The persistent conflict between the United States and Cuba seems to be an exception to historian Eric Hobsbawm’s concept of the twentieth century as a “short century” that ended prematurely with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In terms of this conflict, the century is not yet over, since the Cold War between the United States and Cuba has not finished. This protracted conflict today combines old policies and stereotypes with current global war issues, ultimately projecting a sense of both prediction and déjà vú.
In the period between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the twin towers, U.S. foreign policymakers spoke of the conflict with Cuba in much the same old Cold War terms, although they added a few new elements. Cuba’s image was that of a “backlash-state” accused not only of supposed spying for strategic military secrets and trafficking in Chinese arms, but also of harboring Basque ETA terrorists and Colombian FARC guerrillas. In the post-Cold War era, the Pentagon certainly recognized that Cuba no longer represented the threat it did during the Cold War, but at the same time it warned that the island maintained the Lourdes electronic intelligence station, run jointly by Havana and Moscow. And the U.S. government seemed to be haunted by old ghosts, as with its preoccupation with the possible continuation of the Juraguá electronuclear plant in Cienfuegos Bay, as well as Cuba’s alleged supply of necessities to Russian submarines. The United States also complained that the island maintained relations with other “backlash-states” such as Iran, Iraq, and Libya. (Afghanistan’s Taliban was never listed among those that sheltered terrorist networks, as Cuba was). And in the same 1997 report in which the Pentagon concluded that the Cuban Armed Forces did not constitute a threat, it pointed to the island’s scientific knowledge and potential capacity to research and develop biological weapons. Most recently, the Cuban government was even accused of Internet hacking.
As insubstantial as these accusations seem to be, the important thing to note is that U.S. policymakers continue to use the colors of the old Cold War palate in painting their Cuban enemy, picking out new overtones that are predictive of the current global war agenda. From this perspective, I will examine some changes and continuities in Cuba’s own foreign policy, particularly in matters that concern Cuban national security, central to its relation with the United States in the post-Cold War era and beyond.
The East-West confrontation and the hot wars in Central America during the 1980s raised security worries for Cuba that are still relevant today. The main four issues in this bilateral agenda in the mid-1980s are not so remote today, particularly in light of the current strategic situation:
— A perceived threat of a U.S. attack on Cuba in any one of its variants: a surgical strike against military and economic objectives (including the main cities), a blockade or an invasion. During 1981 and the first half of 1982, U.S. policymakers were seriously considering such an action. U.S. officials saw Cuban support for Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government and El Salvador’s guerrilla forces as a prime instigator of the conflicts then raging in Central America and then- Secretary of State Alexander Haig had made public threats to “go to the source.” The United States then stepped up military maneuvers in the vicinity of the island and increased reconaissance flights. At this time of increased U.S. threat, Cuba was being secretly warned by the Soviet Union not to expect Soviet military protection if the United States launched a punitive attack against the island. The Soviet government limited its aid to the supply of arms. In other words, Cuba’s supposed “patron” did not consider the ties and commitments it had to its so-called Cuban “client” to be the same as those with the Soviet Union’s Eastern bloc allies. Thus, ten years before Cuba’s “principal ally,” the USSR, was to disintegrate, the island was left “alone with capitalism,” as leading Russian Latin Americanist Kiva Maidánik would say.
— Terrorism: According to U.S. government documents that were declassified during the post-Cold War era, counterrevolutionary terrorist actions were sponsored by U.S. security agencies since the beginning of the 1960s, as part of a foreign policy planned and coordinated at the highest level of successive U.S. administrations. By 1975, the Senate Intelligence Committee had documented at least eight assassination attempts against Fidel Castro; according to Cuban sources, there were in fact a few dozen attempts. At the beginning of the 1980s, some Cuban diplomats, and even certain individuals in the Cuban exile community who favored dialogue with the Cuban government, were killed by counterrevolutionary Cuban exile groups. Despite the fact that the Cuban government then offered the U.S. information concerning the activities of these terrorists, the authors of these crimes, including those who planted a bomb on a Cubana Air plane in Barbados in 1976, were not brought to justice then and they remain unpunished today. Furthermore, in the 1980s, when the Iran-Contra connection was exposed, Havana accused the CIA of new attempts to assassinate leaders on the island and of launching new attacks on Cuban embassies abroad.
