US Foreign Policy towards Cuba: Historical Roots, Traditional Explanations and Alternative Perspectives

Raúl Rodríguez Raúl Rodríguez,Harry Targ Harry Targ

doi:10.13169/intejcubastud.7.1.0016

Abstract

This article examines the various interpretations of the root causes of US foreign policy towards Cuba. Examining 250 years of policies articulated and defended by prominent US foreign policy decision-makers, the authors decide that geopolitical, economic and ideological explanations of why the US has behaved towards Cuba the way it has need to be supplemented by an understanding of the counter-revolutionary US foreign policy agenda. Drawing upon North American scholars, many of whom have been critics of US policy, and interpreted by a US and Cuban scholarly lens, the article suggests that examinations of the fundamental motivations for US policy go beyond common explanations and should be applied to the recent dramatic announcements by Presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro that relationships between the two countries will be significantly changing in the near future.

Highlights

This article examines the various interpretations of the root causes of US foreign policy towards Cuba
The triumph of the Cuban Revolution marked the beginning of a process of profound socio-economic and political transformations representing a clean break with the prevailing social, economic and political patterns in the rest of the Western Hemisphere – a geopolitical space that had been a Monroe Doctrine-inspired US hegemonic domain
It is argued that none are as powerful an explanatory tool as that which hypothesises the fundamental contradictions between Cuban revolutionary ferment in search of national realisation and the US hegemonic quest for the maintenance of a status quo throughout the Western Hemisphere

Summary

The Geopolitical Rationale

The expansionist ambition of the US, given Cuba’s size and proximity, has made the latter a prime target, since the early decades of the nineteenth century. During the first half of the nineteenth century, many authors and politicians portrayed Cuba’s importance as a natural fact of geography, a sort of cartographic commonsense It was John Quincy Adams, secretary of state in President James Monroe’s administration, and later president himself, who summarised that trend. Secretary of State John Clayton was firm in asserting that ‘this government [is] resolutely determined that the Island of Cuba should never be ceded to any other power than the United States’.7 This geopolitical concern was based on the fact that the British North American provinces had rejected the ideas of the US republic and welcomed British economic ties and political institutions as a guarantee of their security and prosperity. The main expression of this trend was the US intervention and occupation of Cuba from 1898 to 1902 and the nation building experiment that Cuba was forced to adopt from until 1959

The Economic Interest Rationale

The Bay of Pigs Invasion

Findings

The Missile Crisis