Cuba, Relations with

CUBA, RELATIONS WITH

The Cuban Communist Party began its frequently interrupted existence in 1925. Classically aligned with Moscow, the Cuban communists were among the most active communist parties in Latin America, placing one of their members in the President Batista's cabinet during World War II. The Soviet Union had diplomatic relations with Cuba during the war and for a few years afterward, and reopened them in 1960.

In the mid-1950s Fidel Castro, the leader of a radical nationalist revolutionary movement, organized an armed revolt against Batista's increasingly dictatorial rule. Castro was not a member of the Communist Party; the communists provided little or no support to his movement and openly criticized his tactics and strategies. After Castro seized power in 1959, communists, with a few exceptions, did not staff his new government and fell into obscurity.

In 1960 President Eisenhower concluded that Castro threatened U.S. private and public interests and was not amenable to U.S. direction. Castro was seizing American-owned properties and moving toward one-man rule. In order to protect U.S. public and private interests and to reassert traditional bilateral relationships, the U.S. government embargoed sugar, Cuba's main export, cut off access to oil, and continued an embargo of arms and munitions begun against Batista. These measures, unopposed, would have terminated Castro's rule.

U.S. actions had unexpected results. The USSR seized this chance to establish a toehold in Cuba. Countering U.S. sanctions, the USSR bought Cuba's sugar, sold its oil, and provided arms. U.S. efforts to overthrow Castro at the Bay of Pigs failed, and Cuba's ties with the USSR were strengthened. Castro, his party, and the Cuban state adopted communist models.

The resolve of the three governments in the new triangular relationship was tested in the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1963. Emboldened by his toehold near Florida and reassured by Castro's anti-Americanism and revolutionary intentions, Khrushchev ordered Soviet missiles to Cuba. President Kennedy, risking war, ordered the Navy to block missile deliveries. In subsequent negotiations Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles, and Kennedy agreed not to use force against Cuba.

The Cuban Missile Crisis settlement set the framework for the relationships between the three countries. Castro became even more dependent on Soviet largess, as he was deprived of political and economic ties with the United States, previously Cuba's most important economic partner. The United States continued its anti-Castro campaigns short of invasion. The USSR replaced the United States as the hegemonic power over Cuba with all the advantages, costs, and risks involved.

Castro's dependence on the Soviet Union for trade, military equipment, and foreign aid grew steadily over the years. In return for Soviet aid, Castro copied the ideology, political structure, and economic system of the USSR. In 1976 the constitution formalized a communist structure in Cuba that harmonized with communist structures elsewhere, with party control of agriculture, industry, and commerce. Cuba's ties with the USSR facilitated Castro's iron one-man rule for more than thirty years. Castro reciprocated ongoing Soviet assistance through his support of pro-Soviet revolutionary movements in Latin America, including Nicaragua and El Salvador, and elsewhere, including Angola and Ethiopia. These movements supported the USSR and copied Soviet models.

The Soviet Union's ties with Cuba had global implications. Soviet armed forces had access to the Western Hemisphere, and Cuba could serve as a point of contact for regional revolutionary movements. This alliance, taken together with Communist governments in Eastern Europe and Asia, provided Moscow with an arguable claim to worldwide influence. Moscow also took satisfaction in having a presence in Cuba matching that of the U.S. in Berlin.

Castro proved independent and unruly, not an ideal client by Soviet standards. The leaders of other Communist parties in the hemisphere were under Soviet control through the Foreign Department of the Soviet Communist Party. Unlike most other Communist leaders, Castro manipulated Moscow as much as or more than Moscow manipulated him.

The Soviet Union's ties with Cuba proved very costly over the years. The USSR paid high prices for Cuban sugar, and Cuba paid low prices for Soviet oil. Moscow equipped Cuba with one of the strongest military forces in Latin America. Foreign economic assistance probably far exceeded $70 billion during the relationship. Cuba became the Soviet Union's largest debtor along with Vietnam. The Soviet leadership kept these huge expenditures secret until the USSR began to collapse.

Soviet economic and military investments in Cuba, including the establishment of a military brigade near Havana, were both a strategic advantage and a vulnerability, the latter because of the preponderance of U.S. power in the region. Soviet leaders were careful to make clear that they did not guarantee Cuba against a US attack. Nor was Cuba admitted to the Warsaw Pact. In that military sense their relationship was more a partnership than an alliance. After the Nicaraguan revolution of 1979, Moscow was even more careful, learning from lessons in Cuba, not to guarantee the Sandinistas economic viability or military security.

General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's commitment to glasnost led to public knowledge in Russia of the costly nature of Soviet subsidies to Cuba; perestroika led to a reexamination of the Cuban regime and its relationship to Soviet interests. In his efforts to put the USSR on a more solid footing, particularly with respect to Germany, Gorbachev sought support from the United States. For their part, President George Bush and Secretary of State James Baker sought Gorbachev's collaboration in ending the Cold War in Latin America. In response to U.S. pressure among other factors, Gorbachev withdrew the Soviet military brigade from Cuba and ended lavish economic aid to Cuba. His actions led to the termination of Soviet and Cuban involvement in revolutionary movements in Central America. To Moscow's advantage, and to the huge impoverishment of Cuba, the Soviet Union and Cuba were set free of their mutual entanglements.

See also: cold war; cuban missile crisis; khrushchev, nikita sergeyevich; united states, relations with.

bibliography

Blasier, Cole. (1989). The Giant's Rival: The USSR and Latin America. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Mesa-Lago, Carmelo, ed. (1993). Cuba after the Cold War. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Pavlov, Yuri. (1994). Soviet Cuban Alliance, 1959–1991. Miami: University of Miami North South Center.

Smith, Wayne S., ed. (1992). The Russians Aren't Coming: New Soviet Policy in Latin America. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.

Cole Blasier