The first warning is that the government of the Castro brothers' 2015 vision of the United States is exactly the same as it was when the guerrillas came to power in January 1959.
To them, Cuba's huge and powerful neighbor, with its purported predatory economic practices, is at the root of mankind's basic problems.
The second warning, an offshoot of the first, is that that regime, wholly consistent with its beliefs, will continue to try to effect harm on the United States in each instance that presents itself.
In a former age, the Castro regime placed itself under the Soviet umbrella. In the post-Soviet era, it built the foundation for the São Paulo Forum and later for the circuit known as 21st Century Socialism, which extended to the countries of the so-called ALBA. Today, it allies itself firmly with Iran and is lining up with the Sino-Russian side in the gestating and dangerous New Cold War. Anti-Americanism is a moral crusade the Castros will never renounce.
The third warning is that the Cuban dictatorship has not the slightest intention to begin a process of liberalization that might allow political pluralism or make way for increased freedoms as these are understood among the world's most developed nations.
Opposition democrats are tolerated so long as their movements and communications can be regulated and watched by the political police.
The regime perfectly manages the techniques of social control. Aside from using the conventional police to keep the opposition in check, it has at least 60,000 counterintelligence officers under the Interior Ministry, and tens of thousands of collaborators. To them, repression is not a dark and shameful behavior but a constant and patriotic task.
The fourth warning is that the economic system being put in place by Raul Castro has not been conceived to nurture a civil society, a society that someday will magically overthrow the dictatorship. Instead, it is a model of Military Capitalism of State, built around the backbone of the Army and the Ministry of the Interior, institutions that control most of the country's productive apparatus.
Within that scheme, as can be surmised from the words of official economist Juan Triana Cordovi, the State (in reality, the military sector) reserves for itself the management and exploitation of the country's 2,500 medium and large businesses, leaving to the self-employed entrepreneurs a large number of small activities that it does not care to sustain.
Contrary to the thinking in Washington and among the non-governmental Cuban sectors that support those economic reforms, Raul Castro and his advisers assume, correctly, that the self-employed entrepreneurs will be a source of stability for the Military Capitalism of State, not because of ideological affinity but because they do not want to lose the small privileges and advantages they gain.
The fifth warning is that the Castro brothers' regime is not at all interested in propitiating the enrichment of foreign businessmen. They despise the capitalists' zest for profit, which they find repugnant, although they themselves practice it discreetly.
Investments from abroad will be welcome only if they help strengthen the Military Capitalism of State that the Castros are forging. To the Cuban government, those investments are a necessary evil, like someone amputating his own arm to save his life.
If anybody thinks that that regime will permit the emergence and growth of an independent entrepreneurial fabric, it is because he has not taken the trouble to study the writings and speeches of the officials of the regime or even to examine their behavior.
Real estate investor and renowned millionaire Stephen Ross was absolutely right when, after returning from a trip to Cuba, he declared that he had not seen on the island the tiniest serious opportunity to do business. There is none, except in those activities that provide a clear profit for the government or those that are absolutely indispensable for the survival of the regime.
It is obvious that the Castros' priority is to cling to power, and not to develop a vigorous entrepreneurial fabric that will bring Cubans out of misery. To explain their shortfalls, they resort to the alibi of revolutionary austerity and criticism of consumerism (the attraction to "junk") as a heroic and selfless form of confronting poverty.
The sixth warning is that, in the face of this depressing picture of abuse and insistence on the usual blunders, Washington's rejection of containment, and its substitution with engagement (accompanied by an abandonment of the objective of trying to promote regime change, as Obama announced in Panama) is a dangerous and irresponsible oversight that will harm the United States, encourage its enemies, dishearten its allies and harm the Cuban people, who desire freedoms, real democracy, and an end to their misery.
What is the sense of the United States -- and the Catholic Church -- helping strengthen a Military Capitalism of State, a foe of freedoms, including economic freedom, a violator of human rights? The regime perpetuates a collectivist dictatorship that has destroyed Cuba, and today contributes to destroying Venezuela, because it is incapable of anything other than what it has done for 56 years.
The seventh warning is that the democratic opposition has never been more fragile and less protected than today, despite the impressive number of dissidents and the heroism they display. It has never been more alone.
Why would anyone take that opposition into account when the United States has renounced regime change and is willing to accept the Cuban dictatorship without demanding anything in exchange?
The United States has stopped telling Havana in a clear voice that true change begins when the top level of the dictatorship accepts dialogue with the opposition, and admit that societies are pluralistic and harbor differing points of view.
What argument can be wielded now by the silent and always cowed reformists in the regime to ask -- sotto voce -- for political and economic changes from the Castros' government, when nobody else demands them?
In sum, Obama has made a serious mistake by abandoning the policy followed by the 10 presidents, Democratic and Republican, who preceded him to the White House.
Nobody can state by decree that his enemy has suddenly turned into his friend and has begun to think along one's lines. That's childish.
This is not a question of criticizing Obama for having ventured to try a new policy. The problem is that it is a bad policy.
Ignore reality, and the price you eventually pay will be high. What is sad is that we Cubans will pay that price.
(AP photo)
