International Critical Thought
Raul Rodriguez and Harry Targ
Published online: 15 Nov 2018
ABSTRACT
This paper reviews the history of US-Cuban relations. It identifies the modest but significant changes in that policy brought about by negotiations during the Barack Obama and Raul Castro Administrations. It then examines the policy reversals initiated by President Trump during his first year in office. The paper suggests that US policy toward Cuba is characteristic of US foreign policy generally.
KEYWORDS: US-Cuban relations, US foreign policy, Cuba and the world
“And yet Americans are more ignorant of the nature of the Cuban Revolution and US-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. (Studies on the Left. 1960. “Editorial: The Cuban Revolution: The New Crisis in Cold War Ideology.” Studies on the Left 1 (3).
This statement was published in the summer of 1960! Fifty-seven years later the same assessment of the Cuban revolution is being propagated by the Trump Administration in league with counterrevolutionary Cubans, mostly from South Florida and New Jersey. They wish to challenge the modest efforts of the Barack Obama administration to set the bilateral relations between the two nations on a different trajectory, exploring different ways to engage politically and diplomatically with the island nation.
Overall, the Trump administration is relentlessly attempting to dismantle every aspect of its predecessor in both domestic and foreign policy. The reversal of Obama policy towards Cuba can be seen as a microcosm and a metaphor for reversals of United States foreign policy in general: withdrawal from the Paris Climate Change accords; demanding renegotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and North America Free Trade Agreements; refusing to recertify the Iran Nuclear Deal as it stands; recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of the state of Israel; and reinforcing the divisive role of US foreign policy towards the Middle East in general. He has shifted from diplomacy to hyperbolic rhetoric and from an attempt at negotiation to threats of war, as reflected in the nuclear crisis over the Korean peninsula. During the Obama period there was a modest recognition that the world was becoming multi-polar, with a reinforcement of soft power and a liberal order under US hegemony. However, the Trump Administration has reembraced the Cold War style mythology that a world based on US hegemony is possible irrespective of trends toward globalization, with selective protectionism and national sovereignty only for the United States.
The Cuba Story Revisited
The story of the Cuban revolution needs to be retold as we move ahead to establish a new US-Cuban relationship. 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 and fight Spanish colonialism before 1898 and US imperialism and neo-colonial status after that. For Cubans an independent nation state and path to development and self-determination has been a fundamental goal. That goal remained elusive during the second half of the nineteenth century as Spanish colonial rule and other foreign vested interests opposed it.
While Cuba had been formerly under Spanish rule, the United States gradually became Cuba’s main trading partner as US companies and investors established a foothold on the island bringing great economic and cultural influence. Mining was a sector of great interest for US companies due to the increasing demand for iron ore and manganese in the United States.1. In 1883, iron ore mining started with Juragua Iron Company, a subsidiary of Bethlemen Iron. In 1884, it exported 21,000 tons. In 1895, the Spanish-American Iron campany exported 74,000 tons (Le Riverend, J. 1974. Historia Económica de Cuba, Edición Revolucionaria [Economic History of Cuba, Revolutionary Edition]. La Habana: Instituto Cubano del Libro. 508). By 1880, Louis Perez Jr., reminds us, the United States had become the economic metropolis of Cuba (see Perez Jr, L. 1983. “Towards Dependency and Revolution: The Political Economy of Cuba between Wars.” Latin American Research Review 18 (1): 127–142.[Web of Science ®], The Spanish colonial authority 2 accepted the reality in order to profit from the growing US-Cuban economic interaction. Spanish policy and its implications is detailed in Julio Le Riverend (1974) Historia Económica de Cuba, Edición Revolucionaria [Economic History of Cuba, Revolutionary Edition]. La Habana: Instituto Cubano del Libro. 509–522).
After 1898, it was the emergence of US imperial interests in the region and the globe which became an even more formidable obstacle to the aspirations of nationalist Cubans to realize their national project, aspiring to overcome dependence, achieving full independence.
Cuban revolutionaries were led and inspired by visionary intellectual Jose Marti,Marti (1853–1895), writer, journalist and diplomat, who lived in New York for 15 years and understood the political forces driving US politics, its main trends and the expansionist and hegemonic aspiration of the United States in the Caribbean and the rest of the continent to the south.3 Marti made a very important distinction between Anglo Saxon America and today’s Latin America south of the Rio Grande, which he called “Our America.” Marti’s nationalist project for Cuba was opposed to the US imperialist project for the continent which was on the verge of defeating Spanish colonialism in the late 1890s. The United States intervened in a short inter-imperialist war to defeat the Spanish and claim the right to establish a puppet government to insure its economic and political control for years to come. 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,” suffering Spanish misrule and outright cruelty, and bungling Afro/Cuban revolutionaries (Perez Jr, L. 2011. Cuba in the American Imagination: Metaphor and Imperial Ethos. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 25–94). The dominant ideology of the United States, manifest destiny and white Christian duty, drove the argument for war on Spain. The Cuban people today still accept the view that the United States created a dependent and neocolonial Cuban republic.