—Hijacking of Cuban airplanes and ships by counterrevolutionary groups: Since January 1959, the United States had welcomed fugitives from Cuban justice and hijackers of Cuban vessels. In the early 1980s, Cuban fishing ships continued to be the target of piracy sponsored or tolerated by U.S. authorities and exile groups. Although some of the hijackers were tried, they were not penalized; this impunity served to instigate subsequent hijackings. In the 1990s alone, ten airplanes and numerous ships were hijacked, some of these incidents resulting in the murder of the crew members. Not only were the hijackers given refuge in the United States, but they were even acclaimed as heroes by the Cuban-American right wing and several U.S. news outlets.
— Biological attacks against the population, animals and plants: In a 1984 U.S. trial of leaders of the CIA-backed terrorist exile group Omega 7, the accused claimed they had transferred swine fever germs to the island, causing an epidemic.[1] Cuba had provided evidence to the United States that documented its claims that 1984 epidemics of dengue fever and hemorragic conjunctivitis had also been purposely spread.[2] The failure to respond to Cuban demands for thorough investigations into the matter and the U.S. position, as recently as 2001, against the ratification of the convention that foresaw effective controls over the production and exportation of biological and toxic weapons, contributed to ongoing concerns on the island.
The dissolution of the USSR and the end of the wars in Central America did not make Cuba’s Cold War security concerns fade away. In some ways, those concerns even increased. The fall of the Berlin Wall did not send a message of liberation to the Cuban people; on the contrary, it threw the country into a whirlwind crisis. U.S. harassment of Cuba was not discontinued but in some ways intensified: The U.S. Congress passed the Torricelli Law (1992) and the Helms-Burton Act (1996), legislation that aimed to tighten the existing U.S. economic embargo against Cuba. The economic crisis increased perceptions of vulnerability and strategic imbalance before the renewed U.S. threat, not only to the political system, but to Cuba’s existing social order.
The combination of the economic crisis and the hardening of the blockade brought about an increased awareness of everything that could affect the political stability, the public order and the security of the country. In response, Cuba emphasized the strategy of “the People’s War,” a concept which had originated during the years of the Central America crisis. This military doctrine used the term “special period in time of war” to designate a scenario in which the country was subject to a blockade as well as the most difficult economic, political and military conditions. Given that the impact of the changes caused by the end of the Socialist Bloc and the reinforcement of the U.S. embargo would have economic repercussions comparable to wartime, the era was designated a “special period in time of peace.”
Yet, despite these threats, Cuban military and foreign policies underwent considerable changes in the special period. In spite of fears of U.S. aggression, the Cuban Armed Forces were drastically downsized. According to estimates from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the military budget was cut 4.7 times in the five years following 1989; an army of 300,000 was reduced to 70,000. More recently, Raúl Castro, Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), estimated that during the post-Cold War decade the FAR had been reduced to an eleventh of its former size. Even the Pentagon reported that after 1989 the FAR had ceased to be one of the major armed forces of the region in per capita terms; it had been reduced to a level comparable to Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador and El Salvador. It also reported that the FAR was dedicating itself to economic and social tasks in the civil sector to a greater extent than before. This military readjustment did not occur as a result of negotiations with the United States or any inter-American institution, but as a unilateral decision taken by the Cuban government.
Although the Cuba-U.S. conflict did not abate, a few issues changed in the bilateral security agenda during the post-Cold War period. Migration is the principal changing issue on this agenda. In the summer of 1994, the United States detained a new wave of illegal Cuban immigrants at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo, Cuba, once again demonstrating the strategic-military logic that continued to dominate the U.S. perception of Cuba despite the end of the Cold War. Nonetheless, the crisis of the balseros, or “boat people,” in August 1994 had a positive impact on bilateral relations, as it led to a new U.S.-Cuba agreement that changed a 35-year-old U.S. policy toward Cuban migrants. The agreement contributed to the normalization of bilateral relations regarding immigration. Both countries agreed to cooperate in search and rescue missions, aimed at intercepting and returning safely to Cuba undocumented migrants trying to reach the United States.
