3.6 The cold war and the bipolar order
3.6.3 The cold war in Central America and Cuba
Nicaragua under the Somoza dynasty enjoyed close relations with the United States. However, the dynasty was corrupt, incompetent and often relied on torture and air bombings to punish political opponents. It was amidst such oppressive tendencies of this regime that revolutionaries realised the imperative to overthrow the Somoza dynasty. Consequently, the Sandinista revolutionaries, with the aid of Cuba, became victorious in 1979 (LaFeber, 1994). The emergence and apparent legitimacy of the socialist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua informed the United States’ 1980s policies in the region. It was widely believed in Washington that the regime was “communist and pro-Soviet” (McGrew, 1992, p. 61). The development in Nicaragua
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was particularly worrisome for Washington because of the conviction that if the regime was allowed to flourish, it would become a base for the spread of communism in America which would be significantly detrimental to Washington’s interests and national security. In this light, the United States throughout the 1980s exercised dominance in this region aimed at curtailing the spread of communism.
The United States’ hegemonic posture in the region predates the 1980s. In the 1950s and 1960s, the United States policy in Central America was primarily to prevent a communist revolution.
The policy was executed in two ways: firstly, military and covert intervention as evident in states like Dominican Republic in 1965 and Guatemala in 1954 to install or maintain regimes that promote American interests, and secondly, after the Cuban revolution, America realised the urgency to provide economic and military aid to forces that sought to crush the Cuban or Soviet inspired revolutionary movements. “US policy towards Central America appeared increasingly paradoxical: in the fight against communist totalitarianism it was engaged in alliances with highly undemocratic regimes” (McGrew, 1992, p. 68). In the mid 1980s, Congress banned the US support of the Contra rebels – counter-revolutionary forces in Nicaragua. However, the Reagan administration continued to covertly support the rebels through the provision of arms and training of the commandoes. The US soldiers and military advisers were deployed in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. According to Blum (2003):
Throughout the 1960s, multifarious American experts occupied themselves in El Salvador by enlarging and refining the state’s security and counter-insurgency apparatus: the police, the National Guard, the military, the communications and intelligence networks, the coordination with their counterparts in other Central American countries … (p. 353)
Following the incessant killings of protesters and critics by the El Salvadoran military government in 1979, young military officers staged a coup to overthrow the General Carlos Romero administration. The coup plotters had desired reform and incorporated some civilian politicians in the regime. However, the pressure mounted by the United States and older military officers ensured that key positions were left in the hands of military officers. Therefore the reformists were denied strategic positions through which they could implement their proposed reform (Blum, 2003). The United States military expenditure in this country was extremely high in this period. In the words of Blum, “the amount of American military aid to El Salvador from
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1980 to the early 1990s, for the hardware alone, ran into the billions of dollars” (Blum, 2003, p. 357).
Particularly in Nicaragua, the United States halted the provision of loan and aid facilities. The United States’ actions were perpetuated in the belief that these would curtail the spread of communism in the region and establish a solid American hegemony. However, the Sandinistas’
regime drifted more and more to Cuba and the Soviet Union who provided military and economic assistance for the regime. The United States soon realised the need to intensify its military and security operations in its nearby countries. US military bases were established in Honduras. The United States proved it would use whatever means to attain its objectives in Central America when in 1983 it invaded Grenada.
After the 1959 Cuban revolution, the Cuban state became a source of tension between the United States and the Soviet Union. Cuban ideological and security relationships with the Soviet Union were particularly worrisome for the United States (LeoGrande, 1998). This development was widely believed to have the potential to greatly threaten the security of the United States.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the United States had been hawkish in its relation with Cuba most especially between 1959 and the beginning of the 1970s as was evident in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. The United States tried unsuccessfully to dislodge the Fidel Castro-led communist regime in Cuba. America was accused of assassination attempts against Castro who once argued that “if surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win a gold medal” (The Independent, 2013).
