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By Dr. David Ryan, Senior lecturer in International History and US Foreign Relations at De Montfort University, Leicester.
In the early years of the Clinton administration US National Security official, Saul Landau, admitted: "The embargo [against Cuba] makes no sense, but the fact is that the possible reward for dropping it doesn't correspond with the political risk." By signing the Helms-Burton Bill in this election year, Clinton seems to have made this calculation in the full knowledge that he cannot afford to alienate the 'Cuba vote'. Historian and specialist in US Foreign Relations, Dr. David Ryan has been looking at the Clinton record on Cuba. In this article, specially written for CubaSi, he argues that the Helms-Burton Law is not as anachronistic as some commentators would have us believe.
The Clinton Administration's approach to Cuba between 1993 and
1996 serves well to illustrate two broader themes which have
characterised US policy throughout the twentieth century.
One is the repeated attempt by Clinton's policy makers to portray and
identify their actions with a benevolent mission to spread the
'virtues' of 'democracy' to a tyrannized 'uncivilised' country. The
other is the attempt to spread US power and influence as far and wide
as possible.
The extreme measures adopted by the Clinton administration in the
ludicrously named 'Cuba Liberty and Democracy Act' or Helms-Burton
law as it is commonly known, are a perfect example of the extent to
which US desire for power has become institutionalised.
With this punitive Act Washington is not just trying to isolate Cuba
further but also trying to dictate to other nations who they can
trade with. But despite the international outrage and the fact that
even the mainstream media has criticised the Helms Burton Law, it is
actually quite consistent with traditional US policy making, not just
towards Cuba but the rest of the region as a whole.
Various media presentations of the US-Cuba relationship have
criticised the Bush and then Clinton administrations for conducting
an "anachronistic" foreign policy. After all, the logic according to
these interpretations suggests that since the Cold War ended
somewhere between 1989 and 1991, there is no longer a "Soviet threat"
to the United States. Indeed, Soviet aid to Cuba ended shortly before
the Soviet Union broke up in late 1991. Therefore, say the critics,
Clinton's policy "makes no sense" and they are "dumfounded" and
"bewildered" by it. But they haven't read the small print.
Now, the Soviet threat has gone, there are other reasons to keep the
door closed on Havana. One was provided by US National Security
Advisor, Anthony Lake, writing in the influential journal Foreign
Affairs in 1994, who has concocted a new theory of what he calls
"Backlash States". Such states, although they no longer have the
backing of a superpower, continue to be 'aggressive' and 'defiant' by
promoting 'radical ideologies'. Surprise, surprise, Cuba is top of
the list, followed by North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and Libya.
These countries are singled out for US attention because they have
resisted the 'democratic order' that is being built around them. But
US policy is not and never has been based on opposing countries
because they resist "democracy". One merely has to look at Saudi
Arabia to see that there are nations who continue to resist the
"democratic trend" of the "post-Cold War" world, but who nevertheless
to continue to receive US support. Notions of democracy or political
organisation are not the key to understanding this list of countries.
More relevant is the word "defiant".
These countries remain defiant in the face of US attempts to exert
their power or exercise hegemony over them. And therefore in this
sense, US policy towards these states is not anachronistic, far from
it, the current US approach has long roots, planted way before the
Cold War.
At the end of the commonly understood Cold War, the historian Walter
LaFeber enquired which Cold War had ended? He suggested that there
were at least three other Cold Wars which started long before
1945-1947 and which continued even while the Berlin Wall was coming
down. One was exemplified in the 1989 US invasion of Panama and the
US participation in the 1991 Gulf War, another in the US
participation in the 'two plus four' negotiations on the
reunification of Germany during 1990.
In short, the three other Cold Wars to which he refers were and are
between the United States and Europe over the future shape of Europe,
between the core and the periphery of the world economic system over
resources and access to markets, and lastly, within the United States
itself over the identity and ideologies associated with the nation.
These much longer running conflicts help contribute to our
understanding of the US identity and its exercise of power.
