Cuba Libre: A 500-Year Quest for Independence

by Philip Brenner

  Also meeting in Havana were peace negotiators from the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the main insurgent group in that country. The negotiations began in mid-November 2012. This was not the first time Cuba had tried to help settle a major conflict by serving as a mediator. Donna Rich identified seven instances during the Cold War when Cuba played this role.4

  The often bitter four years of talks between the Colombian government and FARC concluded with an accord that the Colombian Congress ratified on November 30, 2016. (After Colombians in a national vote rejected the initial agreement signed in June 2016, negotiators returned to Havana and hammered out final changes.) An estimated 260,000 Colombians had been killed during the fifty-year civil war, and seven million were displaced.5 A non-Cuban observer close to the negotiations told us in April 2016 that the Cuban mediators had been essential in bringing closure to the last difficult rounds of deliberation. “There would have been no agreement had it not been for Cuba’s efforts,” he said.

  Colombia had perhaps the closest relationship to the United States of any country in South America. It was the third largest recipient of US economic and military aid in the world—an average of more than $700 million per year for over two decades. Thus, Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos’s stark ultimatum at the end of the 2012 Summit of the Americas shocked US officials. Speaking on behalf of the other heads of state, he declared that none would attend the summit planned for 2015 unless Cuba were permitted to participate.6

  Shortly afterward, President Obama fired his national security adviser for Latin America. He then agreed to negotiations between Cuba and the United States that led to the restoration of diplomatic relations on December 17, 2014.

  A Dramatic Breakthrough with the United States

  Limited Changes in US Policy

  Improved relations with Cuba and Latin America were not high on President Obama’s agenda during his first term. He faced a deep recession at home, conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq that he promised to end, and a health care initiative that he wanted Congress to approve. With respect to Cuba, he had gone beyond his 2008 campaign promise. In 2009, he removed all restrictions on remittances sent by Cuban-Americans in addition to reversing President Bush’s restrictive travel policy for Cuban-Americans.

  Cuban-Americans Increase Parcel Deliveries after Restrictions End

  Brisk charter traffic between the two countries quickly ensued after President Barack Obama ended restrictions on Cuban-American travel and remittances. Nearly every flight leaving for Cuba was accompanied by a second plane just to carry the cargo Cuban-Americans were bringing with them. The Cuban diaspora in the United States was emerging as a new force that favored a pragmatic policy to end the hostile relationship.

  Figure 25.1. Cuban-Americans wait for their parcels at José Martí Airport in Havana. Photo by Philip Brenner.

  Even so, in 2011 President Obama increased the level of remittances all US citizens could send to Cuba and he eased some restrictions on educational travel. While he had suspended the semiannual migration talks after the Cuban government arrested USAID subcontractor Alan Gross in December 2009, US and Cuban officials did meet under the radar to discuss several issues. These included monthly meetings to maintain peace and order at the Guantánamo Naval Base fence line and regular cooperation between the Cuban and US coast guards and drug enforcement agencies. In 2011, US and Cuban officials also participated in multilateral talks on responses to oil spills that might result from drilling in the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and Florida Straits.7 One objective was to establish procedures for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to transfer supplies and technology to Cuba via other countries in the event of a drilling accident. The US embargo forbids a direct transfer, even though much of the oil gushing from Cuba’s deep-sea wells would wash up on Florida beaches if there were a malfunction.

  But these actions were so limited that they had little chance of developing the trust necessary to overcome the distrust generated by fifty years of hostility. President Obama also tied his own hands by framing Cuba policy in terms of reciprocity, which conditioned US initiatives on changes Cuba made instead of on the basis of US interests, as President Clinton had framed US policy. The Obama administration followed the Bush administration’s approach, and like his predecessor, President Obama tended to disparage the significance of Cuba’s reforms.8 In the absence of a determined executive branch policy on Cuba, the US Congress filled the vacuum to thwart any reduction in tension. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican who became chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in 2011 (and was the ranking minority member of the committee in 2009 and 2010) dominated Cuba policy in the House. Robert Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat who chaired the Western Hemisphere subcommittee, controlled policy in the Senate. Both were Cuban-Americans who had made opposition to improved relations their first priority and both were repeatedly successful in browbeating State Department officials and White House political operatives.

  Raúl responded to US policy at the end of 2011 by once again affirming Cuba’s determination to maintain its independence. Speaking to the National Assembly, he declared that President Obama “seems not to understand that Cuba made enormous and prolonged sacrifices to win its independence in the nineteenth century and to defend its freedom.” He added that US “attempts to convert a handful of mercenaries into a destabilizing opposition . . . does not produce sleepless nights for a revolutionary people like ours.”9

  Alan Gross’s continuing imprisonment impeded efforts to improve relations because Obama administration officials said they would not engage in any negotiations until Cuba released him. Yet they also would not acknowledge the seeming subversive purpose of his mission, which we elaborated in chapter 23. This position left them vulnerable to conservative charges that Cuba was holding Gross as a hostage in order to exchange him for the Cuban Five.

