The National Interest
Spring 2002

One Hundred Years of Ambiguity

by Irving Louis Horowitz

 

. . . As it happened, Cuba has been unable, ever since 1902, to clarify its status vis-a-vis the United States. This was not entirely the fault of Cubans. The native Cuban regime in 1902 was established under the ostensible protection of the Platt Amendment, which was terminated only in 1934 as a part of the Good Neighbor Policy. Thus, in 1902 and 1934, not much less than in 1898 and 1959—and, of course, in October 1962—external forces rather than internal actors determined the course of Cuba’s national existence. Around these dates one may plot, so to speak, Cuba’s one hundred years of ambiguity. . . .

The problem for Cuba, after securing its independence, was the ambiguity of the outcome. It achieved a result that it desired without devising a method for accomplishing it. The result was that regimes in Cuba from 1902 through 1959 wrestled with a dilemma that they could not resolve. A group of democratic reforms introduced in 1933 was identified with Machado and represented a step toward securing greater autonomy, for on their account the Platt Amendment was soon lifted. But the reforms fell prey to a series of coups and were weakened further by the illegitimacy of the Batista regime. Instead of resolving matters either with regard to Cuba’s political culture or relations with the United States, the Batista dictatorship was halfhearted and inconclusive, like so many earlier regimes. Into such a situation Fidel Castro came to power—not as living vindication of Marxism-Leninism, but as part of an effort to move Cuba beyond ambiguity and to nationalist closure, and, in consequence beyond the suffocating sphere of American influence. . . .