Justo A. Méndez Poli-Sci 472 Prof. Tanter United States and Cuba: foreign policy partial defeat or limited victory "communism in the Western hemisphere is not negotiable" President John F. Kennedy, 1961 "Farewell Fidel, that's the message of this bill" Senator Jesse Helms, 1996 In January 3 of 1997 it will have been thirty six years since Washington broke diplomatic relations with Havana. Nine different administrations have gone by and the United States' foreign policy to Cuba remains the same. All the administrations have upheld a tight economic embargo on Cuba and one has even engaged in an armed stalemate and supported an offensive on the Island. Although the objectives and justifications of the policy have changed with the administrations; the motivations remain the same: the democratization and capitalization of Cuba. The strategic tool for the accomplishment of the American policy has been the same during the last four decades, a total economic-trade embargo; but the objectives of the strategy have shifted several times. The embargo began as a punishment on Cuba's population with the purpose of causing civil unrest that would lead to the overthrow of Castro's regime. As relations with Cuba broke down, coercive diplomacy complemented the embargo, which became rather a denial strategy against Castro's goals for the Island and neighboring countries in Latin America. After Castro established strong economic relations and developing military ties with the Soviet Union; the Cold War came closer to home, ninety miles away from our coasts. At that point in time, the embargo and coercive diplomacy became an strategy for deterrence and containment of not only of Castro's interests, but the Soviet Union's and against the spread of communism as well. The Soviet Block is dissolved, moving away from communism and into democracy; and the Cold War ended five or six years ago. The socialist regimes in Chile and Nicaragua fell down to the internal opposition (not without foreign intervention though) and no other countries in Latin America or the Western hemisphere shows any signs of following a Marxist-Leninist ideology. Fidel Castro remains as the sole communist leader in this part of the world, and China is the only other communist regime in the globe. But then again, Fidel still remains after thirty six years of relentless opposition. Does the thirty six years of Castro's regime represent a defeat the United States policy and credibility? Did the United States take the wrong strategy or have they tried everything in their diplomatic arsenal? Is Fidel Castro an irrational actor, impossible to coerce? Is the present day status quo in the Caribbean any threat to the United States and its goals? This paper has the purpose of explaining why the United Sates strategy on Castro's Cuba has not been a failure of foreign policy, as many political opinions contend. The approach to this explanation is to steer away from the simplistic "all or nothing" perspective of Castro's retention of power; to analyze in theory and in practice the rationality of the process and its actors; and look at the relations between both countries from Castro's perspective (prospect theory): a prisoners dilemma. Finally, analyze the what does the United States have to gain from present the status quo. THIRTY SIX YEARS: NINE PRESIDENTS AND ONE DICTATOR On April of 1959, while addressing the U.S. Senate Foreign relations committee, Fidel Castro stated that "healthy bilateral relations between two nations must be based on the principle of full equality; a point of view Cuban diplomats will reiterate over the next thirty years in any negotiations with Washington." During the months of January and February of 1960, Cuba nationalizes most of the land and facilities under the control of American companies like the United Fruit and Texaco. President Eisenhower responds with threats of eliminating the Cuban sugar quota from the U.S. market. On February 13 , Cuba signs a major agreement with the Soviets for comestibles, machinery and oil. Months later Castro passes a law to nationalize the remaining U.S. holdings on the Island including sugar mills, oil refineries and bank accounts. Immediately after, the U.S. Congress begin drafting the "Sugar Act", providing the President with the powers to reject the Cuban sugar quota. Eisenhower cancels current and future sugar sales, saying "[my] decision amounts to economic sanctions against Cuba"; Castro condemns it as "economic war".(1) During the following year U.S.-Cuban relations took a more antagonistic twist. On January 3 of 1961 Washington breaks diplomatic relations with Havana after Cuba formally accuses the United States of planning an invasion on the Island in front of the UN assembly. On April 17, an invasion force organized, financed, armed and directed by the CIA, with the full knowledge of both Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations, attacks Cuba in the Bay of Pigs. Cuban militia defeats the invading exiles within seventy two hours. At the time of the invasion, U.S. firms are still committed to nearly seventy million dollars a year in trade with the Island. A week after the fiasco of Bay of Pigs, Cuba petitions the United States to enter into negotiations to end the hostilities and re-establish ties. President Kennedy responds to the petition by stating that "communism in the western hemisphere is not negotiable".