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14 Fidel Castro enters Havana in triumph: 8 January 1959
Fidel Castro enters Havana in triumph: 8 January 1959
Posted on: 8 January 2017
As Cuban as palm trees
The death of Fidel Castro at the age of 90 on 26 November 2016 marked the end of an extraordinary life: head of the Cuban government from 1959 until he handed over to his brother Raul in 2008, Castro was the longest serving non-royal leader of the 20th century and survivor of more than 600 assassination attempts by the CIA. Che Guevara & Fidel Castro (Alberto Korda, Museo Che Guevara, Havana Cuba) Castro may have ruled over a small island in the Caribbean, but he was to become a powerful international figure, his influence felt from Moscow to Washington, from Buenos Aires to Cairo, from Caracas to Luanda. The most dangerous crisis of the Cold War was played out in Cuba in 1962. And yet Castro described himself as being ‘as Cuban as palm trees’, and the success of the revolutionary movement he led with his brother and Che Guevara, seizing power as the dictator Batista fled the island, came as a surprise to almost everyone—Fidel included. The Castro brothers had formed an underground movement in the early 1950s to try and overthrow the corrupt regime of the dictator Fulgencio Batista, under whose rule Cuba had become a haven for organized crime while the general population was brutalized. After an unsuccessful rising against Batista in 1953 the Castro brothers were jailed for 15 years, but were released after 2 and allowed to go into exile in Mexico. There they met the charismatic Argentinian doctor Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, who returned to Cuba with them and a small band of followers in 1956. Joining with mountain bandits, from their stronghold in Sierra Maestra Fidel and his followers smuggled in arms, mounted guerrilla raids, blew up bridges, kidnapped Americans and cut off the ports from which sugar was exported, damaging the economy. Batista finally fled on New Year’s Eve 1958, and Fidel, at the age of 30, entered Havana in triumph on 8 January 1959.
The eyes of the world were not on Cuba
In the broader Cold War context, the international focus in 1958-9 was on Europe and the Middle East, not Latin America. In 1958 Khrushchev rose to supreme power in the Soviet Union, swiftly removing opponents and bringing his own supporters into power. A twin strategy of building up Soviet arms while calling for a nuclear test ban and initiating disarmament talks, plus increasing the pressure on the West over the status of Berlin and a divided Germany, kept the US Government headed by President Eisenhower
preoccupied, while providing ammunition for Eisenhower’s political opponents. The President himself was recovering from a stroke, and beset by internal political difficulties. The state of the US economy and allegations of corruption against advisers close to the President led to a heavy Republican defeat in the mid-term elections on 4 November 1958.
There were also major tensions between the USA and China over the status of Formosa (Taiwan), growing concern over Soviet influence in Egypt, and a proxy arms race in the Middle East as the US, Soviet Union and France supported opposing powers in the region. In July 1958, a coup in Baghdad overthrew the monarchy and led to the US and UK sending troops into the Lebanon and Jordan, a show of force intended to deter Nasser from becoming closer to Moscow. Meanwhile, the UK Government under Harold Macmillan was preoccupied with unsuccessful efforts to promote a European Free Trade Area (EFTA) as a rival to the newly-established European Economic Community. No one was paying much attention to Latin America, let alone to Cuba, which fell into Castro’s lap almost before anyone had noticed.
The only leader in town
The Americans regarded Latin America and the Caribbean as their back yard; Cuba was only 90 miles off the US coast, and a lot of Americans had business interests there. But Latin America had not been high on the agenda of the Eisenhower administration since 1954, when the Arbenz regime in Guatemala had been overthrown with CIA help. In the region American policy was perceived as exploitative economically and supportive of dictators, and on his Latin American tour in 1958 Vice-President Richard Nixon was met by hostility (and rotten eggs). Although he returned home to advise that more support was needed to prevent the spread of communism, little changed. The stage was set for Castro, the charismatic and dynamic leader of a broadly-based anti-Batista movement, to increase his pressure on a regime with that Washington was unwilling to prop up. At first Castro received some support in the US; he was not yet an avowed Communist, and it seemed possible he would bring a welcome boost to Cuba and its economy. A week after his triumphal entry into Havana, US Secretary of State Dulles wrote to Eisenhower that Castro’s Provisional Government appeared ‘free from Communist taint’ with ‘indications that it intends to pursue friendly relations with the United States’. But Castro’s opposition to American economic interests, lack of interest in holding elections and programme of nationalization soon alienated the Eisenhower administration, which feared the example of a successful revolution might be emulated elsewhere in Latin America.
By March 1960 Eisenhower had approved the creation of a government-in-exile in preparation for Castro’s fall; however, CIA confidence that Castro could be unseated quickly was misplaced.
Nixon gets it right
Before US-Cuban relations deteriorated badly, Castro visited the US in April 1959, though the visit was an awkward one and led to no meeting of minds. Vice-President
Nixon commented: ‘whatever we may think of him, he is going to be a great factor in the development of Cuba and very possibly in Latin American affairs generally . . . we have no choice but at least to try to orient him in the right direction’ (FRUS 1958-60, vol. vi, p. 476). The first part of this judgement proved to be an understatement, but Castro was to remain resistant to ‘orientation’ until the day he died.