For pro-US annexationists and a broad section of the US upper classes, a counter-narrative emerged, based upon a very different understanding of what the United States did for Cuba. The role of the United States was cast as a benevolent empire helping Cuba to become a “civilized” nation. The resistance of the Cuban people to this view was a source of annoyance for most of the important representatives of the US ruling class. President Theodore Roosevelt, for example, reacted to the 1906 political crisis in Cuba that was generated by the conflict over the reelection bid of an unpopular pro-US first President of the 1902 Republic:
"Just at this moment I am so angry with that infernal little Cuba republic that I would like to wipe its people from the face of the earth. All we wanted from them was that they behave themselves and be prosperous and happy so we would not have to interfere and now lo and behold they have started an utterly unjustified revolution." (quoted in Winter 2013, Winter, M. 2013. Cuba for the Misinformed: Facts from the Forbidden Island. Napa: Westsong Publishing.)
For Cuban nationalists seeking an independent nation-state, it was what the United States did to Cuba that enraged and inspired them as the feeling of unfulfilled national realization settled in following the installation of the republic of 1902. After the 1898 war, the US military, with the support of small numbers of compliant Cubans, created a government that would open the door completely to US investments, commercial penetration, an externally-controlled tourist sector, and North American gangsters. The United States instituted the pillars of a neo-colonial regime: a reciprocity treaty, and an amendment in the Cuban constitution coupled with a permanent treaty that would limit Cuban sovereignty. A US military base was created on Cuban soil to solidify US geo-political and geo-economic control of the Caribbean basin and access to the Western Hemisphere. For Cuba, it meant creating pockets of economic development in a sea of human misery.
Cuban historians, such as Emilio Roig de Leuschering (1889–1964), 4 the First City Historian of Havana wrote that " Cuba no debe su independencia a Estados Unidos [Cuba Does Not Owe Its Independence to the United States]." . He elaborated it further in 1962 (De Leuschering, E. R. 1962. La Tradicion antiimperilaista de Nuestra Historia [The Anti-imperialist Tradition in Our History]. La Habana: Oficina del Historiador de la Habana.,La Tradicion anti-imperilaista de Nuestra Historia. The Antiimperialist Tradition in Our History, a historiographical essay traced Cuba’s resistance to nineteenth century US hegemonic designs to the thinking of Felix Varela and Jose Marti. He argued that anti-imperialism was at the core of the Cuban revolution of 1959, based both on the history of antiimperialist sentiment and the drive for social justice and national sovereignty.
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 (Castro, F. 1953. “History Will Absolve Me”) https://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1953/10/16.htm.) delivered before being sentenced to prison after a failed military action against Batista in 1953 .5
Castro spoke of five goals of his revolution: returning power to the people; giving land to the people who work on 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" (Castro, F. 1953. “History Will Absolve Me.”) https://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1953/10/16.htm.
Almost immediately the revolutionaries who had seized power in January, 1959 began to implement the program envisioned by the Castro speech. Over the next fifty 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.
The structural transformation implemented soon after January 1, 1959 by the new Cuban government took the first steps towards the implementation of the Moncada Program.6. The Moncada Program became the platform of the movement 26 of July (M-26-7) that is named after the military garrison that was attacked on July 26, 1953 by a group led by Fidel Castro. The Program, which became basically the platform of the new government, was profoundly nationalistic. The 1940 Constitution was reinstated and amended, the telephone company was nationalized as early as March 1959, and on May 17, 1959 the Agrarian Reform Law was enacted. For an excellent compilation of the text of the new laws and their impact see Jose Bell Lara, Delia Luisa Lopez Garcia, and Tania Caram Leon 2008. Documentos de la Revolución Cubana 1959 [Documents of the Cuban Revolution 1959]. La Habana: Editorial Ciencias Sociales. http://www.cubadebate.cu/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/documentos-revolucion-cubana.pdf.
