Russia Prompts Detente With Cuba

As of Friday, Jan. 16, Americans will now be allowed to travel to Cuba without a special government license. This move is part of the Obama administration’s normalization of relations with Cuba, which also includes liberalization of trade restrictions, increasing the amount of remittances allowed and reopening diplomatic relations. This normalization of relations can be attributed to many factors: the failure of the embargo to topple Fidel Castro’s regime, pleas form the international community and a changed domestic political landscape.

One reason for the administration’s shift on Cuba policy has received little attention, yet is possibly one of the most important reasons for this historic rapprochement: the new conflict between the United States and Russia. President Obama does not want to repeat the mistakes of America’s Cuba policy during the Cold War, in which the United States isolated and embargoed Cuba in an attempt to remove the Castro regime from power, but actually just drove Cuba in the hands of the Soviet Union.

The politics of Cuba was a matter of great importance in American-Soviet relations for much of the 20th century. Only 90 miles from Florida, communist Cuba was one of the USSR’s greatest points of geopolitical leverage over the United States. Cuba is best remembered for its role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the world came closer to nuclear annihilation than it ever has before or since. But the Soviet Union also basically supported the entire Cuban economy, buying its entire sugar crop and supplying heavily subsidized oil. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and aid to Cuba ceased, the Cuban economy went into deep recession for four years. The Soviets also ran the Lourdes spy base on the island, the USSR’s largest spy base outside of its own borders, which greater than 75 percent of the Kremlin’s strategic information on the United States filtered through at its peak.

While Cuba is no longer as close to Russia as it once was to the Soviet Union, the two countries continue to have deep connections. Approximately 55,000 Russians visit Cuba every year, often for beach vacations away from Russia’s cold winters.

In the past year, as a part of Russia’s new aggressive and expansionist foreign policy, the Kremlin has tried to become closer to its former Caribbean ally. In July, Putin visited Havana and met with Raúl and Fidel Castro. In a deal accompanying the visit, Russia agreed to forgive $32 billion in Cuban debt to Russia, and in return Cuba is allowing Russia to reopen the Lourdes spy base, explore for oil and gas in Cuban waters and help build a large seaport. Russia is attempting to rebuild its connections to Cuba to gain leverage over the United States, as the USSR did during the Cold War.

The Obama administration is determined to not let Cuba fall within the Kremlin’s sphere of influence. A Russia-aligned Cuba would be a great security liability since the country is so close to the United States. A showdown of the magnitude of the Cuban Missile Crisis would be unlikely to occur because the United States’ current conflict with Russia is less heated and communication between the two countries is better than it was during the heyday of the Cold War. But a Russia-aligned Cuba would serve as a springboard for the Kremlin’s anti-Western foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere.

There is already an alliance of anti-Western leaders in Latin America led by Venezuela, and largely fueled by its petrodollars, that includes Cuba, Bolivia and Ecuador. While members of this loose ideological alliance are vocal critics of the United States, they are not powerful enough to challenge the United States in any meaningful capacity. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez infamously called President George W. Bush “el diablo,” but he cannot do much more than this cheap talk.

If these states were to align with Russia though, together they could threaten the United States and its allies much more significantly. Russia could finance insurgencies and extremist parties across Latin America, using these allies like Cuba and Venezuela as bases of operations and partners, as it has done in its own European front yard and as the Soviet Union did during the Cold War.

Obama’s historic rapprochement with Cuba should hopefully avoid this scenario. By reestablishing relations with Cuba, the United States will have much more influence over Cuba — influence that it can use to pull Cuba away from Russia using positive incentives such as foreign aid, trade links and broader cultural connections.

The year 2014 has unfortunately shown that Russia is once again a geopolitical threat to the United States and overall global security. By pursuing rapprochement with Cuba, the Obama administration is ensuring that we do not repeat the fiasco that was American-Cuban relations during the Cold War, as the United States now enters a new Cold War of sorts with Russia. It was a brilliant policy move by the Obama administration in both means and end. By reengaging Cuba in a manner that will hopefully promote democracy, liberty and prosperity for the Cuban people, President Obama is also countering Russia’s geopolitical aggression.

While American foreign policy often does not learn from its own mistakes, by reopening relations with Cuba, Obama is ensuring that the failed Cuba policy of the Cold War does not continue into the new conflict with Russia.

Ben Perlmutter is a College junior from Chappaqua, New York.

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