President Harry S. Truman addressing a joint session of Congress (Harry S. Truman Library & Museum
Posted on: 10 March 2017
The missionary strain in the character of Americans leads many of them to feel that they have now received a call to extend to other countries the blessings with which the Almighty has endowed their own1 Seventy years ago, on 12 March 1947, President Harry Truman addressed a joint session of Congress and asked them to vote $400m for financial assistance to Greece and Turkey. The British government, which had been providing economic and military help for Greece and Turkey, said it could no longer afford to do so. On 19 February, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin had instructed HM Ambassador to tell the State Department that British financial support for Greece and Turkey would stop at the end of March. Truman’s approach to Congress was based on the belief that without financial support Greece and Turkey would succumb to communist expansion, and that only the United States could prevent the extension of Soviet domination to Europe, the Middle East and Asia
Bankruptcy and bad weather
In the spring of 1947 the British Labour government faced a serious financial crisis, crippling global responsibilities and a deteriorating balance of payments, while the US loan negotiated in 1945 was fast running out. Britain could not produce enough for its own consumption or for export, and was forced to rely on dollar imports while American prices were rising. In addition, the government was committed to an ambitious programme of domestic reform. The situation was already alarming when extreme weather during January and February—the worst since 1880—brought the country to a standstill. Electricity for industry was cut off completely on 10 February, and domestic supplies restricted severely. Transport services were reduced, greyhound racing was banned—even the BBC’s Third Programme (now Radio 3) was suspended. On the day the Truman Doctrine was announced, the House of Commons was in the middle of a 3day debate during which the Conservative opposition was highly critical of the government’s economic planning.
The global context
The financial crisis affected Britain’s overseas policy and commitments as well. The government did not see its request to the US to pay for Greece and Turkey as an
abdication of responsibility, but a reluctant acceptance that ‘financial weakness has necessarily increased the need to coordinate our foreign policy with that of the only country which is able effectively to wield extensive economic influence—namely the United States.’2 A snapshot of some of the foreign policy challenges the Attlee government faced during the first two weeks of March 1947 shows what they were up against. On 10 March the Conference of Foreign Ministers meeting opened in Moscow, where Bevin and US Secretary of State George C. Marshall continued long-running and frustrating discussions with the Russians over the future of divided Germany, reparations, peace treaties, German level of industry and the Soviet threat to the freedom of Eastern Europe. Talks continued until 24 April but little agreement was reached.
En route to Moscow, Bevin travelled to Dunkirk to sign an Anglo-French Treaty of Alliance; then stopped off briefly in Poland where a new communist-dominated government had been elected in what Western powers felt were rigged elections. On 2 March, Martial Law was declared in Palestine after a terrorist attack in Jerusalem; the British mandate was in crisis and had been referred to the UN.
On 5-6 March there was a House of Commons debate on India, against a backdrop of inter-communal rioting, following the announcement in February that Britain would transfer power to an Indian government no later than June 1948. Problems remained in implementing the agreement on the fusion of the British and American zones of Germany, where Britain struggled to obtain enough food and raw materials to supply the population in its sector. On 5 March the UK Representative at the UN warned that the Soviet delegate was about to veto a settlement of the Corfu Channel incident when British ships had been damaged by mines off the Albanian coast (it was not settled until 1996). Also on 5 March, the head of the Joint Staff Mission in Washington told the Prime Minister that the US Chiefs of Staff opposed the development of an atomic plant in the UK to develop a British bomb.
Did the British ‘put one over’ on the Americans?
Some complained the British request for help was sprung upon the US government at short notice. But the Minister of Defence had warned Secretary of State Byrnes in October 1946 that Britain’s financial situation meant cutting back support for Greece and Turkey. Byrnes agreed that the US would help in view of the high strategic importance of the Near East. But no concrete US proposals were forthcoming, and in Bevin’s absence at international meetings from October-December 1946, the issue hung fire. Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton told the Cabinet in February 1947 that spending on Greece and Turkey must end in March, and Bevin then approached Marshall. Though some have argued Bevin used the issue to draw the Americans forcibly into the European arena, he was very reluctant, as the recently-published volume of Documents on British Policy Overseas shows, to approach them over Greece and Turkey, and only agreed to do so because of Treasury warnings.
The news that Britain could no longer sustain its responsibilities was shocking to some Congressmen and to the American public, but there was general acceptance that the US had no option and the response was swift and generous. As Dean Acheson told the British Ambassador on 1 March, the US was ‘going over its overshoes’ to meet the British request.3 The Truman Doctrine, as it became known, was a turning point in US post-war foreign policy, and paved the way for the Marshall Plan, or European Recovery Programme for the rehabilitation of Europe, announced a few months later.
Suggestions for further reading
Documents on British Policy Overseas, Series I, Volume XI, European Recovery and the Search for Western Security (London: Routledge, 2017). Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation (London: W.W. Norton, 1969). Robert Frazier, ‘Did Britain Start the Cold War? Bevin and the Truman Doctrine’, The Historical Journal, vol. 27, No. 3, Sept. 1984.
Notes
1. Telegram from the British Embassy in Washington commenting on the Truman Doctrine, 14 March 1947, printed in Documents on British Policy Overseas, Series I, Volume XI, No. 62.
2. Memo of 12 February 1947, printed ibid., No. 48. 3. Washington telegram 1311 of 1 March 1947, printed ibid., No. 54.