There was also an economic embargo and Cuba was internationally isolated. In the 1970s there was a conscious attempt to establish friendly relations between the two countries. There were negotiations under the administration of Ford and Carter, however, they did not yield positive results and in the 1980s there was a return to the antagonistic relationship of the 1960s (LeoGrande, 1998). The major reasons for the strained relationship were Cuban close ties with the USSR and its support for Latin American revolutionaries. Cuba had a military presence in almost all strategic parts of the world. Fidel Castro’s global entanglement stems from his realisation of the imperative to counteract Washington’s hostile policies against Cuba and to garner support from the Soviet Union and other Communist regimes for Cuba’s economic
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development (Dominquez, 1997). Cuba was therefore a most dependable ally of the USSR during the cold war and it is not surprising that Cuba received massive military and economic aid from the Soviet Union (Dominquez, 1997). It is also interesting that the American public opinion did not favour Cuba. LeoGrande observed that:“A May 1960 Gallup poll found that 81 percent of the public had a negative opinion of the Cuban regime, and only 2 percent a positive opinion.
A year later, Gallup found that 63 percent of the public supported a trade embargo on Cuba “so long as Castro is in power” (LeoGrande, 1998, p. 69)
During the Eisenhower regime, the CIA orchestrated a strategy to dislodge Fidel Castro from power. The President not only approved the plan, he even endorsed the commencement of preparations towards the implementation of the strategy particularly the CIA training of Cuban exiles. Policy makers had believed that the invasion would erupt in an uprising against Castro’s administration like the invasion of Guatemala in 1954 (Vandenbroucke, 1984). The invasion was not carried out during Eisenhower administration but it had reached its apex in terms of preparation. With the arrival of the Kennedy administration, the plan was put into force in 1961.
CIA trained Cuban exiles were mostly involved. Kennedy did not provide United States air cover due to his conviction that the USSR might attack West Berlin in retaliation if the United States was perceived to be directly involved. Therefore, the invasion was carried out in April 17, 1961 by 1500 forces without air cover. In a matter of hours, the Cuban troops were victorious and no uprising occurred as envisaged by the United States. The Kennedy administration and United States in general were humiliated following the defeat (LaFeber, 1994).
In October, 1962, the United States U-2 plane took aerial photographs of missiles in Cuba which were installed by the USSR. On October 22, in a televised speech, Kennedy called for the removal of the missiles and argued that if the United States was attacked by the weapons, it would engage in massive reprisal attacks against the Soviet Union (LaFeber, 1994). Khrushchev was quick to justify his actions. He wrote:
The Americans had surrounded our country with military bases and threatened us with nuclear weapons, and now they would learn just what it feels like to have enemy missiles pointing at you ; we’d be doing nothing more than giving them a little of their own medicine. … After all, the United States had no moral or legal quarrel with us. We hadn’t given the Cubans anything more than the Americans were giving to their allies. We had the same rights and opportunities as the Americans. Our conduct in the international arena was governed by the same rules and limits as the Americans.
(quoted in Blum, 2003, p.?)
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Expectedly, a crisis ensued – the Cuban missile crisis – with the possibility of a nuclear confrontation between the two super powers. The origin of the crisis could be linked to a couple of months before October when Nikita Khrushchev had the idea of installing a missile facility in Cuba while preparing for a trip to Bulgaria where he delivered speeches condemning United States missile sites in Turkey, a neighbouring country of the Soviet Union. USSR also believed that the site in Cuba would deter the possible United States invasion of Cuba that would prevent the Cuban revolution and dismantle the spread of communism in the Western hemisphere (Rosenau & Durfee, 1995). However, owing to the United States display of military arsenal and the apparent determination to risk a nuclear war, Khrushchev decided to remove the missile facility with the conditions stated in two letters to the United States. In the first letter, he wrote that the missiles would be dismantled if the United States would pledge not to invade Cuba but before Kennedy replied the letter, a second letter was sent demanding that the United States destroy its missile facility in Turkey (LaFeber, 1994).
On 28 October President Kennedy disregarded the second letter but replied to the first letter stating the United States would not invade Cuba, if the Soviet Union dismantled and removed the missiles from Cuba. Kennedy’s response signaled the end of the Cuban missile crisis. In 1963 the United States removed the missile facility from Turkey, a decision believed to have been influenced by negotiations between the two super powers (Rosenau & Durfee, 1995).