Cuba's Foreign Policy In The Middle East

Damian J Fernandez

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9780429712739
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In spite of the growing academic interest in Cuba's international relations in the revolutionary period. Cuba's policy toward the Middle East has been a neglected field of study. Although the Middle East has not been a high priority item on Fidel Castro's agenda, various factors have combined to propel the regime into taking a more active stance in the region, not least of which is the importance of the Middle East to the Soviet Union. Some of these factors have been ideological, such as the nature of Castroism itself. Other factors have been more pragmatic: the need to increase Cuba's leverage with the Soviet Union; the desire to establish spheres of interest of its own in the Third World; the attempt to use external politics to soothe internal problems and the wish to maximize the prestige of the Cuban revolution, and, by extension, that of its lider maximo. Since 1959, Havana's Middle Eastern policy has experienced four stages: (1) 1959-1973: Autonomous foreign policy, marked by a dual relationship with both Israel and the Arab states. (2) 1973-1977: Accommodation to the Soviet line; anti-Israeli policy combined with an expansion of relations with progressive states, signalled by the establishment of Cuban military missions. (3) 1977-1980: Activist policy in the region, expanded role and development of diplomatic relationships. (4) 1981 to the present (1985): Cautious involvement; restrained activism, emphasizing socio-economic cooperation. Cuba's incursion into the Arab world illuminates how Cuban foreign policy works, especially in relation to autonomy, convergence, and subordination; dependence, pragmatism, and ideology. The island's entrance into Middle East politics has introduced new risks into the island's foreign policy in return for the benefits which have been derived. A theory to explain Cuba's foreign policy in its interaction with the Soviet Union in the Third World must include heretofore neglected variables: time; regime type; and factionalism (bureaucratic politics), in addition to external events. The study of Cuba's initiatives in the Middle East will serve to test this theory.

1Cuban Foreign Policy from 1959 to 1985: An Overview

DOI: 10.4324/9780429043741_2

Fidel Castro first began to display an interest in the Middle East early in the 1960s. With the passage of time, this interest developed into a full-blown policy characterized by shifts in allegiance and a high degree of activism. Cuba's incursion into the Arab world provides an excellent example as to just how its foreign policy works, especially in relation to the recurring elements of autonomy, convergence, subordination visa-vis the Soviet Union, pragmatism, and ideology. Policy toward the Middle East reflects the changes that took place in Cuban foreign policy generally after 1959, including those of the 1980s following the Cuban experience in Angola, Ethiopia, and Grenada. On the whole, Castro's involvement with the Middle East poses significant risks to, and raises new challenges for, his regime.

Cuba has responded to these challenges by adopting new strategies in the pursuit of its goals, enabling it to adhere to traditional patterns in its international behavior. The result has been an approach to the region both flexible and pragmatic, yet always consistent with revolutionary ideology. The logic behind this foreign policy style has been one of reducing the risk of policy failure while maximizing Cuba's room to maneuver.

The following discussion will explore why, when, and how Cuba entered the area of the Middle East. This chapter will provide an overview of Cuban foreign policy, from several perspectives. First, it will survey, chronologically, the stages through which Cuban foreign policy has passed since 1959. Second, it will review the principal theories which have been applied to the analysis of Cuba's foreign relations. Third, it will discuss the influence which Soviet-Cuban relations have on Cuba's international activities. Fourth, it will examine the decision-making process by which Cuban foreign policy is formulated. Finally, we will take a look at both the means and the ends of these policies. Combined, these perspectives should help us to understand Cuban actions and intentions in the convoluted politics of the Middle East.

CUBA'S FOREIGN RELATIONS IN PERSPECTIVE

From 1959 to the present, Cuba's foreign policy can be divided into four stages; (1) the initial period (1959-1967); (2) the period of increasing internationalism (1968-1974); and (3) the period of active internationalism (19754980).¹ To these categories should be added a fourth (and current) period which covers developments in the 1980s, under the rubric of limited or restrained internationalism (1981 to the mid-1980s).² Although it is still too soon to tell, the latter half of the 1980s may herald yet another stage in the island's international relations, one which may turn out to be called "the new internationalism."

THE INITIAL PERIOD: 1959-1967

During the first - or initial - stage, the main priority of the Cuban government was to stabilize, and consolidate, its Revolution. However, at the same time the seeds of its future internationalism were being sown. From 1959 to 1967, "Cuba's foreign policy can be viewed as exhibiting a restrained activism, restrained in the sense that many Cuban policy initiatives were responses and reactions to international conditions and were made necessary by the policies of other actors."³ During this period, Cuba had neither the power - nor the means - to carry out extensive foreign activities, although the revolutionary elite had already begun to manifest its commitment to a globalist policy, especially in its support of revolutionary groups in Latin America.

