Still Dead

-- From Opinion Journal

"Cuba Democracia y Vida, a Sweden-based exile site, claims that Fidel Castro is dead, attributing the information to, as Google's rough translation puts it, "a source near the Cuban regime of total credibility." Havana has been holding back the announcement, the story says, while awaiting the results of the election in Venezuela, where Hugo Chavez, a younger, less dead version of Castro, is leading his challenger by 62% to 37%.

The Associated Press, however, reports that "Cuba's Communist newspaper on Tuesday published a message reportedly from ailing leader Fidel Castro congratulating Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on his weekend re-election victory":

"The victory was resounding, crushing and without parallel in the history of our America," read the brief message published in the online edition of the Communist Party daily Granma.

Without parallel? Is Castro admitting that his own "elections"--whose results are even more "resounding" by virtue of their 100% victory margins--are a sham?"

Whether he is room temperature or gravely ill, just barely hanging on, the question is, 'What becomes of Cuba, post Fidel?' Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence Report has written their analysis, "Cuba After Castro." It is written by George Friedman.

He asks can the Cuban government survive. The government will, the regime will not. Fidel had a vision. His regime, he believed, had a greater purpose. His vision was to not only transform Cuba, but to revolutionize and mobilize Latin America to confront "American imperialism."

"Fidel did not rule for the sake of ruling. He ruled for the sake of revolution."

For Raul and others, "the Cuban regime was an end in itself. Their goal was to keep it functioning. Fidel dreamed of using the regime to reshape the world." The new regime "will not be able to claim the imaginations of the disaffected and the politically ambitious around the world."

With the rise of the far left in South America, notably Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, with its' natural resources, something greatly missing in Cuba, Chavez is the perfect one to take the torch from Castro, even if it has to be a post mortem handoff.

Cuba because of its location, just 90 miles from our shores, poses significant threats to the U.S. because of its' potential as a base for missiles (deja vu anyone) and also because of shipping lanes. To read more of Mr. Freidman's analysis, "Cuba after Castro," go here.