Harry Targ
I wrote in 1992 about the Cuban Revolution (Cuba and the USA: A New World Order? International Publishers, 6):
“….the Cuban revolution (even until this
day) has constituted a living experiment that most progressive forces around
the world identify with. Even though each society has its own history, class
structure, level of development, and revolutionary potential, Cuba’s desire to
create a government to serve its people and at the same time to transform them
from a traditional consciousness to a revolutionary consciousness is shared by
progressives everywhere. For progressives, Cuba is a laboratory, a grand social
experiment that will provide knowledge for others as they seek fundamental
change in their own societies…..Cuba’s successes in the years ahead are
successes of all progressive forces and, similarly Cuba’s defeats are defeats
for all who wish to create egalitarian and humane societies”.
(From an Internal Memorandum Circulated in the
Eisenhower Administration Recommending Policies to Undermine the Popularity of
the Cuban Revolution)
“… every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba. If such a policy is adopted, it should be the result of a positive decision which would call forth a line of action which, while as adroit and inconspicuous as possible, makes the greatest inroads in denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government. ”. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v06/d499
On The Cuban/US Experience: Revolution and Counter
Revolution
And
yet Americans are more ignorant of the nature of the Cuban Revolution and
U.S.-Cuban relations than are the people of almost any other country in the
world. Except for those few Americans with access to a handful of liberal and
radical publications the people of this country have been subjected to an
unrelieved campaign of distortion, or outright slander of Fidel Castro and the
revolution he leads. The determined hostility of American leaders to the Cuban
Revolution, the implementation of a system of economic harassment, and the
threat of military intervention, not only endanger the Cuban Revolution, but
increase the tempo of the cold war at home and abroad (Editors,
“The Cuban Revolution: The New Crisis in Cold War Ideology,” Studies on the Left, Volume 1, Number,
1960, 1).
This statement was published in the summer of 1960! sixty-five
years later the same assessment of United States/Cuban relations still holds.
The story of the Cuban revolution needs to be retold
as we move ahead to stop a war on Cuba, end the economic blockade, and
establish a new United States/Cuban relationship.
Havana street scene in 2010. Inset below: school kids in Havana, 2010. Photos by Desmond Boylan / Reuters
The Revolutionary Vision
The idea of “revolution” refers to a fundamental
transformation of economic and political structures and peoples’ consciousness
of their place in society and the values that should determine human
behavior. Also, revolution is not a fixed “thing” but a process. That
means that changes in structures, patterns of behavior, and consciousness are
changing over time and in the case of revolution are moving toward, rather than
away from, more complete human fulfillment.
What has been most fascinating to observe about the Cuban Revolution has been its constantly changing character. Cubans have debated and made decisions about gradual versus fundamental changes, the need to experiment with different ways to allocate scarce national resources and, most critical, how to respond to external economic, political, and military assaults. Cuban society has been an experimental laboratory, changing public policies as contexts demand. If one set of policies became problematic, the Cubans moved in different directions. Usually change came after heated debate at all levels of society.
For example, after the 26th of July Movement
seized power, the revolutionary regime launched programs to reduce rents for
urban dwellers, established a nationwide literacy campaign, and after a cool
U.S. response to the new government, put in place a large agrarian reform
program. As United States hostility escalated Cuba established diplomatic and
economic relations with the former Soviet Union. From that point US/Cuban
hostilities became permanent.
Cuban History
The story of the Cuban revolution needs to be retold
as we move ahead to establish a new United States/Cuban relationship.
Cuba was a colony of the Spanish for 400 years, an
economic vassal of the British and the United States for more than 100 years,
and a slave state from the fifteenth century to the end of the nineteenth
century.
The domination of the island by foreigners, juxtaposed
with a culture enriched by African roots (the indigenous people were largely
obliterated by the Spanish), led to repeated efforts to resist colonialism
before 1898 and neo-colonialism after that. Slaves, Afro/Cubans, and Spanish
born landowners seeking freedom from the Spanish crown often rose up to
overthrow the yoke of imperialism.
Cuban Revolutionaries, inspired by visionary poet Jose
Marti, were on the verge of defeating Spanish colonialism in the 1890s. The
United States sent armies to the island to defeat the Spanish and establish a
puppet government to insure its economic and political control. To secure support for the war at home the
American media and popular music were filled with images of Cuba as the “damsel
in distress” and bungling Afro/Cuban revolutionaries. The dominant ideology of
the United States, manifest destiny and white Christian duty, drove the
argument for war on Spain.