While the antagonism of the United States served to circumscribe Cuba's foreign activities to some extent, Cuba did not respond passively - or in merely reactive fashion - to this posture. Since early in 1959, Castro consistently made decisions which served to foreclose U.S. economic assistance to, and trade with, the island.⁴ Moreover, Castro's anti-Americanism, a cornerstone of his ideology, antedated 1959. The U.S. embargo, the termination of diplomatic relations, and the expulsion of Cuba from the Organization of American States (OAS) isolated Cuba within the Western Hemisphere. Castro's guerrillismo alienated Cuba in official circles throughout Latin America as Havana preached revolutionary overthrow in other countries as well, and Ernesto ("Che") Guevara, one of Castro's revolutionary leaders, called for "many Vietnams." In practice, Cuba supported guerrilla movements at work in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela. For this reason, this period has also been labeled the period of the export of revolution. Throughout Central and South America, guerrilla leaders, inspired by Castro, adopted the rural foco strategy to achieve power through armed uprisings which were designed to start in the countryside and spread to the urban areas (the model used by Castro). In this concept of revolution, Communist parties assumed a secondary role, if they were to participate at all. Unlike traditional Marxism-Leninism, Fidel's strategy does not assign a vanguard role to the Party.⁵

As Havana's relations with Washington rapidly deteriorated onto a confrontation course, Castro sought out the economic and moral support of Moscow. From the Castro perspective, only the Soviet Union had the power to ensure the survival of his Revolution from reprisal by the United States. Thereafter, the Soviet Union became the focus of Cuba's international relations despite the fact that Soviet-Cuban relations were often to suffer from their ups and downs. Cole Blasier claims that, although Castro's collision with the US. has received the most public scrutiny, actually Cuba's biggest battles were with its Soviet patrons throughout the 1960s.⁶ Diverging interpretations of revolutionary strategy were not the only impediments to the Soviet-Cuban alliance.

The Soviets had their doubts about Castro's reliability as an ally: not only was Cuba involved in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) but it had also courted the friendship of the Chinese in the early-to-mid-1960s. The Cubans had their doubts as well, particularly regarding the degree of Soviet commitment to defend the Revolution. This was dramatized by the Kennedy-Khruschev negotiations at the time of the 1962 Missile Crisis, from which Castro was excluded, a situation which caused Castro to question the reliability of Soviet friendship. Tensions between Havana and Moscow continued to escalate up til 1968, when Castro resolved the conflict by agreeing (1) to endorse the Czechoslovakian invasion and (2) to abandon guerrillismo in Latin America.

Cuban involvement in Africa dates back to this initial period. In 1966 Havana hosted the First Conference of Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, with the purpose of coordinating a common strategy to fight imperialism. Even before this date, Cuba had sent limited military aid to certain countries (such as Algeria and the Congo) in support of anti-colonial groups. Also in the 1960s, Che Guevara had toured Africa to establish contacts and to offer assistance.⁷

During this stage, major foreign policy successes of the regime were the survival of the Revolution and defeat of the U.S.-sponsored invasion at the Bay of Pigs. The combination of fending off U.S. hostility and securing Soviet assistance provided Cuba with an international coup. Jorge Dominguez analyzed "the management of success" in Cuban foreign policy to conclude that:

Above all, the Cuban revolutionary government wanted to survive after January 1959. For many regimes of the world, that might not necessarily be such an obvious foreign policy need, but it was by no means a foregone conclusion that the Cuban revolutionary regime would survive at any time between 1959 and 1962 ... The need for success was most pressing in the early years.⁸

INCREASING INTERNATIONALISM: 1968-1974

Cuba's foreign policy entered its second stage in 1968, when the Soviets were able to pressure Cuba, successfully, to support the Moscow line regarding the appropriate road to revolution in Latin America, and when Castro agreed, albeit reluctantly, to endorse the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. After 1968, idealism became tempered by pragmatism. The pressures on Castro were not only external. Within the country the economy had been steadily deteriorating, and failure to reach Fidel's much-publicized projected 10-million-ton sugar harvest (in 1970) only underscored Cuba's need for Soviet economic assistance. In return for the latter, an "understanding" was reached with the Soviets regarding international policies, and Cuba's identification with the Soviets increased. As a result, Cuba accommodated to Soviet demands concerning its internal politics. By the early 1970s, Cuba had become integrated into the COMECON and had strengthened the Cuban Communist Party.

