People of a certain age will be aware that the 1962 Cuba Missile Crisis was, for the world as a whole, the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. The 1962 ‘Battle of Cuba’ was a ‘cold battle’ in the same sense that the Cold War was a ‘cold war’. (Only one actual shot was fired, by Cuba.) Nevertheless, it is appropriate to ask, “who won”?

In military events hot or cold – it is surprisingly difficult to answer such a question. But it’s actually quite easy in this case.

The cold Battle of Cuba was about three countries, and three charismatic leaders: Nikita Khrushchev (Soviet Union), John F Kennedy (United States), and Fidel Castro (Cuba). Following the disastrous American invasion of Cuba in 1961, Cuba had taken on the role of a Soviet Union ‘client state’ – hence a military proxy – of the Soviet Union. (Prior to the Bay of Pigs assault, Cuba, while a revolutionary country, was not a communist country; though at least one prominent revolutionary, the Argentinian doctor Che Guevara, was certainly of the communist faith and took every opportunity to convert Cuba into a polity that followed the Book of Marx. The actions of the United States facilitated Castro’s eventual conversion.)

The situation that Khrushchev faced in late 1961 was that NATO had an installation of American nuclear-armed missiles in Turkey (now Türkiye). While Turkey had a common border with the Soviet Union – Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia – the missiles were essentially facing north across the Black Sea, into Ukraine and Russia. This was a clear and open – though not widely publicised in ‘the west’ – security threat to the Soviet Union.

Taking advantage of the political fallout between Cuba and the United States, Khrushchev – in an act of bravado, indeed brinkmanship – negotiated with Castro to install nuclear-capable missiles in Cuba, one of the few genuine security threats that the United States has ever faced.

The world trembled at the prospect of imminent (and possibly all-out) nuclear war. Castro looked forward to a hot battle which he was sure Khrushchev and Castro would together win. But Castro was doomed to disappointment. Khrushchev dismantled his missiles in Cuba, and Kennedy dismantled his missiles in Turkey.

So, compare, say, October 1963 with October 1961. The only real difference was that in 1961 there were American missiles in Turkey pointing in the direction of Moscow, and in 1963 there were not. Game, set, and match to Khrushchev. (And of course, the whole world was the winner, in that not a nuclear missile was fired in anger. Though the Cubans did shoot down an American reconnaissance aircraft.)

That’s not the narrative which the western world has taken on board though. In the West, it’s interpreted as a Soviet Union backdown, in the face of relentless diplomatic pressure from the Kennedy brothers (with Robert Kennedy playing a key negotiating role). Certainly, the world was on tenterhooks; brinkmanship can go disastrously wrong.

There are some analogies with the current Ukraine crisis. Though the Ukraine War is certainly a hot war.

Brinkmanship failed in 2021 and 2022. Nevertheless, Volodymyr Zelenskyy does pose as a good analogue to Fidel Castro (though not as an incipient communist!).

Donald Trump’s brinkmanship re China and the European Union

Trump’s war is a ‘trade war’, Winston Peters’ rejection of the ‘war analogy’ notwithstanding. This is a war that uses the language of war. Two longstanding mercantilist economic nations (China, European Union) and one mercantilist leader are slugging it out to see who can export more goods and services to the world; the prize being a mix of gold and virtual-gold, the proceeds of unbalanced trade.

(Historically the United States has also been a mercantilist nation, going right back to its origins as a ‘victim’ of British mercantilism in the eighteenth century. The United States has always been uneasy about its post World-War-Two role as global consumer-of-last-resort and its historical instincts towards mercantilism; an instinct that contributed substantially to the global Great Depression of 1930 to 1935. ‘Mercantilism’ is often confused by economists with ‘protectionism’, and indeed the American Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930 were a mix of both.)

