Cuba: a tiny island nation that upset U.S. hegemony through the power of example. Even as a revolutionary, Castro often spoke in radical-liberal tones about freedom, about democracy, about the rule of law. He insisted that these values could not be realized without the economic justice of state-distributed medicine, of education, of collective ownership of Cuban energy and utilities. “We haven’t chosen this struggle,” said El Presidenté while wearing military fatigues and brandishing a rifle in 1967; “It’s been imposed on us.” As a statesman, Castro was at his best when he asserted how socialism was needed to achieve the liberal ideals that were stymied under free-market capitalism. At the same time, El Presidenté was at his worst as a dictator who ruled undemocratically. The customary military fatigues; the strident hours-long speeches; the greying beard: by the end of the 20th century, they all appeared the gamey trappings of an aging autocrat. Same-sex relations were officially decr...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51