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Max Castro. Posted on Tue, Oct. 22, 2002 in
The Miami Herald.
Forty years ago today, President John F. Kennedy went on national television
and announced to the American people -- and the world -- that the Soviet Union
was installing ballistic nuclear missiles in Cuba and that the United States
would not stand for it.
The president stated his determination that the missiles be removed from the
island and ordered a naval quarantine to prevent Soviet vessels carrying
offensive weapons from reaching Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis, the most
dangerous episode of the Cold War, had begun in earnest.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved peacefully when the Soviets agreed to
pull out their missiles in exchange for an American pledge not to invade Cuba.
Still, subsequent analysis of the events of October 1962 showed just how close
the world came to a confrontation between the superpowers and nuclear war.
By coupling firmness with flexibility, Kennedy held off the hawks in his
administration who advocated an immediate invasion, eliminated a real and
present danger to national security and averted a thermonuclear holocaust.
People draw divergent lessons from the Cuban Missile Crisis, ranging from
the possibility of a diplomatic solution even in extreme situations to the value
of flexing military muscle.
But one thing is certain: Very little of the world of 1962 survives, except
the hostility between the governments of the United States and Cuba, which
created the conditions that led to the 1962 crisis.
The Cold War is over, and the Soviet Union, Kennedy and Khrushchev are gone.
But the hostile U.S.-Cuba relationship endures, symbolized by the 40-year-old
embargo, which against all odds withstood yet another challenge in Congress in
2002. What explains the persistence of this feud that now has lasted longer than
the Cold War itself?
Analysts have offered many explanations, from Fidel Castro's perfidy (and
longevity) to the political clout of hard-line Cuban exiles to U.S. imperial
pretensions. Valid or debatable, depending on one's point of view, none of these
explanations is sufficient.
Something else is at play. Call it -- to use a term currently in vogue to
explain why the United States feels justified in carrying out a Lone Ranger
foreign policy on Iraq -- the ''clash of exceptionalisms.'' Or call it the clash
of arrogance.
American exceptionalism is the belief that the United States differs
significantly from other nations in that it has a unique mission to spread
democracy and the values of free enterprise.
This may be too difficult or too costly to accomplish in the short term in
far-off countries with big markets and large armies, such as Vietnam and China.
But surely we can accomplish it in a country of 11 million people only 90 miles
away.
The failure to bring regime change to Cuba after 43 years challenges
American exceptionalism, a key belief for many U.S. political leaders, although
not necessarily for most citizens. According to the polls, Americans believe in
international cooperation. From the perspective of American exceptionalism, any
settlement of the U.S.-Cuba dispute that leaves the Castro regime standing looks
like defeat.
The U.S.-Cuban relationship became an unending impasse when American
exceptionalism ran smack into its Cuban counterpart. Cuban exceptionalism cannot
afford to be as expansive as the American variety. But it is real and was not
invented by Fidel Castro, who tapped into it masterfully. Cuban exceptionalism
rejects subservience vis--vis the United States. That makes it exceptional in
the Latin American experience if not in the Latin American imagination.
It is the force that makes it possible and essential for Castro to hold out
against the will of the sole superpower. It is the force that allows the leaders
of a community of 1.3 million exiles to imagine that they can control the
foreign policy regarding Cuba of a nation of 288 million people -- and do it.
It is a force that needs to be taken into account if ever there is to be an
end to the long chill between the United States and Cuba.
maxcastro@hotmail.com | 
