Historical Methods Literature Review

Political Misgivings of the U.S. - Cuba Embargo (1960): Literature Review Allison Brown HIST 3020: Historical Methods Professor Hampton October 24, 2021 My literature review comprises four different secondary sources, all related to the same topic: The policy and role of President Eisenhower’s Administration at the start of the US-Cuban Embargo on October 19, 1960. Each article, although interrelated, has its own thesis and pragmatic logics for how Eisenhower’s Administration failed to adequately address the diplomatic relationship with Cuba, and the arguments which can be made for the reasoning behind the US’s action, or lack thereof with Cuba prior to the 1960 Embargo. Historians of these articles approach the start of the US-Cuban embargo in similar ways, however, they differ when discussing the implementation of a “sugar quota” against Cuba, and both the motivations and fallout of the economic policy. To start, I will briefly summarize each of the article's bibliographical elements and their core arguments. Mark Falcoff’s 1994 article in the academic journal of World Affaiurbsa, aCnd the United States: Back to the Beginning, provides a succinct argument utilizing primary documents such as diplomatic telegrams, intelligence reports, and primary accounts of executive meetings with President Eisenhower’s Administration. The article acknowledges the thirty-year gap between the historical occurrence of the start of the US-Cuban Embargo in 1960 and the declassification of certain telegrams and primary communications. Falcoff’s thesis states, “These documents [primary, declassified] lay bare the fact that until late in the day, there was no single, crisp, response to the events in Cuba, nor — given the complexity of American interests there — could there easily have been.”1 Falcoff’s article provides an extensive, incredibly detailed account of US-Cuban Relations between 1952, with the rise of General Fulgencio Batista through coup d’état to 1960, the start of the Embargo. Central to Falcoff’s argument is the internal discussions of the United States’ executive administration and national security officials, and the discrepancies, and the delay in diplomatic relations and a clear policy towards Cuba. 1 Chronologically moving forward, Patrick Haney’s chapterThine Cuban Embargo: The Domestic Politics of an American Foreign Policy (2005), takes a more nuanced approach, stating, “US Presidents from Eisenhower through Carter struggled to to isolate Castro and Cuba and to force Castro’s demise. When Cuba moved inside the Soviet sphere as the US embargo took hold, the 2 embargo became embedded in the politics of the Cold W Ha ar.”ney explicitly states that this chapter (and the book) serves to educate and orient readers to the international relations between the US and Cuba3, and therefore is less detail-orientated and complex as Falcoff’s argument. Regardless, Haney’s chapter serves as a great background to US-Cuban relations. Moving towards more modern publications, Asa McKercher’s article in Diplomatic History, Steamed Up: Domestic Politics, Congress, and Cuba, 1959-1963 , published in 2014, stands in contrast to Falcoff’s 1994 article, arguing that these periods of US-Cuban relations start the “imperial presidency” and often historians do not analyze the actions of the US Congress in the diplomatic equation. According to historians, “any work focusing on the US foreign policy decision-making 4 es cK s.”ercher focuses process or on domestic ideological debates cannot omit the role of Congr M on the different actions of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee in US-Cuban relations at the turn of the decade and the start of the embargo, also highlighting legislation from the past like the Teller and Platt Amendments, and later the Trading with the Enemy Act in 1961, and even direct meetings between Fidel Castro and the Senate Foreign 5 Relations Committee. McKercher’s article differs to the literature by Falcoff and Haney because it 2 builds the US legislative branch as a strong voice in policy decisions alongside the Executive Branch and agencies like the Department of State and the CIA. Finally, Raúl Rodríguez and Harry Targ in their articl e, Foreign Policy towards Cuba: US Historical Roots, Traditional Explanations and Alternative Perspectives , published in the International Journal of Cuban Studies (2015), argue “the fundamental motivations for US policy go beyond common explanations” and “the triumph of the Cuban Revolution marked the beginning of a process of profound socio-economic and political transformations representing a clean break with prevailing social, economic, and political patterns in the rest of the Western Hemisphere — a 6 geopolitical space that had been a Monroe Doctrine-inspired US hegemonic dom ain.” Rodríguez/Targ differ from the literature previously reviewed because their argument does not only argue the political disagreements in the US led to a mishandling of diplomatic relations