ENEMY OF CONVENIENCE The United States vs. Cuba
THE FALL OF COMMUNISM IN EUROPE WILL undoubtedly be viewed as a watershed in the history of the Cuban Revolution, as our last Report showed. It has yet, however, to become a watershed in U.S....
...However, writes Maria de los Angeles Torres, this urgency has also given voice to centrist forces who maintain links with island-based human rights groups (the germ of political opposition), and who accept that the Communist Party will play a major role in any "transition...
...Max Azicri's examination of the origin of that policy shows that hostilities may have been inevitable, given the nature of the revolution and the orientation of U.S...
...The reduced importance of Cuba to policymakers has resulted, paradoxically, in greater hostility, led by bureaucratic inertia and political expediency...
...T HE CUBAN-AMERICAN LOBBY HAS BEEN the key actor in stepping up U.S...
...Washington's war on Cuba is now in its third decade...
...A thirty-year policy would be difficult for any president to change, even if he wanted to...
...Because such groups have always criticized the lack of democracy in Cuba (unlike the Cuban-American Left) they are able to do battle with the Right over democracy within the community, and may soon provide a countervailing influence over U.S...
...Rather than improve the possibilities for normalizing relations, the passage of time and the maturing of the revolution seem to have only made the United States more implacable...
...Save for a few brief openings during the Ford and Carter presidencies, U.S...
...These two factors-lessened strategic importance, and the conversion of Cuba policy into a domestic issue -have shifted the locus of policy-making to Congress, where posturing and grandstanding could more easily lead to provocations and a spiral of ever greater hostilities...
...The widespread belief among Cuban-Americans that change will soon come to Cuba has prompted the Right to renew its crusade with greater vigor...
...policy...
...Claiborne Pell has dropped his longstanding support for normalizing relations, and joined the chorus pushing for more aggressive action against the revolution 90 miles off the Florida coast...
...Cuba stands poised to retaliate in kind, with radio transmitters capable of disrupting U.S...
...The high priority given to the war against Cuba built a sizable army of federal employees, comprising everyone from bureaucrats to terrorists...
...Marti, a government-operated station which since March has beamed propaganda at Cuba, is a favorite project of the anti-Cuba crowd in Congress, and illustrates this danger...
...John Spicer Nichols shows this to be a significant escalation of the broadcast wars Washington and Havana have waged since the early 1960s...
...But in the early years there were opportunities for negotiation and, indeed, for compromise...
...The island is no longer an outpost of an enemy power, a Soviet proxy in the Third World, or even "the source of terrorism" in Central America (as the Reagan Administration once portrayed it...
...A decade of effort by right-wing lobbies, especially the Cuban American National Foundation, has made anti-Cuba politics a litmus test of conservatism for politicians who wish to attract the funding of major right-wing contributors-or at least to avoid the wrath of the well-heeled Cuban-American Right...
...But that lobby faces new challenges from the community itself...
...Moreover, it gave rise to a political dynamic that has tended to block any moves toward rapprochement...
...With the collapse of the Cold War, Cuba is less of a concern to the global strategists at the CIA, Pentagon and National Security Council...
...hostility has been relentless...
...The goals of overthrowing Fidel Castro and destroying the revolution have not changed...
...Contrary to the stereotype of Cuban-Americans as uniformly prosperous and reactionary, the community is quite diverse...
...pressure on Cuba...
...Cuba has become an enemy of convenience...
...Cuba policy, the subject of the second of our two-part series on Cuba...
...Covert warfare, economic embargo, terrorism, sabotage and assassination attempts have been Cuba's daily fare from its mammoth neighbor to the north...
...The weakening of any strategic justification for continued animosity has dovetailed with the rise of Cuba as a domestic policy issue...
...broadcasting over much of the country...
...policy-makers...
...T.V...
...Even liberal Sen...
...What has changed, argue Philip Brenner and Saul Landau, is who formulates that policy, and the motivations behind it-new elements that seem likely to make it more volatile and prone to rapid escalation...
...On the surface, current Cuba policy would seem to be no departure...
Vol. 24 • November 1990 • No. 3
