FULBRIGHT AND CUBA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000200920136-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 5, 1999
• Sequence Number: 136
• Publication Date: April 13, 1964
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

and
Cuba
By Theodore Draper
ENATOR J. William Fulbright's "great debate"
0 speech of March 25 probably has more direct, im-
mediate and practical relevance to Cuba than to any
other part of the Communist world. When the Chair-
man of the Foreign Relations Committee advises us to
distinguish between different Communist regimes else-
where, one wonders why he should bother to kick in
an open door. The distinction between China or Rus-
sia on the one hand and Yugoslavia or Poland on the
other has been recognized for quite some time. But
his views on Cuba represent a far more concrete chal-
lenge to present U.S. ' policy. A fair test of his entire
position may well be how right or wrong he is about
Cuba, though I do not mean to suggest that all of his
other observations do not need to be discussed on their
own merits. I happen to be largely in agreement with
him, for example, on the issue of Panama. But I wish
to limit myself to Cuba, not only for reasons of space
but because it is far more crucial to the Senator's main
theme of Communism.
Fulbright has called on us to base our policy on
"objective facts" rather than on "cherished myths."
The trouble is, of course, that one man's facts may be
another man's myths. The first step, in such cases, is
to define the point or area of disagreement as sharply
and clearly as possible. Then we will at least know
what we are disagreeing about, and others may make
up their minds on the basis of the evidence.
Fulbright's entire argument rests on the fundamental
premise that "the boycott policy is a failure." He evi-
dently considers it a failure, without reservation or qual-
ification, because it has not by .itself brought down
Fidel Castro's regime. And if this were the sole cri-
terion of success or failure, he would be right. But
is it?
Before
trying to answer the question, it may be well
THEODORE DRAPER,. whose articles and special sup-
plements on Cuba appear frequently in these pages,
to go back and put the boycott in some historical per-
spective. A turning point took place in Cuba in the
fall of 1959. It was marked in October by the arrest'
of Major Hubert Matos, who had protested Communist
infiltration of the Rebel Army; and in November by a
shake-up in the Cabinet and in the Cuban National
Bank, as well as by the first stage of the Communist
takeover of the Cuban Confederation of Labor. These
events did not come to pass overnight; they had been
in gestation for at least five or six months. Still, look-
ing backward, November 1959 stands out as a key
month in the process of Cuba's Communization.
In that same month, a Department of Industrializa-
tion was formed within INRA, the so-called agrarian re-
form organization. This department was first headed
by Ernesto Che Guevara, who has revealed that his
group began a "search for offers" to displace the United
States in the Cuban market. This "search" led to
Soviet First Deputy Premier Anastas I. Mikoyan's ar-
rival in Havana in February 1960, and the first Soviet-
Cuban economic agreement was signed on February 13.
Just before Mikoyan concluded the agreement, the
United States made an effort-until now a closely
guarded secret on both sides-to offer Fidel Castro's
regime aid and cooperation. A . high official of the,
U.S. Embassy in Havana asked 'the ambassador of a
large South American country to act as go-between.
Castro at first seemed to encourage the overture but,
apparently after consulting Guevara and others, brus-
quely rebuffed the offer and went ahead with Mikoyan.
(I did not get this information from a U.S. source,
and it is a mystery to me why the entire story was not
made public long ago.)
A few weeks later, Guevara, by now President of
the Cuban National Bank, initiated the open crisis of
1960 by calling in the oil companies' representatives
and delivering an pltimatum to them, without any pos-
sibility of negotiation, for the processing of a large per-
centage of Soviet. oil, starting with two barge-loads that
were already on the way. It was one of those moves
that the Castro regime has repeatedly made to get a
desired, hostile reaction which it then uses to carry
A 1 , 7 issue.
toward Cuba will appear in, our pri
Continued
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is author of Castro's Revolution: Myths and Realities.
