Cuban Internationalism as Dangerous Empathy

Abstract

Some 25 years ago, I edited a textbook on international politics and included a ­carefully researched contribution by Gordon Adams on Cuba’s military actions in Southern Africa.2 I included that chapter because, in part, it effectively refuted certain widely held misconceptions about Cuban foreign policy, one of which was that Cuba was acting as a surrogate, a pawn, for the Soviet Union. But at least as important, the piece served to convey Cuba’s societal-wide, organic, cultural ethos of empathy that motivated and continues to nurture and affirm that country’s internationalism today. That is, claims on behalf of a global praxis of empathy that fail to explicitly critique and attempt to eradicate global structural violence must be treated with skepticism because such assertions fall outside the borders of any serious ­discussion of the subject.3