  A New Resolve in Obama’s Second Term

  Several events and circumstances in 2013 offered renewed expectations for improved relations. A new Cuban law enabled most citizens to obtain passports, to leave the country for up to two years without an exit permit, and to return without forfeiting their property. The United States had highlighted Cuba’s travel restrictions in attacking its human rights record.10 In May, with the concurrence of the Justice Department, a federal judge permitted René González, one of the Cuban Five, to stay in Cuba permanently after he was allowed to travel there to attend memorial services for his father. He had been released on parole in 2011 after 13 years in prison but forced to serve out his parole in the United States. Then in November, speaking at a Miami fundraiser, President Obama hinted at big changes. “Keep in mind that when Castro came to power, I was just born,” he said. “So the notion that the same policies that we put in place in 1961 would somehow still be as effective as they are today . . . doesn’t make sense.”11

  On December 17, 2014, Presidents Castro and Obama revealed what had been in the works for the previous eighteen months. Very much behind the scenes, in supersecret negotiations unknown even to Secretary of State John Kerry, two senior National Security Council staff members had been meeting with Cuban representatives.12 In statements delivered simultaneously from Havana and Washington, the two presidents declared that their countries would resume diplomatic relations.

  President Castro also announced Cuba had released Gross on humanitarian grounds and would also release fifty-three political prisoners. President Obama said that he had commuted the sentences of the three remaining members of the Cuban Five still in prison and returned them to Cuba. Cuba did the same for a CIA agent arrested in the 1990s. President Obama also indicated he would consider removing Cuba from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism. (He did so in May 2015.)

  In April 2015, Raúl attended the OAS-sponsored Summit of the Americas in Panama, where he had a private meeting with Obama (see the two
presidents together in figure 25.2). It was the first time Cuba had participated in this conference, the series of which began in 1994. In July and August, respectively, Cuba and the United States raised their own flags over their former embassy buildings that had served, formally, as “interests sections” of the Swiss Embassy.

  Figure 25.2. Presidents Raúl Castro and Barack Obama meet at the Summit of the Americas in April 2015. Official White House Photo by Amanda Lucidon.

  While the restoration of diplomatic relations was a historic step for both countries, it was not the same as restoring normal relations between them. In fact, Cuba and the United States could not restore a normal relationship because one never existed, as we have elaborated throughout this book. Not when Cuba was a Spanish colony; not during the 1898 to 1903 US occupation; not during the 1903 to 1933 period when the Platt Amendment was in force; not during the Good Neighbor period; not during the Batista years; and certainly not during the period of hostility after 1959. Cuba and the United States needed to draw a new map if they were going to travel the road from normal diplomatic relations to normal relations, which is what they began to do in 2015 and 2016.

  Making Headway and Building Trust

  Headway was made on several matters, such as direct postal service and flights by regularly scheduled airlines, which began in the fall of 2016. Some key issues that were still under discussion at the end of President Obama’s second term included migration, the Cuban Adjustment Act, and property claims by citizens of both countries. Issues that Cuba wanted to consider but US negotiators would not discuss were the US occupation of the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, the US embargo, and US activities that Cuba considers subversive, such as so-called democracy promotion programs. The resolution of differences on these issues unquestionably would contribute to the development of a normal relationship. Yet the essential element needed to achieve normalcy is trust.

  Policymakers in both countries were discovering that building trust was more difficult than they imagined, because of the long legacy of distrust between the Cuba and the United States. Consider that even as many Cubans celebrated the December 17 announcements on diplomatic relations, former president Fidel Castro waited more than five weeks to issue a comment. In a letter to the Cuban Federation of University Students in January 2015 he wrote, “I do not trust the policy of the United States, nor have I exchanged a word with them, but this is not, in any way, a rejection of a peaceful solution to conflicts.”13 Similarly, Fidel was critical of President Obama’s lack of empathy about the history of Cuban deaths caused by US actions when the US president visited Cuba in March 2016. He wrote in Granma,

  Obama made a speech in which he uses the most sweetened words to express: “It is time, now, to forget the past. . . .” I suppose all of us were at risk of a heart attack upon hearing these words from the President of the United States. After a ruthless blockade that has lasted almost 60 years, and what about those who have died in the mercenary attacks on Cuban ships and ports, an airliner full of passengers blown up in midair, mercenary invasions, multiple acts of violence and coercion?14

  Both Cuban and US officials have often described their frustrations in dealing with the other country’s representatives. In part, this reflects circumstances where the United States is determined to bend Cuba to its will—to make it behave like a small country in the US sphere of influence—and Cuba displays an even greater determination not to bend. This kind of confrontation shaped the relationship during the Cold War and continued to infuse relations after the Cold War, even as the two countries negotiated the opening of embassies in January 2015. For example, when US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta S. Jacobson said at a press conference that “we pressed the Cuban government for improved human rights conditions,” Josefina Vidal Ferreiro, Cuba’s lead negotiator, responded sharply, “Cuba has never responded to pressure.”15

  As the United States and Cuba move haltingly toward a normal relationship, their empathetic skills will need finer tuning. Greater empathy will require US policymakers to discard their traditional arrogance, a result of both US invulnerability and the ideology of American exceptionalism. Cuban officials will need to overcome a tendency to be hypervigilant, which in part has been a reaction to Cuba’s vulnerability and the result of a national security ideology that its vulnerability engendered.

