Fulbright and Cuba

...It has rather entered a dangerous period of transition which will determine its ultimate collapse or stabilization...

...He evidently considers it a failure, without reservation or qualification, because it has not by itself brought down Fidel Castro's regime...

...The real question is whether the relatively smallscale British-French deals have opened the way for relatively large-scale U.S...

...Consequently, we are asked not only to make a gratuitous gift to Fidel Castro's stability but to do so in the worst possible way...

...we more often use foreign policy as an adjunct of foreign trade and investment...

...The first step, in such cases, is to define the point or area of disagreement as sharply and clearly as possible...

...But today, he claimed, the boycott was merely "a second-rate inconvenience for Cuba...

...the decision has been made for us by events...

...Whatever gyrations it now makes, he cannot possibly please both sides and displeasing either one will be very painful and costly for him...

...THINKING ALOUD Fulbright and Cuba By Theodore Draper Senator J. William Fulbright's "great debate" speech of March 25 probably has more direct, immediate and practical relevance to Cuba than to any other part of the Communist world...

...had finally made it possible for Cuba to flourish and to be free...

...Still, looking backward, November 1959 stands out as a key month in the process of Cuba's Communization...

...A fair test of his entire position may well be how right or wrong he is about Cuba, though I do not mean to suggest that all of his other observations do not need to be discussed on their own merits...

...This year rice fields have been sacrificed to more sugar production in the frenzied drive toward a "socialist monoculture...

...In that same month, a Department of Industrialization was formed within INRA, the so-called agrarian reform organization...

...According to Guevara, "almost all the factories depend on imported products," the shortages of which were, therefore, responsible for "the shutdowns, the periods of low productivity, the mechanical breakdowns which cannot be repaired in time owing to lack of spare parts...

...The Cuban deals with Britain and France were only an advance payment...

...The distinction between China or Russia on the one hand and Yugoslavia or Poland on the other has been recognized for quite some time...

...It would, in effect, mean that Communism can only go forward, never backward...

...It transmutes a hard problem of policy into the easy solution of an accomplished fact...

...Guevara gave assurances that the U.S...

...This decline of "labor discipline" and "labor productivity" has long worried the Cuban leaders: Castro made a speech on July 1, 1963, in which he bitterly berated various categories of workers for doing less on their jobs under his regime than in the bad, old days...

...For years, a "revolutionary" school of thought had taught that the United States was responsible for all of Cuba's ills, and that Cuba could get rid of them by getting rid of every vestige of U.S...

...More than anything else he needs time, and he is willing to buy it from those whom he considers his worst enemies-if they will sell it to him...

...Just before Mikoyan concluded the agreement, the United States made an effort-until now a closely guarded secret on both sides-to offer Fidel Castro's regime aid and cooperation...

...Theodore Draper, whose articles and special supplements on Cuba appear frequently in these pages, is author of Castro's Revolution: Myths and Realities...

...Ever since Castro declared himself publicly a Communist, Ms regime has hammered away at the thesis that all Communist revolutions are "irreversible...

...It was one of those moves that the Castro regime has repeatedly made to get a desired, hostile reaction which it then uses to carry out an aggressive policy as if it were a defensive one...

...All this adds up to one thing: Castro desperately needs a breathing spell of at least two or three years...

...influence and investments...

...They cried out that now the U.S...

...Since this year's sugar crop cannot be much larger and may even be somewhat smaller than the 3.8 million tons of 1963, the lowest figure in almost 20 years, the first step cannot be taken until next year...

...We do not have to decide any longer whether the boycott is desirable...

...For example, rice production had advanced to a high point of 181,000 tons in 1957, two years before Castro, and plunged to 95,400 tons in 1962, after three years of Castro...

...The next great problem, Guevara went on, was the state of Cuba's industrial equipment...

...I happen to be largely in agreement with him, for example, on the issue of Panama...

...I detect in Fulbright's approach an unwillingness to face the consequences of his thought...

...politico-economic make-up that the least dangerous and most negotiable opportunities should be frittered away by permitting foreign trade and investment to take precedence over foreign policy...

...When Fulbright tells us that the Castro regime is "not on the verge of collapse," is he trying to tell us that it is also on the verge of stabilization or has already stabilized itself...

...The Communist regime obtains the means of long-term survival and power...

...The "search for offers," the rejected U.S...

...It was up to the Soviet Union to demonstrate that Cuba would be better off as part of a Soviet-bloc "international division of labor" than as an economic appendage to the U.S...

...As Guevara has made clear, Cuba has entered a period of two to five years in which its main energies and resources will be devoted to increasing its production of sugar to 10 million tons by 1970...

...This is one way of begging the question...

...That is where Senator Fulbright comes in...

