THE FALL OF COMMUNISM IN EUROPE WILL undoubtedly be viewed as a watershed in the history of the Cuban Revolution, as our last Report showed. It has yet, however, to become a watershed in U.S. Cuba policy, the subject of the second of our two-part series on Cuba. Washington’s war on Cuba is now in its third decade. Save for a few brief openings during the Ford and Carter presidencies, U.S. hostility has been relentless. Covert warfare, economic embargo, terrorism, sabotage and assassination attempts have been Cuba’s daily fare from its mammoth neighbor to the north. On the surface, current Cuba policy would seem to be no departure. The goals of overthrowing Fidel Castro and destroying the revolution have not changed. What has changed, argue Philip Brenner and Saul Landau, is who formulates that policy, and the motivations behind it-new elements that seem likely to make it more volatile and prone to rapid escalation. With the collapse of the Cold War, Cuba is less of a concern to the global strategists at the CIA, Pentagon and National Security Council. The island is no longer an outpost of an enemy power, a Soviet proxy in the Third World, or even “the source of terrorism” in Central America (as the Reagan Administration once portrayed it). The weakening of any strategic justification for con- tinued animosity has dovetailed with the rise of Cuba as a domestic policy issue. A decade of effort by right-wing lobbies, especially the Cuban American National Foun- dation, has made anti-Cuba politics a litmus test of conser- vatism for politicians who wish to attract the funding of major right-wing contributors-or at least to avoid the wrath of the well-heeled Cuban-American Right. Even liberal Sen. Claiborne Pell has dropped his longstanding support for normalizing relations, and joined the chorus pushing for more aggressive action against the revolution 90 miles off the Florida coast. These two factors-lessened strategic importance, and the conversion of Cuba policy into a domestic issue -have shifted the locus of policy-making to Congress, where posturing and grandstanding could more easily lead to provocations and a spiral of ever greater hostilities. T.V. Marti, a government-operated station which since March has beamed propaganda at Cuba, is a favorite project of the anti-Cuba crowd in Congress, and illustrates this danger. John Spicer Nichols shows this to be a signifi- cant escalation of the broadcast wars Washington and Havana have waged since the early 1960s. Cuba stands poised to retaliate in kind, with radio transmitters capable of disrupting U.S. broadcasting over much of the country. T HE CUBAN-AMERICAN LOBBY HAS BEEN the key actor in stepping up U.S. pressure on Cuba. But that lobby faces new challenges from the community itself. Contrary to the stereotype of Cuban-Americans as uniformly prosperous and reactionary, the community is quite diverse. The widespread belief among Cuban-Ameri- cans that change will soon come to Cuba has prompted the Right to renew its crusade with greater vigor. However, writes Maria de los Angeles Torres, this urgency has also given voice to centrist forces who maintain links with island-based human rights groups (the germ of political opposition), and who accept that the Communist Party will play a major role in any “transition.” Because such groups have always criticized the lack of democracy in Cuba (unlike the Cuban-American Left) they are able to do battle with the Right over democracy within the com- munity, and may soon provide a countervailing influence over U.S. policy. A thirty-year policy would be difficult for any presi- dent to change, even if he wanted to. The high priority given to the war against Cuba built a sizable army of federal employees, comprising everyone from bureau- crats to terrorists. Moreover, it gave rise to a political dynamic that has tended to block any moves toward rapprochement. Max Azicri’s examination of the origin of that policy shows that hostilities may have been inevi- table, given the nature of the revolution and the orienta- tion of U.S. policy-makers. But in the early years there were opportunities for negotiation and, indeed, for com- promise. Rather than improve the possibilities for normalizing relations, the passage of time and the maturing of the revolution seem to have only made the United States more implacable. The reduced importance of Cuba to policy- makers has resulted, paradoxically, in greater hostility, led by bureaucratic inertia and political expediency. Cuba has become an enemy of convenience.
Menu
