Leasing Guantanamo Bay

[Dunderman]

Cecil says that the US has a naval base on the soil of one of its enemies because the base was established while the countries were still on friendly terms, and it’s stayed there since.

How can this possible be the case? How can Castro’s Cuba be bound by a contract between the US and the Cuba that Castro overthrew? What laws regulate stuff like this? What would happen if Cuba refused to honour the lease (probable answer: war with the US)?

[Dragonnmann03]

Sounds a bit like squatters rights to me.
What is Fidel going to do?? Evict the U.S. military.
I wonder if he would have to come to the U.S. to file the papers!

[Duck_Duck_Goose]

http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay

The lease was arranged through two agreements signed in 1903 and a treaty of 1934.

< snip >

The Cuban Government strongly denounces the treaty on grounds that the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, 1959 declares in its article 52 that a treaty is void if its conclusion has been procured by the threat or use of force. In this case by the inclusion, in 1903, of the Platt Amendment in the Cuban Constitution. The Cuban Convention was warned not to modify the Amendment and was told that the US troops would not leave Cuba until its terms had been adopted as a condition from US to grant independence.

So, IANA international law specialist, but it looks to me like you can “denounce” a previous administration’s treaty all you want, but if ya wanna actually wriggle out of it, you’re gonna have to either file a lawsuit of some kind at The Hague or someplace like that, or go to war.

Or console yourself by cutting off the water and refusing to cash the checks, as Fidel has done.

[John_W.Kennedy]

How can Castro’s Cuba be bound by a contract between the US and the Cuba that Castro overthrew?

Partly because it is the behavior expected of a legitimate government. The entire treaty system relies on treaties surviving changes in regimes. (For a somewhat parallel case, consider the too-little-known fact that British law still applies in the US wherever it hasn’t been officially changed.)

Cuba isn’t being greatly harmed by GTMO (if the US wished to use it to mount an invasion, it would have done so long since), and has no hope of creating a navy large enough to make practical use of it, while handing it over to the Soviets back in the day would have meant nuclear war.

So Castro makes the best use of it that he can: as something to bitch about.

[Markxxx]

I know in the days of open borders the base probably was an economic benefit to the Cuban communities around it. Does it effect them any today? And did it help the economy of the Cuban communities when it was an open border (pre-Castro)?

[KenGr]

Here is a 5 year old article about works at GTMO:
http://64.21.33.164/CNews/y98/feb98/10e4.htm

I found more recent articles that said there are now 10 “grandfathered” workers left. They have salaries that are huge by Cuban standards. Also, the retired workers are paid US pensions that also greatly exceed normal Cuban incomes. So, Cuba is still getting quite a benefit from the base.