...When he tells us that it is not likely to be overthrown by our policies, is it not also true that our policies can prevent it from being overthrown...

...If nothing else, the boycott left Cuba wide open to the Soviets and gave them a chance to show what they could do...

...deals...

...When he assures us that the Castro regime is a "distasteful nuisance" rather than an "intolerable danger," he must be thinking of that regime in vacuo and not as the farflung and dependent outpost of a Communist world that is both a nuisance and a danger...

...Unless the British and French are willing to be truly prodigal in their credits to Castro on a wide range of products, the basic effect of these spot deals will be limited...

...Whatever one may think of this condition, it is something beyond a scramble for trade, but the possibility of a quid pro quo never even arises in the case of Cuba...

...I am inclined to believe that, thus far, these deals are more significant politically and psychologically than economically...

...It was up to the Communist world to show how Communism could be successfully applied to a Latin American outpost...

...In the case of Communist China, he stops short of demanding immediate recognition and poses at least one condition-"the abandonment by the Chinese Communists, tacitly if not explicitly, of their intention to conquer and incorporate Taiwan...

...The significant thing for our present purpose was the Cuban reaction to the embargo...

...The Cuban line was clearly expressed by the old-time Communist leader, Blas Roca: "Now Cuba has freed her foreign commerce from the monopoly of an imperialist power...

...But was the boycott ever given such a mission...

...A few weeks later, Guevara, by now President of the Cuban National Bank, initiated the open crisis of 1960 by calling in the oil companies' representatives and delivering an ultimatum to them, without any possibility of negotiation, for the processing of a large percentage of Soviet oil, starting with two barge-loads that were already on the way...

...It was now up to Castro to prove that, without the United States, Cuba could leap into the promised land of "accelerated industrialization," diversified agriculture and increased productivity...

...A high official of the U.S...

...To some extent, Fulbright evades the larger issue by the simple expedient of overlooking the fact that Cuba is and considers itself to be an integral part of the Communist world...

...source, and it is a mystery to me why the entire story was not made public long ago...

...He suggests far more than he says and refuses to carry his thought to its ultimate conclusion...

...If it could be unshakably planted in enough people's minds, the ultimate victory of world Communism would be insured whatever the outcome of the struggle within that world...

...Fulbright's entire argument rests on the fundamental premise that "the boycott policy is a failure...

...The Cuban leaders did not cry out that the U.S...

...Almost everything else will have to mark time until the big push in sugar gets well under way...

...The mass acceptance of this idea is more important to the Communist world-and its rejection more important to the non-Communist world-than any other stake in Cuba or elsewhere...

...The new conscription law has militarized Cuba beyond anything in its history...

...It was marked in October by the arrest of Major Hubert Matos, who had protested Communist infiltration of the Rebel Army...

...Imports from the Soviet bloc had fallen short of expectations by as much as 30 per cent, making it necessary to dig into the reserves of raw materials last year...

...Ever since Fidel Castro's long pilgrimage to Russia in May of last year, Cuba has been forced to reorganize its entire economy to lessen the burden on the Soviet Union...

...If Fulbright has his way, then, the Castro regime is going to get what it wants from us and tell the world it is doing us a favor...

...The method used was almost naively simple...

...This "search" led to Soviet First Deputy Premier Anastas I. Mikoyan's arrival in Havana in February 1960, and the first SovietCuban economic agreement was signed on February 13...

...was trying to ruin their country...

...When the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee advises us to distinguish between different Communist regimes elsewhere, one wonders why he should bother to kick in an open door...

...His key word is curiously ambiguous-"feasibility...

...Among other things, Guevara emphasized that "supplies" (abastecimientos) have been the weakest link in the Cuban system...

...Less than three years ago, Cuban Minister of Economics Regino Boti promised that by 1965 Cuba would be relatively the most industrialized country in Latin America and lead in per capita production of electric power, steel, cement, tractors and petroleum refining...

...The economic miracle which Castro and the Communists promised in Cuba has become an unmistakable mirage...

...acceptance of the continued existence of the Castro regime," as Fulbright recommends...

...A reconsideration and reconstruction of our Cuban policy has surely been long overdue...

...Indeed, Fulbright could not have chosen a more unfortunate moment for his pronouncement on Cuba...

...The one thing that could now pull Castro through every danger threatening him would be U.S...

...In truth, the Cuban workers have had only one way to "vote"-through their "labor productivity"-and despite all the propaganda about "emulation,' the Cuban version of Stalin's Stakhanovism, it has been going down steadily in the past three years...

...When the boycott was first established, as I have noted, Guevara gloated that it would hurt the United States more than Cuba...

...He seems to mean that it is not "feasible" as a way of bringing down the Castro regime...

