US–Cuban Relations: Is There a Light at the End of the Tunnel?

Abstract

U.S.–Cuban Cooperation Past, Present, and Future. By Melanie M. Ziegler Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007. 182 pp., $59.95 cloth (ISBN: 978-0-8130-3087-6). This excellent book is an important contribution to the literatures on US–Cuban relations, foreign policy analysis, international cooperation, and security studies. It tackles the neglected issue of US–Cuban collaboration in areas of mutual interest for both countries, such as illegal immigration, drug trafficking, managing tensions around Guantanamo Naval Base, and diminishing the danger of accidental war. The triangular relationship between US policymakers in Washington, the Cuban exiled community in Miami and the Cuban government underlies the persistence of the “Cuba problem” in US foreign policy. Many analysts believe that the continuation of the US economic embargo on trade with Cuba (imposed after the Cuban revolution in 1959) is an anachronism in the post-Cold War era, when the United States has normal relations with China and Vietnam and is negotiating the normalization of relations with North Korea. The refusal of the US government to seriously consider a normalization of relations with the Castro regime is greatly determined by the top-heavy influence of the Miami-based Cuban exiled community in US policymaking, which reinforces the hegemonic presumption (see Lowenthal 1976) in US policy toward the island and becomes an obstacle to consistently implement even mild confidence-building measures (CBMs) such as the migration agreements discussed in this book. The United States helped Cuba to become independent from Spain by winning the Spanish–American war of 1898, but Cuba soon became a US protectorate with the Platt Amendment to the 1903 treaty with the island, which gave the United States the right to intervene in Cuba to protect Cuban security. Since then, the United States has considered that it has a “natural right” to exercise hegemony in Cuba. The Cuban revolution in 1959, “challenged United States hegemony in the Western Hemisphere to an unprecedented degree” (Connell-Smith 1974:226) not only due to the revolutionary Cuban government's alignment …