After the 1898 war, the United States military, with the support of small numbers of compliant Cubans, created a government that would open the door completely for United States investments, commercial penetration, an externally-controlled tourist sector, and North American gangsters. The U.S. neo-colonial regime on the island stimulated pockets of economic development in a sea of human misery. Responding to grotesque economic suffering in the 1950s a band of revolutionaries (led by Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos, Celia Sanchez, and Haydee Santamaria) defeated the U.S. backed military regime of Fulgencio Batista.
Vilma Espin, Cuban Revolutionary
The Cuban Revolution of 1959 began in the nineteenth
century and was driven by 400 years of nationalism, a vision of democracy, and
a passion for economic justice. This vision was articulated in Fidel Castro’s
famous “History Will Absolve Me” speech given before being sentenced to prison
after a failed military action against Batista in 1953. He spoke of five goals
of his revolution: returning power to the people; giving land to the people who
work it; providing workers a significant share of profits from corporations;
granting sugar planters a quota of the value of the crop they produce; and
confiscating lands acquired through fraud. Then he said, the Revolution would
carry out agrarian reform, nationalize key sectors of the economy, institute
educational reforms, and provide a decent livelihood for manual and
intellectual labor.
The
problem of the land, the problem of industrialization, the problem of housing,
the problem of unemployment, the problem of education and the problem of the
people’s health: these are the six problems we would take immediate steps to
solve, along with restoration of civil liberties and political democracy (Fidel Castro, “
History Will Absolve Me,” Castro Internet Archive, www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1953).
Almost immediately the revolutionaries who had seized
power in January, 1959 began to implement the program envisioned by the Castro
speech. Over the next sixty years, with heated debates inside Cuba,
experiments--some successful, some failed--were carried out. Despite
international pressures and the changing global political economy, much of the
program has been institutionalized to the benefit of most Cubans.
Education and health care became free to all Cubans. Basic, but modest, nutritional needs have been met. Cubans have participated in significant political discussion about public policy. And Cuban society has been a laboratory for experimentation.
In the 1960s Cubans discussed whether there was a need
for monetary incentives to motivate work or whether revolutionary enthusiasm
was sufficient to maintain production. Debates occurred over the years also
about whether a state-directed economy, a mixed one, or some combination would
best promote development; how to engage in international solidarity; and
whether there was a need to affiliate with super powers such as the former
Soviet Union. Central to the Cuban model is the proposition that when policies
work they get institutionalized; when they fail they get changed.
The United States reaction to the Cuban Revolution has
been as the Studies on the Left article
warned in 1960. U.S. policy has included military invasions, sabotage,
assassination attempts on the life of Fidel Castro, an economic blockade,
subversion including beaming propaganda radio and television broadcasts to the
island, efforts to isolate Cuba from the international system, restrictions on
United States travelers to the island, listing Cuba as a state sponsor of
terrorism, and in the long-run most importantly portraying in government
statements and the mass media the image of Cuba as a totalitarian state that
oppresses its people.
On December 17, 2014. President Raul Castro and Barack
Obama announced that the U.S./Cuban relationship would change. The United States and Cuba, President Obama
said, would begin negotiations to reestablish diplomatic relations, open embassies,
and move to eliminate the U.S. economic blockade and restrictions on American
travel to the island. This announcement was broadly celebrated by nations
everywhere, the Pope who had lobbied Washington for the policy change, and
Americans and Cubans alike. Of course, in both countries there were skeptics
and the strong and vocal Cuban-American lobby immediately condemned the
announced policy changes.
The United States and Cuba began negotiating the
announced normalization of relations and several steps have been taken by both
countries including:
-easing restrictions on remittances from
Cuban/American families to relatives on the island
-using executive action in the United States to loosen
restrictions on American travel to Cuba and reestablishing the capacity for
banking connections with the island
-authorizing flights from the United States to Cuba by
multiple airlines
-giving authority to some companies to invest in small
businesses in Cuba and the increase in trade of selected U.S. commodities,
primarily agricultural products and building materials
-taking Cuba off the State Department list of sponsors
of terrorism
And President Obama deliberated with President Raul
Castro at the April, 2015 meeting of the Summit of the Americas in Panama,
communicating the image of the return to normal diplomatic relations.
However, much needed to be done to complete the
normalization of diplomatic relations.
