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119 chapter 5 The Fronts Harden The United States and Cuba, 1978–1980 Flowers in Cuernavaca Cuba’s intervention to defend Ethiopia from the Somali invasion ended the tentative rapprochement between Washington and Havana. Castro sought, however, to keep a channel of communication open. In February and March 1978, at the height of the crisis in the Horn, he proposed that the two countries hold informal talks.¹ Castro did not intend to make any concession about what the United States most wanted—the withdrawal of the Cuban troops from Angola and Ethiopia—and he was not going to budge on Cuban aid to the liberation movements of Namibia and Rhodesia. “But we want, without making any concessions, to get rid of the embargo,” he told Neto, “to end the embargo against Cuba. Therefore we will talk to them, we will receive them, we will debate with them.”² As Under Secretary David Newsom recalls, when Castro’s proposal for talks “was placed before Carter and Brzezinski, they were very reluctant to have any kind of contacts with the Cubans. They were apprehensive about Carter’s domestic position and feared that any publicity about contacts with the Cubans that might have suggested normalization would damage Carter’s political position .” Finally, at Vance’s urging, Carter relented.³ Five secret meetings ensued, in New York on April 14 and June 15, 1978, Washington on July 5, Atlanta on August 8, and Cuernavaca, Mexico, on October 28. According to Wayne Smith, who was Director of Cuban Affairs at the State Department, the NSC and the Department of State viewed these talks very differently. “From . . . Vance on down, State saw them as positive, dynamic and open-ended. They offered an opportunity to address the problems between us. The NSC’s perception, on the other hand, was essentially negative and static. We would listen to (but not hear) the other side only as the price we had to 120 The Fronts Harden pay to reiterate our refusal to take any additional steps toward improving relations until Castro withdrew his troops from Africa.” Brzezinski’s aide Robert Pastor sharply disagrees. “There was no real difference between State and the NSC about the talks—not any more. Ethiopia had been clearly perceived by everyone—and especially by Carter—as military intervention, a new kind of imperialism. As a result, everyone was on the same page. There was disagreement about what to do about it, but we all condemned the Cuban intervention. By the summer of 1978 the State Department’s and NSC’s positions on Cuba were similar: there were bureaucratic and personality tensions, but not a signi ficant difference anymore.”⁴ Both Smith and Pastor are right. As Smith suggests, the State Department was much more open than the NSC to the idea of talks with the Cubans. It wanted to explore what steps Castro might be willing to take on issues other than Africa that were of interest to the United States. On one point, however, it agreed with the NSC: there could be no significant improvement in relations, no real step toward normalization, unless the Cuban troops left Africa. Furthermore , if anyone in the State Department had been inclined to disagree, one thing was clear: this was Jimmy Carter’s position. In Under Secretary Newsom’s words, “Carter was uneasy about his ultimate reelection; very conscious of the problem he had with the Soviets and especially the Cubans. Brzezinski felt that part of his job was that the president show firmness on international issues and especially issues related to the Soviets.” Therefore, the State Department “would have had to move more forcefully than I think Vance was prepared to do if he wanted a real dialogue with the Cubans. It was too hot an issue for political reasons. Even the very limited discussions we had [with the Cubans] were held in great secrecy.”⁵ The senior Cuban representative in these talks was José Luis Padrón, a close aide of Fidel Castro. The Americans fielded two teams. At Brzezinski’s request, Carter established two separate tracks: the State Department, that is, Under Secretary Newsom, would deal with Padrón on humanitarian matters. The NSC, that is Deputy National Security Adviser David Aaron, would deal with Padrón on “broader political matters”—this meant, above all, Africa. “Our role [State] was very much confined to talking about the prisoners—Cuban political prisoners and Americans in Cuban jails. Brzezinski just didn’t trust...

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