Although this agreement substantially reduced undocumented migration, it left some holes in bilateral migration relations. These include the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, which allows Cubans who are able to reach the United States to be admitted as legal immigrants, the continued weak prosecution of hijackers of Cuban vessels, the nonexistence of an extradition agreement between the two countries and the unchanging atmosphere of violence and terrorism on the part of anti-Castro groups. Nevertheless, the Elían González affair in 1999-2000 marked an exceptionally positive step forward in this area.
Beyond its significance for the migration agenda, this event made plain to the U.S. public the extremist attitude of the most powerful Cuban-American groups and their disregard for U.S. law enforcement. Although these groups have been acting as if they were independent agents, on several occasions they caused incidents that had serious implications for international security. On February 24, 1996, for example, two Cuban exile planes made harassing flights over Cuban territory and were shot down by the Cuban Air Force. The U.S. government could have prevented this event, since the Cuban government had warned that it would no longer tolerate such violations. The Joint Chiefs of Staff presented President Clinton a choice of options after the shoot-down, among them a military attack against Cuba. Other documented examples of the exile groups’ recent terrorist acts were an assassination plot against Fidel Castro during the 1997 Iberoamerican Summit on Venezuela’s Margarita Island and bombings in Havana tourist hotels in 1997-1998.
Cooperation in anti-drug trafficking has been a second major area of change on the bilateral agenda. Although drug trafficking has not posed a serious internal security problem for the island in the post-Cold War era, Cuban policy has been to track and prosecute trafficking in Cuban waters and airspace. Havana has negotiated drug control agreements with the majority of Caribbean countries and some European countries as well. On several occasions, Cuba has publicly offered to cooperate with the United States in this area, but so far no agreement has been reached.[3] U.S. policy has been to ask for Cuba’s cooperation on specific operations, without sharing information or creating a mechanism to jointly interdict drug trafficking. Nevertheless, a few signs of possible U.S. interest in moving toward an eventual formal agreement emerged during the Clinton administration. Since 1995, cooperation on specific interdiction actions has contributed to the development of some mutual confidence—even to the point of the designation of a U.S. Coast Guard representative in the Special Interest Section that carries out U.S. diplomatic functions in Havana. The United States has recognized that “even though no bilateral agreement exists between the United States and Cuba, the two countries continue to exchange information with regard to law enforcement on drug issues on a case-by-case basis.”[4] The Clinton administration, as part of the 1999 annual drug control certification report, recognized the integrity of the Cuban government in this area.
Other topics on the bilateral security agenda were the nuclear issue and the Russian-Cuban operated Lourdes intelligence facility on the island. Although Cuba, unlike Argentina and Brazil, never had a nuclear weapons program during the Cold War, Cuba had not joined the Tlatelolco Treaty banning nuclear weapons in Latin America. The reasoning behind this reluctance was that the island has been threatened by a superpower that did possess those weapons. The United States even places nuclear weapons on Cuban territory every time a U.S. nuclear aircraft carrier docks at Guantánamo Naval Base. Nonetheless, after the Guadalajara Iberoamerican Summit in 1991, Cuba signed the Tlatelolco Treaty, thus unilaterally changing its position as a gesture of good will toward Latin America and the Caribbean. In relation to the Juraguá nuclear plant in the Cienfuegos Bay, Cuba halted its construction and cancelled the project in 2001, thus putting to rest another issue of concern to the United States. Finally, the electronic intelligence station in Lourdes, was suddenly eliminated by Russia’s unilateral decision in October 2001 to end the agreement that maintained it functioning.[5]
The last topic on the changing U.S-Cuba security agenda is military relations. Some cooperation between Cuban and U.S. military forces has developed since 1995. Examples include the return to Cuba of those seeking “asylum” by jumping the fence or swimming into the bay at the Guantánamo base, as well as the removal of mines surrounding the base. There has also been contact between high-ranking military officials from both sides, and retired U.S. officers have visited the island.[6] In sum, despite the overall political conflict, the most divisive issues in the new security agenda between the United States and its Latin American and Caribbean neighbors—drug trafficking, migration, the environment and military relations—are paradoxically those in which Cuba has had the most success in achieving cooperation and comprehension in its relations with the North.
