Thirty years or so ago, Bill Steif, a friend, colleague and foreign affairs expert, opined that if the Eisenhower and then Kennedy Administrations had been smart, they could have smothered the Cuban menace with economic kindness and saved this nation a world of problems.
“Cokes and Twinkies and all the feel-good trappings of capitalism would have done it, but we passed up the opportunity,” Steif said.
Why didn’t that happen? The answer is complex, but the Cold War and the suspicion at the outset that Fidel Castro represented the Communist threat in all its crimson glory certainly was a root cause. The Red scare was so imbedded in our national psyche that we even turned our backs on the island’s main commodities — sugar and cigars — and treated the revolutionary as the bogeyman.
When this helped shove him in that direction, and that’s not saying he already wasn’t headed there, all our predictions about him came true, turning him toward the Soviet Union anxious to have a friend in the Western Hemisphere and one as close to the United States as possible. All this angst on our part produced one of U.S. foreign policy’s biggest debacle, the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion, cementing Fidel’s grip on things for decades to come.
But that’s just my own oversimplification of what led to more than a half century of animosity between us and a hostile regime just 90 miles or so off our southern coast — a standoff that produced huge injustices to the Cuban people and a strain on our own government forced to deal with tens of thousands who fled here searching for democracy and the freedom it promised. Not to mention the near threat of a Third World War.
But that was then and this is now and it has been apparent for years that Cuba was no longer the menace to us nor we to them that once governed our decisions. The economic sanctions had begun to slip and the need to normalize relations between the two nations has become more pressing. Fidel’s ill health and his abdication to his brother Raul ultimately has given us the opportunity to do just that.
President Barack Obama, despite what Florida Sen. Marco Rubio charges, should be congratulated for taking the first big step in bringing this about. The negotiations have been ongoing for some time, apparently, and displaying more leadership than he has in the past six years, the president seized the moment.
Rubio position is understandable. He is a product of the Cuban exile culture that has had a large political impact on this not occurring sooner. But the younger members of that community have been far less fervent in their hatred of the Castro regime. Most of them don’t even remember the Bay of Pigs debacle, the Cuban missile crisis or Fidel’s efforts, pushed by Ernesto Che Guevara, to export communism throughout South America and the Caribbean.
Rubio is among those considered a contender for the Republican presidential nomination, and his stance on Obama’s Cuban policy already has brought about an angry response from another possible GOP presidential candidate, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., whosupports improved relations between Cuba and the U.S.
It probably will take a while for all the barriers to normal, friendly relations to come down between the United States and Cuba. As my old colleague said, it is a solution too long in coming. While there will be humbuggers, some quite loud, most Americans and Cubans seemingly regard it as a welcome holiday gift.
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