A second article by Draper on United States policy
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out an aggressive policy as if it were a defensive one:
This is no place to rehearse all the events in'the sum-
mer and fall of 1960 which, in October, resulted in the
U.S.. embargo on virtually all trade with Cuba. The
significant thing for our present purpose was the Cuban
reaction to the embargo. The Cuban leaders did not
cry out that the U.S. was trying to ruin their country.
They cried out that now the U.S. had. finally made it
possible for Cuba to flourish and to be free. The boy-
cott? paradoxically, was hailed as Cuba's Declaration
of Independence, the long-awaited economic libera-
tion of Cuba.
Fidel Castro said that the United States could not
hurt Cuba, that Cuba could obtain all it needed
from the "Socialist countries" and "neutrals." Guevara
gave assurances that the U.S. embargo would hurt the
United States more than Cuba. The Cuban line was
clearly expressed by the old-time Communist leader,
Blas Roca: "Now Cuba has freed her foreign com-
merce from the monopoly of an imperialist power.
Now Cuba has won freedom of trade with every coun-
try in the world."
At this time, Blas Roca was more than merely the
top Cuban Communist. Negotiations were just then
going on for the merger between Castro's 26th of July
Movement and Roca's official Communist party. It
was later revealed that the successful conclusion of these
negotiations were celebrated in a public meeting
on December 2, 1960, at which Castro and Roca sym-
bolically appeared on the same platform. The "search
for offers," the rejected U.S. offer, the expropriations,
the embargo and the Communist-Castro merger were
all interacting and interrelated.
I T WOULD be a mistake to think that the Cubans
greeted the embargo with joy in order to hide their
grief. For years, a "revolutionary" school of thought
had taught that the United States was responsible for
all of Cuba's ills, and that Cuba could get rid of them
by getting rid of every vestige of U.S. influence and in-
vestments. The Cuban reaction to the embargo was
the logical outcome of this intellectual conditioning.
Rarely has a historical interpretation had more pro-
found political consequences or such a clear-cut test
of its practical implications.
It was now up to Castro to prove that, without the
United States, Cuba could leap into the promised land
of "accelerated industrialization," -diversified. agricul-
ture and increased productivity. It was up to the Soviet
Union to demonstrate that Cuba would be better off
as part of a Soviet-bloc "international division of labor"
than as an economic appendage to the U.S. It was up to
the Communist world to show how Communism could
be successfully applied to a Latin American outpost.
The method used was almost naively simple. Guevara
has told how the Cubans imported experts who pro-
April
13, 1964Sanitized -Approved
ceeded to make Cuban copies of East European tech-
niques. Within a matter of months, however, the new
order failed to live up to expectations. A rebellious
peasantry developed in the middle of 1961. The pro-
gram of "accelerated industrialization" virtually came
to a halt by the end of the year. The sugar crop took
a sharp drop in 1962 and an even sharper one in 1963.
Agricultural diversification went backward instead of
forward. For example, rice production had advanced
to a high point of 181,000 tons in 1957, two years
before Castro, and plunged to 95,400 tons in 1962,
after three years of Castro. This year rice fields have
been sacrificed to more sugar production in the fren-
zied drive toward a "socialist monoculture."
On February 25, Guevara made an important speech
which further clarifies the Cuban economic situation.
Among other things, Guevara emphagized that "sup-
plies" (abastecimientos)' have been the weakest link
in the Cuban system. Imports from the Soviet bloc
had fallen short of expectations by as much as 30 per-
cent, making it necessary to dig into the reserves of
raw materials last year. According to Guevara, "al-
most all the factories depend on imported products,"
the shortages of which were, therefore, responsible
for "the shutdowns, the periods of low productivity,
the mechanical breakdowns which cannot be repaired
in time owing to lack of spare parts."
The next great problem, Guevara went on, was the
state of Cuba's industrial equipment. The new tech--
nicians,. he said, were able to keep the factories going
but were not able to take care of their equipment
properly. "Today," Guevara added, "we are experi-
encing a very great strain in a number of factories which
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are.. already in difficult condition to operate, because
the equipment has rapidly deteriorated, and we do not
have the specialized technical equipment to enable us
to change the situation, that is, to make new spare parts,
to maintain the most complex units of production so
that they would function perfectly." Guevara also
made clear that the U.S.-made machinery in Cuba had
broken down to the point of "very little efficiency."
