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The past is never dead. It's not even past

Not Even Past

Cuba on Not Even Past

When Fidel Castro died last week at age 90 he had survived 11 US Presidents. A dictator who stifled free speech, political opposition, and nonconformity, and a revolutionary who made education, health care, and independence high priorities, his legacy will be debated for many years to come.

We have reported on Cuba regularly over the years and link below to all the articles in our archive.

In our first year online in 2011, Prof Frank Guridy (now at Columbia University) offered an online book discussion group on Cuba, leading discussions of three books you might like to read:

Louis A. Perez, Jr., On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture
Jana Lipman, Guantánamo: A Working-Class History between Empire and Revolution

C. Peter Ripley, Conversations with Cuba

We featured Prof Guridy’s own book on the connections between Afro-Cubans and African Americans in February 2012: On the Transnational Black Diaspora. You can see our video interview with him on that page as well.

The Future of Cuba-Texas Relations

The Future of Cuba-Texas Relations
 Jonathan Brown teaches courses on the history of Latin American revolutions. He is now completing a manuscript on “How the Cuban Revolution Changed the World.” Professor Brown took the first of his four trips to Cuba in 2006.

Capitalism After Socialism in Cuba

Capitalism After Socialism in CubaThe trip in Cuba from Trinidad to Havana was very hard, as our landlady misled us in order to make a commission off a local cab company.

The Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis
by Priya Ramamoorthy, Kavya Ramamoorthy, Smrithi Mahadevan and Maanasa Nathan Westwood High School Senior Division Group Website Over thirteen tense days in October, 1962, nuclear conflict nearly broke out between the United States and the Soviet Union.

I am Cuba, for Sale (1964)

I am Cuba, for Sale (1964)
An extravagant party on the rooftop of a Havana hotel. It’s the late 1950s; hedonistic tourism is booming in the City. A band plays loud. Drinks. Laughter. Our line of vision moves from the hotel’s rooftop to a crowd of tourists below, where we see a woman and follow her into the pool. Underwater….Hailed today a classic for its inventive cinematography, “I am Cuba” was virtually forgotten for three decades.

The Cuban Connection by Eduardo Saénz Rovner (2008)

The Cuban Connection by Eduardo Saénz Rovner (2008)In The Cuban Connection, Eduardo Saénz Rovner rethinks Cuba’s position as a hotbed of drug trafficking, smuggling, and gambling and he considers how these illicit activities shaped Cuban national identity from the early twentieth century through the rise of Fidel Castro.

The Old Man and the New Man in Revolutionary Cuba

The Old Man and the New Man in Revolutionary Cuba
The forces that created the Cuban Revolution often get lost in polarizing debates about Castro’s Cuba. Two very different films highlight the changes that ripped through Cuban society in the 1950s and early 1960s and created the Cuban Revolution.

Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba’s Struggle with the Superpowers after the Missile Crisis by James G. Blight & Philip Brenner (2002)

Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba’s Struggle with the Superpowers after the Missile Crisis by James G. Blight & Philip Brenner (2002)
Throughout the Cold War and the decade that followed it, historians assumed that Cuban and Soviet leaders cooperated closely in the events associated with the Cuban missile crisis. Havana and Moscow, so went the conventional wisdom, put their lots together in a challenge against U.S.

 

 

Che in Gaza: Searching for the Story Behind the Image

Che in Gaza: Searching for the Story Behind the Image
On June 18th 1959, dressed in full army fatigues and accompanied by several comrades exhibiting an equally imposing revolutionary appearance, Che Guevara landed in Gaza.

 

Operation Urgent Fury: A Revolution Aborted

Operation Urgent Fury: A Revolution Aborted
On the evening of October 27, 1983, President Reagan addressed the American people on live television to discuss unsettling events taking place on the Caribbean island of Grenada.

 

 

 

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Che: A Revolutionary Life by Jon Lee Anderson (2010)

Che: A Revolutionary Life by Jon Lee Anderson (2010)
In July 1997, a Cuban-Argentine forensic team unearthed the skeletal remains of Comandante Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Vallegrande, Bolivia. Thirty years earlier, on October 9, 1967, CIA-trained Bolivian Special Forces agents had captured and executed the thirty-nine-year-old revolutionary before dumping his body in a shallow pit near a dirt runway.

Making History: Takkara Brunson

Making History: Takkara Brunson
In the sixth installation of our new series, “Making History,” Zach Doleshal speaks with Takkara Brunson about her research on Afro-Cuban women in pre-revolutionary Cuba. Brunson’s research experiences in Cuba, and stories of the fascinating women who form the core of her research offer a taste not only of life and work in a place few Americans get to visit, but also a window into the making of a social and cultural historian.

