Cuba has remained strategically important to the United States because of its location and political history.
Relations deteriorated sharply after Fidel Castro established a socialist government in 1959.
Recent developments involving Raúl Castro have renewed focus on the future of US-Cuba relations.
The island of Cuba lies 144 kilometers off the coast of the US state of Florida, but the differences between the two polities couldn’t be wider. Cuba is the only communist country outside of Asia, in the backyard of the nation which led the anti-communist crusade during the cold war.
The geographical proximity and political differences have ensured a rocky history between the two countries. Cuba, since its independence, has been flip-flopped between being in or out of the US sphere of influence. It has been a de facto US protectorate while later becoming the Soviet Union’s spearhead in North America.
Now, with the US indictment of Raul Castro, former Cuban President, defence minister and the brother of Fidel Castro US-Cuba relations are back in the limelight. Talks of a regime change are afoot in many geopolitical circles, especially after seeing how the Trump administration dealt with former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
US Interest in Cuba
Cuba’s geographical proximity to the American mainland has meant that the island has been desired by their neighbors for centuries. There were at least three attempts by the US to buy Cuba when it was a colony under the Kingdom of Spain.
The US gained a protectorate over Cuba after victory in the Spanish-American war in 1898. This represented the first time the US gained a hold over Cuba. The US before the war had said that it had no intention of exercising "sovereignty, jurisdiction or control" over Cuba.
Thus, Cuba became an independent nation in 1902. Though the US maintained significant influence and regularly intervened in Cuban affairs.
The above arrangement largely continued for a few decades until the rise of Fulgencio Batista as the Dictator of Cuba.
Batista and the Cuban Revolution
Batista, who had resided in Florida for the last 8 years, overthrew the government of Cuba and installed a military dictatorship under his leadership.
The US maintained very close relations with Cuba under Batista. Such was American influence on the island that “the American ambassador was the second most important man” in Cuba. The Batista regime received tacit military support in terms of arms and ammunition, in part due to his strong anti-communist stance.
Cuba during this time was a nation ripe with corruption, poverty and mismanagement. The government was a repressive dictatorship which resorted to public displays of violence to keep the population under control.
In 1959, after a revolution led by the Cuban insurgent Fidel Castro, Batista’s regime was overthrown. Fidel Castro became the new leader of Cuba.
Relations Under Castro
After Fidel Castro took charge of Cuba the island nations relations with the US started worsening. The US started embargoing Cuban trade blocking export of goods such as oil, sugar, tobacco etc. This led to Cuba getting closer to the USSR with whom Castro shared ideological interests.
The conversion of the country into a socialist state directly under the nose of the US drew their ire. The US tried in 1961 to stage an invasion, the Bay of Pigs invasion, but were foiled by the Cuban army.
In response Cuba agreed to host Soviet nuclear missiles to enhance the country’s security. Upon discovering it through aerial reconnaissance, in October the US implemented an island-wide quarantine to search vessels headed to Cuba, sparking the Cuban Missile Crisis. Many observers called the crisis as the closest the world ever was to a nuclear war.
In 1996, two US civilian planes belonging to the group Brothers to Rescue were shot down by the Cuban Airforce. The defence minister of Cuba at that time was Raul Castro. The Cuban military claimed that the planes were infringing upon Cuban airspace, the US denied the claims. It is for this incident that the Trump administration has brought about charges against Raul Castro.
Modern Relations; Obama, Trump, and Biden
US Embargo on Cuban trade went through stringent and relaxed phases and mostly are still in effect. There was a brief period under the Obama administration that the relations between the two countries improved. This period called the Cuban Thaw (2015-2017) saw multiple productive talks.
But with the election of Donald Trump as the US President the trade embargoes were renewed and hostilities resumed. Under the succeeding Biden administration, the US policy towards Cuba remained largely similar.
The indictment of Raul Castro, which has come after a period of tightened trade restrictions that has seen Cuba suffer from one of worst energy crises in history, is one of the most major developments in the relationship between the two countries for decades. Though there are stark differences in the situation between the arrests of Maduro and the indictment of Castro, Maduro was head of state while Castro holds no office in Cuba, analysts predict that an attempted regime change is well within the realm of possibility.
If a regime change is successfully enacted by the Trump administration it would represent the removal of a thorn that has been lodged in America’s side since 1959.