Such actions amounted to a strong and swift structural transformation that began incorporating new property and class relations. These actions also limited the possibilities for private capital accumulation. The Cuban government saw these actions as a means to achieve economic sovereignty and social justice. By the end of 1959, the Eisenhower Administration started to articulate a policy based mainly, but not solely, on economic sanctions on Cuba. The United States government— with the additional support of the Cuban propertied class—was to gradually apply economic pressure in the form of economic sanctions, political and diplomatic isolation, military threats and covert actions aimed at overthrowing the government from the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of the island organized by the Central Intelligence Agency to the threat of nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis.
Over the last decades of the twentieth century, education and health care became free for all Cubans, basic, modest, nutritional needs have been met, and Cubans have participated in significant political discussion about public policies. 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, or some combination of state planning and markets would best promote development. On international relations, Cubans sought to engage in international solidarity: the foreign policy of post 1959 revolutionary Cuba impacted many other processes and projects emerging from its colonial past as it developed a clear counter hegemonic project. It also reflected on whether there was a need to affiliate with superpowers such as the former Soviet Union. Central to the Cuban model has been 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 1960, “Editorial: The Cuban Revolution: The New Crisis in Cold War Ideology.” noted, was that of opposition and confrontation. Since the early 1960s, US policy has included military invasions, sabotage, assassination attempts on the life of Fidel Castro, an economic blockade, and such subversive actions as beaming propaganda radio and television broadcasts to the island. In addition, the United States sought to isolate Cuba from the international system: it restricted the right of US citizens to travel to Cuba. It listed Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism. And in the long-run, most importantly, it portrayed, in government statements and the mass media, the image of Cuba as a totalitarian state that oppresses its people. As early as November 1959 the US Secretary of State Christian Herter wrote a detailed memo that affirms, among other things,
"[t]hat the prolonged continuation of the Castro regime in Cuba in its present form would have serious adverse effects on the United States position in Latin America and corresponding advantages for international Communism; and … that only by the building up within Cuba of a coherent opposition consisting of elements desirous of achieving political and economic progress within a framework of good United States-Cuban relations can the Castro regime be checked or replaced." (Office of the Historian, Department of State of USA 1959 , Memorandum from the Secretary of State to the President, Washington, November 5, 1959: Foreign Relations of the United States 1958–1960, Cuba, Volume 6.)
US Policy Takes a New Turn (Obama’s Fourth Quarter)
After eighteen months of secret negotiations, on December 17, 2014 Cuban President Raul Castro and US president Barack Obama made simultaneous announcements that the US-Cuban relationship would change. The United States and Cuba, President Obama said, would begin negotiations to reestablish diplomatic relations, open embassies, and move to modify the US comprehensive economic blockade and restrictions on American travel to the island. The president would use his executive powers to begin a process of changing relations between the two countries. This announcement was broadly celebrated by nations everywhere. Pope Francis, who had lobbied Washington for the policy change, supported the efforts of tension reduction. And Americans in general and particularly those with commercial interests in improved relations applauded the new policy.
The announcement, and the process that would start immediately after, was of great significance to the historical development of the bilateral relations between Cuba and the United States for several reasons. First, it was the first time the United States government recognized the legitimacy of the post 1959 Cuban government. The bilateral dialogue would be carried out on an equal footing without conditions, and it would be based on internationally recognized rules, which had long been Cuba’s main demand. Second, US Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed the new relationship in his speech at the opening of the US embassy in Havana on July 20th, 2015.
"The restoration of diplomatic ties will also make it easier for our governments to engage. After all, we are neighbors, and neighbors will always have much to discuss in such areas as civil aviation, migration policy, disaster preparedness, protecting marine environment, global climate change, and other tougher and more complicated issues. Having normal relations makes it easier for us to talk, and talk can deepen understanding even when we know full well we will not see eye to eye on everything." (Kerry, J. 2015. “Secretary Kerry’s Remarks at Flag Raising Ceremony.” https://uy.usembassy.gov/secretary-kerrys-remarks-at-flag-raising-ceremony)
Since December, 2014, when the United States and Cuba announced the beginning of a process that would lead to normalization of relations, several steps were taken by both countries (Sullivan, M. P. 2017. Cuba: Issues and Actions in the 114th Congress. Washington, DC: Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service) Restrictions were eased on remittances from Cuban-American families to relatives on the island.
Also, using his executive powers, President Obama loosened restrictions on American travel to Cuba and reestablished the capacity for banking connections with the island. The new policy authorized flights from the United States to Cuba by multiple airlines and some companies obtained licenses to engage in further increases of commercial relations. Last but not least, Cuba was removed from the State Department list of countries that are sponsors of international terrorism (Sullivan, M. P. 2017. Cuba: Issues and Actions in the 114th Congress. Washington, DC: Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service).
