Cuba, why is our policy toward this neighbor derived from the politics of 65 years ago?

Musings

Cuba is our neighbor lying approximately 90 miles south of Key West, Florida. Our close involvement with Cuba goes back to the Spanish American War in 1898 At that time we forced Spain to relinquish the colony and  Cuba became independent although there was an American military occupation which was withdrawn. Cuba then became an American playground in the tropics and a neighbor which otherwise was generally thought of popularly by the American people. In 1952 the Cuban government was overthrown by Fulgencio Batista who became the dictator of the country. His government was corrupt and essentially favored his friends and Americans that brought enough money and business into his country. He was not popular. He was overthrown in a revolution in 1959 led by Fidel Castro. With that revolution it became clear that he was a socialist and would pursue socialist policies. The American political reaction was to declare him a communist and begin sanctioning the country to try and force him to be overthrown in a successive revolution. That did not work. Our policy towards Cuba is still based on that sequence and it seems to be nonsensical.

Contemplations

As Fidel Castro and his supporters took over the country from Batista, Batista fled to Spain and those people who were closely tied to Batista and those entrepreneurs with larger businesses in Cuba who feared that they would be prosecuted by the new government fled to the United States. The end result was a considerable migration, mostly to Florida, by wealthier Cubans and those who otherwise feared the new government.

At the time the United States was very diligent and aggressive about responding to new socialist regimes that appeared anywhere around the world and was particularly concerned when one of these appeared 90 miles from our shores. Those fleeing Cuba were mostly coming into Florida and a few other states where they moved. The Cuban refugees had a bitter attitude towards the Castro regime and felt that anything possible should be done to overthrow it so they could return and again take control of their commercial and private assets that were seized when they fled. This attitude of the United States government together with the Cuban refugee bitterness led the United States to get involved in an attempt to assist some Cuban refugees in invading Cuba at the Bay of Pigs  in1961, which was an utter failure. The United States then continued with various efforts by the CIA to try and kill or overthrow Castro. None of it worked. It was an excessive response to a fear of communists.

There are some who will defend the United States effort to keep communism and the Soviets away from our back door just off the Florida coast. Indeed, at one time, in 1962 the Soviets we're placing missiles in Cuba and the United States entered into a blockade of Cuba to force the Soviets to withdraw the missiles. The missiles were withdrawn and our relations with Cuba settled into a sequence of sanctions by the United States with periodic efforts by the CIA to stir trouble in Cuba and Cuban efforts to support revolutions in some other countries in South America. The United States never had further threats from Cuba. Our sanctions just remained in place to the detriment of the Cuban economy and the Castro regime supported such socialist causes in Latin America as it chose, which in general failed.

The relations between the two countries then settled into a period where Cuba was ignored, but sanctioned by the United States and the CIA's periodic attempts to intervene in Cuba, such as trying to figure out how to poison Castro's toothpaste, all of which failed.

Presumably in the 65 years since all of this commotion was stirred up we would have been able to settle back into a somewhat normal relationship with our neighbor. That has not happened. The essential reason is that there are a considerable number of Cuban refugees and their offspring living in Florida and they have continued to be adamant about wanting the United States government to be in opposition to Cuba. Because our two major parties, the Republicans and Democrats, are both concerned with trying to win elections in Florida they do not want to make this voting bloc upset. Therefore, each new administration continues the sanctions and opposition to the Cuban government and ourrelations with our neighbor are to ignore it and try and do what we can to ruin its economy. The one exception to this was when President Obama tried to start opening the door to Cuba. That appeared to be somewhat popular in Florida and was having some success when Donald Trump was elected president and ended the policy.

Our policy toward Cuba has been a failure. It defies logic as to why it is still in place except for the voting blocs in Florida. It is even contrary to the logic that we have used with regard to other countries at which we have been at odds. For example, we fought a war in Vietnam for a decade under the banner of needing to stop the spread of communism. It was another failure. Over 50,000Americans died in that war with thousands and thousands of others injured. Vietnam was bombed endlessly. Our bombing campaign over North Vietnam was more concentrated than that over Germany in World War II.. It was a serious and bitter war. Yet today we have diplomatic relations with Vietnam and our trade with that ccommunistcountry now exceeds $150 billion a year including approximately $130 billion of imports from Vietnam to the United States. This was a much more serious confrontation with communism and loss of American blood and assets and yet having entered into a treaty ending the war with Vietnam we have managed to make it one of our major trading partners. Yet with Cuba, with whom we fought no war but just were mad because it had a socialist/communist government. we continue a policy of silly sanctions.

Thoughts

There is no reason to continue our efforts to isolate Cuba. It has relations with the other countries in the Western Hemisphere and participates in the various international bodies such as the United Nations. We had a disagreement with Cuba in the early 1960s.  The basis for the dispute is gone. We have clearly shown that when we are done fighting with a country we can look to see if we have some mutual issues and concepts on which we can agree such as we have done in Vietnam. We can enter intonormal relations with a country in that situation. With Cuba we have resisted normal relations simply because of a voting bloc in the state of Florida. It makes no sense for the United States to be focusing its relations with Cuba based on that voting bloc. It is time to remove the sanctions and enter into normal relations with Cuba.

Silence Dogood

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