Guevara traced another aspect of the equipment
problem to what he called "the loss of discipline in
work." This decline of "labor discipline" and "labor
productivity" has long worried the Cuban leaders:
Castro made a speech on July 1, 1963, in which he
bitterly berated various categories of workers for do-
ing less on their jobs under his regime than in the
bad, old days. In truth, the Cuban workers have had
only one way to "vote"-through their "labor produc-
tivity"-and despite all the propaganda about "emu-
lation,k' the Cuban version of Stalin's Stakhanovism, it
has been going down steadily in the past three years.
For over three years, the Castro regime has fed its
people far more fantasies than food. The latest fan-
tasies by Castro, offered last month, are that Cuba will
within 10 years have a production of milk superior
to that of Holland, and cheese superior to that of
France. (Less than three years ago, Cuban Minister.
of Economics Regino Boti promised that by 1965 Cuba
would be relatively the most industrialized country in
Latin America and lead in per capita production of
electric power, steel, cement, tractors and petroleum re-
fining.) But the facts of life-the Soviet bloc's failure
to live up to the import plans, the deterioration of
equipment, the decline of labor "discipline" and "pro-
ductivity"-have become more and more exigent
and inexorable. Whatever the merits of Cuban cheese
in 1974, the Cuban people are far more interested in
what Castro in the same speech delicately called the
"shortages" of 1964.
As Guevara has made clear, Cuba has entered a pe-
riod of two to five years in which its main energies
and resources will be devoted to increasing its pro-
duction of sugar to 10 million tons by 1970. Almost
everything else will have to mark time until the big
push in sugar gets well under way. Since this year's.
sugar crop cannot be much larger and may even be
somewhat smaller than the 3.8 million tons of 1963,
the lowest figure in almost 20 years, the first step can-
not be taken until next year. Only .a totalitarian
regime in control of all the means of communication
and propaganda could have indoctrinated its people for
so long against the old evil of gambling everything on
sugar and then decide to do the same thing itself.
All this adds up to 'one thing: Castro desperately
needs. a breathing spell of at least two or three years.
That is the. purpose of all his maneuvering and di-
plomacy. He has worked his way into an economic
corner, and he cannot get out of it with Soviet aid alone.
More than anything else he needs time, and he is will-
ing to buy it from those whom he considers his worst
enemies-if they will sell it to him.
The Cuban deals with Britain and France were only
an advance payment. I still remember the tremendous
splash made in the Cuban press in 1962 by new
Czechoslovak buses, and I suspect that the British
buses will temporarily alleviate but will not solve the
Cuban transportation problem any more than the Czech
buses did. Unless the British and French are willing
to be truly prodigal in their credits to Castro on a wide
range of products, the basic effect of these spot deals
will be limited. I am inclined to believe that, thus far,
these deals are more significant politically and psycho-
logically than economically.
HE REAL question is whether the relatively small-
scale British-French deals have opened the way for
relatively large-scale U.S. deals. That is where Senator'
Fulbright comes in.
I have taken some trouble to sketch in the back-
ground of the boycott because I do not think it can be
profitably discussed in a historical vacuum. What
does Fulbright mean when he says that he is "not argu-
ing against the desirability of an economic boycott
against the Castro regime but against its feasibility?"
He seems to mean that it is not "feasible" as a way of
bringing down the Castro regime. If this is all Ful-
bright means, he may be permitted to score an easy
victory. But was the boycott ever given such a mission?
Obviously not, since there would have been no Bay of
Pigs adventure if the boycott was supposed to accomp-
lish the same thing. It would seem elementary to point
out that the fact that the boycott has not by itself over-
thrown Castro does not mean that it may not have done
other things of vital importance.