My reading of Donald Trump is that he is a mercantilist, but not a protectionist; that he’s not really a tariff-lover, just as Khrushchev was not really a missile lover. Instinctively, China and especially the European Union are protectionist as a way of supporting their ingrained mercantilism. But a country that is ‘great again’ – in this ‘making money’ context – can prevail in a trade war without tariffs. Indeed, that’s exactly why the United Kingdom moved sharply towards tree trade in the 1840s and 1850s. England had not lost its mercantilist spots. But at the heart of an English Empire within a British Empire, London had the power to win a ‘free trade’ trade war. It was the other would-be powers – the new kids on the global block; the USA, Germany’s Second Reich, and later Japan and Russia – which turned to tariff protection in order to stymie the United Kingdom.

Trump’s super-tariffs against China and the European Union – trade weapons, economic ‘missiles’ – are designed to get those two economic nations to remove their various trade barriers that existed in 2024. Once they do that, then Trump may remove his tariff threats.

Trump is playing brinkmanship in the way of Khrushchev. Xi Jinping is Kennedy; so, in a way, is Ursula von der Leyen. Canada, in a sense, is Cuba. (Though Mark Carney may not like to think of himself as Castro!)

If Trump gets his way, the United States’ economy in 2026 will be as free as it was in 2024. The Chinese and European Union economies will have significantly fewer tariff and non-tariff import barriers than in 2024. Significantly fewer ‘trade weapons’ poised to ‘rip off’ the United States! Canada will be much the same in 2026 as in 2024, albeit with a newfound sense of national identity.

Implications for the Wider World, and the Global Monetary System

The wider world will probably not be better off with a mercantilist war, albeit a free-trade war. When hippopotamuses start dancing …!

We already see how free trade in ‘big guns’ is creating military instability in Africa and South Asia. And we must expect to see the United States’ special role as the fulcrum of the world’s monetary system dissipate if the United States significantly reduces its trade deficits; requiring some other deficit countries to take up that challenge. Canada? Australia? India? United Kingdom? A new anti-mercantilist British Empire? I don’t think so. Türkiye? Saudi Arabia? Brazil? Maybe not. Japan? Maybe. Russia? If the Ukraine war ends, Russia will struggle to import more than it exports; though I am sure that Donald Trump would like to see the United States exporting lots of stuff to Russia.

The International Monetary Fund? Maybe, but only if it changes some of its narratives. The challenge here will be for it to reform itself in line with John Maynard Keynes’ proposals at and after Bretton Woods, the 1944 conference which set itself the task of establishing the post-war global monetary order. Keynes envisaged a World Reserve Bank; though he didn’t envisage monetary policy – with New Zealand in 1989 acknowledged as the world’s lead ‘reformer’ – falling into the hands of the ‘monetarists’ and their false narratives about inflation.

*******

Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

By Arturo López-Levy
From Oakland, California

Throughout the Democratic Party primary for the 2020 elections, for the first time all the candidates proposed a policy towards Cuba in line with the course of dialogue and exchange led by President Barack Obama in his last two years in office. This consensus of the Democratic Party expresses a rejection of the US policy of sanctions against Cuba, for which the United States, in addition to causing considerable harm and scarcity to the Cuban people, has entered into conflict with the rest of the world, including its closest allies in Europe and Canada. These countries consider exchange and dialogue with Cuba the best way to promote a friendly insertion of the island into a liberal post-cold war order.

The consensus around the need to lift the current restrictions on trade and travel should not be confused with a common diagnosis about the Cuban government or what should be the best policy to replace the sanctions. The issue entered the US campaign early when senator Bernie Sanders (Democrat of Vermont), argued in favor of a nuanced vision, in which both the authoritarian features of the Cuban government and its important social, health and education achievements will be evaluated, that a comprehensive human rights approach would appreciate and seek to preserve. This position was not new in the Democratic Party as it has been expressed in one way or another by three former presidents: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

Despite this reality, several of Sanders’ opponents presented him as a naive ignorant of the realities of the island, when in reality the senator was one of those who had perhaps most visited the island and studied the Cuban situation. The same has happened with congresswoman Karen Bass, leader of the African-American caucus in the House of Representatives, whose name was considered on the short list of possible candidates for the vice presidency. Bass was since 1973, for some years, a member of the Venceremos Brigade and traveled several times to the island, even favoring in her different legislative positions, since 2004, a policy of rapprochement and good will in negotiating with the government in Havana.

