Although he is beginning the last two years of his administration facing a very hostile, reactionary Republican Congress, Barack Obama last week something that was very long overdue—the formal normalization of relations with Cuba.
The forces of reaction will of course try to insure that this important change is too little too late. At the latest Bill Clinton should have done that when he became President in 1993 two years after the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, whose aid to Cuba was rationale of the blockade.
Jimmy Carter should have done that in 1977 when he became President in the aftermath of the revelations of CIA activities to subvert anti-imperialist governments and m movements through the world, especially the actions to subvert disrupt the Cuban economy and society and the numerous failed attempts to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. And, then of course, there was the role of criminal Cuban former CIA employees in doing the dirty work of the Watergate conspiracy, to fix an American presidential election and subvert the Democratic Party. Ironically, Carter owed his election in part to the Watergate “blowback” from the U.S. campaign to destroy the Cuban revolution.
Obama does deserve great credit for this policy change as does Pope Francis, who played a significant role according to global press reports and the negotiations which led to this event. Unlike his immediate predecessor, John a conservative theologian who served in the Hitler Youth at the end of WWII, Pope Francis lived for many years under the rightist Argentina military Junta regime. His policies seem to be a return l to Pope John 23rd, an anti-Italian cleric t who lived under Mussolini’s fascist dictatorship. Also, as a Latin American, Pope Francis has seen the effects of I U.S. imperialist policies in support of military junta regimes in the exploitation and oppression of tens of millions of people, the largest concentration of Roman Catholics in the world,
But what should the broad left particularly do, those who have been divided between attacking and defending the Obama administration on a variety of domestic issues but largely and for good reason attacking administration policy in the Middle East, Ukraine, and East Asia
Join in the praise of the Obama administration? Yes, but join uncritically, as some have suggested? S top with the praise there, and simply ignore as some have suggested the sordid history of U.S. imperialism toward Cuba and for that matter through Latin America on the ground that it would be too upsetting and strengthen the Republican right.
Let the administration and the moderate liberals carry the ball and encourage the broad left to defer to the center, to both defend the policy as helping to lead Cuba “away from Communism.”
That would be going back to the time I can remember in my youth when the mention of American imperialism was taboo,when all progressive policy suggestions were defined as a way to defeat Communism and revolution,
That would make as much sense as the Civil Rights movement hailing Lyndon Johnson for getting the Civil Rights Act of 1964 through Congress and saying that the legislation in itself was a solution to centuries of institutional racism.
Or the Civil Rights movement accepting the Democratic Party’s 1964 “compromise” at its National Convention on the seating of the segregationist Mississippi Democratic Party delegation with a few token members of the Mississippi Democratic Party as a “perfect solution” to the question of integrating the Southern Democratic parties and resisting the anti-Civil Rights Goldwater campaign. That was what the voices of “gradualism,” of moderation, counseled to let the Democrats and the administration take the ball
But that wasn’t what the Civil Rights movement and its allies did. Instead they did what all successful progressive social movements and parties have done, push the envelope to both advance the campaign to achieve voting rights legislation And they then helped to consolidate these great victories by pressuring Lyndon Johnson to advance through presidential directives an “affirmative action” policy that would demand that all public institutions and private businesses adopt affirmative policies to end institutional discrimination in employment, access to education, etc. Without that policy, institutional discrimination would in all likelihood continue in a variety of guises and the legislation itself would be used to say it no longer existed.
Those on the left and in the CPUSA especially who speak of a “modern twenty-first century” movement might begin to learn from the Civil Rights movement and begin to think of what an affirmative action foreign policy toward not only Cuba but all of Latin America and the peoples of Africa and Asia would be.
First, of course, such a policy would lift the blockade that has existed against Cuba since 1960 because it dared to make an anti-imperialist revolution and remove all travel and other restrictions which have sought to isolate Cuba from the whole world.
But that would and should only be the beginning. Venezuela, whose oil puts it in a very different position than Cuba, continues to face harassment and sanctions by the U.S. government even though its attempts to construct a “Bolivarian socialist revolution” with a multi-party system is very different than the Cuban model of Socialism
However, in today’s Latin America, with similar albeit less radical movements having won victories in a number of countries and the old policy of CIA directed subversion, not to mention the even older policy of direct “gunboat diplomacy invasions, ineffective, Venezuela constitutes a greater threat to U.S. imperialism than Cuba
In its NAFTA and other trade “agreements” in the interest of U.S. corporations and local elites, its continued influence over military and policy leadership groups with U.S. training., the US. Is still very much at the center of what today many would call its “neo colonial empire” through the region.
