CUBA : The Reciprocal Obsession of Castro and Washington

Throughout our history, the U.S. government, on the one hand, and whatever regime was in power in Cuba, on the other, have been prone to spasms of reciprocal obsession--marked by wild rhetoric, economic warfare and sometimes armed violence. Cuba’s stupidly brutal shooting down of two U.S. civilian airplanes last weekend, and President Bill Clinton’s subsequent surrender to Congress on maniacal legislation aimed at the destruction of Fidel Castro’s regime, mark the latest spasm.

Today, no U.S. presidential candidate dares challenge the wisdom of escalating intervention against a small, if unpleasant, neighboring government. The angriest voices in Washington and Florida advocate a naval blockade and do not rule out invasion--ignoring international law and the opinion of other governments. This furor has an all-too familiar ring.

Since the early 19th century, Cuba’s proximity to the United States, strategic location on the seaways of the Caribbean and economic importance have induced U.S. politicians to assert the right to dictate Cuba’s foreign policy and internal arrangements. But the line between legitimate U.S. national-security interests in Cuba and domestic political partisanship has always been blurred.

For example, in 1853, Washington, influenced by the slaveholding states, tried to buy Cuba from Spain to increase the area of slaveholding and suppress a feared insurrection of slaves in Cuba and its spread to the United States. Spain refused to sell. In response, three senior U.S. diplomats--including soon-to-be President James Buchanan--issued the “Ostend Manifesto,” which argued that Spain’s continued possession of Cuba threatened “our internal peace and the existence of our cherished Union.” If we cannot acquire Cuba in any other way, said the diplomats, we should take it through war. Nothing came of this because the United States was hurtling toward civil war--but its tone and its intimate connection to politics in the United States set a pattern.

In the 1870s and again in the 1890s, the Cuban people rose in armed rebellion against the Spanish colonial regime. The Spaniards became alarmed, with good reason, over the support for the rebels coming from the United States, in general, and Cuban Americans, in particular.

Spain suppressed the first insurrection, but not the second, in 1895-98. This time, Cuba was a far hotter issue in U.S. politics--thanks to coverage by mass-circulation newspapers, deeper economic interconnections, the strident lobbying of Cuban Americans and heightened concerns in Washington over the strategic security of the Caribbean. President William McKinley, eager to assure his reelection, joined those who said Spain must be ousted. The sinking, in Havana harbor, of the U.S. battleship Maine as a result of an internal explosion in February 1898, (260 Americans died) inflamed a war spirit--though it is highly unlikely that the Spanish government was responsible. McKinley did not make a serious effort to negotiate. The Spanish government, in turn, preferred war to what it considered dishonorable concessions. And war it was--”the splendid little war” of 1898. Spain lost Cuba--along with Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

The Cuban freedom fighters expected immediate independence. Instead, the United States militarily occupied the island for four years, then imposed, through the Platt Amendment, its right to control Cuba’s foreign relations and to intervene, with troops if necessary, in the country’s internal affairs. President Franklin D. Roosevelt formally relinquished these rights in 1934--but U.S. influence remained pervasive.

Fast-forward to Jan. 1, 1959. Fulgencio Batista, a corrupt and non-ideological dictator, fled Havana and Castro, leader of a successful rebellion, entered the city and established the regime he heads to this day. Scholars debate whether the regime was communist from the outset or became so within a year or two. They also debate whether an accommodating posture by Washington, instead of an obsession with undermining the regime, could have preserved amicable relations. Or were Castro’s obsession with Washington as the source of all Cuba’s problems and his welcome of the Soviet Union as protector the real obstacles? There can be no question, however, that a pattern of reciprocal obsession and provocation was evident from the outset. Washington organized an exile force to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. It was, as one historian said, “the perfect failure.”

More serious, of course, was the 1962 crisis over the placement of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba--the most dangerous moment of the Cold War and a genuine threat to U.S. security. Castro was ignored in the negotiated Soviet-U.S. settlement. The Russians removed the missiles and Washington promised not to invade Cuba.

For the next 30 years, Castro poked his finger in Uncle Sam’s eye at every opportunity--supporting leftist revolutionaries in Latin America, sending troops to Africa at Moscow’s behest--and Washington did everything possible to inflict economic pain and make Cuba a pariah state--only to be thwarted by the subsidies sent to Castro by the Soviet Union.

With the end of the Cold War and disappearance of the Soviet Union, easing tensions, even normalizing relations, might have been expected. But objective security interests and domestic politics are different matters. Castro was too proud--and too convinced of U.S. hostility--to make conciliatory gestures toward Washington. Castro also believed that Mikhail S. Gorbachev lost control of the Soviet Union because he abandoned a repressive political system. Castro says he will not make the same mistake. And in the United States, politicians of both parties competed for the support of the Cuban American community by demonstrating how tough they could be on Castro.

By 1995, Republicans in Congress appeared to have won the tough-posture competition. The Helms-Burton bill--officially the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Bill--sets new heights of obsession with Cuba and pretensions for dictating that country’s future. And it has gained tremendous momentum since the planes were shot down.

The bill’s purpose is unequivocal: Use economic strangulation to eliminate Castro, then establish, with military help, a transitional government and market economy under U.S. supervision, followed by free elections. These measures are justified both on the idealistic ground that Castro is a violator of human rights--which he is--and on a fanciful description of his regime as a threat to U.S. security and international peace. The bill’s arrogant and overblown rhetoric recalls the Ostend Manifesto and its specific provisions are more intrusive than the Platt Amendment of 1903-34.

Helms-Burton assumes that Castro is on the edge of a cliff and the Cuban economy is in shambles. But both assumptions are wrong. Castro is paranoiac about internal criticism, but remains popular. And the island’s economy is reviving with expanding trade and considerable new investment from Canada and Europe.

This trade and foreign investment are the real targets of Helms-Burton. If its provisions become law, and are sustained in the courts, they would burn down the house of U.S. foreign policy. Seeking to overthrow the regime of one little country, the law inflicts great injury to the larger fabric of U.S. trade and investment.

The key provisions flow from the assertion that the confiscation and nationalization of private property in Cuba, carried out by the regime since 1959, violates U.S. and international law. Therefore, any person, corporation or state entity engaging in trade and investment in Cuba is likely to be “trafficking” with stolen property--since, by definition, virtually all economic activity in Cuba is based on confiscated property. Any current U.S. citizen, or any U.S. corporation--like the Bacardi rum company--with a claim to such property can sue these “traffickers” in U.S. courts and be awarded damages.

Furthermore, individual traffickers, or officers or controlling stockholders of trafficking corporations--including their spouses and children--can be excluded from the United States. In theory, the son or daughter of an executive of a Canadian hotel company with Cuban interests attending school in the United States could be deported. The bill’s implementation would create a nightmare for U.S. courts and would violate major treaties and international-trade agreements.

Last summer, Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher recommended that Clinton veto the bill when and if it came to his desk. Until Feb. 24, the chances of the bill being passed and signed were slight. But then Castro blundered into the hands of his enemies--by authorizing the destruction of the two civilian planes flown by the Brothers to the Rescue group. The Cuban government is brazenly unapologetic and said it was defending its sovereignty--but even Castro’s newest friend, China, has joined in deploring the deed.

By this action, Castro achieved what his most fervent critics in Congress could not: He persuaded Clinton to agree to Helms-Burton. Clinton, like McKinley in 1898, wants a second term. The final details of the legislation remain to be worked out, but the president said he will sign. Reciprocal obsessions have again triumphed.