Abstract
This chapter deals with confidence building and confidence-building measures (CBMs) in the context of the ongoing dispute between the United States and Cuba over a wide range of historic, political, and economic matters.1 The very idea of a look at such an activity as confidence building in such an intractable and long lasting conflict may strike the reader as, to say the least, odd and perhaps even foolhardy. After all, one side sees the other as determined to destroy it at whatever cost and however long it takes, while the second party sees its opponent as an incorrigibly evil regime in which one can never have any real faith.2 This is not the stuff of which normal confidence building is generally constructed.
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Notes
Philip S. Foner, A History of Cuba, New York, International Publishers, 1962, pp. 43–44.
See the handling of this subject in David Y. Thomas, A History of Military Government in the United States, London, Columbia University Press, 1904, p. 45.
An interesting work on this is José Luciano Franco Fernán, Política continental americana de España, 1812–1830, Havana, Academia de Ciencias, 1964.
Louis Pérez, On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality and Culture, Chapel Hill, University: North Carolina Press, 1999, pp. 166–198.
For some elements of this see Leslie Bethell, Cuba: A Short History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 78–79; and English, Armed Forces, in the national section of the Cuban chapter of the work.
Kapcia, Cuba: Island of Dreams, helps us understand this. See also Joel James Figarola, Alcance de la cubanía, Santiago de Cuba, Editorial Oriente, 2001.
For an interesting look at the bilateral relationship for the whole of the second Batista regime and the first quarter century and more of Fidel, see Morris Morley, Imperial State and Revolution: The United States and Cuba, 1952–1986, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Cuba of course denies the existence of such a phase of its policy. Fidel has spoken often about the subject. In Cuban discourse it is referred to as “active defense” or is even denied altogether. Even the legendary Che said his writings on guerrilla warfare were much more intended for defensive operations by Cuba in resisting a U.S. invasion than they were for the instruction of those taking revolutionary ideas abroad. See Paul Dosal, Comandante Che: Guerrilla Soldier, Commander, and Strategist, 1956–1967, University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003, pp. 20–22.
See the Cuban argument in Carlos A. Batista Odio, “Bloqueo, no embargo,” in Carlos Batista Odio et al., El conflicto Cuba-Estados Unidos, Havana, Editorial Félix Varela, 1998, pp. 38–48.
United States Department of State, Department of State Bulletin, LXXVII, December 5, 1977, p. 2006.
Smith, Wayne, The Closest of Enemies, New York, Norton, 1987, pp. 124–169.
This process is discussed in one fashion or another in the various chapters of Bert Hoffmann (Ed.), Cuba: apertura y reforma econômica, Caracas, Nueva Sociedad, 1995. An interesting overview of why and how this series of processes took place is given in the analysis of Hiram Marquetti Nodarse, “La Empresa cubana: principales retos que enfrenta,” in Mercedes Sánchez et al., Gerencia: del próposito a la acción, Havana, Editorial Félix Varela, 2002, pp. 169–188.
For this story see Morris Morley and Chris McGillion, Unfinished Business: America and Cuba after the Cold War, 1989–2001, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 33–39.
These figures, and many others of interest, come from the last chapters of Luis Suárez Salazar, Cuba: zaislamiento o reinserción en un mundo cambiado?, Havana, Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1997.
For Latin American and other reaction to Helms-Burton see Joaquín Roy, Cuba, the United States and the Helms-Burton Doctrine: International Reactions, Gainesville, University of Florida Press, 2000.
This does not apply to missions in the former republics of the USSR where special circumstances, related to a retained Russian role in some of these republics, are in place. For example, Cuba for years maintained four observers with the United Nations Observer Mission in Georgia (UNOMIG). See Neil Macfarlane, “La Communauté des États independents et la sécurité régionale,” in Michel Fortmann, Neil Macfarlane, and Stéphane Roussel (Eds.), Tous pour un ou chacun pour soi: promesses et limites de la cooperation régionale en matière de sécurité, Québec, Presses de l’Univiersité Laval, 1996, pp. 181–194.
and International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 1997/8, London, Oxford University Press, p. 215.