The picture has been very different in the Republican Party. Despite the fact that an important sector of this party also considers the sanctions a worn and harmful instrument for the interests of the American business community, and an anti-libertarian case of undue government interference in the travel and business rights of the citizens by the US government. In the US, President Trump defined his policy toward Cuba in terms of “keeping Senator Rubio happy.”[1] .

The context described and its more in-depth analysis serve as a framework to raise important questions about which policies might be most likely to be adopted in the different post-electoral scenarios, depending on the candidate who wins the November elections. Here is an analysis based on five questions and a set of responses that could serve to structure an informed discussion on the topic:

1. What can be expected from a re-election of Donald Trump for president of the US in terms of its policy towards Cuba?

Trump is a quirky president with a big ego. His policy toward any country will be largely defined by his instincts, his entrepreneurial interests, and his “grand vision” of the legacy he is about to leave behind. As the recent memories of former advisor to Trump, John Bolton, revealed,  the position of “America first” stated by the President is just a slogan, without much coherence or reflection on what implementing a nationalist conception means. Assuming as a “systematized” position, it should be best understood as “America only”, a unilateral position, in which Trump expects to dictate his terms to a multipolar world.

It can not be ruled out then that Trump continues by inertia with the same policy towards Cuba but neither that he seeks to negotiate with the island, once Raúl Castro retires in 2021, if that offers an advantage for the US president. It is known that before winning the presidency, even in the middle of the Republican primary, he sent several of his subordinates to explore business opportunities in Cuba under Obama to thaw. It must be added that pro-embargo members of his team have been dismissed (John Bolton) or on the way out (as Mauricio Claver-Carone is competing to head the Inter-American Development Bank). Carlos Trujillo is still there, now in the Department of State’s Undersecretary for Latin America, a key position against new negotiations. But the maxim “keep Rubio happy,” (a phrase attributed to Trump to define the policy toward Cuba), to guide policy towards Cuba could be affected when senator Rubio (Republican of Florida) begins his election campaign in 2024, and tries to keep some distance from the White House. At the very least, Trump’s policy toward Cuba should not become more aggressive, if the current team remains. Bolton and Claver-Carone output from the National Security Council is a big factor, since neither the priorities nor the staff would be so obsessed with the Cuba and Venezuela issues, as has been the case so far. However, nothing can guarantee that new “hawks” in favor of tightening measures against Cuba will not reach a possible second Trump administration.

2. If the winner is former Vice President Biden, should an automatic return to the policy of Obama be expected?

From the point of view of rationality, and the values and national interests of the United States, a president Biden should resume Obama’s policy immediately. However, it is symptomatic that as a candidate, Biden has not emphasized the issue and has sought to win Cuban votes in Florida by appealing to other issues on the progressive agenda (jobs, health). The issue of Cuba came up in Miami during the Democratic primaries because of the nuanced statements of Senator Bernie Sanders. The Vermont senator, from the Social Democratic wing, contrasted authoritarian flaws in the Cuban political system with its positive performance in health and education. Biden did not hesitate to criticize him based on the total demonization of the Cuban government that prevails in the political discourse of the main parties, ignoring that the same position of Sanders had been enunciated before by Obama, Carter and even Bill Clinton.

In this light, we should add a whole dominant narrative developed by his circle of advisers and organizers of the Democratic campaign in Florida. That position insists on presenting Obama’s change not as what is relevant to American interests and values, or appropriate under international law. Rather, they pose the opening to Cuba as a mere modification of methods to achieve the goals of regime change imposed from Miami to the island, measures that the sanctions have failed to achieve. Even Obama used that twisted logic on occasion.

At this time, such a proposal has neither head nor feet and only serves to pay tribute at the altars of the McCarthyist Cuban right and confuse progressive bases, without educating even anti-communist liberals on the importance of breaking with a binary approach towards Cuba. To dismantle the legacy of the Cuban Revolution and impose the heirs of the pre-revolutionary political elites in Cuba is impossible without US military intervention, a total collapse of the Cuban government caused by hunger from the most inhuman regime of sanctions, and a bloodbath. Obama’s policy of openness and negotiation went in another direction. In politics, whoever changes the means,  must adjust the ends.