  Soft Power

  The notion of “soft power” itself is ancient. But it has become associated with political scientist Joseph Nye, who coined the term in 1990 and has since elaborated the concept. “Hard power” involves coercion. “Soft power,” Nye explains, is “the ability to affect others through the co-optive means of framing the agenda, persuading, and eliciting positive attraction in order to obtain preferred outcomes.”16 Cuba’s medical internationalism is one aspect of what observers describe as its “soft power.” By the end of 2016, Cuba still had more than forty thousand health workers spread out over sixty-eight countries. Its commitment in 2011was greater than the total number of medical personnel from all the G-8 countries combined.17

  Even President Obama acknowledged that Cuba’s soft power might be the kind of influence the United States should deploy in the hemisphere. Addressing the 2009 Summit of the Americas, he noted that when Latin American leaders spoke about Cuba, they “talked very specifically about the thousands of doctors from Cuba . . . upon which many of these countries heavily depend. And it’s a reminder for us in the United States that if our only interaction with many of these countries is drug interdiction . . . then we may not be developing the connections that can, over time, increase our influence.”18

  If we look back at Cuba’s foreign policy in only this century, we see repeated examples of how Cuba has used the resources Nye identifies. In addition to medical internationalism, it has made itself a center for regional culture events with an arts festival (Havana Biennial) and annual jazz and film festivals. Sandra Levinson notes that the “Havana Biennial has become a major showcase for ‘Third World’ art, an incredible accomplishment and commitment given Cuba’s financial constraints.”19 Latin Americans accord the annual writing prizes from Casa de las Americas the level of prestige that the Pulitzer Prize has in the United States. Cuban music, films, and art—and, of course, Che Guevara T-shirts—are popular throughout the world. The global appreciation for Cuban culture took off during the Special Period when the government permitted artists and musicians to earn money abroad because it could no longer afford to support them. The Internet subsequently gave them the possibility of getting worldwide exposure.

  In the regional organizations with which it engages, Cuba focuses on goals it has long advocated, such as the alleviation of poverty, which also provide a basis for countries to work together. As Michael Erisman observes, ALBA and CELAC are rooted in a common framework about development and independence. “Both view integration in more than simply economic terms, seeking also to promote political, social, economic, and cultural unity as well as sustainable development,” he explains.20

  At CELAC’s January 2016 summit, the heads of state approved a twenty-eight item “Action Plan.” Note how closely the first five subjects correspond to priorities that Fidel and Raúl have articulated as central to the promotion of development with equity: food security and the eradication of hunger and poverty; family farming; prevention and fight against corruption; promoting equity, equality, and the empowerment of women; and elimination of racial and ethnic discrimination against people of African descent.21 At a time when Venezuela can no longer entice support for such an emphasis with the promise of cheap oil, it does appear that the attractiveness of the ideas and values that Cuba espouses has enabled it to shape CELAC’s agenda.

  Small states historically have sought to use international organizations as a means of enhancing their power vis-à-vis a large powerful neighbor.22 “Cuba’s diplomatic successes in recent years are almost wholly attributable to the isl
and’s soft power,” Julia Sweig and Michael Bustamante observe.23 Certainly Cuba’s most notable success vis-à-vis the United States was gaining participation in the 2015 Summit of the Americas. In effect, the political support Latin American countries gave to Cuba was enough to counter the hard power—military strength and financial levers—the United States traditionally used in dominating the hemisphere. It was an instance of what political scientist Tom Long terms “collective foreign policy,” where a small country can influence a larger one as a result of its “ability to win international allies and to work with other small and medium states.”24

  Cuba’s pursuit of soft power provides an example of the kind of balancing act it has had to perform in recent years. John Kirk points out that the Lineamientos stress “the need to seek financial self-sufficiency while also repeating Cuba’s ongoing internationalist solidarity.”25 As a result, while Cuba expanded its medical internationalism program, it raised the cost for countries that could afford to pay for services. It was able to use those earnings, then, to increase the number of personnel in poor countries such as Botswana where it is not compensated.

  Raúl has relied on soft power to enhance Cuba’s ability to defend its sovereignty. While he has introduced some changes in the financing of international projects, he has not abandoned the genuine humanitarianism that has been an integral component of Cuba’s internationalism and that has made Cuba so attractive to other third world countries.