 

 

From Baseball to Politics

From Baseball to Politics

New works on Afro-Cubans and African-Americans

 

 

 

 

Che’s Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image by Michael Casey (2009)

Che’s Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image by Michael Casey (2009)
How can we make sense of the coexistence of bumper stickers depicting Rambo and Che Guevara in a traffic jam in Bangkok, Thailand? Although this book never answer its opening question, such an insight might allow us to understand Casey’s attempt to explore the different uses of an image that remains remarkably vital decades after its capture.

 

 

 

Latin America’s Cold War by Hal Brands (2010)

Latin America’s Cold War by Hal Brands (2010)
In this new book, covering the entire period of the Cold War in Latin America, Hal Brands restores agency and initiative to Latin American actors, in the process demolishing many of the platitudes that have governed much of the U.S.foreign policy literature.image Based on prodigious research in a dizzying array of U.S., Latin American, and even East German archives, Brands’s work advances a trenchant interpretation that cannot be ignored.

Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976 by Piero Gleijeses (2002)

Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976 by Piero Gleijeses (2002)
Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976, takes readers beyond the familiar categories of the Soviet-American Cold War. In the wake of decolonization, as charismatic national leaders emerged across Africa – from Algeria to Zaire – statesmen in Washington and Moscow waited anxiously to see if the new governments would align with democracy or communism.

 

 

 

Kissinger’s Shadow, by Greg Grandin (2015)

By Clay Katsky

Kissinger Front CoverTickets to “An Evening with the Honorable Henry Kissinger” at the LBJ Library’s Vietnam War Summit sold out in less than one minute. The attention that Kissinger continues to command in 2016 could be linked to the premise of Greg Grandin’s new book. Grandin, a history professor at NYU, portrays the former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State as extraordinarily influential on U.S. foreign policy before, during, and after leaving office. But from the author’s unambiguously leftist point of view, Kissinger’s legacy is anything but honorable. While Grandin cites his most positive achievements, opening China and stabilizing relations with the Soviet Union, the book’s main contention is that Kissinger’s worldview and access to power led him to create a new imperial presidency “based on even more spectacular displays of violence, more intense secrecy, and an increasing use of war and militarism to leverage domestic dissent and polarization for political advantage.” Kissinger brought the old national security state into the post-Vietnam War era.

Kissinger relaxes at the LBJ Presidential Library before his public appearance on Tuesday, April 26, 2016 at The Vietnam War Summit. Courtesy of the LBJ Library : photo by David Hume Kennerly.

Kissinger relaxes at the LBJ Presidential Library before his public appearance on Tuesday, April 26, 2016 at The Vietnam War Summit. Courtesy of the LBJ Library : photo by David Hume Kennerly.

Starting with Kissinger’s legendarily long Harvard undergraduate thesis, Grandin seeks to uncover the ideas, insights, and assumptions that influenced his theories on diplomacy and drove his desire to fashion a new world order based on a balance of power. In focusing on Kissinger’s own writings, the book combines intellectual and diplomatic history. And it offers something new by examining Kissinger’s unique mixture of realism and idealism, which Grandin labels a kind of “imperial existentialism” in which conjecture is more preferable for action than fact because hard facts can be polarizing. Most historians have labeled Kissinger an arch-realist, yet Grandin insists that his more philosophical writings stressed the importance of conjecture in decision-making. In tribute to Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kissinger exalted decisiveness above all else: “In reaching a decision, he must inevitably act on the basis of an intuition that is inherently unproveable. If he insists on certainty he runs the danger of becoming prisoner to events.” But Grandin’s link to Cheney’s 1% Doctrine, which he describes as the United States taking action as if mere threats are forgone conclusions, seems tentative and is based on little evidence. Kissinger had hoped that showing strength in Cuba would lead to bolder foreign polices and legitimize American power, but in office his agenda shifted to preventing a decline in American prestige stemming from the pull out of Vietnam.

Kissinger being sworn in as Secretary of State by Chief Justice Warren Burger, September 22, 1973. Kissinger's mother, Paula, holds the Bible upon which he was sworn in while President Nixon looks on. Via Wikipedia.

Kissinger being sworn in as Secretary of State by Chief Justice Warren Burger, September 22, 1973. Kissinger’s mother, Paula, holds the Bible upon which he was sworn in while President Nixon looks on. Via Wikipedia.

