THE CLOSEST OF ENEMIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000706300001-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 2, 2011
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: March 1, 1987
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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THE CLOSEST OF ENEMIES
A Personal and Diplomatic Account of
U. S.-Cuban Relations Since 1957.
~% By Wa ne S. Smith.
Illustrate pp. ew York:
W. W. Norton & Company. $19.95.
By Jorge G. Castaneda
NEW YORK TIMES
1 March 1987
ATIN AMERICAN diplomats, statesmen and in-
tellectuals have often believed that there is
more than meets the eye to the unending es-
trangement between Cuba and the United
States. Beyond the specific explanations for each chap-
ter in that divorce's turbWent history, they stress a
deeper meaning. In the last analysis, according to this
view, the United States, through seven Presidents in 28
years, has made Cuba an example of the cost of revolu-
tion in Latin America: a complete and indefinite cutoff
of all political, economic and culturat links with Wash-
ington. United States administrations may not always
impede revolution or radical social change in Latin
America, though they often can - as they did in Guate-
mala in 1954, the Dominican Republic in 1965 and Chile
in 1970-73, and as they have been doing in EI Salvador
since 1979 -but they can make the costs seem unbear-
able to others who may have revolution on their minds.
Wayne S. Smith's memoir of relations between the
United States and Cuba since 1957, two years before the
Cuban revolution, does not espouse this view, which is
what one would expect from a former State Depart-
ment career officer, regardless of his clearly perceived
sympathies for Latin American ways and customs. Nor
does this readable, meticulous and well-reasoned ac-
count of endlessly missed opportunities for normaliza-
tion of relations between Fidel Castro and the United
States attempt to provide a substantive, all-encompass-
ingexplanation for more than a quarter~entury of con-
flict and tensions. The quasi-psychological motivations
Mr. Smith resorts to are no substitute -and do not pre-
tend to be - for an abstract analysis of why the world's
wealthiest and most powerful nation has not been able
to accept and deal with such an obviously permanent
fixture of Latin American and international life. The
search for the underlying causes of this Caribbean
paradox falls outside the scope of "The Closest of Ene-
mies;' but the authoCs narrative, particularly of the
Carter Administration and its fleeting detente with
Fidel Castro, sheds fascinating light on many episodes
that illustrate that paradox. It also lends credence -
Mr. Smith's intention notwithstanding - to the Latin
American perspective described above.
? ? ?
During the Carter Administration, the author was
in charge of the Cuban desk at the State Department;
from 1979 to 1982, he headed the United States Interest
Section in Havana. He was thus familiar -sometimes
intimately, sometimes less so -with the entire process
of rapprochement followed by renewed distance that
took place at the time. He attributes the failure of the
step-by-step, reciprocal process above all to the reluc-
tance of the National Security Council -and its chief,
Zbigniew Bnezinski - to pursue normalization of ties
with Cuba, and to the unwillingness of the State Depart-
mentand President Carter to force the issue. Mr. Smith
relies heavily on former Secretary of State Cyrus
Vance, whose memoirs and positions buttress his argu-
ments. He makes his case well. There is some question
whether the whole N.S.C. was as opposed to any form of
agreement with Cuba -beyond the opening of Interest
Sections and the easing of travel restrictions - as he
implies, but his examples are nonetheless persuasive.
In November of 1977, after the two Interest Sec-
tions had opened, President Carter issued a statement
to the effect that increases in the number of Cuban
troops in Angola would complicate further progress in
talks between Cuba and the United States. According to _
Mr. Smith eMr.,,Brzezinski theQ to,~d.a group o 14prna1-
ists, on background, that "a new CIA study ...revealed
~iffat-tFiere-had~een a es aa' r~Fiitif-ary buildup in Angola
and~thiopia during the summer and falL....1`lsrtrigll-
zation with Cuba was therefore now 'impossible."' But
M_r. Smith states in no uncertain terms that "there had
been no buildup" (author's emphasis) and that the
C.I.A. had simply "revised upward its estimate of how
many Cuban troops were in Angola." Mr. Smith does
not explicitly accuse Mr. Brzezinski of_bad faith, b_ut he
hardly needs to.
Similarly, Mr. Smith points out that the Carter Ad-
ministration's claim that Cuba bears responsibility for
the freeze in the normalization process in 1978 because
it dispatched troops to Ethiopia is not entirely solid. The
former diplomat explains in some detail the circum-
stances under which the Cubans arrived in Ethiopia; he
argues that Somalia's switch of alliances in 1977 and
subsequent invasion of its Ethiopian neighbor - by
then a Cuban ally and ideological sotilmate -were both
perceived as having been orchestrated from Washing-
ton. As Mr. Smith puts it: "The Soviets and'Cubans, of
course, thought that the U.S. was behind the Somali in-
vasion.... I did not believe there were any such sinister
motives behind U.S. actions ... At the same time, I had
to acknowledge to myself that had I been sitting in Cas-
tro's chair, I would have been just as convinced as he o[
Washington's ulterior motives." Once again, Mr.