To assess U.S.-Cuba relations, it is necessary to consider the international context, beginning with Cuba’s relations with the Third World.[7] According to the realpolitik point of view, with the end of the Cold War and the demise of Cuba’s Soviet “patron,” the island should have lost its capacity to play an active role in Africa and Latin America. Nevertheless, Cuba has not only maintained political-diplomatic and economic exchanges and cooperation with these regions but expanded and diversified them. In the decade after the Cold War, Cuban diplomatic activism established new relations with 46 countries and incorporated new agendas. Dozens of heads of state, cabinet members and legislators from a variety of countries, especially from the greater Caribbean, have visited Cuba in recent years.
In the post-Cold War era, Cuban trade and financial relations increased, particularly with Europe and Latin America.[8] Cooperation also expanded dramatically, especially in the areas of health services, education, sports and culture, primarily with Latin America and the Caribbean. With the exception of Venezuela, the countries in the region receiving most Cuban health specialists—Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Belize and Paraguay—had no diplomatic or economic relations with Cuba during the Cold War. Moreover, Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, Guatemalans and Dominicans now constitute the majority of students at the new Latin American School of Medical Science in Baracoa, near Havana, where even some U.S. students have received scholarships.[9]
The island has some kind of cooperation in the area of healthcare with 28 countries in the Americas, including some U.S. institutions. Of these countries, 21 are in the greater Caribbean. Cuba’s cooperation with Africa also remains significant today—it cooperates with 19 African countries. Cuba also collaborates with eight countries in the Middle East and Asia.[10]
In this new context, foreign relations have not been limited to diplomatic interaction or official economic or military exchanges. The participation of nonofficial actors in the exchanges has resulted in a sort of “metadiplomacy” that does not occur solely through governmental channels. Paradoxically, Cuban doctors, teachers, sports trainers, art instructors and university professors are reaching places that soldiers and government officials never dreamed of going in the Cold War years. Cuba’s new role in other countries not only weakens Cold War stereotypes, but also some of the theories and myths about Cuban politics constructed during that period.
These efforts in international cooperation may open windows of opportunity for U.S.-Cuba relations, in order to protect the environment, promote popular music, develop biotechnology products, provide relief after natural disasters such as hurricanes, train athletes and develop literacy programs. As a matter of fact, an active metadiplomatic current now flows between the two sides. Unconventional U.S. ambassadors are going to Cuba more often: Representatives of CNN, the American Chamber of Commerce, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Grammy Awards, Cigar Aficionado Magazine, the American Farm Bureau Federation and sister city programs, together with congressmen, governors, retired military officers, church leaders, university presidents, businessmen, employees of foundations and nongovernmental organizations, baseball managers, journalists, artists and even some former hard-line anti-Castro activists are traveling to Havana and making contacts with their official and nonofficial counterparts. As a consequence of these exchanges, the image of Cuba in the United States is also evolving. Events that have shaped that image since 1998—the Pope’s visit to Cuba, the Elián affair and the phenomenon of the Buena Vista Social Club—have all contributed to constructing a less monochromatic and sordid image of Cuban life.
Yet the United States government continues to regard Cuba as an enemy. The official justification given for including the island on the U.S. State Department’s list of countries which are said to support terrorism is that militants from the Basque ETA “have continued to live on the island,” and that “Havana has maintained links with major Colombian terrorists, the FARC and the ELN.” Curiously, the United States seems more worried about these supposed links than the Spanish and Colombian governments. On the contrary, these governments maintain a normal diplomatic dialogue with Cuba; Colombia even recognizes Cuba’s instrumental role in that nation’s peace negotiations with guerrilla forces.
Moreover, Cuba has signed all the anti-terrorism treaties and condemned the September 11 attacks. But the newly declared U.S. “war on terror,” the chauvinistic spirit of crusade which underlies this war, legislation such as the Homeland Security Act and the PATRIOT Bill that have resulted in increased prerogatives for the U.S. executive branch, and the persistence of the U.S. government’s perception of Cuba as a haven for terrorism, all have implications for the island’s national security. The unexpected pullout of Russia in the joint operation of the Lourdes intelligence facility, a principal means for gathering information for Cuba’s defense, may increase its exposure to and perceived threat from its old enemy, now in full combat deployment. It also marks a new step in Russia’s retreat from its former role as a world power and its capacity to act as a counterbalance to U.S. hegemony. Last, but not least, the U.S. government’s unchanging position on Cuba has animated the vengeful spirit of the right-wing exile lobby and its allies in Congress, who are seizing the opportunity to reinforce their destabilizing tactics against Cuba.[11]
In this war where images play a strategic role, the United States constructs its enemies using special effects and satellite images: The “evil Soviet empire” and Cuba, “the Soviet proxy” of the Cold War past, is now Muslim fundamentalism. Cuba no longer represents the United States’ main enemy—even to the closest allies in the U.S.-dominated coalition.[12]
Are the United States and Cuba closer to reaching an understanding after September 11? Now the U.S. government may still be portraying Cuba as the devil’s incarnation. Maybe not. The island must be even lower on the U.S. global agenda than it was before the Afghanistan war—like the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean. Without giving much-needed attention to Cuba, the political will to change a 40-year-old policy could hardly gain momentum.