According to Grandin, power and prestige were crucial elements in Kissinger’s perception of American security interests. Consciousness of power comes from a willingness to act, and he believed the best way to produce willingness was to act. But nuclear weapons complicated Cold War power dynamics because leaders were afraid to use them. Taking stock of Kissinger’s early academic career at Harvard, Grandin points out that in 1956 he wrote that the more powerful the weapons “the greater becomes the reluctance to user them.” Strength turned to weakness. But Grandin’s emphasis on the future statesman’s earliest writings freezes his worldviews in the 1950s. This in spite of the fact that Kissinger’s early musings on limited nuclear warfare later evolved into his belief that action in small wars in marginal areas could produce enough awareness of power to break the impasse of nuclear power. In this regard, Kissinger saw Southeast Asia as more of an opportunity than a burden. But Grandin doubts his escalation in Vietnam was based on any geostrategic reasoning. Like détente it served a more domestic purpose and, therefore, he brands the extensive bombing of Cambodia as both Kissinger’s most heinous crime and his most enduring contribution to U.S. foreign policy.

In terms of its legality, the bombing set an important precedent for U.S. warfare because it targeted a neutral country. Kissinger justified violating Cambodian sovereignty by citing the need to destroy Communist “sanctuaries” along its border with Vietnam. Grandin links such logic to more recent attacks on terrorist “safe havens,” from George W. Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan in 2002 to Barack Obama’s extensive use of drone attacks in Pakistan and Syria. Although Kissinger fell out of favor with the conservative establishment when Reagan began hammering him on détente, this connection is based on good evidence. Desperate to distance itself from talk of power balances and American decline, the New Right began to show Kissinger the door in the late 1970s. But Grandin explains that Kissinger’s defense of the Vietnam War and his arguments for escalation into Cambodia had already become deeply embedded in the ideology of Republican establishment. While Reagan distanced himself from the Secretary of State during his 1976 presidential primary campaign, by 1980 Kissinger was back speaking at the Republican National Convention.

Kissinger’s legacy in the realm of diplomacy is the focus of the book’s second half. Looking at other parts of Asia, Grandin examines his encouragement of the Indonesian invasion of East Timor and his ambivalence towards selective genocide in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Turning to Africa, he exposes in great detail Kissinger’s support for apartheid governments, and in terms of the Middle East, he blames him for locking the United States into a perpetual crisis by vehemently pursuing American hegemony in the region. Kissinger’s impact was global, spanning “from the jungles of Vietnam to the sands of the Persian Gulf.”

Meeting in the Oval Office between Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmi, 31 October 1931. Via Wikipedia.

Meeting in the Oval Office between Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ismail Fahmi, 31 October 1931. Via Wikipedia.

Grandin’s most interesting chapter is domestically focused and intellectually based. The Church Committee inaugurated a new era of foreign policy oversight that Kissinger described as “a merciless congressional onslaught.” Congress’ season of inquiry into matters of national security during the 1970s produced a new relationship between secrecy and spectacle. According to Grandin, the spectacle of continuous congressional hearings nullified the need for secrecy partly because oversaturation leads to public indifference. And when important controversies become mere visual entertainment, public attention fades as crimes are turned into procedural questions or differences of opinion between political parties. Further confusing the issue, arguments over whether the ends justify the means usually leave the hawks in Congress in agreement, and so for the general public such inquiries often act to justify both sides. For his contribution, Kissinger is described as a master at reframing controversial policies into technical matters. But Grandin’s conclusion that Kissinger decided to go covert with the coup against Allende in Chile because Congress was breathing down his neck over Vietnam seems circumstantial. Still, his insight into the parallel nature of secrecy and spectacle fits well anecdotally – in the following decade, Reagan’s full-scale invasion of Grenada smacks as a distraction from the covert wars being carried out in Central America.

Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet shaking hands with Kissinger in 1976. Via Wikipedia.

Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet shaking hands with Kissinger in 1976. Via Wikipedia.

Kissinger’s Shadow connects the sustained American militarism and the increased political polarization that followed the end of the Cold War. Grandin convincingly argues that Kissinger’s influence on U.S. foreign policy has reverberated into the twenty-first century. While he might rely too heavily on a career’s worth of Kissinger’s writing as ammunition to attack him with, the author’s bias against the now elder statesman does not nullify the facts that he presents and most of his interpretation of those facts. The support that many Americans continue to give to a broad policy of intervention and perpetual war may have started out as a product of the superpower rivalry, but Kissinger’s enduring popularity has allowed such machinations to transcend the Cold War.

Greg Grandin, Kissinger’s Shadow: The Long Reach of America’s Most Enduring Statesman (Metropolitan Books, 2015).

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You may also like our collection of essays on US Presidents and Mark Battjes’ recent review of David Milne’s Worldmaking: The Art and Science of American Diplomacy (2015)

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