Back Channel to Cuba: The History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana by LeoGrande, William M., and Peter Kornbluh (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Back Channel to Cuba: The History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana by LeoGrande, William M., and Peter Kornbluh Michael Bustamante LeoGrande, William M., and Peter Kornbluh. Back Channel to Cuba: The History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. 544 pp. “This is the story of a failure.” So Che Guevara begins his Diaries of the Revolutionary War in the Congo.1 Until mid-December, diplomatic historians LeoGrande and Kornbluh might have easily embossed their own book’s cover with this epigraph, for reading Back Channel to Cuba—an absorbing, intimate account of U.S.-Cuban relations since 1959—served in most ways to retrace a prolonged road to nowhere. Now, following President Obama and Raúl Castro’s historic decision to restore diplomatic relations, LeoGrande and Kornbluh will be heralded for wielding the powers of prophecy. The point of their prodigious study, after all, is to highlight an alternative, underappreciated history of productive dialogue mitigating the ups and downs of bilateral confrontation. From Eisenhower to Obama, the authors demonstrate, every U.S. president has “engaged in some form of dialogue with Castro and his representatives” (2). Several proposed the terms for an explicit modus vivendi, and today President Obama appears closer than any of his predecessors to achieving it. Moments of levity, meanwhile, light the way. Readers will snicker when Cuban diplomats negotiating with the Carter administration steal towels from a Mexican hotel, purposely sticking their gringo interlocutors with the bill. Or when, on a list of “excludable” [End Page 405] migrants from the Mariel boatlift being considered for repatriation, the name Nome Hodes (an Anglicized rendering of no me jodes, “don’t screw with me”) hilariously registers one imprisoned refugee’s defiance of U.S. intake protocol. And yet, in the afterglow of December’s diplomatic breakthrough, Leo-Grande and Kornbluh’s work also reminds us of the vicious cycle of wasted opportunities and roads not taken, with the Nome Jodeses of the saga—average Cubans—ending up, for the most part, jodidos. Indeed, because some administrations flirted with success, the story becomes all that much harder to bear. Surely it would be more comforting to think Washington and Havana locked horns all these years over steadfast principles. In fact, as the authors reveal, the difference between stalemate and breakthrough just as often hinged on timing and pride. Emotions aside, Back Channel to Cuba stands among the most important and timely works in the admittedly crowded field of U.S.-Cuban diplomatic history. True, several instances of hidden diplomacy discussed in the book had been exposed previously. Other tidbits, however—like Henry Kissinger’s shocking contingency plans to “clobber” Cuba militarily when secret talks failed during the Ford years—represent fresh revelations. Researchers seeking exhaustive accounts of particular episodes may have to turn elsewhere for the complete picture,2 and opponents of Fidel Castro are likely to find the authors guilty of treating the Cuban government with kid gloves. Nonetheless, Back Channel to Cuba offers an unequaled look into more than fifty years of frustrating give-and-take. Drawing on interviews with virtually every negotiator involved over the years, the authors’ enviable combination of synthesis and new insight is unlikely to be duplicated. One criticism often leveled at the field of diplomatic history is its privileging of high-placed emissaries over popular voices and concerns. Back Channel to Cuba is no exception, tracing conduits of discussion and impasse largely hidden from public scrutiny. A fairer line of critique, though, might examine the extent to which the book uncovers the contending interests and points of view inside rival governments. On this front, LeoGrande and Kornbluh succeed in penetrating the walls of the White House more than they pry open the doors of the Palace of the Revolution. U.S. diplomacy toward Cuba, the authors show, involved contentious negotiations between officials, agencies, and competing priorities. On the Cuban side, however, the picture still echoes journalist Lee Lockwood’s 1967 book: Castro’s Cuba, Cuba’s Fidel.3 Until Cuban government archives are opened to researchers, processes of internal decision making will remain something of a black box. Readers, in the...