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12. The View from Cuba, 1984–1986
- The University of North Carolina Press
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314 chapter 12 The View from Cuba, 1984–1986 The U.S. Threat Reagan’s landslide in November 1984 deepened Cuba’s anxieties of a U.S. attack . Reagan’s rhetoric fanned these fears. He told the American Bar Association that five countries—“a confederation of terrorist states . . . a new, international version of Murder Incorporated”—were responsible for “the growth of terrorism in recent years.” They were Iran, Libya, North Korea, Nicaragua, and Cuba. The president warned: “These terrorist states are now engaged in acts of war against the government and people of the United States. And under international law, any state which is the victim of acts of war has the right to defend itself.” His words were echoed by Secretary of State Shultz, who told the New York Times: “It is proper for the United States to strike at military targets in countries supporting terrorism, even if the target has no direct connection with a particular terrorist act.”¹ This was no bluster: the United States launched air strikes against Libya in April 1986. Closer to Cuba, it was waging undeclared war on Nicaragua. Administration officials urged Congress to continue funding the Nicaraguan Contras because otherwise, Secretary Shultz warned in May 1985, the United States would “be faced with an agonizing choice about the use of American combat troops” in Nicaragua. The New York Times wrote, “The administration contends that the ‘contra’ war is insurance against direct U.S. intervention. It could well have the opposite effect, provoking events that would eventually impel the use of American forces.”² Perhaps the administration’s rhetoric was part of a psychological campaign to spur congressional aid to the Contras and to intimidate the Sandinistas. But Reagan did believe that the Sandinistas were Marxist-Leninists and that the United States could not tolerate a Marxist-Leninist regime in Central America. The View from Cuba, 1984–1986 315 He also believed that there could be no negotiated agreement with the Sandinistas . He told a group of close aides that it was “so far-fetched to imagine that a communist government like that [the Sandinistas] would make any reasonable deal with us” that there was only one reason to hold talks with Nicaragua: “to get Congress to support the anti-Sandinistas.”³ If Reagan was determined to rid Nicaragua of the Sandinistas, and if the Contras failed—and they were bound to fail—the only alternative was a U.S. invasion. The Cubans took the threat seriously. “The Reagan administration has decided to liquidate the Nicaraguan revolution,” Raúl Castro told GDR leader Honecker in April 1985.⁴ There were several hundred Cuban military personnel in Nicaragua, and they were under orders from Havana to fight if the Americans attacked. This would cause Washington to retaliate, the Cuban government feared, with surgical air strikes against Cuba or a blockade. In a January 1985 interview, Cuban deputy foreign minister Ricardo Alarcón told James Nelson Goodsell, the well-known correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor: “We have to take seriously the threatening statements that various North American officials have made, including President Reagan himself. And we cannot play around with the reality that a very powerful neighbor maintains a hostile attitude that does not exclude an armed attack against our country.” Goodsell was not convinced. The Cubans’ warnings of a possible U.S. attack were “a lot of rhetoric,” he told his readers. They were “probably designed to stir public support for the Castro government” in the midst of an economic crisis. Goodsell thought it much more likely that Reagan would extend an olive branch to Cuba. “Cuban officials . . . are asking . . . whether in his second term Ronald Reagan might want to move to tidy up relations with the island,” he reported.⁵ Alarcón dismisses that notion categorically. “Many journalists rely a lot on preconceived ideas. Goodsell came to Havana with a theory: Reagan had been reelected, and the best moment for any president, when he is the most free, is after he has been reelected. When Reagan’s second term began, U.S. journalists said he would seize the opportunity to improve relations with Cuba. There was a whole series of dunces who repeated this ridiculous refrain. Whenever we mentioned the possibility of a U.S. attack, they dismissed it as propaganda. Perhaps Goodsell talked to some Cubans who voiced the hope that Reagan would improve relations, but this was not the view of the Cuban government. For us, Reagan’s reelection meant that the danger increased...