In all, 23 agreements were reached, only four of which were binding. Representatives of both governments were meeting and finishing up agreements on January 12, 2017, including the elimination of the wet foot/dry foot policy 7 (Sullivan, M. P. 2017. Cuba: Issues and Actions in the 114th Congress. Washington, DC: Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service). Wet Foot Dry Foot interpretation of the Cuban Adjustment Act in 1966 gave the Cubans who arrived illegally in the United States, once they set foot on US territory (dry foot), the right to claim the status of political refugee. Those intercepted by coast guard in the open seas (wet foot) were returned to Cuba.
Many issues of relevance to the two countries such as those involving immigration, control of drug trafficking, and cooperation on environment, disaster relief and joint medical research were part of the agreements. Agreements were signed at a host of high-level meetings between the US and Cuban government officials. Also, a record number of congressional delegations, state governors, and trade missions visited Cuba in search of information about economic opportunities.
It is important to remember that this diplomatic process, unlike others between nations in conflict, started with economic sanctions on Cuba in place: a US military base on Cuban territory, the existence of US claims of confiscated property, and Cuban claims of damages based on the US economic war on the island nation.
Subsequent to the joint announcement of improved relations, 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 (Sullivan, M. P.2017. Cuba: Issues and Actions in the 114th Congress. Washington, DC: Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service.)
To be sure, much more needed to be done to complete the normalization of diplomatic relations. The US economic embargo had not been lifted. The Helms-Burton Act of 1996 remained the most formidable obstacle, since it gave the legislative branch the power to conduct Cuba policy and it reinforced the extraterritoriality of US law (Gordon, J. 2012. “The US Embargo against Cuba and the Diplomatic Challenges to Extraterritoriality.”) http://www.invisiblewar.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/The-US-Embargo-Against-Cuba-and-theDiplomatic-Challenges-to-Extraterritoriality3.pdf.) Though not explicit, Helms Burton seeks to make it more difficult for third country companies to conduct normal trading relations with Cuba.
The US economic sanctions against Cuba began when President Eisenhower severed ties with Cuba in early 1961 under the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA) which allowed the president to impose economic sanctions on a hostile country during wartime “or any other period of national emergency declared by the President” (Gordon, J. 2012. “The US Embargo against Cuba and the Diplomatic Challenges to Extraterritoriality.” http://www.invisiblewar.net/wpcontent/uploads/2010/08/The-US-Embargo-Against-Cuba-and-the-Diplomatic-Challenges-toExtraterritoriality3.pdf. Later that year, Congress passed the Foreign Assistance Act banning all aid to communist countries. Under its authority, in 1962, President Kennedy issued a proclamation which prohibited “the importation into the United States of all goods of Cuban origin and goods imported from or through Cuba” (Gordon, J. 2012. “The US Embargo against Cuba and the Diplomatic Challenges to Extraterritoriality.”)
http://www.invisiblewar.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/The-US-Embargo-Against-Cuba-and-theDiplomatic-Challenges-to-Extraterritoriality3.pdf. This was the original framework for the embargo. The Cuban Assets Controls Regulations (CACR), issued under the TWEA, authorized the Treasury Department to regulate commercial transactions. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) issued the specific regulations that implemented the embargo. These regulations have varied to some extent with changes in administration (Gordon, J. 2012. “The US Embargo against Cuba and the Diplomatic Challenges to Extraterritoriality.”) https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=philosophy-facultypubs
However, the discretion of the President to remove or alter the terms of the embargo was limited when Congress passed two additional laws in the 1990s, the Torricelli Act or “Cuba Democracy Act” in 1992 and the Helms Burton Act or “The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act,” which further tightened the embargo (Gordon, J. 2012. “The US Embargo against Cuba and the Diplomatic Challenges to Extraterritoriality.”)
https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=philosophy-facultypubs
In 2000, Congress passed the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act, providing limited exceptions to the embargo, primarily by allowing US companies to sell agricultural and medical products to Cuba, subject to a number of limitations. The economic sanctions not only deprives Cuba of access to US markets and goods, but interferes in its trade with third-party countries; prohibits US dollar transactions, even with banks and trade partners in third-party countries. Other embargoes, such as the Security Council sanctions imposed on Iraq in the 1990s, have caused greater humanitarian harm than the US embargo against Cuba. Yet, in some regards the US measures against Cuba are far more extensive, affecting every aspect of commerce, travel, economic development, and even humanitarian contributions. Overall, Cuba estimates the total damages from the US embargo to be in excess of $100 billion (Gordon, J. 2012. “The US Embargo against Cuba and the Diplomatic Challenges to Extraterritoriality.”) https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=philosophy-facultypubs
In an effort to consolidate the process of return to normal diplomatic relations, the Obama administration issued the Presidential Policy Directive PPD143. This turned out to be an important document; for the first time, a US government renounced its promise of regime change and stated its recognition of the legitimacy of the Cuban government. However, the document also maintained that the United States still had an historical obligation to play a role in Cuba’s future.
