ABSTRACT
Militarization is the fundamental attribute of politics in Third World countries, just as economics dominated the origins of Western capitalism and politics dominated the origins of soviet communism. Militarization of Cuba is a consequence of the inner history of the Cuban Revolution. The guerrilla struggles which overthrew the Batista regime were above all military or paramilitary in character. The contrast with the Soviet Union is important since the Red Army came into being during the Civil War period, after the political party apparatus of the communists seized power. The causal sequence in Cuba, the reversal of civil and military ruling cadres, is critical to an understanding of how deeply the Cuban experience is linked to that of the rest of the Third World, and how sharply it differs from the military professionalism exhibited by the Soviet Union. So far have the 1970s moved in the direction of militarization.
