The history of America’s relations with Castro’s Cuba is marked by crises followed by long periods of policy stagnation. The uproar over the shooting down last weekend of two unarmed civilian planes piloted by Cuban-Americans operating from bases in Florida will repeat this pattern. Once again Castro was shown to be capable of disproportionate brutality in dealing with challenges to his power. In this case it was the prospect of a few hundred political leaflets falling to earth, urging his people to do something which almost none would be foolhardy enough to attempt namely, to take to the streets and demand the overthrow of the regime. The incident has, however, knocked the props from under one of the principal assumptions of Castro’s regime. It had expected that after being re-elected this November, President Clinton would lift the 36-year trade embargo on Cuba, and normalise relations. Instead, on Monday Clinton announced a tightening of sanctions, and even held out the possibility of his Administration endorsing the yet stronger measures which are being considered by the Republican Congress. In effect, Castro has greatly misjudged both Clinton and the American public, and once again he has indefinitely postponed any improvement of relations with the United States.

The same effect might easily have been achieved by the jailing at the end of last week of 50 leaders of the Cuban Council, an umbrella organisation of dissident groups favouring change through peaceful dialogue, which was to have had its first public meeting in Havana on Saturday. Once again, Castro’s refusal to countenance even harmless manifestations of opposition invalidates the claim whether by greedy businessmen anxious to operate in an environment free of independent trade unions, or leftist professors still in search of Utopia that Cuba is changing and that America must respond sympathetically. The crackdown on the Cuban Council led to protest across the political spectrum in Washington, not least from one Massachusetts congressman who only weeks ago led a delegation of businessmen to meet Castro, so technically defying American law.

What is Castro’s problem when it comes to the United States? Evidently, it is partly the existence of a large, affluent and politically organised Cuban-American community, which is determined to see its homeland freed of communism as quickly as possible. While this community numbers at most two million people, it is concentrated in Florida and New Jersey, states rich in electoral votes which no presidential candidate can afford to ignore, and which become more significant during the primary season.

But Cuban-Americans on their own could never hope to determine the foreign policy of a superpower. Rather, epeated polls show that most Americans broadly share their views and goals. A survey conducted last year by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations found that Castro himself is one of the least popular foreign leaders, somewhere between Yassir Arafat and Saddam Hussein. Cuba itself is considerably less popular than China, Saudi Arabia or India, and barely more so than North Korea.

More surprising, perhaps, is the 44 per cent support for military intervention in Cuba in the event of a popular uprising exceeded only by the support for a similar response if Russia were to invade Western Europe or Iraq to invade Saudi Arabia.

Although its partisan critics sometimes claim otherwise, the Clinton Administration has no particular sympathy with Castro or his regime, even though the Cuban dictator often describes himself as well disposed towards the President, and has sometimes cited with approval Clinton’s opposition to the Vietnam War.

Castro forgets that the Administration is full of veterans of the human rights movement of the 1970s and 1980s. One of these, Harriet Babbitt, now Clinton’s Ambassador to the Organisation of American States, was instrumental in obtaining the release from prison several years ago of the Cuban poet Maria Elena Cruz Varela.

At the same time, many of Clinton’s people are veteran critics of previous Administrations which were prepared to do business with anti-communist dictators. They see no reason to alter their standards merely because the last repressive regime in Latin America happens to fly the banners of the Left rather than of the Right. Richard Nuccio, the President’s principal policy adviser on Cuba, has lately been making this point in his efforts to prick the conscience of America’s allies in Europe, many of whom seem to feel that communism in Cuba is merely an expression of exotic tropical tastes.

Without doubt there is a deeply personal aspect to the feud between Castro and the United States. This grudge-match undoubtedly colours the reaction of other countries; indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that on the Cuban issue every country brings to bear not so much its views of Cuban communism as its attitudes towards the United States.

It is understandable, if not particularly commendable, that Canada or France or Iraq or Mexico might choose to use Cuba as a means to achieve some measure of independence from (or defiance of) the world’s remaining superpower. The United States cannot be expected to embrace the same attitudes, least of all when its own political traditions, public opinion, and the facts of the case point to the continuing need for vigilance. 

Mark Falcoff is a resident scholar at AEI.