The Cuban Revolution - A Half Century On...

“I am Fidel Castro and we have come to liberate Cuba” – Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (b. 1926), revolutionary and leader of Cuba 1959-2008

A full half century after a wild eyed and bearded 32 year old Cuban revolutionary swept to power to the chants of ‘Viva Fidel’, and a generation later than it probably should have happened, the United States this month took the first step in improving its long standing sour relations with Latin America. In allowing unlimited travel and money transfers between Cuban Americans and their families back in the homeland, the Obama administration has extended an olive branch to the Castro brothers and in the process signaled its short term goal of agreeing a rapprochement of sorts with the Cuban regime. Over time, the broader geo-political benefits to America may well include less volatility in the hemisphere and increased trade between the United States and her Latin American neighbors. You can be sure that as President Obama embarks on a new policy of détente with Fidel and Raul Castro, he has one eye firmly in the direction of Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

As a European living in the United States it has long baffled me as to why, for the period of at least the last 30 years, and definitely the last 20 years (since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Communism in 1989) the government of the United States, under presidents of both parties, would adopt such a rigid and clearly outdated policy of isolation with Cuba. The Cold War as we know it essentially ended when Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev turned his back on his own revolution (1917) and launched the policies of glasnost and perestroika in the mid 1980’s, paving the way for the fall of the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe and the breakup of the old USSR as we knew it.

Indeed it is today acknowledged by many historians, commentators and politicians of the time that the Soviet threat was consistently overstated, in a period spanning the terms of 8 presidents from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan, by over-zealous and right wing hawks within the military, industrial, intelligence and financial nexus that has controlled the defense budget, and ostensibly the foreign policy agenda of the United States, since the latter presidency of FDR.

The genesis of Cuba’s isolation is well documented of course. In the halcyon, care free days before the revolution, Cuba was an island sanctuary 90 miles off the coast of Florida. During the era of Cuban president Fulgencio Batista, which coincided with that of American president Dwight Eisenhower, Cuba famously became a haven for American organized crime leaders and a cash cow for some of America’s largest corporations. Even though President Eisenhower officially recognized the new Cuban government shortly after Castro rolled into the streets of Havana on New Year’s Day 1959, it quickly became clear that the Cuban revolution would involve draconian domestic reforms and the nationalization of US owned industries on the island. Relations between the governments deteriorated rapidly, resulting in the American withdrawal of diplomatic recognition of Cuba on January 3rd 1961, 17 days before President Kennedy was sworn into office.

In the meantime (in fact as early as April of 1960), President Eisenhower had given the CIA the green light to commence covert activities against the Cuban regime, with the intention of ousting Castro, by fair means or foul. When the democratically elected president of Iran had threatened to nationalize the Iranian oil industry in 1953, the CIA (with help from British intelligence) successfully ousted President Mosaddeq in a coup d’état. The plan was to do the same with Castro.

Castro was no angel, that’s for sure, but there is no doubt that the severing of diplomatic relations and the covert efforts to oust him from power only served to push Castro closer to the Soviet Union for support, both in terms of trade and ideology. The Bay of Pigs disaster in April 1961 convinced Castro that the United States was intent on a military invasion of Cuba, which had the result of only driving Cuba further into the arms of its Communist benefactor half a world away. The subsequent military buildup on the island led directly to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The rest, as they say, is history. Economic, trade and diplomatic sanctions against Cuba were locked down for more than a generation thereafter. Ironically, Castro has gone on to outlive the terms of ten American presidents before handing over power to his brother Raul in February 2008.

The U.S. trade embargo on Cuba remains in place to this day. The question is why? Surely not because either Castro brother can be categorized as Communist; and even if they are, what threat does Cuba pose to the United States of America? The changes recently announced by President Obama are the first step in what I believe is a deliberate strategy to fully normalize relations with Cuba for the first time in fifty years.