US self- identity in the international system has usually been formed
in opposition to some other concocted ideology or system of
governance, and it is this binary reductionism of the world into two
competing blocks which has often proved so offensive to cultures and
nations seeking alternative models of living.
Because alternative models work against the US binary presentation of
the world they are a hindrance to US power and must be opposed,
isolated, or invaded.
The first such binary division of the world, came long before the
Cold War and even before Marx and Engel's wrote The Communism
Manifesto. It came in the two spheres approach of the Monroe Doctrine
of 1823 and its subsequent nineteenth century additions. During this
period, until shortly after the Civil War in 1865, US policy makers
referred to themselves as the "empire of liberty", acting in the
defence of Latin America from further colonization by the monarchial
powers of "old" world: Europe. The use of the word 'empire' to
describe the United States was dropped soon after the Civil War so
that Southerners within the "United" States would not feel themselves
colonised.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the US identity with
liberty and democracy came under a new strain during the imperial
policies associated with the Spanish-American war. The United States
acquired the Philippines and Puerto Rico and fought in the war for
Cuban "independence" which was immediately limited by the Platt
Amendment to the Cuban Constitution. This allowed for US
intervention, which subsequently followed.
Not only did the United States intervene in Cuba, but most Central
American and Caribbean countries were subjected to either direct
intervention or interference during the early decades of the
twentieth century.
The United States tried to exert its hegemony over the region, not
because of some massive external threat during this period, but
because as Theodore Roosevelt informed Congress in 1904: "They have
great riches, and if within their borders the reign of law and
justice obtains, prosperity is sure to come with them. While they
thus obey the primary laws of civilized society they may rest assured
that they will be treated by us in a spirit of cordial and helpful
sympathy."
The historian Bradford Burns argues that this imposition of
"progress" bequeathed to Latin America "a legacy of mass poverty and
continued conflict." But the United States reacted in a similar
fashion to the revolutions in the early decades of the twentieth
century, when there was no Cold War, as they did to the revolutions
that took place between 1947 and 1989. Whether it was in Guatemala
(1944-1954), in Iran (1951-1953), in Cuba (1959-1996), in Chile
(1970-1973), in Vietnam (1954-1973), in Nicaragua (1979-1990), or
Panama, or Iraq, or El Salvador, or wherever, the US response was to
oppose, destabalize and, if necessary, invade to destroy any
government which "defied" its own world view.
During the Cold War such revolutions were presented as "communist",
linked to and driven by the Soviet Union. But the desire for hegemony
predated the rise of Soviet power. The thrust behind Dollar
Diplomacy, in the early decades of this century, was to keep the
European powers out of the Caribbean and however historically
inconvenient it may be for those who like to focus on the Cold War,
it must be admitted that the United States engaged in both continuous
and intermittent occupations of various countries in the western
hemisphere decades long before the Soviet Union occupied and
controlled the states of Eastern Europe after World War II.
And if that seems paradoxical, it must be added that all the while
that the United States was isolating and closing off the western
hemisphere to the European powers it was concurrently advocating an
Open Door system of international trade! From the specific notes of
1899, through to Wilson's Fourteen Points of 1918, to the closing
stages of the GATT negotiations in 1993 and within the structure of
the current World Trade Organisation, the United States claims to be
a supporter of the ideas of Free Trade.
In this light the Helms Law does seem anachronistic and illegal, but
this is only theoretically. In practise, the United States has rarely
been consistent in its championing of free trade. It has always been
willing to use tariff barriers to manipulate rival economic powers,
to incite revolt or revolution in areas where the United States
needed to gain access, and to preserve or extend its power through
the use of force if necessary.
The system, Walter LaFeber argues, is adaptable to suit its own
needs. The tactics and strategies may change, but the US desire to
maintain its hegemony and "leadership" of the "liberal and
democratic" world will continue. In view of this to expect a change
in US policy towards Cuba, just because the Cold War with the Soviets
ended, is a mistake.
Doctor Ryan is author of US-Sandinista Diplomacy: Voice of Intolerance. (Macmillan. 1995).
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