The Obama administration’s policy shift toward normalizing relations with Cuba was supported by most US citizens, including the majority of Cuban Americans as several polls indicated (Cohen, Z. C. 2015. “Poll: Cuban-Americans Shift in Favor of Normalizing US-Cuba Relations.” https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/poll-cuban-americans-shift-in-favor-ofnormalizing-us-cuba-relations/434985/.2.html). Also support came from the foreign policy and national security establishment and the business community, especially the agribusiness and travel sectors. But a small number of politicians from both political parties who opposed normalization of relations used their legislative and public political leverage to reverse the will of the American and Cuban people.
In sum: the dramatic gestures by Presidents Obama and Castro set the stage for the normalization of diplomatic relations, but as of January 20, 2017 when the Presidency changed in the United States, more policy changes were needed to reestablish full diplomatic and economic relations between the two countries.
First, the Helms-Burton Act remained effective, restricting economic relations and conditioning any significant long-term improvement between the two countries on political change in Cuba.
Second, US official statements declared that the United States had just changed their tactics and that their strategy remained the same. This was in no way an acceptance of the proposition that the economic reforms being introduced on the island of Cuba reflected the best principles of the Cuban Revolution: independence, democracy, and human well-being. The clearest manifestation of these principles has been reflected in the development of work place cooperatives in both cities and the countryside. Cubans are being encouraged to engage in work that produces goods and services for their communities in ways that empower workers and decentralize production and decision-making. While the direction of Cuban economic policy should be solely the concern of the Cuban people, educating the American public to the fact that Cuba is embarking on a variety of new economic arrangements, including encouraging work place democracy, would contradict the media image and US government statements that the people are embracing only entrepreneurial capitalism.
Moreover, 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 remains vital. Ironically, despite the long and often painful relationship the Cuban people have had with the United States, the diversity of the two nations’ cultures are inextricably connected. That shared experience should be celebrated.
Finally, solidarity with the Cuban people provides an opportunity to educate Americans to the reality that the United States is not “the indispensable nation,” but one among many with virtues and flaws. Cubans have celebrated their own history and culture but have done so without disrespecting the experiences of other nations and peoples. The United States could certainly learn from that perspective.
However, in virtually every topic related to Cuba—workers cooperatives, democratization, health care, education, and diplomacy—the Trump Administration has embraced the old Cold War rhetoric about Cuba as the totalitarian state and a force to destabilize others in the region. In addition, Trump foreign policy also has resumed the same narrative in describing other states that challenge US hegemony in the region and seek an alternative path: such as Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua.
Trump Reverses Modest Improvements in US-Cuban Relations
With God’s help, a free Cuba is what we will soon achieve. … I am canceling the last administration’s completely one-sided deal with Cuba. (Trump, D. 2017. “Trump Outlines New Cuba Policy in Speech in Miami’s Little Havana.” https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/06/16/donald-trump-cubamiami/102917748/.
With these words, President Trump announced the return to the almost 60-year Cold War against Cuba, a war that has cost the people on the island and their relatives in the United States dearly. The efforts to resume travel restrictions, limit trade and investment on the island, and to punish US citizens who travel to Cuba on their own seem motivated primarily by Trump’s promises to a dwindling sector of Cuban Americans in the Republican Party (and a few Democratic politicians as well). Although economics, geopolitics, and white supremacist ideology have long shaped United States foreign policy, narrow and short-term political calculations seem to have motivated the reversal of modest US openings to Cuba that had been put in place during the Obama Administration.
Only the counter-revolutionaries in critical electoral states such as Florida criticized the new openings to Cuba. And, as would become clear after the 2016 election, policy reversal would be motivated by the new president as a gesture to reverse any and all Obama foreign and domestic policies. The strong and vocal Cuban-American lobby, who had supported presidential candidate Trump’s opponent Senator Marco Rubio, immediately gained legitimacy in the new administration.
