The Friend of My Enemy

Lessons from American and Soviet Responses to Cuban Revolutionary Terrorism

Bibliographic Data

ID11222172
AuthorsJohn David Payne (Texas State University, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume31
Issue5
Pages403-429
Publication date2012-11-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueComparative Strategy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0149-5933 • E-ISSN: 1521-0448
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/01495933.2012.731961
OpenAlexW2022330272
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited12

How can states that are the targets of terrorism best persuade sponsors to cease? Case studies comparing American and Soviet responses to Cuban sponsorship of terrorism support the hypothesis that states sponsor terrorism because they are motivated for conflict but constrained against it, and because they lack accountability. To hold sponsor states accountable, target states must have knowledge, capability to sanction, a clear commitment, and credibility. Because sponsor states have few ties with their targets, they are less vulnerable to the sanctions of target states. Target states thus may wish to develop stronger relationships with the peers of sponsor states. Notes 1. As Brian Jenkins noted, “Terrorism is aimed at the people watching, not at the actual victims. Terrorism is theatre.” In “International Terrorism: A Balance Sheet,” Survival, vol. 17, no. 4 (July 1975): 158. 2. Philip B. Heymann, Terrorism, Freedom, and Security: Winning without War (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 3. See also Paul R. Pillar, Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003), 24; Jenkins, “Terrorism is Aimed,” 160–2; Bruce Schneier, Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain World (New York: Springer, 2003), 27–8, 239; David L. Altheide, Terrorism and the Politics of Fear (Lanham, MD: Rowman Altamira, 2006), 62; Boaz Ganor, The Counter-Terrorism Puzzle: A Guide for Decision Makers (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction publishers, 2005), 229–250; and Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism, revised and expanded edition (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2006), 173–228. 3. Daniel Byman and Sarah E. Kreps, “Agents of Destruction? Applying Principal-Agent Analysis to State-Sponsored Terrorism,” International Studies Perspectives, vol. 11 (2010): 1–18. 4. Daniel Byman, Deadly Connections: States that Sponsor Terrorism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 26. 5. From 1994 to the present, State Department reports have noted no material support for terrorism, but Cuba has remained on the list of state sponsors. Only the most minimal support for terrorism has been alleged, including: safe haven for suspected or indicted terrorists, ties to other state sponsors of terrorism, rhetoric, and lack of cooperation with the United States in the global war on terrorism. Even taking these claims at face value, however, would not make Cuba an active sponsor of foreign terrorism. The conventional wisdom is that Cuba is kept on the list for leverage on other issues. 6. Norman Gall, “How Castro Failed,” Commentary, vol. 52, no. 5 (November 1971): 54. 7. Gall, “How Castro Failed,” 54. 8. Dana Adams Schmidt, “Castro Stresses Land Reform Aim,” New York Times, April 21, 1959. 9. Gott, 165. 10. Before the revolution, many poor Cubans had only seasonal work, and had to subsist the rest of the year on wages earned during this time. Gall,“How Castro Failed,” 46. 11. See Stephen M. Walt, Revolution and War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996), 25–28. He also notes that later, after losing his initial popularity, Castro did attempt to distract and deflect his citizens’ anger by blaming Cuba's failures on its conflicts with the United States. Walt, Revolution and War, 9. 12. Cole Blasier, “The Elimination of United States Influence,” in Revolutionary Change in Cuba, ed. Carmelo Mesa-Lago (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971), 60–1. 