The U.S. economic embargo had not been lifted. The Helms-Burton Act,
which prohibits foreign companies from having commercial relations with the
island and then the United States, was not repealed. And the House of
Representatives passed a resolution that challenged President Obama’s executive
authority to expand the categories of U.S. citizens who could travel to Cuba
without applying for a license from the Treasury Department. In addition, many
issues of relevance to the two countries such as those involving immigration,
control of drug trafficking, and cooperation on disaster relief were yet to be
resolved.
Most Americans, including Cuban/Americans, supported the full normalization of relations. But a small number of politicians from both political parties who opposed normalization of relations continued to use their legislative and public political leverage to reverse the will of the American and Cuban people. One example was the misrepresentation of the case of Assata Shakur, who had lived in Cuba for over thirty years. Shakur, a former member of the Black Panther Party was tried and convicted on dubious grounds of murdering a police officer in New Jersey and who fled to Cuba in 1984, was being used by anti-Cuban activists to resist the normalization of relations, claiming that Cuba is harboring “terrorists.”
Where Does the Foreign Policy of Donald
Trump Fit?
Taking “the long view” of United States foreign
policy, it is clear that from NSC-68; to the response to the Soviet challenges
in space such as during the Sputnik era; to global wars in Korea, Vietnam,
Afghanistan, and Iraq; to covert interventions in the Middle East, Latin
America, Asia, and Africa, the United States has consistently pursued global
hegemony, a program of which Cuban policy is a part. It is also clear that the
pursuit of empire has of necessity involved the creation of a permanent war
economy, an economy that overcomes economic stagnation by the infusion of
enormous military expenditures.
It is also clear that justification for empire and
military spending has necessitated the construction of an enemy, first the
Soviet Union and international communism; then terrorism; and now China. And
Cuba has always served as such an enemy in “our back yard.” The obverse of a
demonic enemy requires a conception of self to justify the imperial project.
That self historically has been various iterations of American exceptionalism,
the indispensable nation, US humanitarianism, and implicitly or explicitly the
superiority of the white race and western civilization.
In this light, while specific policies vary, the trajectory of US foreign policy in the twenty-first century is a continuation of the policies and programs that were institutionalized in the twentieth century. Three seem primary. First, military spending, particularly in new technologies, continues unabated. And as the Council on Foreign Relations warned there is a the danger of the United States “falling behind,” the same metaphor that was used by the writers of the NSC-68 document, or the Gaither and Rockefeller Reports composed in the late 1950s to challenge President Eisenhower’s worry about a military/industrial complex, the response to Sputnik, Secretary of Defense McNamara’s transformation of the Pentagon to scientific management in the 1960s, or President Reagan’s huge increase of armaments in the 1980s to overcome the “window of vulnerability.”
Second, the United States continues to engage in
policies recently referred to as “hybrid wars.” The concept of hybrid wars
suggests that while traditional warfare between nations has declined, warfare
within countries has increased. Internal wars, the hybrid wars theorists
suggest, are encouraged and supported by covert interventions, employing
private armies, spies, and other operatives financed by outside nations like
the United States.
Also the hybrid wars concept refers to the use of
economic warfare, embargoes and blockades, to bring down adversarial states and
movements. The blockades of Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran are examples. Therefore,
the hybrid war concept suggests the carrying out of wars by other, less
visible, means.
Third, much of the discourse on the US role in
the world replicates the bipolar, superpower narrative of the Cold War and, in addition,
the dangerous rise of the Global South. In both cases the enemy is China. As
Alfred McCoy has pointed out (In the Shadows of the American Empire,
2017), the United States in the twenty first century sees its economic hegemony
being undermined by Chinese economic development and global reach. To challenge
this, McCoy argues, the United States has taken on a project to recreate its
military hegemony: AI, a space force, biometrics, new high-tech aircraft etc.
If the US cannot maintain its hegemony economically, it will have to do so
militarily.
In addition to the Chinese threat, countries of the
Global South, to some degree inspired by Cuba, have been meeting to establish
greater economic cooperation to overcome their common experiences of centuries
of European and United States dominance. Tiny Cuba has been an exemplar of
Global South resistance. And China has stepped forward as a “great power”. allying
with this new movement with the vision of creating a multipolar world.
Recognizing these continuities in United States foreign policy, commentators appropriately recognize the idiosyncrasies of foreign policy in the Trump era, particularly during his first term. He reached out to North Korea and Russia. He has rhetorically claimed that the United States must withdraw military forces from trouble spots around the world, including the Middle East. He declared that the United States could not be “the policeman of the world,” a declaration made by former President Nixon as he escalated bombing of Vietnam and initiated plans to overthrow the Allende regime in Chile.
