Cuba: from Eisenhower to Obama

Fidel Castro and his band of guerrillas ran Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista out of power and out of town on New Year's Day in 1959. The revolution in Havana did not go down well with Dwight D Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States. On his watch was inaugurated a process that would eventually lead to Cuba being economically blockaded by the Americans and normal diplomatic ties between Havana and Washington getting snapped for more than half a century.

As the events of the past few days have demonstrated all too clearly, it remained for Barack H Obama, 44th President of the United States, to initiate a move toward restoring normality in his country's relations with Cuba. It was a brave act, given that there are yet Americans who somehow have missed the reality of the end of the Cold War. Anyone listening to Marco Rubio, the Republican senator from Florida, fulminate against Obama's decision for an opening with Cuba would think the 1960s were back, that Washington was once more up to all sorts of tricks to oust Castro from power.

By doing what he has done, President Obama has made as important a move as Richard Nixon did when he travelled to China in February 1972. Nixon's was a historic step, a breakthrough that was to change the world of modern diplomacy for ever. Likewise, by acting decisively on a restoration of ties with Cuba, Obama has demonstrated the political courage demanded of leaders who intend to correct the mistakes that mar history. Nearly every American president before Obama did nearly everything in his power to undermine the Castro regime. Now that this American president has reversed conditions, it would be well to delve into a history of US-Cuba relations since the rise of Castro and his guerrillas to power.

Innumerable have been the conspiracies to dispense with Castro by rogue elements in the United States. Perhaps no rogue element has been as determined as the CIA to see the back of the Cuban leader through an employment of means that would beat conspiracies on celluloid hollow. There have been attempts by the CIA to poison the cigars smoked by Castro and have those cigars handed to him by an agent, generally an individual disgruntled with the regime. In post-Watergate Washington in 1975, hearings conducted by the US Senate Select Intelligence Committee, headed by Senator Frank Church, uncovered as many as eight plots by the CIA and its agents to assassinate Castro, besides stumbling on to conspiracies aimed at the removal of heads of state in some other countries.

It was in 1960, the final year of the Eisenhower presidency, that the CIA formally initiated a covert programme aimed at disposing of Fidel Castro. With the Cuban leader scheduled to visit the United Nations in autumn of that year, the CIA's Office of Medical Services had Castro's favourite Havana cigars sprinkled with a powerful toxic element. The cigars were to be given to Castro. Somehow, for reasons that have never been explained, Castro did not receive the cigars. The plan to kill him fell through. Notwithstanding the failure of the plot, the CIA went ahead with other ideas to have Castro die. One of these involved spraying the studio which Castro used for his broadcasts to Cubans with a 'super acid' — a concentrated form of LSD — in order for him to lose focus during his speech and sputter nonsense. The plan failed to work.

Another plot involved sprinkling Castro's shoes with thallium salts, which would cause all the hair on the Cuban leader's body to fall out. Other plots related to Castro being presented with a poisoned wet suit, given that he was an avid scuba diver and use of that suit would lead to swift death. An intriguing plan was put forth by General Edward Lansdale, in charge of covert operations against the Castro regime in the Kennedy administration. The plan was simple: Cubans would be indoctrinated into believing that a Second Coming of Christ was around the corner and that the Anti-Christ, symbolised by Castro, would soon be driven out. And how was that to be? This was how Lansdale saw it: all Cubans would rise in insurrection with news of Christ's coming. At a particular point, Christ, on an American submarine, would appear on the shores of Cuba. To convince Cubans that it was all real, shell flares in the shape of stars would be released in the night sky, the better to have Cubans believe God Himself was behind it all.

The bizarre idea did not work, probably because the administration dismissed it as impractical. But then President Kennedy made the grave error of launching the Bay of Pigs invasion, involving Cuban exiles in Florida, in April 1961. Under the plan, the exiles would swim ashore at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba after alighting from American boats. Simultaneously, American air power would give them cover as they moved into the island country, sparking a local anti-Castro uprising that would drive the regime from power. The invasion was a disaster, for Cuban military forces, having already unearthed the conspiracy, were waiting on the shore as the exiles came in. They were swiftly decimated. No American air power was to be seen. The Kennedy administration, badly mauled and globally embarrassed and licking its wounds, beat a hasty retreat.

And then came, in October 1962, the Cuban missile crisis. It turned out to be an opportunity for Kennedy to recover the reputation he had lost at the Bay of Pigs when American intelligence spotted a steady installation of Soviet missiles in Cuba. America imposed a blockade around Cuba as Kennedy demanded that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev withdraw the missiles. For days the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war as Moscow and Washington remained eyeball to eyeball. Eventually, the Soviets decided to take their missiles back home, on the reported understanding that the Americans withdraw their base in Turkey.

All through the 1970s and early 1980s, the Castro regime diligently funded various liberation movements in Africa. In apartheid South Africa, in Mozambique, in Ian Smith-ruled Rhodesia, in Angola, Castro's Cuba came in with moral and material support for the liberation movements waging war for political change. At home, the regime put in place a medical welfare system that has even had Americans travel to Havana for cheap but excellent treatment. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent collapse of communism in eastern Europe convinced the West, especially the United States, that the end of the Castro regime was imminent. That hope was belied. Fidel Castro remained an inspirational figure for such left-wing government leaders as the late Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia. An increasingly ailing Fidel Castro would transfer political authority to his sibling Raoul in 2006.

It was with Raoul Castro that Barack Obama spoke on the phone on Wednesday. It was a conversation that swiftly changed the dynamics of diplomacy, despite the shrieking Marco Rubio and all those neo-conservatives in America. The opening to Cuba could well turn out to be Barack Obama's lasting legacy in American history. The Nobel Prize for Peace, awarded to him early on in his presidency for reasons that certainly were not clear and indeed did not exist, may well come to be regarded, finally, as somewhat well-deserved, albeit retroactively.

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Syed Badrul Ahsan is a journalist, current affairs commentator and columnist.