13. Richard Gott, Cuba: A New History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 182. 14. Jorge F. Perez-Lopez, “Sugar and Petroleum in Cuban-Soviet Terms of Trade,” in Cole Blasier and Carmelo Mesa-Lago, eds., Cuba in the World, (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1979), 276–7 15. Gott, 183. 16. The Soviet Union's increasing commitments to buy Cuban sugar may have been as much a policy response to Chinese behavior as American behavior. Leon Goure and Julian Weinkle, “Cuba's New Dependency,” Problems of Communism, vol. 21, no. 2 (1972): 70. See also Gott, 183–4. 17. Gott, 184. 18. Helen Osieja, “Economic Sanctions as an Instrument of U.S. Foreign Policy: The Case of the U.S. Embargo against Cuba,” (Master's thesis, The American University of London, 2005), 108. 19. Fidel Castro, “First Declaration of Havana,” September, 1960), available at www.walterlippmann.com/fc-09-02-1960.html (accessed August 2011). 20. Peter Schwab, Cuba: Confronting the U.S. Embargo (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), 53–4. 21. Peter Shearman, The Soviet Union and Cuba, Chatham House Papers, no. 38, William Wallace, ed. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1987), 16. 22. French agronomist (and Marxist) Rene Dumont observed after visiting the island that Castro had eliminated a capitalist system full of defects, but “could not develop the same abilities for organizing work,” which the old system had displayed. Gall “How Castro Failed,” 47. 23. Gall, “How Castro Failed,” 47. 24. Kosmas Tsokhas, “The Political Economy of Cuban Dependence on the Soviet Union,” Theory and Society, vol. 9 (1980): 332. 25. Judith Ewell, Venezuela and the United States: From Monroe's Hemisphere to Petroleum's Empire (Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press, 1996), 216. 26. Unsurprisingly, this revelation came at the end of a three-hour rambling intellectual autobiography, which went on long past midnight. Robert E. Quirk, Fidel Castro. paperback ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995), 393–5. 27. Gordon Connell-Smith, “The OAS and the Dominican Crisis,” The World Today, vol. 21, no 6 (June 1965): 232. 28. Raymond L. Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1989), 9. 29. U.S. Code, Title 22: Foreign Relations and Intercourse (Washington: Government Printing Office, 2002), 667. 30. Mark P. Sullivan, Congressional Research Service, “Cuba: U.S. Restrictions on Travel and Remittances,” CRS Report for Congress (January 7, 2011), 3. 31. One important reason for the failure of increased Soviet aid to fully restore relations with Cuba is that the Soviet Union also wanted Cuba to stop trying to industrialize and return to monocultural production of sugar. Goure and Weinkle, “Cuba's New Dependency,” 71–2. 32. Ewell, Venezuela and the United States, 216. 33. Antonius C. G. M. Robben, Political Violence and Trauma in Argentina (Philadelphia: The University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 98–9. 34. Schwab, Cuba, 15. 35. Ewell, Venezuela and the United States, 216. 36. Organization of American States (OAS), “Ninth Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Serving as Organ of Consultation in Application of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, Pan American Union, Washington, DC,” (July 21–26, 1964), 5. 37. Connell-Smith, The OAS,” 234. 38. OAS, “Ninth Meeting,” 6. 39. Connell-Smith, “The OAS” 233. 40. A. Mark Weisburd, Use of Force: The Practice of States since World War II (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997), 186. 41. Goure and Weinkle, “Cuba's New Dependency,” 69. 42. Weisburd, Use of Force, 186–7. 43. Richard B. Lillich and Frank C. Newman, International Human Rights: Problems of Law and Policy (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1979), 417. 44. Shearman, The Soviet Union, 15. 