The End of the Bogeyman: The Political Repercussions of the US-Cuban Rapprochement

Abstract

The December 17, 2014 announcements that Cuba and the United States had agreed to begin normalizing their bilateral relationship significantly reduced the threat that Washington posed to Cuban national security—a threat that has been acute for the past half century. From 1959 to 2014, except for brief interludes in the mid 1970s, the objective of US policy was to force regime change through diplomatic isolation, economic pressure, and covert subversion. Obama’s opening to Cuba is historic precisely because he abandoned coercive diplomacy, replacing it with a strategy of engagement and coexistence. “I do not believe we can keep doing the same thing for over five decades and expect a different result,” the president said, explaining his decision to give up on regime change. “Moreover, it does not serve America’s interests, or the Cuban people, to try to push Cuba toward collapse. Even if that worked—and it hasn’t for 50 years—we know from hard-earned experience that countries are more likely to enjoy lasting transformation if their people are not subjected to chaos” (Obama 2014).