U.S. Policy Is Consistent--but Wrong

The Bay of Pigs invasion 40 years ago this month was, as historian Theodore Draper famously observed, “a perfect failure.” Washington’s attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro by sending 1,400 Cuban expatriates ashore to spark a popular insurrection proved not only ineffective; it was also premised on a profound misunderstanding of Cuba by U.S. policymakers that persists to this day.

The invasion, and later CIA campaigns of sabotage and attempted assassination, grew out of Washington’s conviction that Castro’s government was so antithetical to U.S. interests that coexistence was impossible: He had to be overthrown. These policies failed because Washington did not comprehend how successfully Castro can rally nationalist sentiment behind his revolution in any confrontation with the United States.

The world has changed dramatically since 1961, but U.S. policy toward Cuba remains remarkably unaltered. Washington still cannot conceive of coexisting with Castro and is still trying to overthrow him, albeit by means other than military force. It is still deaf to the ways in which its actions enable Castro to appeal to Cuban nationalism. Current U.S. policy employs a combination of severe economic sanctions, designed to weaken the Castro regime, and “people-to-people” contacts, intended to foster the development of civil society.

People-to-people contacts--through academic and cultural exchanges, improved air and telecommunications links--are laudable in principle. They serve the immediate interests of ordinary citizens on both sides of the Florida Straits. But the policy has a double edge. From the outset, Washington has conceived of these contacts as a way to subvert the Cuban government. That’s how the policy, dubbed “Track II,” was promoted when first introduced in the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act. Its author, Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.), argued that Eastern European Communist regimes “ultimately fell from the power of ideas.” By analogy, Castro would, too.

Washington has also taken a more direct hand. In addition to academic and cultural contacts, the 1992 law authorizes U.S. government aid to “individuals and organizations to promote nonviolent democratic change in Cuba.” Former President Bill Clinton approved the first such program in 1995. The following year, the Helms-Burton law expanded the “democracy-building” mandate of this overtly political program, authorizing assistance to democratic and human-rights groups in Cuba and to former political prisoners and their families. About $10 million has been spent since 1996, and another $5 million allocated in the next budget cycle. A new bill just introduced by Cuban American Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) would channel this political aid exclusively to “opposition groups” and former political prisoners.

The idea of fomenting and supporting opposition to regimes that Washington dislikes is by no means new. Overtly and covertly, the United States has funded newspapers, trade unions, political parties and nongovernmental organizations in scores of countries with the aim of destabilizing their governments. The strategy has an impressive record of success: It disposed of Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, Salvador Allende in Chile (where the policy was also called “Track II”), the Sandinistas in Nicaragua and Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia.

But exploiting whatever political liberty exists in another country to foment its subversion inevitably puts real democrats at risk. Castro managed to survive Washington’s enmity in the 1960s in part because he quickly and ruthlessly eliminated all political opposition. Even today, the amount of political space open to opponents of his regime, slim as it may be, fluctuates with the tenor of U.S.-Cuban relations.

Advocates of political aid reply that Cuba’s dissidents themselves are the best judges of whether receiving outside assistance is worth the added repression they endure. No one is forced to take U.S. aid, they point out, and some, like human-rights activist Elizardo Sanchez, consistently refuse. The problem, however, is that a chill in the political climate affects everyone. When Castro’s regime cracks down, everyone suffers, not just those who have consciously decided to risk antagonizing state security by accepting U.S. aid. Every dissident is tarred with the brush of disloyalty and subjected to harsh new laws, like the one passed in 1999 that makes “collaboration” with the United States punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

Furthermore, people who are not political opponents of the government, but simply want to expand the boundaries of intellectual inquiry and policy debate in Cuba, find themselves stifled. In 1996, soon after passage of Helms-Burton, Cuban Defense Minister Raul Castro, younger brother of Fidel, denounced Cuban intellectuals for developing dangerously close ties with U.S. NGOs and foundations. They had been seduced by U.S. plans to create a “fifth column,” he warned. An ideological housecleaning of Cuban think tanks commenced. Perversely, a policy justified in Washington as a way to increase the free flow of ideas had a chilling effect instead.

Cuban intellectuals and mid-level officials trying to find creative ways to solve their country’s problems are far more numerous and politically well-positioned than the tiny opposition movement. Europeans recognize that these are the people most likely to chart Cuba’s future course, and so have tried to build constructive relations with them. U.S. policy fails to distinguish them from regime hard-liners, betting instead that the future belongs to the small, fragmented and isolated dissident community.

When change comes to Cuba, it will most likely come from a coalition of people inside and outside the regime, as has been typical of other democratic transitions in Latin America. By drawing a bright line between Cuban “officials,” whom Washington despises, and Cuban “dissidents,” whom it supports, U.S. policy makes the emergence of such a coalition more difficult. From the Cuban perspective, U.S. aid marks a dividing line between patriots and traitors--a line not easily crossed.

Patriotism is, of course, the last refuge of scoundrels, and Castro might accuse his opponents of being agents of a foreign power whether or not they received U.S. aid. But the history of U.S.-Cuban relations gives special resonance to the charge that Washington’s hidden hand is trying to manipulate Cuban politics.

From its first intervention in Cuba in 1898, the United States has adopted a tutelary attitude toward the island. The Platt Amendment, imposed on Cuba in 1901 as the price for ending U.S. occupation, granted Washington the right to intervene in Cuba at its discretion, a right exercised twice in the following decade. In 1933-34, Ambassador Sumner Welles engineered the replacement of two successive Cuban presidents and installed Fulgencio Batista’s military government. In late 1958, the CIA tried in vain to find some alternative to Castro as Batista’s replacement, and even after Castro’s victory, the agency tried to build an opposition movement to challenge Castro’s leadership. Then it tried to assassinate him.

Castro has made a political career reminding Cubans of this history of imperial arrogance. It was no coincidence that he chose the moment of the 1961 invasion to declare the Cuban revolution socialist. In the months leading up to the Bay of Pigs, internal opposition to Castro had been rising as he pushed the revolution to the left. The invasion gave him the perfect opportunity to wrap socialism in the Cuban flag, making it a nationalist project. Several months later, Castro’s comrade in arms, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, met White House official Richard N. Goodwin at an Organization of American States meeting in Punta del Este. “He wanted to thank us very much for the invasion,” Goodwin reported to President John F. Kennedy in a memo recently declassified. “It had been a great political victory for them [and] enabled them to consolidate.” Forty years later, the Elian Gonzalez affair demonstrated that nationalism remains a potent political force, regardless of how disheartened ordinary Cubans may be about the decline in their standard of living or the sclerotic pace of change.

Washington should cancel its program of overt political aid to opposition groups. Given the history of U.S. hostility to the Cuban government, there is no way this support can avoid tainting everyone who receives it, casting suspicion on everyone who interacts with foreigners and exacerbating internal divisions in ways that make peaceful change less likely. Authentic people-to-people contacts ought to be truly nongovernmental, not orchestrated and manipulated by government behind the scenes.

Four decades after the “perfect failure” at the Bay of Pigs, the United States should stop playing the perfect foil for Castro’s nationalism.