Cross-post: This also appears at Marry in Massachusetts.
Now, a less impulsive and probably much brighter President is patching the Cuba wounds. His first one-eighth measures aren't going to heal much if anything. Moreover, as the Financial Times' Christopher Caldwell states today, allowing U.S. second cousins and closer unlimited visits to the island and the right to send non-military goods to family sends mixed and wrong messages to Cuban and U.S. citizens.
Mr Obama’s plan has some bizarre elements, such as the granting of travel rights on ethnic grounds. We know why Americans of Cuban ethnicity would want to go to Cuba more than other Americans. That they should be allowed to go to Cuba more than other Americans is an outrage against republican principles…It is another sign (along with affirmative action and the widespread use of undocumented labour) that Americans are now quite comfortable having different classes of citizenship.
Our Kennedy-established embargo has been both a failure and a perennial embarrassment. This allegedly greatest nation we are could not crush Castro's government economically. First, the Soviets provided subsidies. Then Cuba eked out cash with its agricultural output (including cigars the rest of the world can buy). Moreover, Kennedy's fantasy that the embargo would catalyze a citizen revolt was just that. Our stupidest Senators, including Jesse Helms, clung to that, egged on by the vitriolic Cuban Americans of the WWII generation.
The most unfortunate aspect of this is how it exposed the United States' motives. Our banks and other corporations whose Cuban assets were nationalized, have insisted on payment half a century later. Yet, as a nation, we pretend that this was never about money. We were saving this corner of the world for democracy and challenging a dictator.
Our white horse we like to ride is covered in blood and mud. In Cuba, as in Vietnam and so many African and South American nations, we install or support dictators, brutal tyrants. Castro and now his brother were not of our choosing and we can't seem to get over it.
Schmucks and Schlemiels
We have had many chances to lead a communist, socialist or dictatorial nation and its leader toward democracy and capitalism. Our tools though have not been those of saviors and inspirations. As with Cuba, we went with force, military and economic.
We conveniently forgot that our colonies farmed Cuba for slaves and we maintained an exploitative relationship with it until Castro took power in 1959. We encourage rapacious U.S. corporations and organized crime to bleed the nation's resources and abuse its people.
What we remember is that Castro took power and seized our company and Mafia assets. As Caldwell wrote:
In its first quarter-century, the embargo against Cuba was a powerful means of expressing America’s enmity, at a time when Cuba had done plenty to earn it. It was a way of satisfying voters’ sense of justice, showing the high price of crossing the US and demonstrating that, for Washington, profits took a back seat to strategy. It provided a useful example to countries choosing sides in the cold war.
Instead, we could have dealt with the dictator not of our choosing. We could have shown by example and lesson the virtues of behaving like the United States, of looking to us for trade and philosophy alike, and of gradually rejecting the quasi-communist path.
That is harder, but no less prone to failure than say a Bay of Pigs invasion or decades of impotent embargo that hurt only Cuban citizens. Understandably, they don't hate the Castros for our embargo of their nation.
It's past time, Obama. End the embargo and pull a Dick Nixon in normalizing relations with this little enemy. The WWII legislators are retiring or dying. Their replacements don't have to look very far to see the failure of our Cuban policy. Right now, we look like schmucks for our viciousness and schlemiels who who can't beat down a poor island nation in 50 years of trying. Also, the new generations of Cuban Americans are not invested in their grandparents' grievances of lost property.
Beyond this, the big lesson here is one we should have learned in Chile, Vietnam and elsewhere as well as Cuba. If we want people elsewhere to want to be like us, we need to act like saviors and not oppressors. We can turn others by our good example, but we need to live the good example first.
This is a good explanation for the need to normalize Cuban-American relations, but it gets to the right place by taking all the wrong roads. I enjoy alternate history as much as anyone else, but I prefer it to be believable. To try to reduce the complexity of the CMC to Kennedy’s fantasies and manhood is ridiculous — to pretend that it had nothing to do with internal Soviet politics is foolhardy. To pretend that the Bay of Pigs has been edited out of our national memory is tantamount to saying that our posture toward Iran is based on the Iraq-Iran War and is unaffected by the hostage crisis.
<
p>I agree with the idea of normalizing relations with Cuba — which first takes an act of Congress in this case, not an act of the president — but offering a Chomskyesque analysis of American history doesn’t make for an explanation. Nixon did not normalize Sino-American relations, Carter did. To pretend that our policy toward Cuba is rooted in “World War II legislators” and not the political importance of Cuban-American communities in Florida and urban NYC is similarly erroneous. That internal political dynamic is the driver for this dichotomy where Pinochet and al-Bashir are treated better than either Castro.
I cited the Cuban Americans. Let’s keep in mind that they are relatively few and were used by most Presidents from Kennedy on as well as conservatives to justify our Cuban aggression and policy. They were important because they served political aims in Washington.
<
p>The missile crisis and “pretend that it has nothing to do with internal Soviet politics” is not founded from my post. I did not assert that, but I would hold that Kennedy’s previous two years of arrogant and failed diplomacy with the USSR, even face to face, precipitated Khrushchev’s policy and action.
<
p>Kennedy may still be a political saint to many around these parts. He had many flaws, particularly in foreign policy. I hold that his actions toward and policy with Cuba were disasters start to finish. A savvy U.S. would have converted and co-opted a Castro instead of trying to assassinate him.
Florida Cuban-Americans are relatively few, in a state where races are often decided by relatively few votes — look at the presidential elections from 1960-1976. Furthermore, the CMC was more about Kruschev’s struggles against some hardliners in his Politburo than anything else — why do you think so many different messages were sent to DC over such a short period of time?
<
p>Of course co-opting Castro would have been smarter than trying to attack him — and you can say that about Ho Chi Minh, Augusto Sandinho, Viriata du Cruz, and so many others. That’s not a Kennedy thing, but an American thing. The break with this is one of the most hopeful notes in the Obama/Clinton foreign policy. If you want to dismiss any criticism or examination of your points with “Kennedy may still be a political saint”, you are welcome. But it doesn’t make up for the lack of basic historical context I keep seeing.
I’m glad you support the main point about how we should have dealt and should deal with the “so many others.”
<
p>This is not a historical tract and does not pretend to be – although the small context is necessary to frame Obama’s current direction. I don’t intend to dismiss any criticism and frankly would be surprised if there weren’t more apologists coming forward.
<
p>What we have now and where you and I seem to agree is that this is a great chance for the Prez to break with out failed policies. You and I probably would concur that co-opting our enemies when possible would be the way to go. We didn’t even get into the current shift of power to the younger Castro, and the likelihood that he won’t be in power all that long. This is the time.
Anytime an American administration has made even the slightest noise about easing that embargo, the Cuban government does something so provocative as to make it impossible. Last time, they shot down a civilian plane full of activists, prompting the Helms bill that wound up tightening the embargo. I don’t see that this dynamic has changed. It is just a question of what provocative thing they will do.