Pierre Queuille, L’Amérique latine, la doctrine Monroe et le panaméricanisme, Paris, Payot, 1969.
or G. Pope Atkins, Latin America in the International Political System, Boulder, Westview, 1995.
And for the inter-American system Rodolfo Garrié Faget, Organismos militares interamericanos, Buenos Aires, Ediciones Depalma, 1968.
and Hugo Garrié Faget, Organismos militaries interamericanos, Buenos Aires, Ediciones Depalama, 1968.
and Hugo Luis Cargnelutti, Seguridad interamericana ¿un subsistema del sistema interamericano?, Buenos Aires, Círculo Militar, 1993.
This is discussed in a useful way in Milagros Martínez Reinosa and Jorge Hernández Martínez, “¿Alternativas políticas en la inmigración cubana?” Cuadernos de Nuestra América, XII, 23, January–June 1995, pp. 33–47.
“Miami” intransigence can backfire. The Elián González controversy, where the bulk of the U.S. public backed the boy’s return to Cuba and his next of kin and rejected entirely the “view from Miami,” is a case in point. See Carlos Alzugaray, “Cuba y los Estados Unidos en los umbrales del siglo XXI: perspectivas de cooperación,” Cuadernos de Nuestra América, XV, 29, January–June 2002, pp. 49–76.
See Francisco Rojas Aravena (Ed), Medidas de confianza mutua: verificaciôn, Santiago, FLACSO, 1996; and his Balance estratégico y medidas de confianza mutua, Santiago, FLACSO, 1996.
See Peter D. Scott and John Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies and the CIA in Central America, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1991, pp. 102–103; and Enrique A. Meltín Casas, “Cuba en la política antidrogas de Estados Unidos,” in Batista Odio, “Bloqueo, no embargo,” pp. 208–225.
See Anya Landau and Wayne Smith, “Keeping Things in Perspective: Cuba and the Question of International Terrorism,” Washington, Center for International Policy, November 20, 2001, in http://www.ciponline.org/cuba/ipr/keepingthingsinperspective.pdf.
Dec’lau McCullagh, “Feds say Fidel is Hacter Threat,” Washington, Wired Digital, February 9, 2001.
See Arias Fernândez, Cuba contra el narcotrkfico, and “Automatizan radar de Punta del Este,” in Grauma, August 5, 2002.
Intr-American Dialogue, The Environment in U.S.–Cuban Relations: Recommendations of Cooperation, Washington, Inter-American Dialogue, 1997. See also Alzugaray, “Cuba y los,” p. 65.
See the excellent opening chapter of Lars Schoultz, National Security and United States Policy towards Latin America, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1987.
These issues are discussed in several of the chapters of the highly interesting David Dewitt et al. (Eds.), Building a New Global Order: Emerging Trends in International Security, Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1993.
and for Latin America in particular in Enrique Obando, Nuevas amenazas a la seguridad y relaciones civiles-militares en un mundo en desorden, Lima, Centro Peruano de Estudios Internacionales, 1994.
See this and related issues in the U.S. sections of Peter H. Smith, Drug Policy in the Americas, Boulder, Westview, 1992.
Christopher Marquis, “Pentagon want U.S. Military to Work with Cuba,” The Miami Herald, February 21, 1998.
Christopher Marquis, “Report Downplaying Cuba Threat Back to Review,” The Miami Herald, April 8, 1998.
Anthony Boadle, “Cuban Military No Threat, Turns to Farming,” The Miami Herald, March 31, 1998.
Christopher Marquis, “Cuba Still No Threat, Pentagon Insists but Defense Chief Tempers Report,” The Miami Herald, May 7, 1998.
Rafael Hernández, «De los cañones a los frijoles: las Fuerzas armadas cubanas en la posguerra fría,» Opiniones críticas y rápidas, May 3, 1999.
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© 2005 Hal Klepak
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Klepak, H. (2005). The FAR and the United States: Confidence Building in Limited but Important Sectors. In: Cuba’s Military 1990–2005. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403980601_6
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