Job Name:2084432 Date:14-12-11 PDF Page:2084432pbc.p1.pdf Color: Cyan Magenta Yellow Black THE AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH, established in 1943, is a publicly supported, nonpartisan research and educa­ tional organization. Its purpose is to assist policy makers, scholars, businessmen, the press and the public by providing objective analysis of national and inter­ national issues. Views expressed in the institute's publications are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff, advisory panels, officers or trustees of AEI. Institute publications take three major forms: 1. Legislative Analyses-balanced analyses of current proposals before the Congress, prepared with the help of specialists from the academic world and the fields of law and government. 2. Studies-in-depth studies and monographs about government programs and major national and international problems, written by independent scholars. 3. Rational Debates, Meetings, and Symposia-proceedings of debates, dis­ cussions, and conferences where eminent authorities with contrasting views discuss controversial issues. ADVISORY BOARD Paul W. McCracken, Chairman, Edmund Ezra Day University Professor of Business Administration, University of Michigan R. H. Coase, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago Milton Friedman, Paul S. Russell Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University of Chicago Gottfried Haberler, Resident Scholar, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research C. Lowell Harriss, Professor of Economics, Columbia University George Lenczowski, Professor of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley Robert A. Nisbet, Albert Schweitzer Professor of the Humanities, Columbia University James A. Robinson, President, University of West Florida EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Herman J. Schmidt, Chairman of the Richard J. Farrell Board Dean P. Fite William J. Baroody, President Richard B. Madden William G. McClintock, Treasurer SENIOR STAFF Anne Brunsdale, Director of Edward J. Mitchell, Director, National Publications Energy Project Joseph G. Butts, Director of Legislative W. S. Moore, Director of Legal· Policy Analysis Studies Robert B. Helms, Director of Health Robert J. Pranger, Director of Foreign Policy Studies and Defense Policy Studies Thomas F. Johnson, Director of Louis M. Thompson, Jr., Assistant to Research the President for Communication Gary L. Jones, Assistant to the David G. Tuerck, Director, Center for President for Administration Research on Advertising Richard M. Lee, Director of Planning and Development ON NEGOTIATING WITH CUBA ON NEGOTIATING WITH CUBA Roger W. Fontaine American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research Washington, D. C. Distributed to the Trade by National Book Network, 15200 NBN Way, Blue Ridge Summit, PA 17214. To order call toll free 1-800-462-6420 or 1-717-794-3800. For all other inquiries please contact the AEI Press, 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 or call 1-800-862-5801. RogerW. Fontaine is directorof Latin American Studies atthe Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University. ISBN 0-8447-3191-9 Foreign Affairs Study 28, December 1975 Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 75-39898 © 1975 by American Enterprise Institute -for Public Policy Research, Washington, D. C. Permission to quote from or to reproduce materials in this publicaton is granted when due acknowledgment is made. Printed in the United States of America CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION 1 2 CUBA AND THE UNITED STATES: FROM THE BEGINNINGS TO 1959 3 Cuba's Past 4 The United States and Cuba 12 3 FIDEL CASTRO AND THE UNITED STATES: THE SMALL POWER FACES THE SUPERPOWER 27 Small Power versus Superpower 27 Castro and the United States. 32 American Policy toward Cuba 41 4 THE NEW WILLINGNESS TO NEGOTIATE 51 The Shift in American Opinion 51 Signals, Noise and Preconditions for Negotiations 58 The Shift in American Policy 60 The Shift in Cuba's Policy 65 5 NEGOTIATIONS: THE INTERESTS, OBJECTIVES, AND STRATEGIES OF THE PRINCIPALS 71 The Soviet Stake in the Negotiations 71 Cuba's New International Strategy 76 United States Strategy 83 Our Bilateral Policy: Negotiations 87 Cuba's Third Option 94 Projections for the Coming Months 95 1 INTRODUCTION The United States seems to be, in the words of Dean Acheson, "approaching the end of an error" in its policy toward Cuba. After several false starts, the Organization of American States sanctions against Cuba were virtually abandoned by the OAS foreign ministers at the San Jose, Costa Rica, meeting held in July 1975. Moreover, American officials now talk openly of negotiating with the Cuban government in the near future. Despite the growing demand for a change in policy, however, little analysis of what is involved in resuming relations with Cuba has been attempted. The expectation seems to be that a revision of American policy is urgently needed and the rest will somehow fall into place. Taking no