On this day in 1961, the United States ended diplomatic and consular relations with the Castro dictatorship. (Here is what they left out of the narrative.)

“On this day in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower announced the United States was formally terminating diplomatic and consular relations with Cuba.” - The Boston Globe

Batista in the 1950s was not a U.S. backed dictator, but was pressured out by Washington in favor of what they believed would be a return to democracy

In a previous CubaBrief, we looked at the negative reaction of the Truman Administration to Fulgencio Batista's March 10, 1952 coup against the democratically elected government of Carlos Prio. In another, the Eisenhower Administration's engagement with Havana during the Batista regime, from January 20, 1953 through December 31, 1958. President Dwight Eisenhower had short, informal talks with Fulgencio Batista on July 23, 1956 at the US Embassy in Panama, but the images are reminiscent of President Obama meeting with Raul Castro during the Summit of the Americas in April 2015. 

Eisenhower was not "supporting" the dictatorship, but decreasingly tolerating it, with an arms embargo placed on the Batista government by the Eisenhower Administration in March 1958, and the US Ambassador pressuring the Cuban strongman to step down in December 1958.

Richard Nixon met Fidel Castro in April 1959 and sought a detente with Havana in 1974

Fidel Castro visited the United States for eleven days in April 1959, culminating in a three-hour meeting with Vice President Richard Nixon on April 19, 1959.

Within three months of the United States' recognition of Cuba's revolutionary government, the new regime began targeting American interests on the island, allying with the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, and plotting the overthrow of several Latin American governments.  
Fidel Castro visits Caracas on January 23, 1959 and meets with Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt, a social democrat, "to enlist cooperation and financial backing for 'the master plan against the gringos.'"

On March 3, 1959 the Castro regime expropriates properties belonging to the International Telephone and Telegraph Company, and took over its affiliate, the Cuban Telephone Company.

On May 17, 1959 the government expropriated farm lands over 1,000 acres and banned land ownership by foreigners.

Havana beginning in 1959 sent armed expeditions to Panama, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic to overthrow their governments.

On February 6, 1960 talks began publicly between the U.S.S.R and Fidel Castro. The Soviet Union agreed to buy five million tons of sugar over five years. They also agreed to support Cuba with oil, grain, and credit.

On July 6, 1960 the Castro regime passed a nationalization law authorizing nationalization of U.S.- owned property through expropriation. Texaco, Esso, and Shell oil refineries were taken.

In September 1960 the Cuban government diplomatically recognized the People's Republic of China.

On November 19, 1960 Ernesto "Che" Guevara heading a Cuban delegation in Beijing met with Mao Zedong between 4:20pm and 6:30pm and discussed revolutionary objectives in Latin America.

 

It was Fidel Castro's demand that the US embassy be left with a skeleton crew in the midst of a migration crisis that led to the severing of diplomatic relations.

Tens of thousands of Cubans were lined up outside of the U.S. embassy in Havana seeking visas to flee the communist dictatorship, and this became a source of embarrassment for the regime. Fidel Castro communicated with the Eisenhower Administration on January 3, 1961 and demanded the expulsion of 67 U.S. diplomats, within 48 hours, reducing their number to 11, the same number at the Cuban embassy in Washington DC. When the ultimatum was issued, the Americans had over 50,000 visa applications to process.

President Eisenhower issued a statement on January 3, 1961, at 8:30 p.m. EST, stating: "There is a limit to what the United States in self respect can endure. That limit has now been reached," and broke diplomatic ties with Cuba.

Taken from the Center for a Free Cuba, and adapted.

The high price of diplomatic relations with the Castro regime

"We are going to have diplomatic relations with the United States without having ceded one iota." - Gerardo Hernandez, Cuban spy sentenced to life in prison for murder conspiracy freed by Obama as part of his deal with Raul Castro. (Capitol Hill Cubans)

Castro and Obama (April 2015) Sirley Ávila machete attacked (May 2015)

The Obama administration has had to bend over backwards in order to arrive at the formal re-establishment of diplomatic relations because since 1977 the Carter administration established de facto diplomatic relations with the opening of interests sections in both countries. Joint military exercises began to be carried out in 1994 during the Clinton administration. Therefore in reality what remained to be done was more symbolism than substance, and easier for the Castro regime to drag its feet knowing that the pressure for a breakthrough weighed more heavily on President Obama and his legacy. They were not disappointed:

• Releasing the three remaining WASP network spies, including Gerardo Hernandez -- who was serving two life sentences, one of them for conspiracy to murder four members of Brothers to the Rescue.
• Ignoring the Castro regime's continuing sponsorship of terrorism and smuggling of weapons to sanctioned countries in order to take Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
• Delinking the pursuit of full diplomatic relations from the rise in human rights violations in Cuba and in the region by Cuban state security.
• Commitment from President Obama at the State of the Union address to work for the lifting of economic sanctions on the dictatorship.

Never has so much been sacrificed with regards to Cuba policy to obtain so little in return purposefully. The Obama Doctrine, first addressed by Charles A. Kupchan in 2001, and fully fleshed out in his 2010 book,  How Enemies Become Friends The Sources of Stable Peace was summarized by José Azel in the critical May 6, 2015 article The Resurrection of Neville Chamberlain into four steps:

It must begin, according to Kupchan, by making concessions to our enemies in an act of “unilateral accommodation.” These concessions must be “unusual and costly” to signal benign intent. [...] The second phase entails the practice of “reciprocal restraint” where the adversary nations walk away from rivalry, peace breaks out, and geopolitical competition gives way to cooperation.[...] “Social integration” and “the generation of new narratives and identities” are the third and fourth phases of Kupchan’s sequence towards stable peace.

Kupchan in a April 2011 article in Friedrich Ebert Stiftung attempts to refute the charge that this policy is a version of neo-appeasement arguing:

It follows that talking to the enemy is not appeasement  – as is often claimed by engagement’s critics – but, under the right circumstances, good diplomacy. To be sure,  the effort to pursue diplomatic accommodation with an  adversary may not work. The target state may refuse to  reciprocate the initiator’s signals of benign intent, ensuring that confrontation continues.

The trouble with Kupchan's argument is that what he is advocating goes well beyond "talking to the enemy" into what he describes as "unilateral accommodation" setting the stage for "reciprocal restraint." Now when one government is making "unilateral accommodations" and the other side is declaring victory and maintaining an aggressive posture in the real world, while talking the talk of accommodation in diplomatic exchanges, it does share a disturbing similarity to appeasement policies of the 1930s that did not lead to peace but was a precursor to a major war that claimed tens of millions of lives. Underestimating the capability for mischief of what appears to be a weakened totalitarian dictatorship is a script that has played out before with horrible consequences.

This approach not only ignores the underlying conflict between the United States and Cuba but also the conflict between the Cuban dictatorship and the Cuban people. This mentality is also found deeply engrained in other parts of the Obama administration. For example, when 25,000 Cubans made it known that they wanted democratic reforms in 2002 - 2003 through a citizen initiative that challenged the dictatorship, then presidential candidate now Secretary of State, John Kerry said it was "counterproductive."

History rebukes getting into bed with dictatorships, but that is precisely what the White House is doing in Cuba, and unlike the Varela Project,  it promises to be counterproductive to both the interests of the United States and the Cuban people. When this approach is proven a disaster hopefully those formulating policy in the next administration will look to a nonviolent approach that works.