Trump’s Cuban Policy as a Metaphor for US Politics

ABSTRACT

This paper reviews the history of US-Cuban relations. It identifies the modest but significant changes in that policy brought about by negotiations during the Barack Obama and Raul Castro Administrations. It then examines the policy reversals initiated by President Trump during his first year in office. The paper suggests that US policy toward Cuba is characteristic of US foreign policy generally.

KEYWORDS:

• US-Cuban relations
• US foreign policy
• Cuba and the world

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on Contributors

Raul Rodriguez is Professor/Researcher and currently Director of the Center for Hemispheric and United States Studies at the University of Havana. His most recent publications include “Convergence and Divergence in United States and Canadian Cuba Policy Post 1959: A Triangular Comparative Analysis” (International Journal of Canadian Studies, 2008), “US-Cuba Relations: Historical Roots, Traditional Explanations and Levels of Analysis” (co-authored with Harry Targ, International Journal of Cuban Studies, 2015), “Canada and Cuba: A Historical Overview of Their Political and Diplomatic Relations” (in Other Diplomacies, Other Ties, Cuba and Canada in the Shadow of the USA, edited by Luis Rena Fernandez, Lana Wyle and Cynthia Wright, University of Toronto Press, 2018), “Cuban Foreign Policy under Raul Castro: Canada and Cuba” (co-authored with John Kirk, in Cuban Foreign Policy under Raul Castro, edited by John Kirk and Michael Erisman, Rowan & Littlefield, 2018).

Harry Targ, Professor of Political Science, Purdue University, has published on US foreign policy and political economy. He blogs at http://www.heartlandradical.blogspot.com. Currently he is doing research on the new US-Cuban relationship since the election of President Donald Trump and political movements in the United States.

Notes

1. In 1883, iron ore mining started with Juragua Iron Company, a subsidiary of Bethlemen Iron. In 1884, it exported 21,000 tons. In 1895, the Spanish-American Iron campany exported 74,000 tons (Le Riverend 1974, 508).

2. Spanish policy and its imprlications is detailled in Julio Le Riverend (1974, 509–522).

3. Jose Marti (1853–1895), Writer, Journalist and diplomat, lived in New York for 15 years and understood the political forces driving US Politics, its main trends and the expansionist and hegemonic aspiration of the United States in the Caribbean and the rest of the continent to the south. Marti made a very important distinction between Anglo Saxon America and today’s Latin America south of the Rio Grande, which he called “Our America.” Marti’s nationalist project for Cuba was opposed to the US imperialist project for the continent.

4. Emilio Roig de Leuschering (1889–1964), the First City Historian of Havana.

5. The problem of the land, the problem of industrialization, the problem of housing, the problem of unemployment, the problem of education and the problem of the people’s health: these are the six problems we would take immediate steps to solve, along with restoration of civil liberties and political democracy (Castro 1953).

6. The Moncada Program became the platform of the movement 26 of July (M-26-7) that is named after the military garrison that was attacked on July 26, 1953 by a group led by Fidel Castro. The Program, which became basically the platform of the new government, was profoundly nationalistic. The 1940 Constitution was reinstated and amended, the telephone company was nationalized as early as March 1959, and on May 17, 1959 the Agrarian Reform Law was enacted. For an excellent compilation of the text of the new laws and their impact see Jose Bell Lara, Delia Luisa Lopez Garcia, and Tania Caram Leon (2008).

7. Wet Foot Dry Foot interpretation of the Cuban Adjustment Act in 1966 gave the Cubans who arrived illegally in the United States, once they set foot on US territory (dry foot), the right to claim the status of political refugee. Those intercepted by coast guard in the open seas (wet foot) were returned to Cuba. Many issues of relevance to the two countries such as those involving immigration, control of drug trafficking, and cooperation on environment, disaster relief and joint medical research were part of the agreements.

8. See Lenin (1963, 667–766): (1) The concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies that play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital and the creation on the basis of this finance capital of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist association which divide up the world among themselves; (5) territorial division of the world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed.