Fifty Years of Revolution: Perspectives on Cuba, the United States, and the World

17. Transitology, Realpolitik—and Todo lo Contrario: Old and New Futures in U.S.-Cuban Relations

17 Transitology, Realpolitik— and Todo lo Contrario Old and New Futures in U.S.-Cuban Relations Rafael M. Hernández English translation by Lyse Hébert And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can’t, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can. Barack Obama’s Victory Speech, Chicago, Illinois, November 4, 2008 We must remember how, despite the initial confusion and discouragement, we managed to face up to the first, harsh years of the Special Period early in the last decade, and how we managed to move forward. What we said then we can more justifiably repeat today: Yes, we can do it! Raúl Castro, Camagüey, July 26, 2007 Castro’s Final Hour (1992) by the award-winning Miami Herald journalist Andrés Oppenheimer, once touted as “the definitive book on Cuba in the past decade” (Dallas Morning News), is now sold on the Internet as a collectible .1 Paradoxically, more than 150,000 hours after its publication, the book is not a rarity but merely one more title in a sort of cult genre, that of the Cuban Armageddon. And this genre occupies but one obscure shelf within the vast collection devoted to imagining the future of Cuba, one component of which is its relations with the North. An examination of the bibliography on the conflict between Cuba and the United States reveals that many of the authors are internationalists; that is, experts in foreign relations in the strictest sense, who do not always have a full understanding of other approaches (historical, sociological, political) 350 · Rafael M. Hernández for studying one country individually. This is not a deficiency per se, but it is indeed a limitation when the objective is to understand and explain a dynamic of change that encompasses the political system, civil society, debates on ideas, and consensus. In the 1970s and ’80s, academic research on Cuba’s cold war foreign policy , as well as Cuban studies in general, moved beyond the paradigms that had prevailed in the 1960s—those of the “revolution betrayed,” the “American tragedy,” and the “satellite of Moscow”—and developed more elaborate and balanced approaches. Some applied modernization theory2 or realism theory3 or sought an explanation of the island’s foreign relations in interdependence theory and in the study of internal and external dynamics of its economic system, as well as in elite approaches and psychoanalysis. These approaches offered a greater relative capacity to find a logic behind Cuba’s foreign policy, and to understand its complexities and nuances.4 Yet although the dual international and domestic nature of many themes relating to Cuba was recognized, few writers attempted to explain the island’s foreign policy based on the internal context in which it developed.5 Despite the progress made since the 1960s, many of these approaches to Cuban foreign relations during the cold war, including analysis of the conflict with the United States, shared a certain number of basic premises and epistemological features, among which are the following: • Few theoretical paradigms that might allow for an articulation of analytical models with explanatory and predictive power • An emphasis on empiricism and narrative and descriptive accounts • Reduction of the conflict to a specific dispute between two actors based on their respective antagonistic agendas • Personalized political analyses centered on Fidel Castro (always represented as a constant), and on successive U.S. presidents (always represented as variables). These analyses tended to be rationalized on the basis of concepts such as “arrogance,” “obstinacy,” “a desire for vengeance,” and the like. • Limiting of policy analyses to the content of public statements and diplomatic or military measures, ignoring the multiple dimensions and complex interweavings of these relations, particularly those revealed in declassified documents on both sides • Ideologized political analyses, reduced to the logic and rigidity of doctrinarian dogmatism Transitology, Realpolitik—and Todo lo Contrario · 351 • Failure, in most approaches, to consider foreign relations in conjunction with other aspects of politics, specifically internal power structures and factors, dynamics of political consensus, relationships between civil society and the state, changes in political culture , views on the outside world, and the nature of specific agreements with international actors, be they state officials or not The end of the cold war gave rise to new conditions and expectations with regard to the conflict, which allowed for a reexamination...