A nuance in this regard was the consideration of Congresswoman Karen Bass (D-California ), a former member of the Venceremos Brigade but today distanced from those more radical positions, for the short list of candidates for the Democratic vice presidential candidacy. Bass has never stopped advocating for a policy of detente and dialogue with Cuba, with a nuanced view on the Cuban situation. Her prominence in the media as the  leader of the African-American caucus in the House of Representatives, and also as a result of the high profile racial issue following the death of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis and subsequent protests, have brought the issue of Cuba into the spotlight. Unlike 2008 when anti-sanctions positions were in a slump, the pro dialogue efforts with Cuba reaches 2020 with a momentum to lobby for that option from ethical and humanitarian grounds, as well as economic and even strategic interests.

Nor can we forget that if Biden wins and with that Democrats’ power in the Senate is improved,  it is likely that senator Robert Menendez ( D-New Jersey) may occupy the presidency of the International Affairs Committee. Menendez is perhaps the last Democrat with an openly pro-embargo stance, but his ability to block any efforts to improve the relationship with Cuba from the presidency of a senatorial committee cannot be underestimated. Particularly if President Biden does not consider Cuba an issue so important as to burn that relationship with the senator.

In short, it is to be hoped that until a defining clash occurs in Congress over a key issue, such as freedom to travel, a Biden administration will aim for policies of exchange programs, but without the intensity and priority of the last two years of Obama after the historic opening of December 17, 2014. It should also be noted that between 2014-2017, Obama and Raúl Castro negotiated the less complex issues of the conflict. The issue of nationalizations and compensations, or human rights issues, were barely outlined. And the Guantanamo base? Well, thanks. Of course barbarities as opening the Title III of the Helms-Burton law is not expected to continue. That was only expected from a National Security Council with Bolton and Mauricio Claver-Carone in charge of the hemispheric portfolio.

3. Bolton will no longer be in the White House, and it seems that Mauricio Claver-Carone will leave as well. Could this personnel change lead to a policy change?

That may happen but not very likely. Bolton’s firing at least does not harm the bilateral relationship with Cuba, or indeed US foreign policy. He was a bad official (he forgot who the US voters had chosen) with terrible ideas about the relationship of the US with the world. His departure and that of Claver-Carone have not indicated a policy change. There are enough supporters of their positions in several key positions in the Department of State though (Carlos Trujillo, for example, as Undersecretary of Hemispheric Affairs) and in Congress (Senator Marco Rubio, among others).

Furthermore, Trump is campaigning in Florida advocating the same hostility against Cuba. If there is something that Trump has enjoyed during his first term, it is his clashes with Europe and Canada, which he insisted on treating  as subordinates under NATO and not as allies, as the US consensus since the Truman administration to Obama has respected. That said, if the president does not adjust course, it is possible that in a situation of US weakness, Europe may start approving laws to defend the region from penalties and extraterritorial interference,  which would exacerbate the problems with the financial and business world. All this is made worse by the “imperial” tendencies created by Senator Jesse Helms in 1996 to impose an extremist stance against Cuba on the world.

Claver-Carone is like a Sisyphus, carrying a stone to the top of the mountain just to discover that despite accomplishing everything he sets out, the Cuban government still stands up and remains defiant. It’s hard to expect Bolton, Claver-Carone, or Pompeo to question their assumptions about Cuba or improve the US policy toward the island, but someone is supposed to one day question them. If in the executive branch there is not a minimum of rational analysis on the costs of the blockade for the United States, not only humanitarian but also in commercial terms and drainage of political capital in the face of Latin America and its own US allies, it is likely that a Congress in Democratic hands will start demanding explanations. The attempt by congressman Bobby Rush (D-Illinois) in early August to cut funding for the implementation of the sanctions is only the beginning.  Regarding Trump, in a scenario where he has succeeded in everything (in terms of pain caused, scarcity and high costs of living to the Cuban people), Claver-Carone and his allies will likely have failed to thwart an intergenerational transition in the Cuban leadership and or have any significant  effect on it.