The influence of the Cuban American right-wing is blatantly obvious in the rhetoric and actions of Trump administration officials. They have made the calculated decision to stop and reverse the process of dialogue with the Cuban government, which most US foreign policy experts view in a positive light. But as has been demonstrated over the first year of the Trump presidency, he has an utmost disdain for experts. The pressure for reversing Obama era policy toward Cuba includes the following:
Cuba has become again a domestic policy issue bringing back the language of the Cold War.
Cuba is being accused of being a destabilizing force in Venezuela (this also has a domestic connotation as a rising number of Venezuelans who oppose the Bolivarian revolution are settling in South Florida).
The administration is constructing imagery of a Cuba that is a security threat and adversary. It has made unsubstantiated claims that Cuba is using sonic attacks on US diplomats in Havana, causing them physiological damage.
Resistance to US Global Hegemony Grows in the Twenty-First Century
The visible global political and military contests in the twenty-first century have centered in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. But significant changes have been occurring in Latin America. A continent pillaged by Spain, Britain, France, Portugal, and the Netherlands for hundreds of years has been doggedly moving towards political autonomy and economic independence. Colonialism came to an end with the Spanish/Cuban/American war in 1898. In its place, the United States established neocolonial control over the politics and economics of virtually every country in the hemisphere.
At first, from 1898 until 1933, the United States maintained control through repeated military interventions. There were over 30 interventions in 35 years, with long marine military occupations of Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua.
From the 1930s until the 1980s, US control was maintained by putting in place and supporting military dictatorships in such countries as Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. During the time when Reagan, Bush senior and Clinton were in office, control was enhanced by “neoliberal” economic policies and the Washington consensus of the 1990s. These demanded that these countries, increasingly tied to international banks by crippling debt, create open markets, allow foreign economic penetration, and drastically reduce domestic spending for its own citizens.
During the years of dictatorship and neoliberalism, the primary example of resistance to US economic imperialism and militarism was Cuba. For that reason, the United States maintained a policy of diplomatic isolation, an economic blockade, and a fifty-year campaign to subvert and overthrow the revolutionary government. As described above, during the presidency of Barack Obama modest changes in Cuban policy were instituted including the establishment of formal diplomatic relations, increased abilities of US citizens to travel to Cuba, increased opportunities for investment and trade with the island, and collaboration on efforts to end drug smuggling from Latin America to North America. To be sure, much more needs to be done but instead the new president, Donald Trump, has begun to reverse the modest improvements in US-Cuban relations. And, it appears that the Trump policies seem to be motivated more by narrow political gain than US economic opportunities.
Scale of Significance for US Imperialism
To help understand the attention that US policy-makers give some countries, it is possible to reflect on what we have called here the Scale of Significance for US Imperialism (SSUSI). We are in general agreement with the theory of imperialism articulated by Lenin that describes imperialism’s core features, (Lenin, F. 1963. Lenin Selected Works, vol. 1. Moscow: Progress Publishers.,667–766), 8 (1)The concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies that play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital and the creation on the basis of this finance capital of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which divide up the world among themselves; (5) territorial division of the world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed.
The SSUSI provides a useful disaggregation of imperialism as a theory about policy to incorporate the several variables that have shaped US-Cuban relations over time. Particularly, the SSUSI has three interconnected dimensions that relate to the relative importance that policymakers give to some countries compared to others.
First, as an original motivation for expansion, economic interests are primary. Historically, US policies have been driven by the need to secure customers for US products, outlets for manufacturing investment opportunities, opportunities for financial speculation, and access to vital natural resources.
Second, geopolitics and military hegemony matter. Empires require ready access to regions and trouble spots all around the world. Teddy Roosevelt, as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Vice President, and then President of the United States, was not only knowledgeable about Admiral Alfred Mahan’s work on the need for naval supremacy, but articulated the first warning that global power required the development of a “two-ocean” navy. The United States, he said, must become an Atlantic and a Pacific power; thus prioritizing the projection of military power in the Western Hemisphere and Asia (Kane, R. 2014. “Who Influenced Whom? A New Perspective on the Relationship between Theodore Roosevelt and Alfred Thayer Mahan.” Saber and Scroll 3 (4): 53–71. https://apus.libguides.com/ld.php?content_id=41350266. If the achievement of global power was dependent upon resources drawn from everywhere, military and political hegemony in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, and parts of Africa also required attention.