...it was the cause of "more difficulties" for the United States by having provoked differences with its Western allies...

...Agricultural diversification went backward instead of forward...

...It constantly plays with words that conceal as much as they reveal...

...In no area is the latter more necessary and more difficult than in the utilization of Communist conflicts, contradictions and crises...

...The quid pro quo is usually, as Hans J. Morgenthau recently put it, "idiotic...

...For over three years, the Castro regime has fed its people far more fantasies than food...

...Despite all this, I fully agree with Senator Fulbright that the time has come to stop clinging to "old myths" and to face "new realities," though his myths and realities are not mine...

...The latest fantasies by Castro, offered last month, are that Cuba will within 10 years have a production of milk superior to that of Holland, and cheese superior to that of France...

...A turning point took place in Cuba in the fall of 1959...

...It would seem elementary to point out that the fact that the boycott has not by itself overthrown Castro does not mean that it may not have done other things of vital importance...

...It is peculiarly characteristic of the U.S...

...they had been in gestation for at least five or six months...

...Our Cuban policy has been a textbook of almost every possible mistake a great power can make, but this one would be the most bizarre...

...At this time, Blas Roca was more than merely the top Cuban Communist...

...policy...

...Embassy in Havana asked the ambassador of a large South American country to act as go-between...

...The Sino-Soviet struggle cannot go on very much longer without getting Castro into trouble, whatever he decides to say or do...

...Within a matter of months, however, the new order failed to live up to expectations...

...In a second article, I hope to show how all of them have thought within the same flawed frame of reference and have adopted a common set of options among which each has merely chosen a different one...

...Whatever the merits of Cuban cheese in 1974, the Cuban people are far more interested in what Castro in the same speech delicately called the "shortages" of 1964...

...offer, the expropriations, the embargo and the Communist-Castro merger were all interacting and interrelated...

...he has implicitly covered the Soviets' left flank by vouching for the Soviets' revolutionary zeal and by singing the praises of that "greatest capitulationist in history," Nikita Khrushchev...

...The sugar crop took a sharp drop in 1962 and an even sharper one in 1963...

...What does Fulbright mean when he says that he is "not arguing against the desirability of an economic boycott against the Castro regime but against its feasibility...

...A second article by Draper on United States policy toward Cuba will appear in our April 27 issue...

...These events did not come to pass overnight...

...Every time a Communist power needs a breathing spell, however, it begins to make cooing sounds and dangle offers of trade...

...Paradoxically, however, Fulbright's analysis of the problem of policy does not differ as much as he may imagine from that of former Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, the present Administration, or even Senator Goldwater...

...But I wish to limit myself to Cuba, not only for reasons of space but because it is far more crucial to the Senator's main theme of Communism...

...Unfortunately, Fulbright's own contribution to the debate suffers from imprecision and perhaps disingenuousness...

...The Cuban reaction to the embargo was the logical outcome of this intellectual conditioning...

...I do not wish to get entangled in the semantics of Castro's exact classification, but if he has become more of a "nuisance" than a "danger," it must be because he has made serious mistakes at home and suffered serious setbacks abroad...

...Today," Guevara added, "we are experiencing a very great strain in a number of factories which are already in difficult condition to operate, because the equipment has rapidly deteriorated, and we do not have the specialized technical equipment to enable us to change the situation, that is, to make new spare parts, to maintain the most complex units of production so that they would function perfectly...

...Guevara has told how the Cubans imported experts who proceeded to make Cuban copies of East European techniques...

...The new technicians, he said, were able to keep the factories going but were not able to take care of their equipment properly...

...I still remember the tremendous splash made in the Cuban press in 1962 by new Czechoslovak buses, and I suspect that the British buses will temporarily alleviate but will not solve the Cuban transportation problem any more than the Czech buses did...

...At the very moment that Fulbright was speaking, the trial of the former Communist informer, Marcos Rodriguez Alfonso ripped through the facade of monolithic unity and revealed top leaders at each other's throats...

...Fulbright has called on us to base our policy on "objective facts" rather than on "cherished myths.' The trouble is, of course, that one man's facts may be another man's myths...

...This short-sighted view of the national interest is also characteristic of Fulbright's remarks on Cuba...

...He conceded that at one time "the blockade was rather effective, particularly with regard to Cuban industries...

...A rebellious peasantry developed in the middle of 1961...

...Guevara also made clear that the U.S.-made machinery in Cuba had broken down to the point of "very little efficiency...

...But his views on Cuba represent a far more concrete challenge to present U.S...

...He stops short of telling us what to do if, as he insists, the boycott is no longer feasible...

...if it is not "feasible," we need not concern ourselves with its desirability...