(2) In 1962, the Cuban-Soviet alliance becomes a real threat. Despite affirmations that it has no intentions of installing offensive weapons systems in Cuba, the Soviet Union tries to do precisely that. The Soviets are secretly moving to introduce and set up intermediate-range ballistic missiles in the Island. This results in the Cuban Missile Crisis, bringing the world to the brink of global nuclear war. The Missile Crisis ends after two weeks of a naval stalemate with an agreement between Kennedy and Khrushchev. Nevertheless, Cuba initially refuses to recognize the agreement or to cooperate with the United Nations' supervision of the missile removal, one of the understanding's original provision. The Soviet Union compromises to remove its offensive weapons systems from Cuba under UN supervision and not to reintroduce them. President Kennedy, in return, promises not to invade Cuba, and to drop its naval blockade from the Island. On 1962, a total U.S. embargo against trade with Cuba goes into effect; and new legislation is suggested which proposes cuts in foreign aid to any U.S. ally assisting or trading with the Cuban government. A year later the embargo is adopted by United States official law, falling under the "Trading with the Enemy Act"; including legislation barring American citizens from spending money on Cuban soil and businesses. During the following years, several countries like Britain, France, Spain, Yugoslavia and Mexico publicly announce that they will continue diplomatic and commercial relations with Cuba despite of the U.S. policy. Over the next twenty seven years, the U.S. government maintains the policy of a complete trade ban on Cuba. At times the embargo is even expanded. For instance, in 1966, Washington prohibits the sale of food supplies to any country trading with Cuba. In 1980 President Reagan considers the idea of a naval blockade of the Island in response to a Soviet troop deployment to Afghanistan. Again, in 1992, the embargo is tightened with the approval of the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 ("Torricelli's Law"). This act is passed by Congress in an effort "to promote peaceful democratic change in Cuba through foreign aid restrictions and economic sanctions, including prohibitions on exports to Cuba by foreign subsidiaries of U.S. firms."(3) The last action the United States takes in relation to Cuba, is President Clinton's approval of the Helms-Burton bill, known as the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1995. The purpose of this law is implement every possible restriction on United States businesses from investing in Cuba. This bill also includes a very controversial clause, which empowers the U.S. government to prosecute foreign investors who are profiting from industrial facilities in Cuba, that were previously owned by Americans. President Clinton signs the bill into law in 1996 but allows for a six month moratorium on the controversial clause. THE UNITED STATES OBJECTIVES AND THE EMBARGO The United States have had several different objectives during the long stand of the Cuban embargo. First, beginning in March of 1960, the United States initiated the embargo as retaliation and an effort of compellance against Castro for nationalizing American properties and assets in Cuban soil. As the compellance stand failed, the United States began to work for the downfall of the Castro regime. In effect, President Eisenhower's policy of non-intervention, contained in his proclamation of January 26, 1960, was set aside, and "the new American policy -not announced as such but implicit in the actions of the United States government- was one of overthrowing Castro by all means available to the U.S. short of the open employment of American Armed forces in Cuba."(4) By causing a extreme economic hardship to the Cuban people, the embargo was intended to cultivate enough dissent to eventually lead to the downfall of the new regime. The embargo was at that point enforced as a punishment strategy on the Cuban population; either looking for the people to rebel against Castro, or for Castro himself giving up to U.S. demands for the sake of his people. For its second objective, even if it would had failed to collapse the regime, the embargo was deemed worthwhile in that it would make the Cuban-Soviet relationship as costly as possible to both. At best, this would lead one, or both countries to decide that the price was to high, and consequently to reduce or even desist from the newly formed ties. This second stage was seen as a denial strategy. The United States by no means would have allowed the Soviet Union to establish a military post ninety miles away from its coast, offsetting the balance of power during the Cold War. Along with the second objective and moving on into third stage, the embargo was intended to have a two-fold demonstration effect. Imposed initially in retaliation for the nationalization of U.S. properties, it was intended to serve as a deterrent to other countries that might contemplate such nationalizations; thus protecting the interests of U.S. property owners. At the same time, by contributing to the failure of the communist economic model, it would make the revolutionary experience less attractive to other countries that might think of following Cuba's example. This last objective was triggered by what the United States perceived to be Cuba's aggressive foreign policy goals in Latin America. These were best expressed by Fidel Castro's "vow to turn the Andes into the Sierra Maestra(5) of Latin America", and by the "Second Declaration of Havana", which was a virtual declaration of war against the other governments of the hemisphere. As the United States saw it, Cuba was determined to bring about both the overthrown of those governments and their replacement by revolutionary regimes sympathetic to Cuba. The United States were determined to contain communism within Cuban shores. A vital part of the containment objective, mostly important during the Cold War, was to deprive the Cuban government of hard currency earnings and access to the credit market. Access to foreign credit lines would had allowed Cuba to enter the production market, generating earnings that then might have been used to finance Castro's ideal of "exporting the Revolution."