Third, as the imperial project grows, certain dependent political regimes and cultures take on particular importance for imperial policymakers. Foreign policy elites claim that the imperial power, in this case the United States, has a special responsibility for the weaker nations. In other words, ideology matters. If the dependent country rejects domination, the experience burns itself into the collective consciousness of the imperial power. Cuba, for example, was seen by US rulers as far back as Thomas Jefferson as soon to be part of the United States. Cuba’s rejection of this presumption of US tutelage has been a scar on the US sense of itself ever since the spread of revolutionary ferment on the island in the twentieth century. And to make matters worse, Cuba’s successful domestic policies and capacity to resist US domination increase favorable perceptions of the revolution by the people of Latin America, thus threatening the US sense of its exceptionalism. As Chomsky puts it https://chomsky.info/unclesam01/ the Cuban revolution represents the threat of a good example.
The Politics of Trumpism: The New/Old Cuban Policy as Metaphor for US Foreign Policy
Much scholarly literature points to the above noted motivations for United States foreign policy: economics, geopolitics, and ideology. However, foreign policy elites for the last eight years, and probably longer, have come to the conclusion that traditional US policies toward the island nation no longer serve economic or geopolitical interests, and that the ideology of American exceptionalism no longer requires opposition to some normalization of relations. So, if the three key motivators for policy are not compelling reasons for reversing his predecessor at the White House for the Cuba policy, what explanation or explanations remain?
The logic of the US role in the world in 2018 suggests two additional variables as motivators for policies, particularly for the Cuba policy. One is about politics; another psychology. These two do not replace the other three motivations for policy but add to them and are sensitive to the context in which current policies are being developed.
First, politics. Candidate Trump had his broadest appeal in the most conservative states. Florida, in particular, has historically been critically important as a state that has decided election outcomes. In 1876, a deal between Democrats and Republicans was made over Florida electoral delegates that gave the presidential election of that year to Rutherford B. Hayes (Monroe, J. 1893. “The Hayes Tilden Electoral Commission, How Congress Settled the Disputed Electoral Count in the Presidential Election of 1876.” https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1893/10/the-hayes-tilden-electoralcommission/523971). The Republicans, under Hayes, would pull federal troops protecting reconstruction out of the South in exchange for Democrats’ collaboration in allowing Florida’s electoral college votes to go to Hayes. The second decisive role that Florida played in a presidential election was in 2000. George Walker Bush defeated Al Gore based on problematic and decisive voter fraud which gave the election to Bush.
In 2016, two of Trump’s strongest competitors for the Republican nomination for President were Marco Rubio, a Cuban American Senator from Florida and Ted Cruz, a Texas Senator whose father was Cuban. Although the level of enthusiasm for virulent counter-revolutionary sentiment among Cuban Americans, particularly among the young, has been declining in Florida and elsewhere, the counter-revolutionary Cubans exercise political power beyond their number, which is why Rubio and Cruz still campaigned around the anti-Cuban sloganeering characteristic of the twentieth century. And these anti-Cuba forces were a part of the Rubio base that had to be won over.
Second, psychology matters. President Trump, through his actions and speeches, manifests a deep disdain for everything his predecessor ever did or said. His foreign policy yardstick seems to be, whatever the Obama administration did, he, Trump, should oppose. While some of his policy reversals stem from the obvious fact that his policy perspectives are ideologically opposed to the previous administration and most Democrats, his speeches add a virulent tone in references to Obama. However, paradoxically, Trump’s Cuba policy seems to contradict the substantial lobbying efforts to normalize relations with Cuba for reasons of economic interests, particularly those representing the tourist, agricultural, pharmacological, and construction sectors. And with the demise of the socialist bloc and the countries of the Bolivarian Revolution experiencing political and economic problems, the geopolitics of Cuba “90 miles from our shores” has dwindling salience.
Thinking about the emerging foreign policies of the Trump Administration on a worldwide basis since January, 2017, economic and geopolitical interests and ideology are complemented by politics and psychology as well. Trump policies include extraordinary threats of nuclear annihilation on the Korean Peninsula, withdrawal from the Paris Climate Treaty and from the Trans Pacific Partnership, increased bombings in Syria, the maintenance of uncritical relations with Saudi Arabia and Israel, threats to withdraw from the treaty with Iran and covert operations against countries in South America, particularly Venezuela.
In each case diplomacy is rejected and militarism and interventionism supported. Obama is skewered over and over again for “giving too much away,” and being too soft. Racial superiority is subtly suggested in Trump’s speeches. In each foreign policy area, appealing to his base, he expresses impatience with the United States being pushed around. And this kind of perspective is most appreciated among the most hawkish members of the military elite and the white nationalist sectors of his administration. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, Trump conceptualizes the world as Obama’s world, which has to be changed.