Will the new global conflict provide a more realistic environment for U.S.-Cuban rapprochement? Ironically, perhaps. Certainly, Fidel Castro can hardly be portrayed today as public enemy number two, as in the old Cold War years. Compared to the many foes of the United States, the Cuban leader may be perceived as a reasonable, moderate, tractable counterpart.
On the other hand, the uncertain, tragic situation created by September 11, may have brought public opinion in the United States and Cuba closer than before, and made the citizens of the two countries more able to understand each other than during the Cold (and even the post-Cold) War. North Americans may perceive better today that living under external threat may impose restrictions on individual freedom. They may now share a common ground with Cubans regarding the necessity to apply the rule of the law to terrorist organizations, including those conspiring to overthrow a foreign government. They may better understand why the use of biological warfare should be banned. And they might also recognize the importance of developing closer ties with other nations, no matter how geographically, politically and culturally distant.
A lot of energy and activism will be required to overcome a long-lasting policy based on threat and arrogance, and a deep legacy of mistrust between Cuba and the United States. In any case, since the collapse of the twin towers, Continental Airlines has begun flying into Havana, bringing more Texas rice growers and others interested in exploring a dialogue with the island. For years Cuba’s leader has been known as “The Horse,” a tribute to his stalwart energy and activism. Now, according to the Chinese calendar, 2002 will be the year that precisely celebrates energy and activism: The Year of the Horse.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rafael Hernández is Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Research and Development of Cuban Culture "Juan Marinello" and editor of Temas. He has published several books on Cuban and U.S. policies, inter-American relations, and Cuban culture, society and politics. Translated from the Spanish by NACLA.
NOTES
1. Jane Franklin, Cuba and the United States: A Chronological History (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 1999), p. 206.
2. Patricia Sethi, “Entrevista de prensa de Fidel con Patricia Sethi” in Bohemia, February 6, 1984.
3. Fidel Castro, “Discurso en el Anniversario del 26 de julio,” in Granma, July 27, 1999.
4. Office of National Drug Control Policy White Paper, April 1999. Emerging Drug Threats to U.S. National Security and the Security of the Community of Nations and the Role of Department of Defense in Combating these Threats.
5. The Russian government made this announcement on October 23, 2001. See Granma editorial of October 26, 2001.
6. See Mayor General Edward B. Atkes’ editorial in The Washington Post, March 16, 1996.
7. Thirty-four pecent of Cuba’s foreign trade is with Western Europe, another third is with the Americas, including Canada; only 16% is with Eastern Europe and Russia (in contrast to 70% during the Cold War).
8. There are 27 Cuban embassies in Europe and 28 in Latin America and the Caribbean. MINREX, 1999.
9. Many Third World students have received scholarships and studied in Cuba. Collaboration with Middle Eastern countries, such as Algeria, Libya, Palestine and Syria, has been important. “Colaboración cubana a otros países, 1960-1999,” Ministry of Foreign Investment and Economic Collaboration, Havana, 2000.
10. “Colaboración cubana a otros países, 1960-1999.”
11. Cuban Internal Opposition Act of 2001, introduced in the House of
Representatives, HR 1271 IH, 107th Congress.
12. See Marc Frank, “Britain Wants Cuba off U.S.Terrorism Blacklist,”
Reuters, Havana, Ocober 13, 2001. Britain’s Minister of Energy Brian
Wilson stated that “We are not in agreement with the U.S. view that
Cuba sponsors terrorism.”
