tdaxp

"On Dealing with Castro's Cuba", by Albert Wohlstetter, http://www.rand.org/publications/classics/wohlstetter/D17906/D17906.html, 16 January 1965.

A comment on Zen Pundit linked to the writings of Albert Wohlstetter. As farmers in South Dakota sometimes grumble about the embargo of Cuba, I found this note from more than 40 years ago interesting.

One interpretation of "returning to normal" among Americans urging reconciliation with Castro is simply a lifting of the U.S. embargo. In some ways, these advocates for taking off the embargo resemble in fervor and inconsistency the advocates of "deterrence only." "Deterrers only" manage to believe that active and passive defenses are completely ineffective and at the same time very harmful, provocative, etc. Similarly, those who would stop the embargo manage to believe both that it is totally ineffectual and also that it is worth a good deal to the Cubans to have it terminated. As Draper has pointed out, when the embargo is called ineffective, what is usually meant is that by itself it won't bring Castro down. Of course, no American policymaker ever said it would. Under-Secretary of State George Ball gave the following set of reasons for the embargo in a speech on April 23, 1964:

1. To reduce the will and ability of the present Cuban regime to export subversion and violence to the other American states;

2. To make plain to the people of Cuba and to elements of the power structure of the regime that the present regime cannot serve their interests;

3. To demonstrate to the peoples of the American Republics that Communism has no future in the Western Hemisphere;

4. To increase the cost to the Soviet Union of maintaining a Communist outpost in the Western Hemisphere.

None of these four points -- not even the second -- implies that Castro will come tumbling down simply by being boycotted. In any case, Mr. Ball specifically denied that bringing down Castro was the embargo's goal.