NAM summit I really should be blogging more about this, since it's a pretty big deal, but I guess I've been so distracted by the raging methodological debates in political science that I've been neglecting my duties. As far as I know, Cuba hasn't hosted the Non Aligned Movement summit since it was fresh from its African wars and on top of the world, and so it's fairly remarkable that they're hosting it this fall, given the circumstances. Apparently a short video of Castro actually standing and chatting with--who else?--Chávez aired on Cuban TV, but nobody knows whether he'll make any kind of official appearance before the summit ends on Saturday. Pérez Roque has been quick to point out that Fidel is still the head of the Cuban delegation to the summit, even though he's left the speeches to Pérez and Raúl.

The speeches are utterly predictable--"it's obvious that our movement is more important than ever," "it's obvious that the American empire is in decline," etc. etc.--but what's most interesting to watch is the incredibly intricate positioning that is going on among all of these dudes who want to (and individually all fully expect to) succeed Fidel in a more ideological sense. The power struggle in the Politburo is fascinating enough, but there's also a macrocosmic version of the ever-popular moderates vs. hardliners game playing out between guys like Chávez, Lukashenka, and Ahmadinejad vs. guys like Musharraf and Singh. Even Evo Morales, who I am generally fairly fond of and don't fear nearly as much as Chávez, is bursting into bizarre, Zhirinovsky-style rants about how Bolivia is going to fuck Chile's shit up if it doesn't get its Pacific port back. When I first got into the post-Castro prediction business a few years ago, I remember telling Steve that things could look a lot like the post-Gorbachev struggle in Russia. You've got your Yeltsin-like "shock therapy" camp, your Zyuganov-style "Castro failed the revolution but I'll do better" approach, your Solzhenitsyn-style Cuban/Caribbean "identity"-based exceptionalism, and maybe even the wild card in a bit of Zhirinovsky-style "joke facism." But I predicted that struggle to emerge within Cuba, which, of course, it still could (and surely already exists to some extent behind the scenes), but I underestimated how broad the struggle could actually be. Obviously it isn't over the nominal leadership of a small island country--or even, as I think it was in Russia's case, a real identity question--"what is Russia, and who gets to decide?" But this is about the heart and soul of socialism, and the heart and soul of underdog-ism, and the underlying legitimizing principle of so many of these authoritarian countries: perpetual struggle. So there is, I think, a hell of a lot at stake here. Certainly a lot more than just Fidel's immediate succession.

With all of that in mind, I can't imagine Fidel missing the opportunity to get out there and revel in the glory of it all--he's waaaay too much of an egomaniac (and a good Leo!) for that. I know there's some evidence out there that the deathly ill sometimes are able to fight off the reaper just long enough to mark some kind of milestone--a birthday, an anniversary--and if welcoming 118 countries to your crumbling city precisely when you're trying to firmly secure your legacy isn't something to live for, I don't know what the hell is. One's thing for sure: if he does shuffle out in his bathrobe to say a few words this weekend, the smallest details of all that compulsory ring-kissing will be well worth watching.  ¶ 5:33 PM