Last week, in Miami, to the cheers of American hard-liners, President Trump announced a reversal of the Obama administration’s “terrible and misguided deal” with Cuba. With the swipe of a pen, decades old trade and travel restrictions were reinstated, dashing hopes for normalized relations in the near future.
This abrupt about face should play well with the president’s supporters, and I’m not talking about fringe conservatives or aging Miami residents. I’m talking about Russia, because what our president did, for the second time in half a century, was toss Cuba right into their lap.
In his defense, the president might not have realized the broader strategic implications of opening up Cuba. Obama was very public in his desire to “bury the remnants of the Cold War.” Both he and the press (on both sides of the Florida Straights) framed the agreement in terms of healed wounds and reunited families. What no one talked about was that barely a month before the agreement was announced, Russia declared the resumption of long range bombers patrols into the Caribbean. These patrols represented the most aggressive Russian actions to date, and their farthest power projection since the Cold War. They were also a direct response, by Vladimir Putin, to America’s perceived involvement in Ukraine. Unlike Trump, who is often accused of playing checkers rather than chess, Putin is all too familiar with “The Grand Chessboard.” Like the Soviet dictators before him, Putin is always on the lookout for new pieces to play, new (or perhaps old) pawns he can leverage against the West.
{mosads}In his defense, Trump is not the first American president to miss the larger role of smaller countries. The whole reason Cuba originally fell into Moscow’s arms was because Eisenhower let it slip away. Like Tito in Yugoslavia, Fidel could have been a neutral communist well outside the Kremlin’s orbit. Not long after seizing power, he tried meeting with Eisenhower to officially normalize relations. But our narrow minded, short sighted rebuff of Castro handed the Soviets a crown jewel in the bullseye of the Western Hemisphere. And as we all know, that bullseye nearly sparked nuclear Armageddon.
On a side not, Castro wasn’t the only newly minted leader waiting with an outstretched hand. Around the same time, a guerilla fighter half a world away had based his countries’ declaration of independence directly on the United States. That leader was Ho Chi Minh.
Fortunately for us, Obama was less like Eisenhower and more like his former veep. Like Nixon with China, Obama saw an opportunity to flip an old enemy, and snatched Cuba right out from under a resurgent Russia. Of course the new agreement could never be seen in geostrategic terms. That would make Raul Castro look like he was caving to Yankee imperialism. The deal had to be framed from a purely regional, economic, humanist perspective, in order to give Fidel’s brother room to maneuver. And it worked! For a brief, hopeful moment, it looked we’d just jiu-jitsu the Kremlin.
Until now.
Relations are freezing, walls are going up, and Vladimir Putin is rubbing his hands with glee. He knows how much his petro-state can offer their former ally, and the massive political-military dividends a new alliance will yield. And here we are handing that alliance to him on a silver platter. What will he do if Raul Castro, needing to save face in the wake of our backhanded slap, suddenly turns on his heel towards Moscow? Will the future find Russian troops once again sunning themselves on Cuban beaches as their bombers refuel at rebuilt bases?
If the last few months have taught us anything, it is the need to recognize seemingly impossible scenarios. As I write this, an American F-18 over Syria has just shot down a Russian Su-22 fighter-bomber, the first air-to-air kill of the 21st century. In response, the Kremlin threatened to target ANY coalition aircraft they see as threatening, including ours. Is it so inconceivable to imagine Putin proposing to check our new anti-ballistic missile shield in Eastern Europe by deploying or RE-deploying a nuclear deterrent 90 miles from our shores?
We need to avoid a repeat of Cold War mistakes and see Cuba within a larger geostrategic framework. Failure to understand that big picture opens the door for other players like Russia, and perhaps even China. Failure to move beyond old conflicts and shallow campaign promises will only weaken our position on the global stage. In the case of Cuba, the choice is clear; a neutral neighbor and perhaps future friend, or a revitalized Russian vassal at our door?
Max Brooks is a nonresident fellow at The Modern War Institute at West Point and a senior nonresident fellow at The Atlantic Council. He is also the author of the New York Times Bestseller “World War Z.”
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