Marifeli Perez-Stable

Published in The Miami Herald
July 31, 2008

During the Cold War, the United States was of two minds regarding the Third World. Did the new nations in Africa and Asia provide fodder for Soviet expansionism? Were Iran under the reformist Mohammed Mosaddeq or Guatemala under Jacobo Arbenz on the brink of becoming Soviet outposts? Should Washington welcome the Cuban revolution?

Dwight Eisenhower’s secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, answered two forceful yeses and an emphatic no. John F. Kennedy, in contrast, saw neutrality in Africa as an opportunity, not a threat. In Latin America, the Alliance for Progress extolled reform, democracy and freedom as the best antidotes for revolution.

Cuba, however, stuck in JFK’s craw. His bungling of the Bay of Pigs signaled a weakness that he could ill afford as a newly inaugurated young president. Two months later in Vienna, Khrushchev, in Kennedy’s words, ”just beat the hell out of me.” The Missile Crisis would prove JFK’s mettle, which Cuba and the first summit with the Soviet premier had put in doubt.

After the Missile Crisis, Kennedy followed two tracks regarding Cuba. The first suggested a willingness to live and let live if the revolution established ”an independent communist state.” The second still sought regime change. In 1961-62, Operation Mongoose had tried to spark an uprising in Cuba to no avail. In 1963, the CIA continued efforts to assassinate Fidel Castro.

That November an assassin’s bullet felled Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson soon put the Havana-Washington talks “on ice.”

With the 1964 election on the horizon, Johnson worried about appearing ‘’soft on anything, especially Cuba.” As Vietnam consumed his administration, the island lost its immediacy. Never again would Cuba be at the heart of U.S. foreign policy.

In the 1970s, détente generated a bipartisan consensus about normalizing relations with Cuba. For 18 months, the Ford administration engaged in a hidden dialogue with Havana. Both sides dropped preconditions: the United States that Cuba sever all military ties to the Soviet Union; Havana that Washington lift the embargo.

With U.S. support, the Organization of American States ended multilateral sanctions against Cuba. Subsequently, Ford authorized U.S. subsidiaries abroad to trade with Cuba and took other measures that eased the embargo. Cuba, in turn, released a U.S. citizen with CIA ties and returned the $2 million ransom a U.S. airline had paid for its hijacked plane.

Then, in November 1975, Cuba entered the Angolan civil war. From the U.S. perspective, Angola torpedoed the talks. Unsurprisingly, Havana saw things differently. If the secret talks became public, Cuba reasoned, Ford’s campaign in 1976 would have been severely damaged and that’s the reason why Washington ended them.

Jimmy Carter picked up where Ford left off. The travel ban was lifted. Interests sections opened in both capitals. Washington and Havana seemed on track to normalization. Yet, with Havana’s continued presence in Angola and its 1978 deployment of 15,000 troops to Ethiopia, Carter found it difficult to remove Cold-War imperatives from his nascent Cuba policy. For its part, Havana couldn’t pass up the opportunities that Africa offered to enhance its international standing.

In 1981, Ronald Reagan came into office determined to avoid what he saw as Carter’s mistakes at home and abroad. All the same, even if only on specific issues like Central America and migration, Washington continued to talk with Havana. In 1988, moreover, the United States, Cuba, Angola and South Africa negotiated an accord that ended the Angolan civil war and established Namibian independence. By May 1991, all Cuban troops had finally left Angola.

It is often said that the Cold War hasn’t ended for the United States and Cuba. I don’t really agree. The Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

What’s pending is for Washington and Havana to learn to live in peace, that is, to settle into a mutually beneficial relationship. Along the way, the United States should gain a consideration of Cuban sensibilities. Cuba, meanwhile, needs to turn geographic nearness into an asset. The 50-year enmity hasn’t served either country well.

I’ll conclude my thoughts on the future of U.S.-Cuban relations in my next column.