Brzezinski's role - as well as Mr. Vance's passive ac-
quiescence and Mr. Carter's waffling -are not too dis-
creetly suggested. Although Mr. Smith may be right or
wrong on each detail of the specific examples he pro-
vides, it stands to reason that Mr. Bnezinski did place
United States-Cuban normalization in the context of
United States-Soviet tensions. Likewise, it is probable
that he did subordinate the United States-Cuban rap-
prochement c~he need to deter Soviet aggression in
the third world by showing firmness. All of which may
have made geopolitiical sense, but it also meant that any
understanding betvyeen Cuba and the United States was
virtually impossible: Fidel Castro refused to renounce
his Soviet alliance and his friends in Africa and Central
America for the dubious delights and uncertain stabil-
ity of potential and conditional normalization with the
United Sta -and will continue to do so.
The h' point of Mr. Smith's personal history is his
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a.
narrative of the Mariel affair. In April 1960, more than
100,000 Cubans fled to Miami in hundreds of small
boats. Many left for political reasons; others were ex-
pelled from Cuba when Mr. Castro sent thousands of
delinquents and criminals from the jails and streets of
Havana to the United States, handing Mr. Carter one
more problem with no solution. Mr. Smith lived through
the crisis in situ, and offers explanations for why it oc-
curred in the first place, and why the Cuban leader lost
control of a situation for the first time since the revolu-
tion.
As of late 1979, Cuban citizens wishing to leave
their country had been hijacking boats and sailing them
to Florida. Instead o[ trying the hijackers and jailing
them - as Cuba had done with American hijackers of
planes to Cuba -the United States Government set
them free. Mr. Smith emphasizes that the Cubans regis-
tered several protests, through the Interest Section,
and never received a reply, much less satisfaction. Ac-
cording to Mr. Smith, the issue was juggled back and
forth by the State Department and the Justice Depart-
ment -the responsible agency -but nothing was ever
done. At the same time, the United States was refusing
to grant visas to Cubans who wanted to leave legally.
This apparent American hypocrisy eventually led Mr.
Castro -distraught and overwhelmed, according to
Mr. Smith, by the death of Celia Sanchez, his companion
of 25 years - to order the Mariel sealift. It also made
him underestimate the number of Cubans who wanted
to leave, as well as the political consequences for Mr.
Carter's re-election campaign of another instance of his
perceived indecisiveness.
R. SMITH'S version of these and other
events in the Cuban-American conflict since
1959 will undoubtedly be disputed. His
book's greater interest lies in the vision it
gives of the historical process, and its similarities to the
present situation in Nicaragua. During the first several
years of the Cuban revolution. the United States dealt
with the Castro regime as if it were a transitory phe-
nomenon, which would either be done away with - by
others, at no cost to the United States - or would go
away on its own. Later, when it became clear that nei-
ther would occur, the United States attempted to
achieve an understanding with Cuba, but on its own
terms, essentially demanding that Fidel Castro cease
to be Fidel Castro in exchange for normalization. When
that failed also, the Reagan Administration simply put
the Cuban issue aside.
In the Nicaraguan drama, the United States still
finds itself in the first stage: attempting to overthrow
the Sandinistas by remote control, or hoping they will
j ust disappear. Once again, neither will happen: the bat-
tle between the Sandinistas and the rebels, or contras,
is over, lost by President Reagan's "freedom fighters"
in the halls of Congress and the jungles of Nicaragua.
The Sandinistas are more firmly in power today, and
more relaxed and adroit in its exercise, than at any
time since 1979, and they know it.
In the last analysis, if President Daniel Ortega
Saavedra of Nicaragua outlasts Ronald Reagan - as
Fidel Castro has outlasted every American President
since Eisenhower -the United States will have to ne-
gotiate with the Sandinistas from a position of weak-
ness. Because of President Reagan's obsession with
getting rid of his Sandinista nemesis, and given his fail-
ure so far to attain this goal, the United States will have
lost its proxy war, and Nicaragua will have won. The
fact that viewing the problem in these terms makes lit-
tle sense is irrelevant: this is the way the Reagan Ad-
ministrationhas framed the debate. Like Cuba, the San-
dinistas will have defied the United States and gotten
away with it. The cost they both paid has been dear and
may deter some in Latin America from Sollowing the
road of revolution. But `or many others, the taste of vic-
toryover the "colossus of the north" seems priceless. In
any case, those who pay it are not disposed to give up at
the negotiating table what they won in the mountains,
the news media and the international arena. This is the
lesson we can draw from Wayne Smith's account, and
from the United States' failure to come to terms with
revolution in Cuba, Nicaragua and elsewhere in the
hemisphere. ~
Jorge G. Castaaeda is a senior associate of the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
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