It is important to deal l with the historical background of U.S imperialism, the background some on the left wish to forget but we should t not forget. The following deals only with Cuba, although the interventions after the Spanish American War and much of the world after WWII
The Cuban model for U.S. imperialism was based on establishing in Cuba a “protectorate” or what the Chinese leader Sun Yat-sen called in the early 20th century called a “semi colony,” and extending that model to all of Central America and the Caribbean, making the collection of “protectorates along with the U.S. constructed Panama Canal serve as a foundation for a U.S. sphere of influence through all of the Western Hemisphere (
-- The U.S. first refused to permit the Cuban revolutionary army to participate in the surrender of the Spanish colonial forces in 1898, and then refused to end its occupation of the island until the Cubans had written into their constitution the Platt Amendment, drafted by Senator Orville Platt of Connecticut, an open proponent of a U.S. imperialist policy,
The Platt Amendment mandated Cuban acceptance of the U.S. government’s right to determine Cuba’s economic relations with foreign powers and intervene militarily in Cuban affairs to “protect Cuban self-determination”. To back this up, Cuba also ceded a naval base at Guantanamo Bay to the U.S.
The Platt Amendment in the first three decades of the 20th century was applied to many countries in Central America and the Caribbean, below are the Cuban highlights
A Cuban uprising against the Platt Amendment led to a marine invasion and de facto occupation (1906-1909) U.S. Marines intervened in Cuba under Taft to smash a strike of sugar workers in 1912 which threatened U.S, investors. U.S. Marines re occupied Cuba (1917-1922) under Wilson and Harding until “stability” (protection of U.S. economic interests) was restored
Gerardo Machado, reactionary Cuban military figure came to the White House to get Calvin Coolidge’s ok to establish an open dictatorship in the mid 1920s., which he got. , U.S. Bankers and brokers subsequently gave him a testimonial dinner to show their support for his regime
Machado, clearly the most brutal tyrant Cuba had seen since the end of Spanish colonial rule was the kind of “strong man” Wall Street loved, someone who would protect American investments and, as businessmen said at the time of Benito Mussolini in Italy, even make the trains run on time Machado was the kind of dictator the U.S was supporting and would continue to support , in the tradition of those whom Franklin Roosevelt, in perhaps the m most honest expression of U.S. policy in history, would later call “our son of bitch”
Franklin. Roosevelt the most significant reformer modern U.S. history, but no revolutionary abrogated the Platt Amendment, 1934 after announcing a policy of Good Neighbor (1933) and before advancing a policy Pan-American cooperation (1936)
These policies won substantial popular support through Latin America and even with their limitation offer a model for an “affirmative action” foreign policy in the region and the world
.Roosevelt did send U.S. warships to support democratic forces that ousted Gerardo Machado in 1933, a rarity in U.S. history, where the U.S. intervened against a rightwing dictator.
But then, the U.S, faced with a reformist government and a powerful left, practically supported Fulgencio Batista in establishing his first dictatorship to protect U.S. investments on the island. This was the first Batista dictatorship, far less reactionary and brutal than the second post WWII regime.
At the end ofWWII, Batista left and permitted an elected government to take office, albeit one that was ineffectual. However, Battista returned from Florida, where he had taken up residence in the early cold war years to establish a second dictatorship, more brutal and corrupt then the first, in which traditional U.S. Business and banking interests joined with U.S. organized crime (a powerful force in the hotels, casinos and bordellos that “served” tourists).
After its initial failure to remove the Batista dictatorship and establish a military Junta that would defeat the guerrilla army led by Fidel Castro, the Eisenhower administration launched a steady escalation of attacks on the revolutionary government including the establishment of an embargo against it, and the organization of a Cuban exile military force to launch an invasion of Cuba completely funded and orchestrated by the CIA to establish a puppet regime, suppress all pro revolutionary forces, and restore all U.S. property
This was on the model of the successful CIA directed overthrow of the Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954, with some of the same CIA cast of characters, including E. Howard Hunt, who had participated in the Guatemala overthrow, would participate in the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion and then would resurface with some of his Cuban associates in the Watergate conspiracy).
The U.S. continued CIA actions after the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion through “Operation Mongoose”, the largest CIA operation in the world at the time, to overthrow the Cuban government, a campaign which took the form of attempts to murder Fidel Castro, raids against Cuba, use of bacteriological warfare to destroy Cuban swine herds, and the organization of sabotage campaigns against sugar production in Cuba
. Later, the Reagan and Bush administrations, worked successfully with the Gorbachev regime to reduce substantially Soviet aid to Cuba. The Bush and Clinton administrations intensified the economic blockade against Cuba following the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, even though the rationale for the blockade from 1960 on was Cuba’s turning to the Soviet Union for aid, which made it into a Soviet “satellite” (the cold war era term for protectorate) and a military base from which the Soviets would attack the U.S. But Cuba, to the consternation of all imperialists and reactionaries, survived and continues to survive
The cost to the American people of this policy can be calculated thusly the spending over the last 54 years of tens of billions of U.S. public funds to “contain/destroy the Cuban revolution, , the suffering of the Cuban people, the loss to all of Latin America of what a policy of Cuban-American friendship and solidarity could have meant for the development of the region, given the outstanding achievements of Cuba in education and health care, connected to what the U.S. has to offer in terms of technology, capital, and its own technical and professional workers.
Now, more than a century after the Platt Amendment, more than 80 years after Franklin Roosevelt announced the Good Neighbor Policy ,what would an “affirmative action “foreign policy consist of. The idea first of all of a hemispheric and global good neighbor policy, a part of a forgotten American tradition , would probably be the best starting point.
