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Editorial / Commentary / Opinion
José Azel : Cuba’s foreign policy -
the logic of intransigence
The most remarkable characteristic of Cuba’s foreign policy is that it seems to capture the world’s imagination. What is it about this rather insignificant, impoverished, Caribbean island of 11 million people that has held our collective attention for over half a century?
Cuba has certainly projected its foreign policy onto the international stage. In 1959, the Cuban revolution and its leader, Fidel Castro, fascinated the world with a romanticized image of a domestic social revolution. Then, the world knew little about Castro’s anti-Americanism which dated to his university years. By 1961, with the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban revolution had solidified its image as a mythical David successfully confronting the hated Goliath to the north. The following year, in 1962, the world stood still as the United States and the Soviet Union came dangerously close to nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis.
For the next two and a half decades, with the Soviet Union as its patron and benefactor, Cuba played an important role in the Cold War with its proxy armies and operatives fighting in support of Marxist regimes and insurgencies in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and elsewhere. During this period the Castro government supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1979, as well as the abhorrent and bloody regimes of Idi Amin in Uganda and Nguema Macias in Equatorial Guinea.
Cuba’s foreign alignments have been described as being based on socialist ideology or on the congruency of economic models. But Cuba’s foreign policy has been ideologically inconsistent, supporting, at the same time, liberation movements, brutal dictatorships, foreign occupations, theocratic regimes, and more.
Historically Cuba’s geopolitical alliances have transcended profound political, economic, and even theological differences. Cuba’s foreign economic policies have been far from rational, if we understand “rational” to be a desire to improve the well-being of the Cuban population. But Cuba’s foreign policy has been eminently rational if we understand the term to be an uncompromising desire to remain in power and to oppose the United States.
Cuba’s foreign policy follows its own logic and rules of engagement. If it is not political ideology or economic pragmatism, what then is the centerpiece of Cuba’s foreign policy? And perhaps more importantly, has it changed under Raul Castro?
Our failure to understand Cuba’s foreign policy stems from the fact that our analysis is framed by Western economic rationality. When we extrapolate our logical model to the Castro brothers we are trying to understand from our cultural and analytical environment actions arising from another. Cuba’s foreign policy cannot be fully understood if viewed exclusively from the mindset of Western economic and political rationality.
Cuba’s foreign policy follows two uncompromising principles: First, to remain in power, and second, an unmitigated hostility towards liberal democracies and market economies in general and towards the United States in particular. Historically, Cuba’s foreign policy has had as its principal focus the forming of anti-American alliances determined to undermine U.S. national interests. In 1958, while still in the Sierra Maestra, Fidel Castro wrote, “I have sworn to myself that the Americans are going to pay dearly for what they are doing. When this war ends, for me will begin a much longer and bigger war: the war that I am going to wage against them. I realize that this will be my true destiny.” (1)
The root cause of Cuba’s intransigence is not adherence to Marxists principles, but rather Fidel Castro’s pathological megalomania. Fidel’s intransigence is best understood as megalomaniacal rather than ideological. It is this pathology that will foil any diplomatic initiatives by the international community or the United States to induce the Castro brothers to undertake political or economic reforms that may undermine their absolute control. If Cuba’s foreign policy can be described as ideological at all, it would be based on an ideology of hate towards the United States
Cuba’s regime has managed to outlive ten U.S. administrations, the collapse of the Soviet Union, an abysmally poor economic development track record, and the pauperization of the country. Intransigence is the leitmotif of Cuba’s foreign policy. It has served them well for fifty years. It is a legacy that the Castro brothers are unwilling to compromise. Consequently, as irrational as it may seem to us, diplomatic overtures by the Obama administration and the world community will not move the Castro regime to grant Cubans civil liberties or political rights.
Often, Raul Castro has been characterized as a more pragmatic leader than his older brother. And while this may indeed be the case in some aspects of governance, it is not a pragmatism that will lead him to embrace policy changes that may jeopardize his hold on power. More likely, it is a pragmatism that will induce him to formulate practical policies designed to perpetuate power.
Undoubtedly, in time, Raul Castro will imprint his own governing style. But Raul Castro is not a peripheral participant in a system created by his brother; he is a central co-creator of that system. The changes that we have seen in Cuba since Raul Castro assumed the presidency are no more than a simple division of labor. The more mundane tasks of running the country have been delegated to the younger brother while Cuba’s foreign policy remains the sole proprietorship of Fidel Castro. In this context it may be useful to remember that when Mikhail Gorbachev visited Cuba in 1989, Castro reportedly warned him that “if you open a window [To Democracy] you will lose all power.”
Even after his brother’s passing, Raul Castro is unlikely to open the window.
Notes
(1) Fidel Castro’s letter to Celia Sanchez, June 5, 1958.
José Azel is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies, University of Miami. Petroleumworld does not necessarily share these views.
Editor's Note: This commentary was originally published by Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies on 02/22/2010. Petroleumworld reprint this article in the interest of our readers .
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