In the case of the campaign against the Cuban medical missions, the United States has closed ranks with the most reactionary and conservative forces of Latin American politics, damaging the credibility of the Inter American system. Trump and Rubio have put even the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, in the unfavorable position of  appearing in Miami as a radical anti-Castro activist[2] in broadcasts of “influencers” on Youtube with content that is typical of tabloids, where orgiastic scenes,  gossip and scandals are discussed, in a language and with images that would scandalize the FCC. When Trump says “jump”, Almagro asks ” where?”.

4. Can the elimination or attenuation in the oil blockade against Cuba be expected after the heat of the electoral campaign?

The idea of ​​interrupting the flow of oil to Cuba by force or by arbitrarily blacklisting tankers is an extreme measure . It not only violates international law, but also  represents a further escalation with unpredictable consequences. Trump, badly advised by Bolton, brought unilateralism and interventionism to levels difficult to beat.

If he wins the Democratic nomination, it is logical to expect that a Biden government could take a most constructive attitude towards the situation of Venezuela, at least for three reasons:

a. He doesn’t owe the same debt that Trump does to Venezuelan and Cuban radical sectors in South Florida committed to regime change. For them, all people who do not join their efforts, including major opposition groups in Venezuela and the most voted opposition figure, Henry Falcon, are nothing short of disguised Chavistas . Here it should be added that if new congressional elections are held in Venezuela with the participation of an important part of the opposition, the United States and particularly several countries of the Lima Group will have the opportunity to recognize the result and move to a pro-dialogue position, although not necessarily pro-Maduro.

b. The last few years have shown that there is little to be gained by applying to Venezuela the same policy of ignorance of its internal realities that was followed against Cuba for sixty years.

Bolton’s advice [3] to Trump has supported the personal vendettas of an irresponsible class today sheltered in Miami, which has undermined the possibilities of understanding throughout the hemisphere, for which the Venezuelan crisis is an aggravating factor. The millions of refugees fleeing from Venezuela (although thousands of Venezuelans are actually coming back with the Government’s support), in the face of economic deterioration, primarily a responsibility of the  Maduro government, but also exacerbated significantly by the US sanctions, have complicated an already critical situation in other countries.

What has the United States gained from this irresponsible adventurism? If the history of the Cuba-United States conflict demonstrated anything, it was that pushing nationalist and revolutionary leaders of the continent to ally with alternative powers to the United States or disappear, has only made the complex problems of hemispheric relations intractable. In a world of Chinese ascendancy, and the return of Russia to the Latin American region, when international relations theorists even speak of a Thucydides trap, wouldn’t it be logical that the United States would work constructively to avoid converting the region closest to its frontiers into the battlefield that was imposed on it during the missile crisis, with all the military dictatorships and the Central American civil wars?

c. The obsession with overthrowing the governments of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua looks exactly like it is, a neglect of the regional context where political instability and social protest spreads from Honduras to Chile, from Brazil to Ecuador. Meanwhile, organized crime, poverty, and the uneven impact of the COVID- 19 pandemic are rampant.

The United States may have opinions at odds with Cuban international health efforts, but this type of internationalism is compatible with the pillars of a liberal international order, even under US leadership. From a global perspective, such as the one Biden proclaims, his government may criticize or suggest a less vertical and more transparent relationship between the Cuban government and the doctors and health personnel of its medical brigades. But given the Biden campaign’s awareness about the need for responses to global risks of epidemics and natural disasters, it is logical that such criticism should be channeled in a constructive way. That includes cooperating with Cuba, as the Obama administration did in the face of the cholera epidemic in West Africa.

Cuban medical brigades have served against COVID-19 in Africa, Asia, Latin America and developed Europe, raising acceptance of this dimension of Cuban soft power to unprecedented levels. In contrast, the governments that have expelled Cuban doctors from their countries (Brazil, Bolivia, and Ecuador), due to US pressure or ideological vocation, have shown very poor performance. In this context, the legislative initiative “Cut the profits for the Cuban regime Act”, presented by the Republican senators from Florida, Rick Scott and Marco Rubio, in addition to the Republican senator for Texas, Ted Cruz, to punish countries that have received Cuban doctors, is an aberration with counterproductive effects for any discussion on human rights.