With military and economic aid guaranteed, the regime received the protection it needed to initiate global activism. In 1972 Castro travelled throughout Africa and Eastern Europe; in 1973 he gave a landmark speech in Algiers at the Non-Aligned Meeting. In this address, Castro condemned the notion of two imperialisms (that of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.), and he defended the thesis that the Soviet Union, as a socialist and, therefore, an anti-imperialist state was a natural ally of the Third World in the struggle for freedom and development.

It was during this period that Cuba increased its military missions to Africa and the Middle East, as well as the number of foreign socio-economic assistance projects. By 1973, Cuban personnel were operating in Algeria, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Iraq, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Yemen, and Syria.⁹ In Latin America, Castro opted for conventional state-to-state relations, having abandoned, at least temporarily, the incitement to revolution. The island found diplomatic doors opening as several Latin American countries (Peru, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, and Chile under Allende) reestablished relations with Havana.

At the same time, Cuba and the U.S.S.R. decided that cooperation in the international arena could be mutually beneficial. Havana was assured of much needed Soviet economic and military assistance as relations intensified between the two regimes. Furthermore, Fidel's personal dream of becoming a revolutionary figure of world stature was given added substance as Cuba was able to diversify its contacts about the globe. This development was also encouraging to a domestic nationalism which would have liked to reduce dependency on the Soviets.

In turn, the Soviets were compensated for assuming the financial burden of supporting, and the risks incumbent in having, an unpredictable ally, by the benefits produced through a lowered international visibility which reduced their risk of confrontation with other powers as well as the cost of potential failures. As the Angolan, Ethiopian, and Grenadian situations were to demonstrate, years later, Cuba could serve as a broker for Soviet influence and a proxy for the Soviet presence.¹⁰

ACTIVE INTERNATIONALISM: 1975-1980

As the Soviet-Cuban connection grew stronger, the conditions Cuba needed to assume a more active international role were being met and the way paved to the third stage. In this sense, the 1968-1974 period served as a prelude for orchestration of the partners' diplomatic and military moves in several areas of the Third World. In 1975, three events took place which marked a new era in Cuban foreign relations: (1) the First Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba was held; (2) OAS sanctions against Cuba came to an end; and, (3) Cuban involvement in Angola escalated. As John McShane has pointed out, "the First Party Congress represented not the depersonalization of governance under Fidel, but rather a heightened concentration of power and responsibility on the líder máximo with respect to foreign policy."¹¹ Centralization of decision-making is illustrated by the fact that Fidel holds the first position in the Party, the Council of State, the Council of Ministers, and the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR).

With firm internal control, strong Soviet support, and the beginning of acceptance in the Hemisphere, and with Castroism as the driving force, Fidel Castro embarked on a period of unprecedented foreign activism. The reinvigorated international role found expression in traditional state-to-state diplomacy, a leadership role in the Third World movement, and in troop commitments abroad, specifically in Angola and Ethiopia. Cuba not only found new and old friends in the Caribbean (Panama, Mexico, Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad-Tobago, and later Grenada), but also cultivated allies in the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. In 1977, Fidel made a successful tour of those continents. Two years later, in 1979, Cuba, as leader of the Non-Aligned Movement, acted as host for the Sixth Conference of Non-Aligned Nations, held in Havana.

The overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile (1973), who had been the first socialist in Latin America to be elected head of state, had a profound impact on the Cuban-Soviet alliance. Both Havana and Moscow interpreted Allende's fall in the same way: by claiming that it was impossible for a progressive group to reach power by means of the ballot. Castro's line of the 1960s, that violence was the correct strategy to follow in the "liberation...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents Page
• List of Tables Page
• Acknowledgments Page
• Introduction
• CHAPTER 1 CUBAN FOREIGN POLICY FROM 1959 TO 1985: AN OVERVIEW
• CHAPTER 2 CUBAN FOREIGN POLICY IN THE MIDDLE EAST: 1959-1987
• CHAPTER 3 THE IMPLEMENTATION OF CUBAN FOREIGN POLICY IN THE MIDDLE EAST: COUNTRY BY COUNTRY
• CHAPTER 4 CUBAN-LIBYAN RELATIONS: A CASE STUDY
• CHAPTER 5 CUBAN FOREIGN POLICY IN THE MIDDLE EAST: CONCLUSIONS
• Appendix A
• Appendix B: Bibliographic Note
• Appendix C: An Overview of Middle Eastern Countries
• Selected Bibliography
• Index