|
Welcome to The Latell Report.
The Report, analyzing Cuba's
contemporary domestic and foreign policy, is published monthly
except August and December and distributed by the electronic
information service of the Cuba
Transition Project (CTP)
at the University of Miami's
Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS).
The Latell Report is a
publication of ICCAS and no government funding has been used
in its publication. The opinions expressed herein are those of
the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ICCAS
and/or the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Like six American presidents before him, Democrats and
Republicans, Barack Obama has sought to improve relations with
Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
In warm and conciliatory language during the recent summit of
the Americas in Trinidad
and Tobago the
president, and Secretary of State Clinton, dramatized their
desire to begin a bilateral process of rapprochement withHavana.
Their hopes were elevated because since assuming Cuba’s
presidency early last year Raul Castro has repeatedly signaled
interest in a constructive dialogue. But within days of the
American overtures, Fidel
Castro, Cuba’s
ex-president and still presiding potentate, all but
conclusively rejected them.
In two lengthy commentaries disseminated by Cuba’s
media this week, the elder Castro was scornful and abusive. He
described president Obama as “looking conceited” in Trinidad.
Quoting extensively from Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega’s
fifty minute anti-American jeremiad in Port-of-Spain, Castro
echoed the theme that it is the United
States, not Cuba,
that must change. He gave no ground whatever, intimating that,
as far as he is concerned, Cuba can
wait another four or eight years until after President Obama
leaves office without progress in alleviating bilateral
tensions.
Castro’s intransigence is scarcely any different than it
has been since the first months of his revolutionary regime.
Dwight Eisenhower was the first American president to deal
with him, and the first earnestly to seek a constructive
relationship. He dispatched Philip Bonsal, a veteran diplomat,
fluent in Spanish and sympathetic to many of the Cuban
revolution’s initial objectives, as ambassador. But Bonsal was
shunned by Fidel. In his memoirs he concluded that “as long as
Castro remains in power there will be no change: (he) needs
the United
States as
a whipping boy and relentless enemy.”
In the fall of 1963 John Kennedy entered into
exploratory diplomatic contacts with Cuba,
long after the embassy on Havana’s
Malecon had been shuttered. Those contacts expired following
the assassination in Dallas,
but undoubtedly were doomed to fail for the same reasons that
Bonsal came to appreciate.
Later, before his resignation in 1974, Richard Nixon
authorized high-level diplomatic contacts with Cuba.
They were undertaken by his successor Gerald Ford and
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1975. And again, soon
after his inauguration in 1977, Jimmy Carter launched a
similar effort. The three presidents and their advisers
believed erroneously that Castro would see critical advantages
in reducing bilateral tensions and that he would be willing to
make important concessions toward that end.
Those efforts foundered, however, when it became clear
that Castro placed a higher priority on supporting
revolutionary internationalism in Africa,
and on retaining the American enemy to berate, than on
achieving rapprochement.
Bill Clinton’s White House tried yet again, exploring
means of improving relations behind the scenes and through
intermediaries. He was deterred too, when in February 1996
Cuban MIG fighters shot down civilian aircraft over
international waters, killing American civilians. The fallout
for Fidel was enactment of the tough Helms-Burton legislation
that had been languishing in Congress, but that only provided
yet more “anti-imperialist” ammunition for the Cuban
propaganda machine.
The latest effort, undertaken by President Obama with
considerable fanfare and the best of intentions is possibly
the most ambitious of all seven of these presidential efforts
to reduce or end the deadlock in relations with Cuba.
But it appears that it is already suffering the same fate as
all of the earlier attempts.
This time, however, Castro has new and compelling
reasons for rejecting virtually all compromise with Washington.
He is in a triumphant, unyielding mood. Believing that the
correlation of international forces --a term revived from
classic Marxist lexicon-- is working overwhelmingly in Cuba’s
favor, he feels no need to compromise. With just a little more
patience, perhaps even in his lifetime, Cuba,
he believes, can win most of its goals in the stand-off with Washington through
unilateral concessions.
And as usual, his calculus is derived from convincing
evidence. Cuba’s
legitimacy with governments in this hemisphere has never been
higher. Soon every country except the United
States will
have full diplomatic relations with Havana.
A rump group of presidents led and fueled by Venezuelan
President Chavez have raised the volume and intensity of
pro-Castro and anti-American rhetoric to unprecedented levels.
President Obama endured insulting public doses of it in Trinidad from
both Chavez and Ortega.
Castro’s new world view has been reinforced by many
other fawning regional leaders. Following the Rio Summit late
last year, with Cuba for
the first time participating as a full member, ten Latin
American and Caribbean presidents and prime ministers have
paid their respects to one or both Castro brothers in Havana.
So did an important American congressional delegation. None of
those visitors bothered to meet with, or even to acknowledge
the suffering of Cuban human rights and pro-democracy
dissidents.
Regional demands for the end of the U.S. economic
embargo, readmission of Cuba to
the OAS, and an end to the years of hostility have become
deafening. Innumerable calls have also been heard from leading
members of Congress, influential Washington think
tanks, and commentators of many stripes who argue that the
time finally has come for the impasse withCuba to
end. From Castro’s perspective at least, unilateral
concessions by Washington,
such as lifting the travel ban or all of the embargo, now seem
within the realm of the possible. With so much now converging
in Cuba’s
and his favor, Fidel sees no need to make significant
compromises.
But his rejection of the most promising American
overtures ever offered is likely to generate severe tensions
within the Cuban leadership. Fidel’s intransigence will be
unsettling to the many civilian and military leaders who
genuinely had hoped for a better relationship with Washington.
Most had come to believe that Raúl Castro, Cuba’s
president after all, was intent on moving in that direction.
But Fidel’s snide commentary published on April 21
chastens and humiliates his brother. Now issuing almost one of
these reflections daily, there can be no doubt that it is the
infirm, cosseted, all-but-invisible Fidel, angry but
triumphant, who is again the ultimate arbiter of Cuban foreign
policy.
______________________________
Dr. Brian Latell,
distinguished Cuba analyst
and recent author of the book, After
Fidel: The Inside Story of Castro’s Regime and Cuba’s Next
Leader, is a Senior Research Associate at
ICCAS. He has informed American and foreign presidents,
cabinet members, and legislators about Cuba and
Fidel Castro in a number of capacities. He served in the
early 1990s as National Intelligence Officer for Latin
America at the Central Intelligence Agency and taught at Georgetown University for
a quarter century. Dr. Latell has written, lectured, and
consulted extensively.
________________________________
The CTP, funded by a grant from
the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), can be
contacted at P.O. Box 248174, Coral Gables, Florida
33124-3010, Tel: 305-284-CUBA (2822), Fax: 305-284-4875, and
by email at ctp.iccas@miami.edu. |
.
|