Cuban President Fidel Castro recently celebrated the 40th anniversary of his nation's socialist revolution.

On the end of the Cold War:

The United States won the Cold War. Of course, it was very well assisted by the Soviet Union. It is quite a recent history, and it is somewhat irresponsible to express a judgment on the role of certain personalities. But let's say that the West won the Cold War, and fundamentally the United States, as the leader of the Western world. And I don't know whether anyone can doubt that the socialist camp and the USSR lost the Cold War. Because what happened was the disintegration not just of the socialist camp, but of the USSR itself. Not even Hitler dreamt of such a thing; that wasn't even mentioned in "Mein Kampf." Hitler considered the Slavs an inferior race, good only to work in the countryside, and he yearned for the lands of the Ukraine. But what happened in the Soviet Union, without firing one shot, was something nobody had ever dreamed of; and the country fragmented and it lost [the Cold War]. ...

The Third World was also a loser, because during the Cold War there were two superpowers, and one could speak of a bipolar world. And there was a space within which the Third World countries could move. Even the Non-Aligned Movement, which was made up of most of the Third World countries, emerged during the Cold War and played a role in relation to the interests of the Third World countries. Attention was focused on them because each of the superpowers wanted to exert their influence in those countries. There was talk about the Third World, about measures which could help the economy of those countries, and of economic development assistance. At the end of the Cold War, one superpower ceased to exist, and only one superpower remained, which had absolute hegemony. The bipolar world was transformed into a unipolar world, leaving the United States with enormous power.

Today, sovereignty is a principle which is completely ignored. The U.N. institutions are lagging behind; we would need a more democratic United Nations, and at least a broader Security Council where the different regions of the world would be represented, with a right to veto -- because there is no other choice, since those who have it do not want to relinquish it. But it would be better not to have the right of veto. A sort of world government is taking shape, with world institutions, but they are characterized by the fact that they come under the hegemony of only one government and one superpower. In other words, those institutions exist nowadays in a unipolar world. There are interventions everywhere, except in the case of a big country like China, or Russia -- still -- or Europe, or a nuclear power. No one nowadays can guarantee the sovereignty of small or medium-sized countries. I mean, the concept of sovereignty is disappearing even before these countries have had a chance to develop. It seems to me that from the political, military and economic point of view, there is no other power that can compete with the United States.

On the future:

I think that one of the stages of the future will be a multipolar world, in which there will be the United States on the one hand; Europe on the other; Russia, provided it is able to overcome the tremendous obstacles ahead of it, if it manages to preserve its unity and if it's able to begin to develop; China, which is developing rapidly; and Japan and Southeast Asia. In economic terms, a multipolar world could be developed.

I think that that will be an intermediate stage before the development of the concept or the reality of a global world can be realized both economically and politically. I think that we will have to go along that road, and that strong competition will develop -- something which can already be observed between Europe and the United States, between the euro and the dollar, between the yuan and the yen, between the Chinese and the Japanese. No one knows when the ruble will be able to compete. But the most logical thing that could happen is the development of strong competition in the economic area between the different regions of the world. Latin America is nowadays an object of dispute between the United States and Europe: the United States with its "free trade in the Americas" idea, the South Americans with their idea of the Mercosur and economic union, the Europeans trying to preserve their influence and space in Latin America particularly, and the United States trying to use as much economic space as possible in this hemisphere.

In other words, there will no longer the kind of military confrontation which took place at a certain time -- the kind of confrontation that characterized the Cold War. But a new struggle is coming into being, a tremendous struggle among regions in the field of the economy. But inevitably, they will all have to march towards that global world. As customs tariffs and the remaining barriers are lifted, they march towards that world, where they will arrive sooner or later. ...

I trust that solidarity will prevail over xenophobia and racism, that generosity will prevail over selfishness.