45. W. Raymond Duncan, “Historical Antecedents of Cuban Foreign Policy,” Irving Louis Horowitz, ed., in Cuban Communism, 6th ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1987), 99. 46. Jorge I. Dominguez, To Make a World Safe for Revolution: Cuba's Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 70. 47. Charles D. Ameringer, ed., Political Parties of the Americas, 1980s to 1990s: Canada, Latin America, and the West Indies (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1992), 227. 48. Shearman, The Soviet Union, 18. 49. Ibid., 15. 50. Ibid., 18. 51. One way in which Castro did this was by excluding communist parties with strong ties to China from the 1964 Havana conference. William Ratliff, “Cuban Foreign Policy toward Far East and Southeast Asia,” in Georges A. Fauriol and Eva Loser, eds., Cuba: The International Dimension, (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1990), 210. See also Shearman, The Soviet Union, 17. 52. Ratliff, “Cuban Foreign Policy,” 210–1. 53. Shearman, The Soviet Union, 17. 54. Ernesto “Che” Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 173. 55. Rex A. Hudson, Castro's America Department: Coordinating Cuba's Support for Marxist-Leninist Violence (Washington, DC: Cuban American National Foundation, 1988), 9. 56. Roger W. Fontaine, Terrorism: The Cuban Connection (New York: C. Russak, 1988). 57. Alberto Pérez Giménez, “El Departamento América Cubano,” ABC (August 17, 2001); and Salim Lamrani and Ricardo Alarcón, Estados Unidos contra Cuba: La Guerra contra el Terrorismo y el Caso de los cinco (Mataró Spain: El Viejo Topo, 2005), 188. 58. Christopher Dobson and Ronald Payne, The Carlos Complex: A Study in Terror (New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons, 1977), 33–36. 59. Fontaine, Terrorism, 97–100. 60. Ibid., 60–75. 61. Dominguez, To Make a World Safe, 70. 62. Tsokhas, “The Political Economy of Cuban Dependence,” 353. 63. William G. Hyland, “Brezhnev and Beyond,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 58, no. 1 (Fall, 1979): 57. See also David D. Finley, “Conventional Arms in Soviet Foreign Policy,” World Politics, vol. 33, no. 1 (October 1980): 1–35; and W. T. Lee, “The Shift in Soviet National Priorities to Military Forces, 1958–1985,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 457 (September 1981): 46–66. 64. Dominguez, To Make a World Safe, 71. 65. Edward Gonzalez, “Relationship with the Soviet Union,” in Carmelo Mesa-Lago, ed., Revolutionary Change in Cuba (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971), 103. 66. Quirk, Fidel Castro, 586. 67. Gall, “How Castro Failed,” 54–5. 68. Goure and Weinkle, “Cuba's New Dependency,” 68. 69. Shearman, The Soviet Unoin, 20. 70. Gall, “How Castro Failed,” 56. 71. Perez-Lopez, “Sugar and Petroleum,” 275. 72. Ibid., 273–4. 73. Tsokhas, “The Political Economy of Cuban Dependency,” 326. 74. Willard W. Radell, Jr., “Cuban-Soviet Sugar Trade, 1960–1976: How Great was the Subsidy?” The Journal of Developing Areas, vol. 17, no. 3 (April 1983): 365–6. Together with military aid, including aid from Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe, the total benefit was estimated at between $2 and 3 billion per year. Desmond P. Wilson, Jr., “Cuban-Soviet Relations: Conditions and Constraints,” in Richard F. Staar, ed., Aspects of Modern Communism (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1968), 378. 75. Perez-Lopez, “Sugar and Petroleum,” 278–9. 76. Wilson, “Cuban Soviet Relations,” 380-1. 77. Ibid., 380. 78. Ibid., 379. See also Radell,“Cuban Soviet Sugar Trade,” 367. 79. Dominguez, To Make World Safe, 73. 80. Tsokhas, “The Political Economy of Cuban Dependence,” 325. 81. Shearman, The Soviet Union, 21. 82. Dominguez, To Make World Safe, 73. 83. Tsokhas, “The Political Economy of Cuban Dependence,” 325. 84. Ibid., 326. 85. Shearman, The Soviet Union, 21–2. 86. Tsokhas, “The Political Economy of Cuban Dependence,” 325. 87. Dominguez, “To Make World Safe,” 76. For a different view on Castro's speech, see Gott, Cuba, 237–9. 88. Tsokhas, “The Political Economy of Cuban Dependence,” 355. 