thought for the morrow may be good Christianity, but it is not prudent statecraft. This essay's central assumption is that, while relations with Cuba are inevitable (though not necessarily desirable), the precise nature of these relations is still very much open to question. For example, will it be easier for the United States to deal with Fidel Castro, the pro-Soviet Communist of 1975, than it was to handle the Jacobin nationalist of 1959? Are we faced with the prospect of a permanent Soviet military base in the Caribbean or is that worry irrelevant in an era of detente and long-range nuclear weapons? Assuming that the Cubans have dropped their strategy of promoting guerrilla warfare, does that signal a rapprochement with the United States or merely the substitution of some more effective anti-Ameri­ can policy? American leaders have more than these issues to worry about. They must also be aware of the long history, often unhappy and often distorted for partisan advantage, of Cuban-American relations. They must also face the fact that our dealings with Cuba have been 1 and will always be a classic instance of a big power-little power confrontation. And last, they must come to terms with the mistakes and false perceptions that have dogged American policy in the recent past. Once past errors are understood, there is the problem of fashion­ ing a workable strategy for the coming negotiations. First, American leaders must come to grips with Cuban and Soviet ambitions in the region-both their objectives and their strategy-before sorting out American goals in the future talks. Nothing could be more foolhardy than a fatuous optimism over these negotiations, an optimism based on the notion that bad relations were and are simply the result of u.S. intransigence. Finally, we must ask what specific issues need to be discussed and what can we reasonably expect from these discussions? Cuban-American relations, past, present, and probably future, are not an easy or pleasant subject to examine. At every turn we encounter failures, mistakes, cross-purposes, and great, perhaps un­ bridgeable, differences. Yet we remain near neighbors, as the Cuban premier has recently reminded us, and some kind of modus vivendi will be worked out. This essay is an attempt to discuss the problems of doing so and to layout the best strategy for the coming negotia- -tions. There is no perfect solution, and none is offered here, but it is at least possible to expose some of the hidden rocks on which previous American leaders have seen their policies wrecked. 2 2 CUBA AND THE UNITED STATES: FROM THE BEGINNINGS TO 1959 Let us begin with the obvious. The current sorry state of Cuban­ American relations is in part the result of problems that have con­ tinually plagued Cubans in the course of the island's history-and that have intermittently concerned, and baffled, Americans. But what happened before 1959 did not determine the course of the Cuban revolution. The current regime is certainly not inexplicable in terms of the Cuban past-but Fidel Castro was not inevitable nor did the United States necessarily deserve what it got. But while historical inquiry can indicate the problem areas of Cuban-American relations, there is no agreement on precisely what the problems are and exactly who is to blame. In fact, there are three contending interpretations of the history of Cuban-American relations. The first, basically Marxist, and of course favored in Havana, assumes that the United States is the villain. Its greed for empire and treasure drove it to preventing an authentically Cuban regime from taking power-at least until 1959. After that, quite naturally, it made every attempt to destroy the new regime. The second interpretation comes close to the Cuba sf, Yanqui sf model: mistakes have been made on both sides, though the United States is perhaps the worse offender; with a measure of understand­ ing and patience, however, even the United States's hostility can be resolved eventually. After all, if the United States can work with the Soviet leaders and the Chinese, surely the neighboring Cubans can also be caught in the net of detente.1 1 It is often overlooked that the China-U.S.S.R. analogy is, for a number of reasons, not very appropriate for Cuba. That small Communist state is much closer in outlook and self-interest to North Vietnam and North Korea which have also resisted ending the cold war. 3 The third position assumes that mistakes have been made by the United States and Cuba, both before and after 1959, but emphasizes fundamental differences rooted in conflicting interests, passions, and perceptions of one another that will never be resolved easily or com­ pletely. Cuban-American relations will continue to be difficult at best, if not virtually impossible. ' But whichever of these interpretations one accepts, neither the Castro government nor American dealings with it will ever be com­ prehensible unless the past is weighed and found wanting, in terms of both what the Cubans have done to themselves and what we have done to and for them.