the monopoly, so a policeman stopped him and wanted to confiscate the fish, so the fisherman was only able to kill the policeman.
This was indicative of the extent to which the privatization process in Cuba and the process of liquidating the state had reached, allowing American companies to control the economy and society. All this was in the service of the US imperialist hegemony strategy and not resorting to military intervention except in cases of resistance by countries to this hegemony.
This explains the outbreak of the Cuban Revolution led by Fidel Castro, starting from the attack on the Moncada barracks on July 26, 1953, until the victory of the revolution on New Year’s Eve 1958-1959. The Cuban Revolution was primarily a reaction to the social engineering operations carried out by the United States in Cuba during the fifties.
Egypt under the socialist model
This leads us to Egypt in the sixties. Under the leadership of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt was able to play a pioneering role in the Arab world and globally, based on a state project led by the late Egyptian leader based on strengthening the role of the state in managing society and the economy. This explains why Abdel Nasser sought to establish a strong army on the one hand and to build a huge industrial structure in Egypt represented by the establishment of thousands of factories. This would have established a social base that would protect the revolution and constitute a lever for the independent Egyptian role in the world.
To break Egypt and control it, the United States supported its enemies and opponents and sought to besiege it, leading to the support of an attempt by the Muslim Brotherhood to overthrow the regime and carry out acts of sabotage in the year 1965. When all these attempts did not succeed, the United States supported Israel in its aggression against Egypt and the Arabs in a war The Six Days in the year 1967. Nevertheless, Egypt, led by Abdel Nasser, withstood and waged a war of attrition against “Israel” between 1967 and 1970, and drew up plans to remove the effects of the aggression, which were completed in the summer of 1970.
However, time did not allow Abdel Nasser, who died on September 28, 1970, leaving power after him to his deputy, Anwar Sadat.
Unlike Abdel Nasser, Sadat was part of the alliance formed between the army officers, the Egyptian bureaucracy, and the remnants of Egyptian capitalism and feudalism. His political orientations were evident a few weeks after he assumed the reins of power when he began secret contacts with the United States, expressing his readiness for a peaceful settlement with “Israel”. After the October 1973 war, which Sadat launched unwillingly as a result of the pressure exerted on him by the army and the people, and as a result of the failure of Israel and the United States to respond to his peaceful initiatives, Sadat benefited from the success that reaped its fruits to engage in radical policies that began with the transfer of Egypt from the camp hostile to the United States to the camp loyal to it.
Egypt under neoliberal policies
As a result of this radical transition under the umbrella of American influence, Sadat agreed to implement a number of economic and social policies that the United States demanded under the pretext of economic reform. Among these measures was the beginning of the privatization of the huge public sector that Abdel Nasser left behind, in addition to the start of reducing the role of the state in the economy by liberalizing the economy and placing it in the hands of the private sector, which obtained capital from the international financial circles with American approval (such as the case of the Sawiris family), except for Reducing subsidies for major commodities such as wheat. These measures, which were taken hastily and within only three years (1974-1977), will have catastrophic effects on Egyptian society, which will push it to revolt and launch a huge uprising on January 17 and 18, 1977, which made Sadat stop many economic effects, fearing for himself.
Privatization operations continued during the era of President Hosni Mubarak (1981-2011), especially in the last decade of his rule, at the hands of businessmen who gathered around his son Gamal, who aspired to succeed his father in the presidency. This was one of the factors in the January 2011 uprising that toppled Mubarak. The short period of the Brotherhood’s rule in Egypt constituted attempts to further privatize the public sector, which continued during the era of President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, leading to the sale of the Iron and Steel Factory, which was one of the most important economic projects established by Abdel Nasser, and the introduction of the Suez Canal for privatization, which the Egyptians restored with their blood. In the year 1956.
The policies that were presented to Egypt by American and Western economists and the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank constituted efforts to reduce the role of the state in the economy and society and make the state a gelatinous state that lacks the structures and pillars that fortify it against American hegemony attempts. This made Egypt, during the period that followed 1974, submissive in the hands of the United States, even at the expense of elements of its national security. Today, we find it unable to protect its national security in Libya, the Nile Valley, the Red Sea, or the Levant. Rather, we find it hastening to be the facilitator of American policies in the Middle East, which come at the expense of Arab national security and Egyptian national security.
The American policies of hegemony over Egypt have been adopted as a model to be applied to any country the United States seeks to dominate. This was the case in Lebanon under Rafik Hariri (1992-2005), Argentina under Carlos Menem (1989-1999), Turkey under Adnan Menderes (1950-1960) and Turgut Ozal (1983-1993) and then under Recep Tayyip Erdogan (2002-up). right Now).
Summary
There are many examples around the world of the United States applying neoliberal policies to privatize the public sector and reduce the role of the state in society to put these countries under American hegemony. On the other hand, Cuba, which revolted against the US policies that were imposed on it in the fifties of the last century, was able to withstand the US attempts to dominate it, despite the six decades of blockade imposed on it. This island, whose area does not exceed 110,000 square kilometers and has a population of 11 million, still challenges Washington, although it is no more than 90 miles from the US state of Florida.
Countries facing American hegemony are characterized by a pivotal role for the state in managing the economy and society, such as China, which in a few decades achieved an economic miracle to become the second economy in the world, and like Russia under Vladimir Putin, where the state regained its pivotal role in the economy after eliminating the oligarchs linked to Western capital.
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* Jamal Wakim, Professor of the history of international relations at the Lebanese University