In Cuba, by contrast, there are substantial debates on public policy issues, through the elected assemblies and social organisations. For example, in Cuba’s economic crisis of the 1990s, eighteen months were spent debating the introduction of major economic changes such as introducing regulated foreign investment, the development of mass tourism, adjustments to services and taxes, preservation of free health care and education.
In the US, ‘structural adjustment’ was a formula developed by the private banks, adopted at home and enforced in debtor countries. This ‘technical’ formula, comprising privatisation, high interest rates, cuts to social services, user pays regimes, privileges for private investors and exporters, is presented as a ‘fait accompli’. There is no public inclusion in a policy debate, so communities are forced to react defensively to this ‘technical’ economic policy.
There is one final, important reason why the US cannot be a democracy. An imperial ambition drives it to dominate, invade and exploit the resources of other countries. US ‘defence forces’ are almost exclusively deployed abroad and current US ‘national security’ policy contemplates pre-emptive military strikes on more than sixty countries. Like other imperial ventures, US ambitions are pursued on behalf of a small clique of private investors, at the expense of millions of poor and marginalised people within the US. Yet as the US writer Gore Vidal has pointed out, no imperial project can be mounted in a genuine democracy, or a genuine republic.
Cuba, on the other hand, has never invaded another country. It has only used its defence forces to defend its own people or to support others under attack, such as defending the Angolan and Namibian people from the apartheid South African army, in the 1980s.
Cuba has used its world class health sector to assist other countries. While the US sends thousands of troops to other countries, Cuba sends thousands of doctors. Further, more than twenty thousand foreign students are studying medicine in Cuba, on fully-funded Cuban scholarships. This includes nearly one hundred US students. This is one more reason why, if the word is to have any meaning, Cuba is a democracy and the US is not.
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