Last week we saw an encouraging sign that the 50 year cold war between the
US and Cuba was finally coming to an end. President Obama announced on Wednesday
that the US and Cuba would restore full diplomatic relations and that embassies
could be re-opened in each country by the end of the month.
For this achievement, which was resisted by vested interests in the US, Obama
should be praised. However we shouldn't be too optimistic about truly establishing
normal relations until we understand how relations became so abnormal in the
first place. The destruction of relations between the two countries was preceded
by US intervention on behalf of a hated Cuban dictator, Fulgencio Batista,
which had turned the Cuban people against the United States and set the stage
for the emergence of Fidel Castro.
In 1944, after Batista's first term as president of Cuba, he emigrated to
the United States. When his campaign to return to office in 1952 looked lost,
he led a military coup, seized power, and declared himself president. The US
government quickly recognized his military junta as the legitimate government
of Cuba and began propping him up. Much of the Cuban economy was in the hands
of well-connected US companies, and the US government exerted its influence
to their financial benefit.
The Cuban dictatorship was helped along by US assistance. The secret police
was trained by the United States and was used to brutally suppress any political
opposition. Almost all US aid to Cuba was in the form of military equipment
used brutally against the Cuban people. The US was seen as the force behind
Batista's dictatorship.
As John F. Kennedy said while campaigning for the presidency in 1960:
Fulgencio Batista murdered 20,000 Cubans in seven years ... and he turned
Democratic Cuba into a complete police state -- destroying every individual
liberty. Yet our aid to his regime, and the ineptness of our policies, enabled
Batista to invoke the name of the United States in support of his reign of
terror.
US intervention in Cuban affairs really got a boost when Batista was overthrown
by the young revolutionary Fidel Castro. As Stephen Kinzer writes in the excellent
book, "The Brothers," Castro's rise to power was not immediately
condemned by the US. When Castro traveled to the US shortly after taking power,
he met with Vice President Richard Nixon, who found that Castro "has those
indefinable qualities which make him a leader of men." But Nixon worried
that the US might not be able "to orient him in the right direction." Nixon
was concerned that Castro sounded too much like Indonesian president Sukarno,
who urged countries to join a non-aligned movement to resist both superpower
camps at the time. The US could not tolerate the non-aligned movement and pushed
a zero-sum game in global politics.
When Washington realized it could not control Castro, it embargoed the island
and began launching plots to overthrow and even kill him. US policy likely
was responsible for Castro turning to the Soviet Union in the first place.
This US intervention in Cuba's internal affairs continues to this day. Even
under Obama several US plots to overthrow the regime have been exposed. So
while opening an embassy in Havana is a positive step, this embassy must be
used to help promote truly normal relations with Cuba. That means an end to
the embargo, an end to the travel ban, and an end to US interference in Cuba's
internal affairs. A more free and prosperous Cuba will not emerge as long as
US interventionism continues to turn Cubans against the United States.
