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Text File | 1994-05-02 | 17KB | 323 lines

<text> <title> A Pragmatic U.S.- Cuba Policy </title> <article> <hdr> Foreign Service Journal, April 1991 A Pragmatic Cuba Policy: Looking beyond the standoff </hdr> <body> By Wayne S. Smith. Mr. Smith is director of Cuban Studies at the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies and the author of Close Enemies: A Personal and Diplomatic Account of U.S.-Cuban Relations Since 1957. He is a retired Foreign Service officer whose last post was chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba, 1979-1982. Particular U.S. objectives in Cuba, and conditions for improving relations, have shifted over the years with changing circumstances. But for almost three decades, the objectives have focused on Cuba's foreign policy (or, more specifically, its entanglements abroad) and human rights. During the 1960s, our stated preconditions for re-engagement with Cuba, first articulated in response to a 1964 offer from Castro to negotiate, were twofold: 1) that Cuba stop supporting subversion in the rest of Latin America, and 2) that it sever ties with the Soviet Union. As was often pointed out at the time, demanding that it cut ties with Moscow before reaching some accommodation with Washington was a non-starter. No nation is likely to forswear the protection of an ally without prior assurances from its principal enemy. The United States government understood that. In fact, the conditions were so phrased as to cut off further discussion. The U.S. response was simply a way of saying no in such a way as to put the onus back on Castro. The government was probably right to have so handled it. At the time, there was no evidence of any moderation in Castro's policies. And there was a sense that the revolutionary fervor in Cuba had still to burn down and that Castro had to be bloodied by the realities of the world. By the first half of the 1970s, those conditions obtained. Castro had found that even Soviet support did not guarantee the success of his economic programs at home, and in Latin America, his efforts to promote revolution had failed. He thus began to change course, reaching out to establish diplomatic relations with the same governments he had once vowed to overthrow and signaling his readiness to reach an understanding with the United States. The United States responded cautiously, voting with the majority in the Organization of American States in 1975 to lift the multilateral sanctions against Cuba (thus leaving it up to each member government to decide for itself whether or not to maintain relations with Cuba), and holding confidential talks with the Cubans to explore the possibilities of rapprochement. Before the effort was well launched, however, new problems emerged when Cuba decided to send troops to support one faction in the Angolan civil war, the Marxist-led Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), against invading South African forces. Thus, by the time the Carter Administration came to office in 1977, Africa had been added to Latin America as an area in which Cuban actions conflicted with the U.S. policy objectives. And the Carter Administration brought with it a deep commitment to human rights. Hence, from 1977 forward, the principal U.S. conditions for improving bilateral relations were: 1) that Cuba begin to remove its troops from Africa; 2) that it not support efforts to overthrow other governments in this hemisphere; 3) that it reduce its ties, and especially those of a military nature, with the Soviet Union; and 4) that it show greater respect for human rights--most specifically by releasing political prisoners. Proper ends, unwise means The quintessential U.S. concern, of course, had to do with Cuba's close relationship with the Soviet Union, and rightly so. So long as we lived in a world in which the two superpowers confronted one another on a global scale, constantly jockeying for political and military advantage, the United States could only regard the projection of Soviet influence so close to its own guns as potentially threatening. The Havana-Moscow alliance not only impeded normal relations between Washington and Havana, it colored Washington's reactions to Cuban initiatives elsewhere. Had Cuba not been the ally of the Soviet Union, the United States might have been more relaxed about the former's actions in Latin America and then in Africa. As it was, those actions were assessed in the context of Washington's global competition with Moscow. From 1977 forward, U.S. objectives with respect to Cuba were, in my judgment, eminently sensible. How we pursued those objectives, however, was usually not--not sensible and certainly not effective. Even the Carter Administration's much-ballyhooed "opening" to Cuba turned out not to be much of an opening at all. It agreed to the establishment of Interests Sections in one another's capitals so that the two sides could have direct communications with one another, but could not then break the habits of the past, which discouraged any meaningful communications. What was needed was a systematic negotiating process in which U.S. and Cuban concerns were taken up on an issue-by-issue basis and providing a clear correlation between Cuban moves to accommodate U.S. concerns and U.S. responses. Effective diplomacy, after all, involves a carefully calculated mix of penalties and inducements. There are rewards for the adversary if he addresses your concerns, penalties if he does not. The Carter Administration, probably because of domestic problems and the in-fighting between the National Security Council and the State Department, managed to introduce no such correlation into U.S.-Cuban relations. Quite the contrary, it continued to make unilateral demands, often without any thought of quid pro quo. It complained of Cuban actions in Africa but never once tried to discuss the matter with the Cubans or to try multilateral diplomacy to defuse the conflict. It urged the release of Cuban political prisoners, but then in 1978 responded to Cuba's accession not with a positive step of its own but by holding air and naval maneuvers off the Cuban coast, as though to penalize them for acceding to our request--and did so just at the moment we were asking for the release of four American prisoners. Not surprisingly, the four Americans had to wait another year for their release. If, by and large, the Carter Administration's style was to eschew negotiations in favor of unilateral demands, that has also been the style of all subsequent administrations. All administrations over the past 15 years have regarded negotiations with Cuba as an absolute last resort. U.S. officials have usually tried to rationalize this by expressing doubts as to Cuban sincerity. As one State Department officer put it years back when discussing the question of emigration from Cuba: "We have no reason to believe Fidel Castro would negotiate the issue in good faith, and therefore we do not intend to enter into negotiations with him on this subject." And yet, demonstrably, when they were tried, negotiations worked. On every occasion in which the United States finally agreed to sit down to serious bargaining, the Cubans responded in good faith and agreement was reached. When, in 1978, for example, the Carter Administration discussed the release of political prisoners with the Cuban government and agreed to process for entry into the United States any who did not wish to remain in Cuba, the result was the release of most political prisoners held at that time--some 5,000 in all. The cause of human rights, in short, was advanced more by those discussions than by anything tried by previous or subsequent administrations. The Cubans had indicated from early 1981 forward their readiness to continue the negotiations begun in 1980 and to sign a migration agreement. The United States demurred on grounds that the Cubans weren't serious. Yet, when finally in 19