89. Gall, “How Castro Failed,” 50. 90. Tsokhas, “The Political Economy of Cuban Dependence,” 351. 91. Shearman, The Soviet Union, 28. 92. Tsokhas, “The Political Economy of Cuban Dependence,” 352–3. 93. Perez-Lopez, “Sugar and Petroleum,” 273. 94. Tsokhas, “The Political Economy of Cuban Dependence,” 330. 95. Ibid., 328. 96. Lillich and Newman, International Human Rights, 417. 97. Organization of American States, “Sixteenth Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Serving as Organ of Consultation in Application of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, San Jose, Costa Rica,” July 29, 1975, available at www.oas.org (accessed July 21, 2011). 98. Kathlyn Gay, Leaving Cuba: From Operation Pedro Pan to Elian (Brookfield, CT: Twenty-First Century Books, 2000), 133–4. 99. Schwab, Cuba, 15. 100. Gay, Leaving Cuba, 134 101. Ibid., 102. Dominguez, To Make a World Safe, 228. 103. Ibid. 104. Shearman, The Soviet Union, 53. 105. Dominguez, To Make a World Safe, 160. 106. Lewis H. Diuguid, “Castro Seen Seeking to Avoid Troop Commitment in Eritrea,” Washington Post, April 27, 1978, A24. 107. Dominguez, To Make a World Safe, 160. 108. Karen DeYoung, “Troops’ Role in Africa Gives Cubans at Home a Cause,” Washington Post, June 25, 1978, A22. 109. Murrey Marder, “Ethiopia Launches Drive against Eritrean Rebels,” Washington Post, May 17, 1978, A1. 110. Juan Benemelis, “Cuba's African Policy,” in Georges A. Fauriol and Eva Loser, eds., Cuba: The International Dimension (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1990), 121–152, 145. 111. Bernard Diederich, Somoza and the Legacy of U.S. Involvement in Central America (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1981), 144–5. 112. Ibid., 282. 113. Bruce E. Wright, “Pluralism and Vanguardism in the Nicaraguan Revolution,” Latin American Perspectives, vol. 17, no. 3 (July 1990), 42. 114. Maria Chavarria, as quoted in Pilar Arias, Nicaragua: Revolucion: Relatos de Combatientes del Frente Sandinista (Mexico, DF: Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1980), 154. 115. Fontaine, 86–90. 116. Weisburd, Use of Force, 234–5. 117. Gay, Leaving Cuba, 135. 118. Quirk, Fidel Castro, 813–4. Despite the announcement, Radio Marti did not actually begin broadcasting until May of 1985. Gay, Leaving Cuba, 136. 119. Gay, Leaving Cuba, 135 120. Quirk, Fidel Castro, 818. 121. Ibid., 821. 122. Fidel Castro, “Funeral Ceremony: Cubans who Died in Grenada,” November 15, 1983, University of Texas-Austin Latin American Network Information Center, available at lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1983/19831114.html (accessed August 6, 2011). 123. Hudson, Castro's American Department, 4. 124. Quirk, Fidel Castro, 822. 125. Melvin Allan Goodman, Gorbachev's Retreat: The Third World (Westport, CN: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1991), 25. 126. Walter Raymond Duncan and Carolyn McGiffert Ekedahl, Moscow and the Third World under Gorbachev (San Francisco: Westview Press, 1990), 199. 127. Mervyn J. Bain, Soviet-Cuban Relations, 1985 to 1991: Changing Perceptions in Moscow and Havana (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007), 46. 128. Goodman, Gorbachev's Retreat, 74. 129. Hudson, Castro's American Department, 63. 130. Bain, Soviet-Cuban Relations, 48. 131. Stephen Blank, “The End of the Affair: Moscow and Havana, 1989–1992,” in, Donald E. Shulz, ed., Cuba and the future (Westport, CN: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1994), 102–3. 132. Ibid., 103. 133. Quirk, Fidel Castro, 830. 134. Jiri Valenta and Frank Cibulka, Gorbachev's New Thinking and Third World Conflicts (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1990), 112. 135. Gott, 286. 136. Quirk, Fidel Castro, 831. 137. Byman, Deadly Connections, 35. 138. The Helms-Burton Act, which attempts to impose a multilateral sanction unilaterally, came after the State Department had reported the end of Cuban support for terrorism

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