frozen in time

sixty-three years

Good morning, all. Let’s start with the gorgeous late afternoon sun we finally had yesterday. What a beautiful place Spa Creek is.

I frequently note that consequences can take a long time to manifest. 7 February offers an excellent reminder as it’s the 63rd (yes, sixty-third) anniversary of the Kennedy administration imposing a complete embargo on Cuba in hopes of undermining the Castro administration. Fifteen presidents later, the Castro-originated government still controls Cuba, the United States has a Secretary of State of Cuban heritage (albeit not an exile himself), and the embargo is firmly in place to the utter frustration of the most powerful country on earth.

Embargoes are a coercive instrument intended to push an adversary to change behavior by inflicting economic pain. A thorough embargo, including medical supplies and humanitarian aid, as true in with Cuba, basically ends commercial interaction between two nation-states. For the majority of these sixty-three years, U.S. aims have been to strangle the island’s economy to force the end of the Castro Communist government led by Fidel Castro Ruz beginning in 1959. Fidel and then brother Raul Castro Ruz rode it out with the people feeling pain but the government holding on.

Embargoes can be one of many tools any government employs to advance its interests. Often these embargoes are tightly targeted to an adversary’s greatest vulnerability to ensure successful pressure. The United Nations mandated an arms embargo against the Apartheid regime in South Africa in 1977, for example, a major contributing reason President F.J. de Klerk freed jailed nationalist leader Nelson Mandela in 1991. Following that action, the white nationalist regime lost to Mandela’s African National Congress in open elections three years later. The U.N. arms embargo, in short, was an endorsement for this targeted suspension of commercial intercourse.

The U.S. move against Cuba has overwhelmingly been a wide-ranging prevention of all interactions—including travel itself—with the island, including food, health supplies, arms, financial items, and energy. The Embassy in Havana closed when we broke relations with the Castro regime so neutral Switzerland oversaw any U.S. interests on the island. While Cuba prior to 1959 supplied the United States with tremendous sugar imports, the newly admitted Hawai’i filled that void in U.S. grocery stores, diminishing our pain but assuring Cuban workers felt the loss of products and imposition of state-driven limits to the economy.

The sum of our interactions between 1962 and 2014 revolved around two major controversies. The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred nine months after the embargo commenced, a ten day period where the world came perilously close to nuclear exchanges when Fidel’s patrons in the Kremlin sought to deploy nuclear-capable missiles in Cuba to threaten disaster on the United States as we did to them because of U.S. missiles in Turkey. The world, once it knew of the threat, held its collective breath as the Kennedy White House actually ratcheted up pressure by imposing a blockade on Soviet vessels carrying the weapons to the Caribbean. Khrushchev and the Red Army blinked.

The “Mariel Boatlift” was a term for 125,000 Cubans who fled the island between April and October of 1980. Most felt tremendous pain when economic conditions fell apart on the island, exacerbated by the embargo, rising fuel prices, and global turmoil associated with the Soviet fantasies in Afghanistan along with the Iranian Revolution. Americans welcomed Cubans who went into exile (always saying it would be a temporary step as anticipated defeat of Castro was always around the next corner) beginning in the late 1950s but those were predominantly wealthy Cubans who lost land to the communist regime as of 1959. The “boat people” in 1980 were destitute, fleeing as “economic refugees” as much as political ones.

Most concerning were those who took Castro at his word that anyone seeking to depart his regime were free to do so, unleashing fears he was unloading undesirable, criminal elements on U.S. shores. The Carter administration, already overwhelmed by events in the Middle East, established camps for the migrants in places like the Army facility at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, as processing of these refugees proceeded. Many Americans were appalled that the embargo contributed to Cuba’s downturn while others were angry that Havana was dumping its poor and lawbreakers on the United States.

President Obama reestablished relations his second term to provide opportunities for the deprived Cuban population, actually visiting the island with his wife in 2014. Obama restarted conversations with then-president Raul Castro sd part of a gradual restart of trade and travel between the two countries, to help the Cuban people who clearly suffered significantly under the embargo (in Obama’s words). President Trump reimposed the toughest measures during his first term, with President Biden struggling to find an appropriate path forward. Upon reelection, Trump announced his intention to tighten the screws against the communist government anew.

Hmmm. This is not exactly what one would expect for the population just shy of 11 million on an island the size of Pennsylvania 90 miles of the coast of Florida (a similar distance existing between the PRC and Taiwan, interestingly). Cuba’s gross domestic product in 2020 was $107.3 billion, ranking 104th out of the 193 nations of the world.

The truth is that embargoes work only under certain conditions. Multiple alternative viable sources of trade, investment, or tourism—all three vital to Cuba’s economy—existed for Cuba because the United States and fewer than a handful of allies in the post-1960s world sought to embargo Cuba. Indeed, even today, if one seeks travel to Havana, one merely needs to travel to Toronto as Canada maintains strong ties with the island as does the remainder of the western hemisphere. European states similarly continue relations with the post-Castro government of Miguel Diaz-Canel, in office since 2019 when Raul departed. Because these other states continue semi-normal relations with the Cubans, no U.S. embargo will make much difference.

