Cuba: USAID making ever-higher investments in subversion

Jean-Guy Allard

THE U.S. offensive against progressive Latin America is now being intensified in terms of the countries of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA). In Cuba, Washington’s pro-annexationist investment has increased and intensified via new technologies.

That is confirmed by the Venezuelan-American researcher Eva Golinger, who analyzes in an interview how the current U.S. administration is still making "investments in destabilizing the Cuban Revolution" via USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

"USAID is investing in the destabilization of the Cuban Revolution via two formats," explains the specialist, who has spent the last 10 years studying and unmasking U.S. mechanisms of interference and subversion in Latin America.

"Its main funding comes from the Economic Support Fund, a financial division of the State Department that finances USAID projects," she states. "This fund has contributed $65.33 million to the so-called transition to democracy in Cuba over the last two years. An additional $20 million is scheduled for 2010."

In USAID terminology, $10 million of the funds delivered in 2008 and 2009 were channeled into the "human rights" area; $7 million went into promoting "political competition," and close to $49 million went to "civil society."

"At the end of 2007, USAID also opened an Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) in the Cuban context, in order to work with youth and ‘independent initiatives from the media,’" Golinger notes.

"To this end it has contributed additional funding of $8.383 million since 2008. These OTI’s are USAID divisions set up to make a rapid response to political crises, to ‘solve’ them in line with U.S. interests."

The OTI’s handle cash funds "in very large quantities without having to go through many reviews or accounting checks in the U.S. Congress."

An OTI was set up in Venezuela in August 2002 to promote and consolidate forces opposed to the Bolivarian Revolution. Since then, the OTI has funded and helped to create more than 450 NGOs and political groups with finances in excess of $60 million.

This money basically serves to fuel conflicts and covertly promote U.S. interests.

The USAID, an agency set up in 1962 as the financial wing of the State Department for attending to "humanitarian" affairs, has been transformed in the 21st century into one of the central actors in counterinsurgency operations under the new doctrine of Washington’s Irregular Warfare.

"This doctrine was signed in early 2009 by the recently inaugurated president of the United States, Barack Obama, as part of his new policy of ‘smart power,’ intelligent power, which employs the use of military power in conjunction with diplomacy, culture, communications, and economic and political power."

There are two central points of difference between irregular warfare and traditional warfare: the objective and tactics, notes the Venezuelan-American lawyer.

"Traditional warfare sees as its objective the defeat of the adversary’s armed forces, and its principal tactic is the use of military power in its most traditional form, combat and bombardments. The objective of irregular warfare is control over the civilian population and the neutralization of the state, and its principal tactic is counterinsurgency, which is the use of indirect and asymmetric techniques like subversion, infiltration, psychological operations, cultural penetration and military deception."

In this 21st century, USAID has developed divisions within the agency that function, alongside the Pentagon, as offices for Conflict Management, Transition and Reconstruction, Democracy and Governability, and Transition Initiatives, which are directing their work toward counterinsurgency efforts.

"In this way, USAID has become the principal financial actor of destabilization and penetration in the civil society in countries of strategic importance for U.S. interests."

In the case of Latin America, the figures for USAID financial investment in political groups and in "promoting democracy" are staggering.

On the other hand, the NED, a CIA front agency — it was founded to do the work that the CIA did in the 1960s and 70s but with a more legitimate image — has contributed $1.435 million to promoting destabilization in Cuba this year, Golinger states, listing the groups benefiting from that U.S. fund:

- Afro-Cuban Alliance (ACA): $82,080.

- Asociación Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana (Cuban Cultura

Encounter Association): $225,000.

- Center for a Free Cuba, Frank Calzón: $54,222.

- Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE): $157,526.

- Committee for Free Trade Unionism (CFTU): $150,000.

- El Directorio Democrático de Cuba (The Democratic Directory of

Cuba): $275,000.

- CubaNet News: $42,000.

- Disidente Universal de Puerto Rico (Universal Dissident of Puerto

Rico): $40,00.

- International Group for Corporate Social Responsibility in Cuba:

$236,730.

- People in Peril Association (PIPA): $43,320.

The majority of this assortment of organizations, groups and mini-groups has been linked to CIA activities in the past.

Despite promises, administration change or not, Washington is still squandering hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars every year on this dirty war on Latin America.

"An imperial offensive against Latin America is underway, which is currently being intensified against the ALBA countries," Golinger affirms.

"One of the manifestations of this aggression is this counterinsurgency call as a tactic to penetrate and infiltrate communities and promote destabilization," stresses the author of books such as the Código Chávez (The Chávez Code) and La Teleraña Imperial (The Imperial Spider’s Web), a repertoire of Washington’s intelligence activities on the continent and in the world.