…the rationality of life. Not as idealist speculation, but as state policy, as a strategy of resistance, and as a civilizational project…

https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/analysis/the-globalization-of-fraternity--an-alternative-to-the-logic
The globalization of fraternity: An alternative to the logic of global capitalism - Pedro Monzón Barata Pedro Monzón Barata

The battle is also cognitive: while Washington imposes a narrative of exploitation, millions of patients grateful for Cuba build real soft power based on gratitude and moral legitimacy.
An island that globalized without capitalism

On the map of the twenty-first century, Cuba appears as both a geopolitical and ethical anomaly. A Caribbean island nation, then home to just eleven million people and subjected to one of the longest and most aggressive economic blockades in history, has managed to project itself onto the global stage—not through capital, weapons, or the typical instruments of imperial soft power—but through concrete solidarity: doctors in remote areas, human resource development in impoverished countries, vaccines developed in national scientific centers and laboratories, and an internationalist ethic that places life above profit.

Cuban solidarity has been multifaceted and always grounded in ethical principles. It has been a beacon of support for Africa’s decolonization and decisive in the struggle for Angola’s independence—acts of anti-imperialist fraternity that accelerated Namibia’s liberation and the fall of the apartheid regime. These impulses to do good have broadly reached such vital sectors as human education and health.

This paradox, a small nation challenging the unipolar order not with military force but with white coats, is neither an isolated incident nor a romantic exception. It is the political, historical, and civilizational expression of an alternative project: the globalization of fraternity. This concept, derived from the thought and action of Fidel Castro, embodies the core of his internationalist convictions and Cuban revolutionary praxis over more than six decades. In the face of capitalist globalization, which homogenizes markets, strips away sovereignties, and exports violence, Cuba has built, from the Global South, a South-South cooperation network based on the principles of reciprocity, non-intervention, non-commercialization of health, and prioritizing the most vulnerable.

In a world transitioning toward multipolarity, where liberal consensus is collapsing and new poles of power are emerging, this contrast is no longer symbolic, it is existential. Neoliberal globalization has revealed its terminal face: a logic of death that sacrifices entire peoples in the name of profit, energy security, or military hegemony. Yet within the interstices of this crisis-ridden system, another rationality is blossoming: the rationality of life. Not as idealist speculation, but as state policy, as a strategy of resistance, and as a civilizational project.

This article explores this confrontation from a rigorous and objective perspective. First, it proposes to articulate a theoretical framework that defines and contrasts both globalizations. Second, it analyzes the concrete materialization of globalized fraternity in Cuban foreign policy, showing that it constitutes a structural system, not merely occasional gestures. Third, it examines the imperial response to this alternative, and finally, it argues for the urgency of its projection in a world threatened by systemic crises that capitalism can no longer resolve. The central hypothesis is clear: the globalization of fraternity is not just one ethical option among others; it is the only viable path for human survival in the twenty-first century.

I- Two mutually exclusive rationalities

Capitalist globalization: Accumulation, violence, and hegemonic decline
Globalization is neither a recent nor a neutral phenomenon. As early as the Communist Manifesto (1848), it was described how the bourgeoisie, “for the first time in universal history,” had forged a world market, imposing its dominion across every corner of the planet. This internationalization of capital has gone through distinct phases: classical imperialism in the late nineteenth century, the bipolar Cold War (1945–1991), and, following the collapse of the socialist camp, the neoliberal unipolar globalization that has dominated since the early 1990s. This latest phase was characterized by the rhetorical triumph of the “end of history” and the naturalization of the free market as an inexorable destiny. Yet its reality has been different: the deepening of capitalism’s structural contradictions. Far from generating universal prosperity, it has exacerbated class divides, destroyed national productive fabrics, financialized the economy, and turned essential goods—health, water, education, the environment—into commodities subject to speculation.

Moreover, in its phase of hegemonic decline, global capitalism has increasingly resorted openly to violence as a mode of reproduction. As Lenin pointed out, the system, once it exhausts its accumulation avenues at the center, must expand violently toward the periphery. This thesis is updated today in a multifaceted globalization of violence:

Economic violence: Blockades, extraterritorial sanctions, confiscation of reserves, and financial pressure that suffocate entire economies, as in the cases of Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and Syria.
Political violence: Funding of opposition groups, destabilization campaigns, recognition of “parallel governments”—as in the case of Guaidó in Venezuela, and now something similar is being attempted with the arbitrary Nobel Prize awarded to Ms. María Corina Machado—and the use of NGOs as instruments of interference, among them the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID.
Military violence: Direct interventions, a global network of military bases, and explicit threats of war in the twenty-first century. These include the permanent deployment of the US Seventh Fleet in the Indo-Pacific, escalating tensions in the South China Sea, the unprecedented concentration of US naval forces near the coasts of Venezuela and Cuba, and persistent forms of modern piracy in the Caribbean—evident in the illegal interception, seizure, and appropriation of oil tankers, the harassment of small vessels, and the killing of its crew members. Nothing illustrates this logic of extermination more starkly than the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza. Under the complicit silence or open justification of Western powers, "Israel"—the armed arm of imperialism in the Middle East—has unleashed a systematic campaign of annihilation that has left tens of thousands dead, most of them women and children, and reduced to rubble hospitals, universities, food production centers, and water systems. This horror is not an isolated aberration but the extreme manifestation of a globalization that turns discriminated, oppressed, and anti-imperialist peoples into legitimate targets of structural violence. The impunity with which this crime is committed reinforces the thesis that global capitalism, in its phase of decomposition, no longer even needs to hide its genocidal face.
Cognitive violence: Imposition of media narratives that criminalize dissent, portray non-aligned states as “failed", and conceal the structural causes of induced crises.
In this logic, human life becomes expendable. When individuals or communities no longer generate surplus value or enrichment—or dare to challenge the unjust international order—they are deemed disposable and treated as enemies. Thus, contemporary capitalism does not merely exploit; it exterminates. Sanctions against Venezuela have caused, according to UN Special Rapporteur Alena Douhan, over 40,000 avoidable deaths. The blockade of Cuba is a weapon of mass destruction that, sustained over decades, is deliberately designed to inflict civilian suffering for the purpose of regime change.