If Trump wins, it should not be concluded that the president will necessarily continue his policy of total confrontation against Caracas. Trump is forewarned about the misfortunes of the Venezuelan opposition, and he is suspicious of the view that  Claver-Carone and Bolton sold to him regarding Guaidó.

It should be also taken into consideration if Steven Mnuchin continues as Secretary of the Treasury. Mnuchin has shown multiple signs that the indiscriminate use of sanctions is viewed with reluctance and apprehension by the interests of the American business community and Wall Street.

And it is difficult to imagine another national security adviser different from Bolton, waking Trump up at 7am, with tears of joy yelling “Venezuela is free”, with the unrealistic dream that the opposition leaders Leopoldo López and “President” Guaidó have taken an air base in Caracas. That day did not end happily for Trump, nor of course for Bolton, whom the president later called “crazy” and “incompetent.”

5. How important are the famous “sonic attacks” as obstacles to improving relations between the US and Cuba? Today there is hardly much talk about them, but they were the reason argued by Washington to reduce the diplomatic staff in both capitals and stall the migration situation and the cooperation agreed in the Obama period between the two countries. How could it vary, depending on who wins?        

Any damage caused to diplomatic personnel or their missions must be taken with the utmost seriousness. It is impossible to conceive a constructive diplomatic relationship without the proper protections regulated by the Vienna Convention of 1961, to which Cuba and the United States are parties. Both nations have the obligation to protect diplomats from the other country. It is necessary then that the two governments cooperate to find the causes and those responsible for any attack against diplomats, particularly if it originated from third parties, and offering reasonable guarantees that something like this will not be repeated.

At this time it is difficult to find a definitive opinion on what happened with the so-called “sonic attacks ”. Articles published both in Cuba and within the US scientific community point to different culprits or the impossibility that something like a “sonic attack ” could have happened in a place like the Capri Hotel in Havana. The State Department insists on presenting evidence of the damage to the health of its accredited officials in Havana and at a consulate in China, while the Cuban government highlights the implausibility of the hypotheses raised and has rejected the complaints as pretexts to paralyze the bilateral relationship. The Cuban government even invited the FBI to visit the country and investigate, an offer that was accepted on several occasions.

The solution of this dispute depends ultimately on the attitude of the future elected president to the overall relationship. The issue of damage to the health of diplomats has left its mark and should not be underestimated, but it can be handled with prudence and with clear boundaries in the future. Neither of the two diplomatic missions can be happy with the absence of conditions to carry out tasks essential to the achievement of its respective foreign policy objectives.

The very needs of US immigration policy demand the restaffing of consular personnel and visa processing in Havana, not only if diplomatic relations are to be improved, but also to guarantee legal, safe and orderly emigration, an objective that appears to be bipartisan. On the Cuban side, the economic reforms and the projection towards the United States demand an institutional apparatus capable of managing the improvement of the ties between the people and government on the island with the Cuban diaspora, which is based to a greater extent in the United States..

Arturo López Levy, PhD, is assistant professor of political science and international relations at Holy Names University in Oakland, California, and a COHA Senior Research Fellow. He is co-author of the book “Raúl Castro and the new Cuba: A Close-up View of Change”. McFarland, 2012. Twitter: @turylevy

Edited by Fred Mills, Co-Director and Senior English Editor; Danny Shaw, Senior Research Fellow at COHA; and Patricio Zamorano, Co-Director of COHA and Senior Spanish Editor.

[Photo-credit: Celebration of Labor Day at the Revolution Plaza, in Havana, Cuba. Author: Nathalie Zamorano]

End notes

[1] “The Mystery of the Havana Syndrome,” https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/19/the-mystery-of-the-havana-syndrome

[2] “Otaola Special Program with Luis Almagro (OEA) and John Barsa (USAID) (Thu. May 7, 2020)”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fh_snI22j4

[3] For a review of John Bolton’s memoirs and its impact on President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, see “John Bolton and the President Who Hired Him,” https://www.esglobal.org/john-bolton- and-the-president-who-hired-him