A central weakness in U.S. policy toward Cuba has been the undervaluation of the utility of negotiation and the overvaluation of the utility of penalties. The tendency has been to adopt symbolic policies toward Cuba in response to domestic political pressures in the United States. The record after over three decades, however, is plain: negotiation accomplished U.S. goals whereas exhortation and confrontation did not.
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References
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1. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958-1960 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1991), 6:265.
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2. For discussion, see Gordon Dunn, “The Hurricane Season of 1963,”Monthly Weather Review, 92(3):135-136 (Mar. 1964).
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Granma Weekly Review, 19 Dec. 1971, pp. 12, 15.
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4. For elaboration, see Jorge I. Domínguez, “Cooperating with the Enemy? U.S. Immigration Policies toward Cuba,” in Western Hemisphere Immigration and United States Foreign Policy, ed. Christopher Mitchell (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), pp. 31-88.
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5. Julio Carranza, “Cuba: Los retos de la economía,”Cuadernos de Nuestra América (Havana), 9(19):131-159 (1992).
7. Interviews with informed Cubans. According to the Cuban government, blank and null ballots in the December 1992 municipal elections amounted only to 10 percent of the national electorate; this number was released two months after the election. It is about the same as the proportion—almost 12 percent—of blank, null, or other dissenting votes cast in February 1993 elections for the National Assembly and the Provincial Assembly. This makes no sense: why would the government have launched a massive nationwide campaign to “win” the February elections (even though there was a single slate) were it not for the scare of the higher dissenting vote the previous December? The official results of the December 1992 elections are not believable; this is the first time since municipal elections have been held in Cuba since 1976 when there is reason to suppose that the election results were purged.
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8. The information in this and the paragraphs that follow comes principally from my interviews with U.S. government officials and members of Congress and their staffs.
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9. In effect, Cuba was a U.S. protectorate from 1902 to 1934 under the terms of the so-called Platt Amendment, which was embodied as an appendix to Cuba's Constitution and which was also the text of a U.S.-Cuban treaty.
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10. Hours after its delivery, I discussed the Bush address with a Communist Party official in Havana. A bright and competent official, knowledgeable about the United States, he could find nothing new in the Bush remarks.
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11. I have confirmed this point specifically from independent sources.
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12. These observations with regard to possible Clinton administration policies are also based on direct interviews.