The globalization of fraternity: The rationality of humanism
Faced with this rationality of pain and death, revolutionary thought—especially in its Cuban strand—has articulated a de facto alternative: the rationality of life. It is not based on accumulation, but on social reproduction; not on competition, but on cooperation; not on domination, but on solidarity.

This model is not a defensive reaction, but a civilizational project with deep roots. José Martí already spoke of “Our America” as a space of unity against imperialism. Che Guevara defined proletarian internationalism as the feeling that “the misery of any one person is the misery of all.” But it was Fidel Castro who, in the context of the Special Period and amid extreme difficulties on the island, elevated this ethic to a geopolitical principle. His position was consistent: in the face of neoliberal globalization, we must globalize solidarity.

This idea is not an abstraction. For Fidel, internationalism was “a fundamental principle of the Revolution,” not an act of charity. “We give what we have, not what is left over,” he repeated many times. In his speech of September 7, 1977, he declared, “Internationalism is the most beautiful essence, the most revolutionary essence of Marxism-Leninism.” And in 2005, while addressing the first graduating class of the Latin American Medical Training Program, he summarized the contrast, “Today we export doctors, not soldiers; we export health, not war; we export knowledge, not ignorance; we export solidarity, not selfishness.”

This thought is condensed in Fidel’s slogan: “Doctors, not bombs.” Far from being a slogan, it is an ethical and political axiom that establishes an irreconcilable dichotomy between two civilizations:

The civilization of death: Invests trillions in weapons—drones, aircraft carriers, and military-industrial complexes.
The civilization of life: Invests in medical care, vaccines, field hospitals, physician training, and the transfer of sovereign technologies.
Fraternity, in this sense, is not an abstract sentiment but a concrete policy: non-commodified exchange, cooperation without political conditions, priority for the poorest, and building national capacities. It is, ultimately, a post-capitalist globalization under construction

II- Cuban praxis: Structural foundations of systemic solidarity

Cuban medical solidarity—initiated in 1963 with the dispatch of a brigade to Algeria following that country’s independence and amid a severe health crisis resulting from the French colonial war—is neither a spontaneous initiative nor a propaganda tool. It is the result of a strategic state investment in two fundamental pillars: mass physician training and scientific-biotechnological development. These two pillars reinforce each other, creating a sustainable international cooperation system even under the siege of the blockade.

Pillar I: Mass physician training

In 1959, Cuba had 6,286 doctors for 6 million inhabitants. Following the emigration of thousands of professionals—a direct result of the rejection by sectors of the creole bourgeoisie of the nationalization of healthcare and revolutionary reforms—the revolutionary government made the universalization and massification of medical education a national priority. The result was a unique system with the highest physician-to-population ratio in the world.

Twenty-four medical schools were created in all provinces. The “education through work” model—under which students rotate through polyclinics, hospitals, and communities from their first year—became the norm. Mandatory specialization in family medicine strengthened primary care, and the system now graduates about 10,000 new doctors annually, in addition to more than 30,000 health professionals overall.

This critical mass has enabled Cuba to maintain its internal health system—considered a benchmark by the WHO—while simultaneously deploying more than 24,000 professionals in 56 countries (2025 data).

Pillar II: Scientific and biotechnological development

Parallel to this, Cuba bet on science as the axis of national development. Under Fidel’s slogan to turn the country into “a nation of women and men of science,” institutions such as the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB), the Center for Molecular Immunology (CIM), and the National Center for Scientific Research (CENIC) were created. Today, the BioCubaFarma conglomerate groups more than 30 centers and employs 20,000 people, many of them highly qualified scientists.

Its achievements are notable, with numerous medicines unique in the world. Among them is a drug that drastically reduces amputations due to diabetic foot ulcers: Heberprot-P. The world’s first therapeutic vaccine against lung cancer, developed at CIM—CimaVax-EGF—has benefited patients in Cuba and in clinical trials abroad. Nimotuzumab is a monoclonal antibody used in oncological treatments. And sovereign vaccines—against hepatitis B, meningitis, and the highly effective Abdala and Soberana against COVID-19—have guaranteed health sovereignty even under reinforced blockade.

This scientific capacity not only protects the Cuban population but also enhances international solidarity. During the pandemic, Cuba not only immunized its own people but also shared knowledge with dozens of countries, as well as other important medicines like Interferon Alfa-2b and Jusvinza.