Unfortunately, Fulbright's own contribution to the
debate suffers from imprecision and perhaps disingen-
uousness. He suggests far more' than he says and re-
fuses to carry his thought to its ultimate conclusion.
His key word is curiously ambiguous-"feasibility." It
implies that we no longer have to decide whether or
not to maintain the boycott; the decision has been made
for us by events. We do not have to decide any longer
whether the boycott is desirable; if it is not "feasible,"
we need not concern ourselves with its desirability.
He stops. short of telling us what to do if, as he insists,
the boycott is no longer feasible. He seems to believe
that our allies' decisions have deprived us of all power
of decision in this matter, as if the basic effectiveness
of the boycott depended primarily on them rather than
on us.
This is one way of begging the question. It pro-
vides a nice, pragmatic pretext for absolving us of re-
sponsibility for our own actions. It transmutes a hard
Continued
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problem of policy into the easy solution of an accomp-
lished fact. It constantly plays with words that conceal
as much as they reveal. When Fulbright tells us that
the Castro regime is "not on the verge of collapse," is
he trying to tell us that it is also on the verge of
stabilization or has already stabilized itself? When he
tells us that it is not likely to be overthrown by our
policies, is it not also true that our policies can pre-
vent it from being overthrown?
I detect in Fulbright's approach an unwillingness to
face the consequences of his thought. If the Castro
regime is not on the verge of collapse, it is surely not
on the verge of stabilization. It has rather entered a
dangerous period of transition which will determine
its ultimate collapse or stabilization. The economic
miracle which Castro and the Communists promised
in Cuba has become an unmistakable mirage. If nothing
else, the boycott left Cuba wide open to the Soviets and
gave them a chance to show what they could do. The
United States may be guilty of many things, but it can-
not be held responsible for the missing 30 per cent of
Soviet imports, the "difficulties" which Guevara has
sportingly admitted came "principally from our side,"
the increase of workers' "absenteeism" and decrease
of their "productivity."
Indeed, Fulbright could not have chosen a more un-
fortunate moment for his pronouncement on Cuba.
Ever since Fidel Castro's long pilgrimage to Russia
in May of last year, Cuba has been forced to reorganize
its entire economy to lessen the burden on the Soviet
Union. The new conscription law has militarized Cuba
beyond anything in its history. At the very moment
that Fulbright was speaking, the trial of the former
Communist informer, Marcos Rodriguez Alfonso rip-
ped through the facade of monolithic unity and revealed
top leaders at each other's throats. The Sino-Soviet
struggle cannot go on very much longer without get-
ting Castro. into trouble, whatever he decides to say
or do.
Since May 1963, Castro has objectively acted as a
Soviet buffer against China; he has implicitly covered
the Soviets' left flank by vouching for the Soviets'
revolutionary zeal and by singing the praises of that
"greatest capitulationist in history," Nikita Khrushchev.
Castro's balancing act, which once tended to give aid
and comfort to the Chinese, has in the past year .swung
far over to the Soviet side. Whatever gyrations it now
makes, he cannot possibly please both sides and dis-
pleasing either one will be very painful and costly for
him.
THE ONE THING that could now pull Castro through
every danger threatening him would be U.S. "ac-
ceptance of the continued existence of the Castro re-
gime," as Fulbright recommends. Fulbright seems to
think that the critical question is whether Castro is a
"distasteful nuisance" or an "intolerable danger." I
do not wish to get entangled in the semantics of Castro's
exact classification, but if he has become more of a
"nuisance" than a "danger," it must be because he has
made serious mistakes at home and suffered serious set-,
"backs abroad. Every time a Communist power needs a
breathing spell, however, it begins to make cooing
sounds and dangle offers of trade. And just as pre-
dictably, a strange alliance of sympathizers and busi-
nessmen springs up. The quid pro quo is usually, as
Hans J. Morgenthau recently put it, "idiotic." The Com-
munist regime obtains the means of long-term survival
and power; the West obtains short-term profits, if there
are any, for a few impatient entrepreneurs.