But treaties like NAFTA don’t make good neighbors. The policies of the IMF and World Bank for the people of Latin America and the poor countries of the world are more in the tradition of loan sharks then of good neighbors. Good Neighbors help each other and work to help create a larger community of friends and neighbors. It was hoped after WWII that the United Nations would help to bring this about regionally and globally
During WWII, for a brief period, an agency called the Board of Economic Warfare (BEW) under the nominal leadership of Vice President Henry Wallace, sought what was at that time a radical departure from U.S. foreign policy in Latin America. The Board, which negotiated contracts for the purchase of strategic raw materials, sought to include in those contracts a commitment by the sellers/employers to provide their workers with trade union rights and wages and hours protection—not the same level of wages and hours protection that American workers received but a level in line with their standard of living.
The idea was in effect t o begin to internationalize the New Deal reforms, to use U.S. economic power to raise the living standards and purchasing power of Latin American workers, which would also benefit American workers by reducing their competition with U.S. workers as cheap labor and also, thanks to the increase In their purchasing power, increase the ability of these countries to absorb American exports.
This policy was the exact opposite of programs like NAFTA, which benefit capitalists by permitting them to establish enterprise zones in poor Latin American countries, disrupt the lives of millions of poor rural people, creating a flow of undocumented workers to the U.S., and coercing governments into reducing national policies aimed at protecting workers and consumers in order to increase exports to rich countries in order to pay off their mounting debts.
In the past the U.S. did pay lip service to f old Pan American ideals, recycling them into anti-Communist cold war policies. In the 1960s, the Kennedy administration established a so called “Alliance for Progress,” defined as a mutual development program and a way to defeat the “spread” Cuban revolution. Through Latin America
But unlike The BEW program, which Wall Street and conservative forces inside the Roosevelt administration killed in 1943, leading Roosevelt to disband the agency, the Alliance for Progress was essentially a fraud, channeling funds to various governments to develop pro business policies similar to post WWII U.S. “urban renewal “ policies s that increased inequality in Latin America while the U.S. government increased its military aid to Latin American countries and its overt and covert support for military juntas.
An “Affirmative Action” foreign policy would begin by establishing something like a Pan-American Agency for Development (not to be confused with the Agency for Development or AID) that would work with both the UN and various governments in Central and South America on a regional basis to address rural poverty and urban slums, provide jobs for rural and urban populations in infrastructure development , use economic “sanctions” against governments which oppress their own people in the interests of local elites and transnational corporations, while also using sanctions against such corporations. The agency might also serve as a model for the development of other regional agencies for the poor countries of the world
An affirmative action foreign policy for Cuba specifically would be to work with Cuba for both mutual development and also for regional development in areas like health care and infrastructure where Cuba can be of great help.
An affirmative action foreign policy for Venezuela would be to see the Bolivarian revolutionary government as a friend and ally, to work with it against its reactionary domestic enemies, not vice versa.
And an affirmative action foreign policy for Mexico for example would be not only to end the long-term policy of supporting reactionary forces in the PAN and PRI parties against progressive forces in Mexico but to work with those forces in the Revolutionary Democratic Party , labor and peoples movements on a policy that will both raise the living standards of the people of Mexico and end for the mutual benefit of both peoples the flow of the poor of rural Mexico across t he U.S. border which has harmed the labor and peoples m movements of both countries. Also, these policies would foster real Pan-American cooperation in destroying the parasitic gangster drug cartels, which have thrived through the mass poverty and local corruption that imperialist policies have sustained.
In that regard, an affirmative action foreign policy for the Western Hemisphere could serve as a model for a global policy in the way that the “Cuban Model” of gunboat-dollar diplomacy with its Platt Amendment became the de facto model for the Truman Doctrine and U.S and then U.S./NAT0 bloc policies for the world.
The foundation of that t policy in the Western Hemisphere would be to engage and work with various progressive and socialist oriented governments in Venezuela, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, on hemispheric development instead of working with their domestic enemies to undermine them.
It would also not only end the generations old support for “our sons of bitches” through the hemisphere but opposing their repressive policies and the U.S. companies that support and profit from imperialist policies
And this is essentially a broad left foreign policy that large numbers of Americans who have outgrown the red baiting and fear mongering of the past, a policy to influence the political center.
It is proactive instead of reactive, that is, responding to one crisis after another with ineffectual demonstrations against intervention followed by trying to pick up the pieces after the interventions. And it is the sort of policy that a presidential candidate like Elizabeth Warren, a principled and serious critic of the abuses of monopoly capitalism and by far the best possible Democratic candidate for President in 2016 with a serious chance to win the nomination, would identify with and, as President, attempt to implement.
Finally .it would give the broad left an active rather than a passive voice in the debate over U.S. global issues It is a policy that could not only offer an alternative to a shallow political liberalism and virulent rightwing reaction, but help to strengthen and revitalize both the left and the CPUSA
In the holiday spirit it would be like the Macbees liberating Judea from the Assyrian Empire rather than allying themselves moderate Assyrians and Jesus driving the money changers from the Temple rather than joining with Pharisees to regulate the money changing.