...Fidel Castro said that the United States could not hurt Cuba, that Cuba could obtain all it needed from the "Socialist countries" and "neutrals...

...But is it...

...It was later revealed that the successful conclusion of these negotiations were celebrated in a public meeting on December 2, 1960, at which Castro and Roca symbolically appeared on the same platform...

...Castro's position in that world is by no means simple or traditional, but it is just as wrong to take him out of it as to lose sight of his individuality in it...

...And if this were the sole criterion of success or failure, he would be right...

...But the facts of life-the Soviet bloc's failure to live up to the import plans, the deterioration of equipment, the decline of labor "discipline" and "productivity"-have become more and more exigent and inexorable...

...Fulbright seems to think that the critical question is whether Castro is a "distasteful nuisance" or an "intolerable danger...

...It is not right or just for them to wash their hands of all responsibility by pretending that the decision has been made for them...

...and in November by a shake-up in the Cabinet and in the Cuban National Bank, as well as by the first stage of the Communist takeover of the Cuban Confederation of Labor...

...The program of "accelerated industrialization" virtually came to a halt by the end of the year...

...It provides a nice, pragmatic pretext for absolving us of responsibility for our own actions...

...1 have taken some trouble to sketch in the background of the boycott because I do not think it can be profitably discussed in a historical vacuum...

...Since May 1963, Castro has objectively acted as a Soviet buffer against China...

...This department was first headed by Ernesto Che Guevara, who has revealed that his group began a "search for offers" to displace the United States in the Cuban market...

...Those who are willing at this stage to give up all hope and effort to bring down the Castro regime must take into account the total magnitude, the full enormity, of this decision...

...And just as predictably, a strange alliance of sympathizers and businessmen springs up...

...Obviously not, since there would have been no Bay of Pigs adventure if the boycott was supposed to accomplish the same thing...

...the West obtains short-term profits, if there are any, for a few impatient entrepreneurs...

...Before trying to answer the question, it may be well to go back and put the boycott in some historical perspective...

...Castro's balancing act, which once tended to give aid and comfort to the Chinese, has in the past year swung far over to the Soviet side...

...Then we will at least know what we are disagreeing about, and others may make up their minds on the basis of the evidence...

...Fulbright treats the boycott not as if giving it up were a deliberate political decision with serious consequences, which we can accept or reject, but as if it had already been decided for us by forces beyond our control...

...It is frequently necessary, however, to prove that it is not a "stupid tiger...

...Commenting in Geneva on Senator Fulbright's speech, Guevara admitted that he had been wrong about the past but this did not prevent him from repeating the same propaganda line in the present...

...Negotiations were just then going on for the merger between Castro's 26th of July Movement and Roca's official Communist party...

...He seems to believe that our allies' decisions have deprived us of all power of decision in this matter, as if the basic effectiveness of the boycott depended primarily on them rather than on us...

...embargo on virtually all trade with Cuba...

...That is the purpose of all his maneuvering and diplomacy...

...Now Cuba has won freedom of trade with every country in the world...

...If the Castro regime is not on the verge of collapse, it is surely not on the verge of stabilization...

...On February 25, Guevara made an important speech which further clarifies the Cuban economic situation...

...This is no place to rehearse all the events in the summer and fall of 1960 which, in October, resulted in the U.S...

...Yet, if there is one place in the world where Communism can be "reversible," it is Cuba...

...Castro at first seemed to encourage the overture but, apparently after consulting Guevara and others, brusquely rebuffed the offer and went ahead with Mikoyan...

...It implies that we no longer have to decide whether or not to maintain the boycott...

...The Soviets ruthlessly use foreign trade and aid as an instrument of foreign policy...

...Guevara traced another aspect of the equipment problem to what he called "the loss of discipline in work...

...The boycott, paradoxically, was hailed as Cuba's Declaration of Independence, the long-awaited economic liberation of Cuba...

...It would be a mistake to think that the Cubans greeted the embargo with joy in order to hide their grief...

...I did not get this information from a U.S...

...embargo would hurt the United States more than Cuba...

...It may be unnecessary for the United States to prove that it is not a "paper tiger...

...If this is all Fulbright means, he may be permitted to score an easy victory...

...Only a totalitarian regime in control of all the means of communication and propaganda could have indoctrinated its people for so long against the old evil of gambling everything on sugar and then decide to do the same thing itself...

...Rarely has a historical interpretation had more profound political consequences or such a clear-cut test of its practical implications...

...The United States may be guilty of many things, but it cannot be held responsible for the missing 30 per cent of Soviet imports, the "difficulties" which Guevara has sportingly admitted came "principally from our side," the increase of workers' "absenteeism" and decrease of their "productivity...

...He has worked his way into an economic corner, and he cannot get out of it with Soviet aid alone...