Bush long ago made the most important deals on Cuba through the Soviet Union, making sure that Mikhail Gorbachev cut Cuba progressively adrift. “U.S. policy toward Cuba has been very successful,” says Bernard Aronson, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs. Cuba’s economy is in ruins and Castro exhorts his people: “Socialism or death!” Everything from newsprint to electricity is in short supply in Cuba. And Bush can afford to quietly let the embargo do its work. The guerrilla movements Cuba once nourished all have folded. The only strategic considerations now turn on the considerable mischief Castro can make on his own–creating an incident over the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay or setting loose a new flood of boat people.
But some critics of Bush’s strategy say that the embargo permits Castro to blame America for all his problems. This plays well in Havana: Pentagon analysts say Cubans are more anti-American than the depth of their plight might suggest. “U.S. policy is counterproductive and is one of the factors enabling Castro to remain in power,” a recent Army War College report concluded. It would be better to normalize trade and “let the contagion of capitalism and materialism creep in,” said one Pentagon analyst. But the White House doesn’t want to hear about that. “The word we’ve gotten is, ‘Don’t even waste your time on a new policy for Cuba’,” said one Pentagon officer. “It’s a nonissue.”
The presidential campaign could still make Cuba an issue. If Castro engineers an incident or if there is a popular uprising that is brutally suppressed, Bush will come under pressure to respond. And nobody doubts that Castro is capable of ordering a bloodbath. A network of tunnels being built in Havana supports the view that Castro is preparing for the worst. “Tiananmen is a scenario people worry about,” says Edward Gonzalez of the Rand Corp. So is the prospect of a flood of boat people like the one Castro loosed in 1980, another election year. The Pentagon plans to block Cuban-Americans from setting sail to evacuate their countrymen, but this could produce a public outcry.
If fighting breaks out in Cuba, Cuban exiles and their right-wing supporters will want to intervene. But military planners know that after a decade of FBI surveillance, Cuban militant organizations such as Alpha 66 consist of a few hundred weekend warriors who run through the Florida Everglades in camouflage paint for visiting Japanese TV crews. And they say any U.S. military intervention, even such limited action as selective bombing, would guarantee long-term resentment by Cubans who have no love for members of the old ruling class.
As Cuba teeters on the brink, militant exiles aren’t content to wait for the apple to ripen and fall. “Goddam it, we’ve got to do something, " says exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa, accurately summing up the Cuba lobby’s line. Members of Congress who agree propose to increase the economic pressure. Neoconservatives and Democrats who need Cuban-American votes want to tighten the embargo by preventing U.S. subsidiaries from trading with Cuba.
All this leaves the president in the middle, wishing Cuba would just go away, at least until Nov. 3. The Cuban-American community so far backs him and Bush won’t disrupt that by relaxing the embargo. He also knows that more coercive measures would be foolhardy. So he hopes to stand pat. But the rhetoric is confusing. On one hand, Bush says the United States has no aggressive intentions toward Cuba. On the other, he pacifies the Cuban-American community with predictions that Castro will fall. The question is whether anti-Castro forces are willing to watch what he says, not what he does.
title: “Running Against Fidel” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-30” author: “Steve Madonia”
Bush long ago made the most important deals on Cuba through the Soviet Union, making sure that Mikhail Gorbachev cut Cuba progressively adrift. “U.S. policy toward Cuba has been very successful,” says Bernard Aronson, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs. Cuba’s economy is in ruins and Castro exhorts his people: “Socialism or death!” Everything from newsprint to electricity is in short supply in Cuba. And Bush can afford to quietly let the embargo do its work. The guerrilla movements Cuba once nourished all have folded. The only strategic considerations now turn on the considerable mischief Castro can make on his own–creating an incident over the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay or setting loose a new flood of boat people.
But some critics of Bush’s strategy say that the embargo permits Castro to blame America for all his problems. This plays well in Havana: Pentagon analysts say Cubans are more anti-American than the depth of their plight might suggest. “U.S. policy is counterproductive and is one of the factors enabling Castro to remain in power,” a recent Army War College report concluded. It would be better to normalize trade and “let the contagion of capitalism and materialism creep in,” said one Pentagon analyst. But the White House doesn’t want to hear about that. “The word we’ve gotten is, ‘Don’t even waste your time on a new policy for Cuba’,” said one Pentagon officer. “It’s a nonissue.”
The presidential campaign could still make Cuba an issue. If Castro engineers an incident or if there is a popular uprising that is brutally suppressed, Bush will come under pressure to respond. And nobody doubts that Castro is capable of ordering a bloodbath. A network of tunnels being built in Havana supports the view that Castro is preparing for the worst. “Tiananmen is a scenario people worry about,” says Edward Gonzalez of the Rand Corp. So is the prospect of a flood of boat people like the one Castro loosed in 1980, another election year. The Pentagon plans to block Cuban-Americans from setting sail to evacuate their countrymen, but this could produce a public outcry.
If fighting breaks out in Cuba, Cuban exiles and their right-wing supporters will want to intervene. But military planners know that after a decade of FBI surveillance, Cuban militant organizations such as Alpha 66 consist of a few hundred weekend warriors who run through the Florida Everglades in camouflage paint for visiting Japanese TV crews. And they say any U.S. military intervention, even such limited action as selective bombing, would guarantee long-term resentment by Cubans who have no love for members of the old ruling class.
As Cuba teeters on the brink, militant exiles aren’t content to wait for the apple to ripen and fall. “Goddam it, we’ve got to do something, " says exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa, accurately summing up the Cuba lobby’s line. Members of Congress who agree propose to increase the economic pressure. Neoconservatives and Democrats who need Cuban-American votes want to tighten the embargo by preventing U.S. subsidiaries from trading with Cuba.
All this leaves the president in the middle, wishing Cuba would just go away, at least until Nov. 3. The Cuban-American community so far backs him and Bush won’t disrupt that by relaxing the embargo. He also knows that more coercive measures would be foolhardy. So he hopes to stand pat. But the rhetoric is confusing. On one hand, Bush says the United States has no aggressive intentions toward Cuba. On the other, he pacifies the Cuban-American community with predictions that Castro will fall. The question is whether anti-Castro forces are willing to watch what he says, not what he does.