This short-sighted view of the national interest is
also characteristic of Fulbright's remarks on Cuba. In'
the case of Communist China, he stops short of de-
manding immediate recognition and poses at least one
condition-"the abandonment by the Chinese Com-
munists, tacitly if not explicitly, of their intention to
conquer and incorporate Taiwan." Whatever one may
think of this condition, it is something beyond a
scramble for trade, but the possibility of a quid pro quo.
never even arises in the case of Cuba. Fulbright treats
the boycott not as if giving it up were a deliberate politi-
cal decision with serious consequences, which we can
accept or reject, but as if'it had already been decided for
us by forces beyond our control. Consequently, we are
asked not only to make a gratuitous gift to Fidel
Castro's stability but to do so in the worst possible
way. Continued
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When the boycott was first established, as I have
noted, Guevara gloated that it would hurt the United
States more than Cuba. Commenting in Geneva on
Senator Fulbright's speech, Guevara admitted that he
had been wrong about the past but this did not prevent
him from repeating the same propaganda line in the
present. He conceded that at one time "the blockade
was rather effective, particularly with regard to Cuban
industries." But today, he claimed, the boycott was
merely "a second-rate inconvenience for Cuba"; it was
the cause of "more difficulties" for the United States
by having provoked differences with its Western allies.
If Fulbright has his way, then, the Castro regime is
going to get what it wants from us and tell the world
it is doing us a favor. Our Cuban policy has been a
textbook of almost every possible mistake a great power
can make, but this one would be the most bizarre.
It may be unnecessary for the United States to
prove that it is not a "paper tiger." It is frequently
necessary, however, to prove that it is not a "stupid
tiger." In no area is the latter more necessary and more
difficult than in the utilization of Communist conflicts,
contradictions and crises. It is peculiarly characteristic
of the U.S. politico-economic make-up that the least
dangerous and most negotiable opportunities should
of world Communism would be insured whatever the
outcome of the struggle within that world. It would,
in effect, mean that Communism can only go forward,
never backward.
Yet, if there is one place in the world where Com-
munism can be "reversible," it is Cuba. Those who
are willing at this stage to give up all hope and
effort to bring down the Castro regime must take into
account the total magnitude, the full enormity, of this
decision. It is not right or just for them to wash their
hands of all responsibility by pretending that the de-
cision has been made for them.
To some extent, Fulbright evades the larger issue
by the simple expedient of overlooking the fact that
Cuba is and considers itself, to be an integral part of
the Communist world. When he assures us that the
Castro regime is a "distasteful nuisance" rather than
an "intolerable danger," he must be thinking of that
regime in vacua and not as the farfiung and dependent
outpost of a Communist world that is both a nuisance
and a danger. Castro's position in that world is by no
means simple or traditional, but it is just as wrong
to take him out of it as to lose sight of his in-
dividuality in it.
Despite all this, I fully agree with Senator Ful-
bright that the time ' has come to stop clinging to
vestment to take precedence over foreign policy. The "old myths" and to face "new realities," though his
Soviets ruthlessly use foreign trade and aid as an instru- myths and realities are not mine. A reconsideration and
ment of foreign policy; we more often use foreign reconstruction of our Cuban policy has surely been
policy as an adjunct of foreign trade and investment. r long overdue. Paradoxically, however, Fuibright's
Ever since Castro declared himself publicly a Com- analysis of the problem of policy does not differ as
munist, his regime has hammered away at the thesis much as he may imagine from that of former Presi-,
that all Communist revolutions are "irreversible." The dents Eisenhower and Kennedy, the present Adminis-
mass acceptance of this idea is more important to the tration, or even Senator Goldwater. In a second article,
Communist world-and its rejection more important I hope to show how all of them have thought within
be frittered away by permitting foreign trade and in-
to the non-Communist world-than any other stake
in Cuba or elsewhere. If it could be unshakably
planted in. enough people's minds, the ultimate victory
the same flawed frame of reference and have adopted
a common set of options among which each has merely
chosen a different one.
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