However, while Trump moved in one direction he almost
immediately undermined the policies he has ordered. His announced withdrawal
from Syria, while in the abstract a sign of a more realistic assessment of US
military presence in the Middle East was coupled with a direct or implied
invitation to the Turkish military to invade Northeast Syria to defeat the
Kurds. Also, at the same time he was withdrawing troops from Syria, the Defense
Department announced the United States was sending support troops to Saudi
Arabia. He withdrew from the accord with Iran on nuclear weapons and the Paris
Climate Change agreement.
Time after time, one foreign policy decision has
contradicted by another. Sometimes policies seem to be made with little
historical awareness and without sufficient consultation with professional
diplomats. (One is reminded of the old Nixon idea, the so-called “madman
theory.” Nixon allegedly wanted to appear mad so that adversaries would be
deterred from acting in ways contrary to US interests out of fear of random
responses).
During his first term the contradictory character of
Trump foreign policy left the peace movement befuddled. How does it respond to
Trump’s occasional acts that go against the traditional imperial grain at the
same time that he acts impetuously increasing the dangers of war? How does the
peace movement participate in the construction of a progressive majority that
justifiably seeks to overturn the Trump era and all that it stands for: climate
disaster, growing economic inequality, racism, sexism, homophobia, and hybrid
war?
While much of the foreign policy of his first term in office was confused, since he assumed office in 2025, he asserted an unequivocal tilt toward militarism. In the fall of 2025 he began an assassination campaign against those in small boats sailing in the Caribbean, alleging that those on the boats were carrying drugs. He escalated threats against Venezuela and in early January 2026 kidnapped the President and First Lady of Venezuela. This was followed in February by a brutal bombing campaign against targets in Iran (in conjunction with Israeli militarism). During all this time the United States supported Israel’s genocidal war on the Gazan people. And from time to time during this militarization of his foreign policy he has implied or stated directly that Cuba would be next. Direct killing now is being coupled with hybrid war.
Perhaps the task for the peace movement is to include
in the project of building a progressive majority ideas about challenging the
US as an imperial power, proclaiming that a progressive agenda requires the
dismantling of the permanent war economy. These are truly troubled times, with
to a substantial degree the survival of humanity and nature at stake. The war
system is a significant part of what the struggle is about.
As Global Health Partners has written about US/Cuban
policy today:
“Washington’s
ever-tightening embargo has thrown Cuba into the worst economic and healthcare
crisis in its history. The U.S. is using its spurious inclusion of Cuba on the
list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism” to wield increasingly punitive measures
that limit the supply of food, fuel and basic medical supplies. To bolster this
inhumane policy, right-wing members of Congress are slipping new, outrageous
sanctions into broad budget legislation aimed at keeping the U.S. government
running.
No War on Cuba! End the Blockade!
The dramatic gestures by Presidents Obama and Raul Castro
set the stage for the normalization of diplomatic relations, but with the reversals
in policy by Trump (Biden did not reverse Trump’s Cuba policies either) more
work needs to be done.
First, activists must continue to pressure their
legislators to repeal the Helms-Burton Act and oppose any efforts by their
peers to re-impose legislation that will stop the process of change. Lobbying
should be complemented by rallies and marches. Support should be given to those
organizations which have been on the front lines of Cuba Solidarity for years
such as Pastors for Peace. In addition, people to people exchanges, community
to community outreach, and high school and university study abroad programs
should be encouraged. (There were many US/Cuban educational exchange programs
in the first decade of this century)
Second, those in solidarity with the Cuban Revolution should support the economic reforms initiated by the Cuban people before the resumption of the brutal US policies by Trump. The clearest manifestation of these principles is reflected in the development of workplace cooperatives in both cities and the countryside and before the draconian US policies access to adequate diet, health care, and education, Educating the American public should include information that Cuba, before escalated US aggression, had been embarking on new economic arrangements that began to fulfilled human needs, in the spirit of the “History Will Absolve Me” speech. AND, it could be argued that Fidel Castro’s vision for Cuba might also be relevant for the United States.
In sum, the solidarity movement should continue the
process of public education about Cuba, explaining the realities of Cuban
history, celebrating Cuban accomplishments in health care and education, and
recognizing the richness and diversity of Cuban culture. Ironically, despite
the long and often painful relationship the Cuban people have had with the
United States, the diversity of the two nation’s cultures are inextricably
connected. That shared experience should be celebrated. NO WAR ON CUBA! END THE
BLOCKADE!
