How would Raul Castro govern?

Robert Windrem Senior investigative producer • E-mail

Ailing Cuban dictator Fidel Castro is not dead, but he is no longer president.

Unlike other authoritarian regimes, Cuba already has the transition scoped out and the successor appointed: Castro's younger brother and Cuba's defense minister, Raul Castro.  It's in Cuba's constitution.  Most people inside and outside Cuba give the younger Castro brother good marks for handling the transition — so far. The question is how will he handle the inevitable calls for reform.

While there is often discussion and gossip both inside and outside Cuba about who among the next level of officials — Vice President Carlos Lage, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon — might succeed Fidel Castro, U.S. officials insist that Raul Castro remains the key to any succession. In addition to being the constitutionally designated successor to his brother, the 76-year-old Raul Castro is viewed as a a reluctant leader, one who is "always the better administrator ... a good manager, not a great thinker," an official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told NBC News.

In several wide-ranging interviews over the past decade, U.S. officials from both the diplomatic and intelligence services describe a Raul Castro regime as one having a "very, very different character with a need for a support base," a base that they say is already in place and is both extremely loyal to him and competent. In each case, officials would speak only in return for anonymity.

"Raul is a reluctant, unpopular leader," said one intelligence official in discussing the need for such a support base.  "He has prospered by being his brother's brother, surrounded by those who he sees as competent and loyal. He is the chairman of the board of this new team, more of an orchestrator.

"The consensus is that there is a team there and they know what they are doing."  Yet, say officials, there is nothing on the horizon that is "leading to long-term revival of a discredited regime."

A Raul Castro regime would not abandon the Marxist revolution — Raul Castro was a Marxist before his brother — but is likely to be more pragmatic at least on economic reforms. However, any transition from Fidel to Raul would also be marked by jockeying for power to be Raul's successor. Even before this recent crisis, Perez Roque was seen as trying to undermine Alarcon. Other such disputes would no doubt surface.

'Raul will seek consensus'
Still, a Raul Castro regime would be different.

"Raul will seek consensus. He built the party, built the military and built the government. He is Mr. Cadre, Mr. Personnel, Mr. Talent Scout," said one intelligence official who has tracked  Cuban affairs and is now a senior intelligence official.

It has been Raul Castro, as the man in charge of the UJC — the Young Communist Union — who has acted as a talent scout for his brother, spotting people like Lage, the Foreign Minister, Felipe Perez Roque, and dozens of others from ministers to provincial secretaries to ambassadors along with others who did not work out and were pushed into meaningless jobs.

Neither brother, say U.S. officials, has great loyalty to even long-time allies: If you don't produce, you are more than likely replaced by a much younger person. And that should be the lesson in looking at succession. A decade ago, there was a house-cleaning of provincial secretaries, and each replacement was a younger person, in their thirties and forties.  Moreover, says officials, while Perez Roque is now the most prominent of the younger cadre of officials, the Cuban political landscape is littered with those who did not fulfill their potential, at least in the Castro brothers' eyes.

The transition between Castro brothers, says a senior U.S. intelligence official who has tracked Cuba for more than a decade, is more likely to have been planned for a while and timed for the opening of the National Assemby — and the election of Council of State this weekend.

"This is a time that makes sense," he said. ""They may be thinking 'We have seen Phase 1 work pretty well, now lets then begin phase 2 with the old man still alive.' This is a convenient signpost for him to step back. it's orderly, he's still around as a soldier of the revolution. He may not be doing so as president or commander in chief of the army, but he is still around."

Officials say the most important "Raulistas" are two members of Fidel Castro's cabinet: Lage and Sugar Minister/former army chief Ulysses Rosales del Toro. They are most responsible for making the tattered Cuban economy work and are described as "exceedingly loyal" to Raul Castro, as well as the revolution.

However, say officials, there is little to distinguish between those believed to be loyal to Fidel — "Fidelistas" — vs. "Raulistas," something the CIA thought it could determine and use to its advantage in the first decade after the 1959 Cuban Revolution.

"We did an exercise," said one U.S. intelligence official. "A graphic representation of who is close to Fidel and who is close to Raul. And we determined that it can't be done.  The circles [of the two men's loyalists] so closely meet they are essentially the same.  There are no serious outsiders who might come to power outside those closely matched circles."

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