Cubans would prefer a traditional relationship with the gringos to the north but nationalism has thrived under the messaging that foreigners The Communist government still limits many basic rights for its people. Many would argue the Communists frequently whip out the the excuse that a foreign power seeks to overthrow the regime rather than defend its own ineptitude. While the U.S. wants to see an end to the Communist government, the crux of the challenge will always be how any regime on the island handles the claims of by those landowners (many of whom fled here decades ago) whose land holdings, often lucrative and large, were expropriated by Castro after coming to power. The original exile generation is fading but demands by wealthy Cubans who lost so much through expropriate passes from generation to generation. The poorer Cubans left on the island are less sympathetic to that view but are not entirely happy living under an authoritarian government, either.

Our history with Cuba since its independence from Spain in 1898 has been a peculiar one. We intervened directly in the island multiple times, going so far in 1901 to pass the Platt Amendment to dictate Cuba’s reactions to some of our demands. Gangsters frolicked and gambled ninety miles off the U.S. coast while U.S. sugar conglomerates grew, processed, and dominated the commodity’s role within that country’s economy for most of the first half of the twentieth century. Few Cubans felt their position in any way equal to U.S. interests making so much money off Cuba. Many remain frustrated by U.S. interventions regarding who ran the country—hardly respect for sovereignty. Once Castro arrived in 1959, it was little surprise he eschewed either a reconciliation or truce with the Eisenhower, then Kennedy administrations each still expecting vetoes on Havana’s choices of policy. The Soviets, in the midst of the Cold War, saw an opportunity to bother Washington by providing aid to the Castro Revolution but proved far less able to support the economy than Fidel, Raul, or other leaders hoped.

So, the embargo goes on. It could ultimately force out the regime but that doesn’t seem likely after these decades. Instruments of statecraft require coordinated, synchronized choices of when to employ versus pull back but rarely is a single instrument the answer to a foreign policy problem. By imposing a complete embargo that demands changes Havana finds untenable for survival, things likely will remain frozen until some one within the island becomes strong enough to organize to oust the Communists, at the ballot box or elsewhere. No such figure is clear as of now.

I look forward to your thoughts. Many of you may have been to the island; I have merely flown over it on transit from South America over the decades. Do chime in on Cuba as a national security priority, threat, or success.

I include a response I got this morning from a subscriber about yesterday’s column on ranking the United States. In particular, this individual has an alternate thought from Seymour Martin Lipset’s words about knowing countries but I leave it to you to read.

“These are excellent words and excellent thoughts. And I hope you know/believe that I try to be as open minded and knowledge seeking as anyone so I spend lots of time trying to learn about the rest of the world.

But.

Is there chance some of the disenfranchisement so central to the current US political environment is driven in some parts by the 40-45% of America that thinks the elite and the government class have lost their connection and touch to the citizens in this country?
I could do the same math in some regards. DMV metro is roughly 5.5M. US is roughly 330M. So DC is about 1.6%. So 98% of US are DC 'foreigners. Because how many residents of DC travel inside the US? I mean really travel. Dwell for a week or two weeks in Spokane, WA. Or Duluth MI. Or Corpus Christi, TX. Or Ames, IA. Stay connected with and understand how the gov't is creating better current or future conditions. Or even write, or study, or work on issues for those areas.
While there is some superiority and primacy in the American psyche, I'm not sure that's singular or even primary in the political tension in this country.
I would modify Lispet's quote just a little bit. It's impossible to understand a country without seeing it.
And I'm sorry, my 8 years in DC gave me enough observations and experiences to think there is a little justification for the disconnected narrative. I get it and it's natural. By and large DC thinks and focuses on the world beyond our borders. For good reason. I think the message over the past 8 years is it might be important to spend a little more time inside the country.”

Fair points indeed. My relatives in the Midwest or best friend in Lenexa, Kansas might have a thought or two on it. I know that I have had the chance to spend time outside the Beltway over the decades but not as much as I used to.

What say YOU to this? I would like to hear. Are we missing the really big questions or do we know so little of each other it doesn’t matter? Chime in, please.

I hope you have a good weekend, squeezing in some Actions create consequences if you can. We are due more snow (oh, goody) but happy to have a warm roof over our heads and coffee in the pot. Soup making to combat the cold!

I thank you for your time, your thoughts, your subscriptions, and your interest. Subscriptions are $55 for a year or by the month, if you prefer. In any case, I deeply appreciate those of you who commit support to this column.

Be well and be safe. FIN

CFR Editors, “Backgrounder: U.S.-Cuba Relations”, CFR.org, 24 April 2024, retrieved at https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-cuba-relations

“Charting a New Course on Cuba”, ObamaWhiteHouse.gov, retrieved at https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/issues/foreign-policy/cuba

“Cuba GDP”, worldometers.com, retrieved on 7 February 2025 at https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/cuba-gdp/#google_vignette