with Cuba, but debates which theoretical explanations could account for the political misgiving. These theoretical conceptions include economic, ideological, and geopolitical rationales. The literature surveyed for my project all have contrasting views on the economic impacts, the drive, and the governing force behind the question of revising the US Sugar Quota to act as a punitive measure against Cuba. Haney (2005) lays the basic information out for readers regarding the conversation, “An estimated 80% of Cuba’s hard foreign currency came from the sugar trade with the United States … Eisenhower wanted Congress to grant him the flexibility to unilaterally alter the existing sugar quota, which he eventually got. The covert operations, including the attempts to sabotage sugar production, [would now] be supplemented by the prospect of formal economic sanctions.”7 Serving as a text to “orientate” readers to the relationship, Haney stays away from 3 building on the important role sugar would play as an economic driver between the United States and Cuba. However, Haney indicates President Eisenhower wanted, and eventually gained “unilateral” jurisdiction over the sugar quota. Unilateral power is a theme picked up in Falcoff (1994) with the argument that President Eisenhower, and his political guise of collaboration in Cuba, was the start of the “imperial presidency”. Falcoff, more broadly, argues that the question of implementing a sugar quota was a “radical misreading of the local reali8ty F.”alcoff also adds to the literature by alluding to domestic concerns with the economic sanctions, “At one point, the Eisenhower Administration even thought that it might be necessary to ration sugar until several growing seasons had elapsed, and the import quota could be reallocated” and “there was a genuine fear in Washington that punitive use of the sugar quota would have counterproductive political effects in Cuba i9 tsM elfor.” eover, Flacoff states that Secretary of State Roy Rubottom believed, in 1959, that using the sugar quota for punitive measures would only strengthen Fidel Castro domestically in Cuba, and would disarm the growing opposition on the island of their ability to combat the revolutionary government in economic discourse. Regardless of the advice of Secretary of State Rubottom in 1959, President Eisenhower acknowledged sugar as the key driver of the Cuban economy. McKercher (2014) states, “Eisenhower turned to using sugar as a weapon against Castro’s government. This commodity was the center of the Cuban economy. Cuba held the lion’s share of the quota apportioned to foreign producers in the extant US Sugar Bill.”10 McKercher’s analysis differed from the writing of Falcoff and Haney because it recognizes how the Eisenhower Administration would take their knowledge of the high 4 value of sugar to the Cuban economy, and use it as an economic tool against Fidel Castro and the revolutionary government. Rodríguez/Targ bring the theoretical arguments made by McKercher and Flacoff into fruition by explaining how and why the Eisenhower Administration responded, “[After] his hostile visit to Washington, Fidel Castro announced a redistributive program of agrarian reform which generated opposition from conservative Cuban and American landowners … The Eisenhower Administration responded by reducing the quantity of US purchases of Cuban sugar … Cuba signed trade agreements with the Soviet Union in February 1960. The Soviets agreed to exchange their oil for sugar, no longer purchased by the US. In July 1960, the US cut all sugar purc11hases.” Rodríguez/Targ argue Castro and the revolutionary government had no other option than to sign trade agreements with the USSR because the US’ economic policies forced their hand. Additionally, Rodríguez/Targ differ from the arguments of the literature surveyed because they do not claim that US policy in Cuba is guided by geopolitical, economic, and ideological explanations, like Falcoff and McKercher, but policy is guided by hegemonic ambitions for the US, arguing “The real reason for hostility to Cuba, going beyond these causes, was the revolutionary threat Cuba represented to US 12 hegemony, not only in the Caribbean but also throughout the Western Hemisphere.” In conclusion, it is evident in my literature surveyed that historians, ranging from 1994 to 2015, agree on the basic “facts” surrounding domestic discourse and economic reason for the US sugar quota and ultimately the cut of all US sugar purchases in 1960. The literature differs in the arguments made in Eisenhower’s Administration for, and against, the use of a sugar quota as a “weapon” to combat Fidel Castro and the revolutionary government. The difference in this literature is important because it reveals the economic justifications which would be used later to implement a 5 full embargo, the arguments of economic, ideological, and geopolitical, as well as the misgivings of the US government at the time, and the hegemonic force of the US in the Western Hemisphere. 6