(6) Along with the containment of communism, the United States have its "threat credibility" on the line; and the maintenance of this credibility is one of the major elements that keeps the embargo alive today. CASTRO'S RATIONALITY, PROSPECTS, AND PRISONER'S DILEMMA Fidel Castro has been the leader of a nation of peasants who rebelled against an American supported dictatorship and a rich elitist minority that maintained the Island in almost a feudal state. Under Batista's regime, Cuba was a heaven for exploitative industries, mafia dealings, trafficking of all sorts and gambling. All this went on under the protection of the United States government and the enrichment of American interests and the Cuban elite. Cuba was the capitalists paradise; no trade laws or regulating structures and cheap labor. It was precisely capitalism what the Cuban people were rebelling against; the unrestrained capitalism that they blamed for the inequality and social chaos. Immediately after Castro gained power over the Island, his first project was to implement the Agrarian Reform Act; a law that would enable the Cuban government to distribute land grants among the population and compensate the owners of the expropriated properties. The passage of this Act turned on the panic alarm in the U.S. Congress. The expropriation of those properties and the socialist ideals behind it, urged the United Sates into a defensive stance with Castro. Even though the U.S. showed its disapproval of the Reform, Castro still came to Congress looking for American support. The United Sates government not only turned Castro down, but even put pressure on him by implementing the embargo. The United Sates next move was the Invasion of the Bay of Pigs; although fought by Cuban exiles, it represented and illegal and blatant attack on Cuba's new government. Still, a week after the attack, Castro went back to Congress in an attempt to put hostilities aside and re-establish ties. President Kennedy replies that he will not negotiate with communists. In the bipolar balance of power of the Cold War, Castro saw no other option than to allay with the Soviet Union. In the eyes of Castro, the American coercive diplomacy became the bully that would kill the "Revolution". Communism and the Cold War bipolarity represented Fidel's way out from his "prisoners dilemma". United States' impulsive strategy of coercive diplomacy justified the emergence of communist Cuba, a Soviet ally ninety miles away from American shores. Analyzing Castro's decision-making process from both a prisoner's dilemma perspective or prospect theory, Castro should be judged as a "reasonable" actor. Castro's regime would not have survived if he had given into any of the United States coercive demands. Cooperation with the American policy not only represented possible exploitation, but assured collapse of Castro's regime. The prospects of possible negotiations with the United States made loss- aversion Castro's main priority in his dealings with the American government. Cuba also had its political credibility, as well as the credibility of the socialist system on the line. Opening up to American demands would represent the admission of the communist model failure, and the justification of American capitalism as the only viable, if not the optimum option in the Western hemisphere. The Cuban government has even shown that it would rather "burn the bridges" as a manifestation of self-assurance than to negotiate in American terms. For the last thirty six years Castro has condemned the "American Imperialism" in every public speech in front of Cubans and the international community as well. Even more dramatic; and significant since Cuba is no longer the Soviet's protégé, was the downing of two civilian aircrafts that took off from American soil in the past February. Castro justified his action by denouncing that the planes were in Cuban airspace and therefore shot down. The United States condemned the action as an act of provocation and a coward attack on innocent civilians. This situation developed just months after the Clinton administration gave signs of possible conversations with Havana. Although Castro's objectives seem irrational, like establishing a communist regime and later a Soviet military outpost ninety miles away from the United States, the rationality of his methods to achieve goals and survive American coercion has maintained him in power. Within the school of thought of coercion and rationality, Castro has not been coerced because of the irrationality of his decisions, but for the subjective irrationality of his goals. The economic embargo has also served a very useful tool for Castro to "perpetuate the Revolution" in the hearts of his people and in the eyes of the international community. As long as there is an enemy, the revolution will survive. Castro has easily demonized the United States policy as the "Yankee Imperialism"(9); and the Cuban people rallies around the flag, overlooking Cuba's precarious conditions. THE UNITED STATES POLICY: WHAT WENT WRONG THEN AND WHAT COULD BE DONE NOW The United States initial approach to Castro's regime is a reflection of the debate between Shellings's punishment versus Pape's denial strategies. The United States failure to depose Castro by starving civilians, serves us as empirical evidence to reaffirm the ineffectiveness of punishment as a coercive strategy. Cubans had lived in extreme poverty and desperation under Batista's dictatorship. The revolution was not Castro's personal campaign to power, but a national effort to overthrow the ruling elite; a fact apparently overlooked by the American policy. Cubans were obviously not ready to give up their efforts and surrender their leader to the intransigent demands of a foreign "imperial" power; the same power that previously supported their oppressor. The second misjudgment in the American policy was the choice of an intransigent bully-like diplomacy instead of a firm but flexible approach(10). The bullying diplomatic strategy not only alienated Cuba into the Soviet alliance, but also put the United States credibility in question. With the invasion of Bay of Pigs and Kennedy's replies to Castro's diplomatic proposals, the American government had its share of bridge burning, reaching a point of no return. Another