Therefore, in the end, the US-Cuban story is parallel to US foreign policies everywhere around the world. As argued in this paper, US foreign policies have multiple causes: economic, geopolitical, ideological, political, and psychological. Efforts to change that policy, towards Cuba or the world at large, will require a multi-dimensional struggle.
Notes on Contributors
Raúl Rodríguez Rodríguez is Professor/Researcher and currently Director of the Center for Hemispheric and United States Studies at the University of Havana. His most recent publications include “Convergence and Divergence in United States and Canadian Cuba Policy Post 1959: A Triangular Comparative Analysis” (International Journal of Canadian Studies, 2008), “US-Cuba Relations: Historical Roots, Traditional Explanations and Levels of Analysis” (co-authored with Harry Targ, International Journal of Cuban Studies, 2015), “Canada and Cuba: A Historical Overview of Their Political and Diplomatic Relations” (in Other Diplomacies, Other Ties, Cuba and Canada in the Shadow of the USA, edited by Luis Rena Fernandez, Lana Wyle and Cynthia Wright, University of Toronto Press, 2018), “Cuban Foreign Policy under Raul Castro: Canada and Cuba” (co-authored with John Kirk, in Cuban Foreign Policy under Raul Castro, edited by John Kirk and Michael Erisman, Rowan & Littlefield, 2018).
Harry Targ, Professor of Political Science, Purdue University, has published on US foreign policy and political economy. He blogs at http://www.heartlandradical.blogspot.com. Currently he is doing research on the new US-Cuban relationship since the election of President Donald Trump and political movements in the United States.
Notes
1. In 1883, iron ore mining started with Juragua Iron Company, a subsidiary of Bethlemen Iron. In 1884, it exported 21,000 tons. In 1895, the Spanish-American Iron campany exported 74,000 tons (Le Riverend, J. 1974. Historia Económica de Cuba, Edición Revolucionaria [Economic History of Cuba, Revolutionary Edition]. La Habana: Instituto Cubano del Libro. 508).
2. Spanish policy and its imprlications is detailled in Le Riverend, J. 1974. Historia Económica de Cuba, Edición Revolucionaria [Economic History of Cuba, Revolutionary Edition]. La Habana: Instituto Cubano del Libro. 509–522).
3. Jose Marti (1853–1895), Writer, Journalist and diplomat, lived in New York for 15 years and understood the political forces driving US Politics, its main trends and the expansionist and hegemonic aspiration of the United States in the Caribbean and the rest of the continent to the south. Marti made a very important distinction between Anglo Saxon America and today’s Latin America south of the Rio Grande, which he called “Our America.” Marti’s nationalist project for Cuba was opposed to the US imperialist project for the continent.
4. Emilio Roig de Leuschering (1889–1964), the First City Historian of Havana.
5. "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" (Castro, F. 1953. “History Will Absolve Me.” https://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1953/10/16.htm. [Google Scholar]).
6. The Moncada Program became the platform of the movement 26 of July (M-26-7) that is named after the military garrison that was attacked on July 26, 1953 by a group led by Fidel Castro. The Program, which became basically the platform of the new government, was profoundly nationalistic. The 1940 Constitution was reinstated and amended, the telephone company was nationalized as early as March 1959, and on May 17, 1959 the Agrarian Reform Law was enacted. For an excellent compilation of the text of the new laws and their impact see Jose Bell Lara, Delia Luisa Lopez Garcia, and Tania Caram Leon 2008. Documentos de la Revolución Cubana 1959
[Documents of the Cuban Revolution 1959]. La Habana: Editorial Ciencias Sociales. Accessed May 24, 2018. http://www.cubadebate.cu/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/documentos-revolucioncubana.pdf. [Google Scholar]).
7. Wet Foot Dry Foot interpretation of the Cuban Adjustment Act in 1966 gave the Cubans who arrived illegally in the United States, once they set foot on US territory (dry foot), the right to claim the status of political refugee. Those intercepted by coast guard in the open seas (wet foot) were returned to Cuba. Many issues of relevance to the two countries such as those involving immigration, control of drug trafficking, and cooperation on environment, disaster relief and joint medical research were part of the agreements.
8. See Lenin 1963. Lenin Selected Works, vol. 1. Moscow: Progress Publishers. 667–766): (1) The concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies that play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital and the creation on the basis of this finance capital of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist association which divide up the world among themselves; (5) territorial division of the world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed.
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