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Backing the Wrong Tyrant

Backing the Wrong Tyrant
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June 12, 1994, Section 7, Page 34Buy Reprints
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CONTESTING CASTRO The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution. By Thomas G. Paterson. Illustrated. 352 pp. New York: Oxford University Press. $30.

THE headaches and humiliations associated with recent United States involvements in crisis spots like Bosnia, Somalia and Haiti have led to a certain nostalgia for the apparent clarity and simplicity of the cold war. One aspect of the cold war that should occasion no nostalgia, however, is the regrettable history of Washington's relationships with "friendly tyrants" in the third world, particularly in Latin America. An early, emblematic instance of such a relationship was the cozy, doomed friendship between the United States and Fulgencio Batista, the strongman who seized power in Cuba in 1952 and ran the country for seven tawdry years before falling to Fidel Castro's revolutionary movement.

It was a case with all the elements that would appear repeatedly during the cold war: a corrupt, repressive leader backed by the United States for his anti-Communist and pro-business views; a rising but poorly understood nationalistic insurgency; a policy of strong support for the dictator until his imminent collapse prompted a vain, hurried search for some moderate alternative; and the fall of the dictator coupled with the emergence of a revolutionary Government that viewed the United States with suspicion and hostility.

The story of this failed policy is well told in "Contesting Castro." Thomas G. Paterson, a distinguished diplomatic historian who teaches at the University of Connecticut and has written extensively on the cold war, has turned his considerable research energies and narrative skills to a critical period of relations between the United States and Cuba. The picture he presents of Washington's policy in that period is not flattering, but it is a persuasive answer to the central question he poses: "How did the United States, the hegemonic giant in the hemisphere, let this one, just 90 miles off the Florida coast, get away?"

Mr. Paterson shows Washington policy makers, secure in their belief that Cuba was inextricably dependent on the United States, persistently failing to appreciate the damaging consequences of Fulgencio Batista's corruption and repression, or the significance of Fidel Castro's revolutionary movement. He effectively refutes the view of some historians that the United States Government was passive or neutral in the struggle between the two men by chronicling the political, moral, economic and military support provided to Batista.

Despite this support, Mr. Paterson explains, Batista was an uncooperative client who resisted pressures for reform and then sabotaged the 1958 elections that the State Department hoped would ease him out of power. In any event, these pressures remained inconsistent and ineffective until the sudden crumbling of Batista's rule in late 1958 sent the Eisenhower Administration scrambling to replace him with some "third force" and prevent a Castro takeover. By that time, however, Batista was too dug in to be eased out, the Castroites were too powerful to give up and no viable third force was still standing.

Meanwhile, the United States' obsession with the Communist issue was a poor substitute for a serious effort to understand Fidel Castro's appeal and Fulgencio Batista's failings. As Mr. Paterson emphasizes, "During the period of insurrection, American officials searched more for signs of any Castroite flirtation with Communist dogmas than for the profound sources of Cuban discontents." Yet, he says, every time Washington investigated the issue, it concluded that Mr. Castro was not a Communist.

A particularly unflattering but colorful portrait emerges of Earl E. T. Smith, the United States Ambassador to Cuba during the two years before Batista's fall. Ambassador Smith, a wealthy investment banker and high-society figure who believed he knew Cuba well, ardently backed Batista and decided that Mr. Castro was a Communist -- in part because anyone who was anti-American must also be a Communist. He resisted all pressures from Washington to push Batista to reform and believed almost to the bitter end that Batista had the situation under control.

"Contesting Castro" does not delve deeply into the subtleties of Cuban politics in the 1950's or bring to life Fidel Castro in his rebel years. Nor does it develop substantially the broader context of the Eisenhower Administration's evolving anti-Communist policy toward Latin America. It succeeds admirably, though, in telling a story that is crucial to understanding the frigid standoff that has defined relations between the United States and Cuba for the last 30 years. With potentially turbulent times ahead for Cuba as the Castro regime confronts its own post-cold-war realities, the seemingly distant events of the 1950's may soon be of quite immediate relevance. Let us hope that whatever role the United States seeks to play in Cuba's future, it is based on a thorough understanding of that inglorious past.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section 7, Page 34 of the National edition with the headline: Backing the Wrong Tyrant. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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