policy that was doomed for failure from its offset, was the threatening of American allies with economic sanctions if they insisted on offering aid to or trading with Cuba. No sovereign country could take this threat likely and without offense. The international community immediately disapproved of the United States actions and policies. The United States found itself alone in its stand, and Castro's cause against "imperialism" was justified internationally. This policy was not only ineffective in calling for international support against Castro's regime, but also left plenty of open doors for private economic interests to invest in communist Cuba. The private ivestors that were hurt the most by the trade restrictions were the American businesses. Many American businesses were looking to reestablish their economic dealings with Havana right after Castro's regime was stabilized. But the trade restrictions took them out of Cuba, and opened the door to European invesors, who took over the existing economic infrastructure. Still to this day, American businesses are waiting for the embargo to end and are even lobbying in Washington for its withdrawal. American businesses have opposed reinforcement legislation for the embargo like the recent Helms-Burton bill, signed after the incident in last February. The fact that interest groups within the United States and President Clinton himself opposed this type of legislation, shows another problematic area in the American Policy; unrestrained bureacratic politics. The United States also have had its hands tied with this static policy because of bureacrats drafting their own policy towards Cuba without any coordination with the executive branch. In the past years, proposals like the "Toricelli Law" and the Helms- Burton Act, have forced the executive branch to compromise its credibility and support these laws. These laws are condemned by the United Nations as well as the international community, and have proven to be useless. So Fidel Castro is still in power after thirty six years of economic and diplomatic warfare. Has the United States failed in its policy? Should the United States search for a new solution or attempt to persuade Fidel? The answers to this questions are all in the present status quo. At this point in history, search and persuasion would not only be useless, but would also prove to be counterproductive for the United States strategy. Castro's stronghold is his resistance to being persuaded. Anything that represents a threat to his regime, regardless if it is or not in the control of the United States, he will still blame it on the American government, using the threat as a rallying point for his support. Also, as discussed before, Castro considers that any concession on his behalf or conciliatory action would contradict and deligitimize his position. Castro's retention of power should not be the sole indicative of success or failure. Cuba's regime represents no threat to the United States national security. On the contrary, Castro, in this moment in history represents an stability for the United States in the Caribbean. If Castro's regime came down right now, the United States would have to face serious immigration problems; as it is most likely that many Cubans would leave the Island in direction to American coats. A second problem would be the government- less nation. It would be in the United States best interests to intervene in the establishment of a new government; an intervention that would definitely be very costly and closely watch by the international community. Another difficulty the United States would face, would be the legal settlements over lands and properties in Cuba. Because of their dual citizenship, Cuban-Americans could take their legal disputes against foreign investors to American courts. American courts do not have precedents on which to base these types of decisions. Furthermore, the parties that will be facing each other in court are both very important to the American political system and the economy. Cuban- Americans are major economic contributors to both the Democrat and Republican parties; while the treatment of private foreign investors in American courts will reflect in the relations with the governments of those foreign interests. Another interesting situation that has been developing within the last month, the European economic community petitioned for the democratization of Cuba under the conditioning of financial and humanitarian aid. The European community, Cuba's main trading partner, has always been a harsh critic of the U.S. policy and embargo for both economic and humanitarian reasons. Most European governments have been vocal advocates of Cuba's political and economic sovereignty, and have even gone so far as denouncing the embargo as illegal and a violation to human rights. But this recent change of mind in the international arena represents an endorsement of the American policy for Cuba and a boost to the United States credibility. In conclusion, the present status quo in the Caribbean is the vindication of the United States foreign policy towards Cuba. The figure of Fidel Castro has allowed the United States to show the world that communist military regimes are nothing but dinosaurs from the bipolarity of the Cold War, and not a viable option in the new world order. END NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Murray, Mary. Cruel and Unusual Punishment, Ocean Press, Australia 1993. 2. idid. #1 3. Congress session 102-2, Aug. 5, 1995. public doc. S.Hrg.102-825 4. Smith, Wayne. The Closest of Enemies, 1987 W.W.Norton & Co. New York 5. Smith, Wayne; Morales, Esteban. Subject to Solution: Problems in Cuban-U.S. Relations. Boulder & London Colorado 1988. 6. ibid. #5 7. Schelling, Thomas C.. Arms and Influence 1966 Yale University Press. 8. Fidel Castro's speech March 1963 in "Plaza de la Revolucion"" 9. ibid #8 10. Huth, Paul. Extended Deterrence and the Prevention of War Yale University Press 1988. in Cuba