Hideaki Kami writes that President Obama's trip to Cuba in 2016, “undoubtedly opened the door for the path toward ‘normal relations.’” In April 2019, President Trump's national security advisor, John Bolton, spoke at a commemorative luncheon of the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association. His words could not have been more menacing: “Today, we proudly proclaim for all to hear: The Monroe Doctrine is alive and well.” He added that together “we can finish what began on those beaches [Bay of Pigs], on those famous days in April, 58 years ago today.”
Why reverse course and opt for an approach that has continually failed to derail the Castro regime?
Analysts disagree about how to explain a state's foreign policies. One group focuses on the effects the power distribution among states has on the actions of a state; a second group emphasizes the role of domestic politics; and a third concentrates on the ideas and beliefs of the state's leaders. Kami's excellent analysis transcends those artificial boundaries. Though his principal intent is to explain the effects of the antirevolutionary activities by Miami's Cuban migrants on Washington's actions, in the process he identifies the multiple external factors that affected the complex interactions between Havana, Washington, and Miami from the time of the formation of the Castro regime in 1959 until the end of the George H. W. Bush administration in 1993.
Chapter 1 provides a historical context to the analysis. Chapter 2 describes the violence unleashed throughout the Americas by Miami's Cuban extremists. Chapter 3 chronicles the measures initiated by President Carter to combat Miami's counterrevolutionaries; Castro's decision to release 3600 prisoners from jail and to allow over 100,000 Cuban émigrés to visit the island; and the 1980 Mariel boatlift crisis. Chapter 4 outlines the battle between Castro and Carter to control the migration, and it explains why the latter lost.
Chapters 5 and 6 discuss the contradictions that molded Washington's behavior throughout the 1980s. Despite his intense dislike of the Cuban leader, President Reagan agreed to work with him to find a way to deal with the migration phenomenon. But at the same time, the US president committed himself to promoting Cuba's “freedom,” thus undermining attempts to find a way out of the crisis. The final chapter explores the clashing measures initiated by President George H. W. Bush and Cuban counterrevolutionaries. The former, though unwilling to legitimize Cuba's communist regime, sought to negotiate with its leaders on migration issues; the latter's goal was to destroy the Castro regime.
Much can be learned from Kami's meticulous research. The inclusion of attempts by Miami's counterrevolutionaries to influence Washington's actions toward Havana reveal a level of complexity rarely found in the interactions between Washington and other international actors with their own large migrant communities in the United States Of equal significance, the book elicits a critical question: Why have Washington and Miami repeatedly failed to recognize that Havana was always determined to retain control of Cuba's existing political system, at almost any cost? After six decades, Washington and Miami should admit, as Obama stated, that what the United States has done for several decades has not worked and should “have the courage to acknowledge that truth.”
China, Laos, Vietnam, North Korea, and Cuba are the only remaining communist states in the world arena. China has the second largest economy in the world; Laos has one of the fastest growing economies in the world; and Vietnam experienced rapid growth after it switched from a centralized command economy to a mixed economy. Washington has full diplomatic relations with all three. In the meantime, North Korea and Cuba remain determined to protect their political systems and continue to have centralized economies. Washington has been negotiating with Pyongyang without demanding that it replace its political structure, while it continues to pressure Havana to open Cuba's political system. The difference in approach is easy to understand. North Korea can inflict severe costs on the United States and its closest allies, while Cuba's military power, though substantial, is not backed by nuclear weapons. Moreover, the Korean immigrant community in the United States is markedly less powerful than the Cuban immigrant community.
Hence the question: Why not allow Cuba to conduct an experiment similar to the one carried out by China, Vietnam, and Laos? Maybe Cuba's communist regime will continue to retain its power, or maybe it will undergo the political and economic transformations experienced by several former Eastern European communist countries. Yes, some of them are becoming more authoritarian, but that development should forewarn Washington and Miami that throughout history democracies have evolved slowly; that the external imposition of a democracy has typically failed because the target countries lacked a culture that valued democracy; and that even democracies with a solid constitutional structure have often stumbled. The decline of democratic principles in the United States over the past decades should alert Washington that it perhaps lacks the moral bearing to demand that other states create a political system that the United States itself has failed to form.
