In another thread in GQ, RealityChuck remarked that the US does not officially recognize Cuba. I’ve heard that a number of times, but I can’t figure out why it’s the case.
I know Communism would have been one of the reasons prior to say, 1989. But with the fall of the Soviet Union, the cold war is basically over.
I do not wish to start a GD, but could someone explain to me in fairly neutral, non-inflammatory terms the reasoning behind the US not officially recognizing Cuba?
Even a pointer at the arguments advanced by advocates of this stance would be fine. Remember, I didn’t ask if this is a good policy…
I don’t have a cite, but in almost all of the articles I’ve read about our relations with Cuba it always come down to the fact that the Cuban-American population of Miami has some excellent lobbyists.
The US recognizes Cuba. It would be hard to ban cuban cigars if you didn’t recognize Cuba. But we don’t have diplomatic relations with them, for two reasons:
- They have a brutal communist dictator. (Batista was no saint either)
- They’re small enough so they don’t really matter.
The former Soviet bloc and China are of course major players in international goings-on, so we need diplomatic relations with them. And China assembles all our crap for cheap.
A friend of mine’s father worked for the US State Department in Cuba. Of course, since we don’t have diplomatic relations with Cuba, there’s no American embassy there. There’s just an American “interest” in another embassy. I think maybe it was the Swedish one. The American “interest” in the Swedish embassay was in a seperate, bigger building. 
Yes, the US DOES recognize Cuba (we still send the rent checks for the land in Guantanamo) – we just do not have “normal” diplomatic relations with them.
Considering we’ve even been able to get over it and reestablish reasonably civil relations with Vietnam, whose ruling government IS the one established by the people who cost us 57 thousand killed, hundreds of thousands physically and emotionally crippled, billions in treasure, and who abominably mistreated our POWs, and in the process we ended up causing untold troubles in our own society – we can only conclude:
(a) They are too small to really be worth courting (brutal dictator? Yeah, but like we’ve ever cared if the guy we’re dealing with is the scum of the Earth; Saddam was our pal for 10 years, remember?); and
(b) We must salute commitment and lobbying power of exile organizations like the Cuban American National Foundation. See this Miami Herald editorial to get a sense of the argument.
Essentially the Cuban-exile lobby will accept NOTHING other than TOTAL REGIME CHANGE, the complete fall and elimination of the existing communist government – and normalizing relations would mean that we accept the existence of that government and will try to nudge it into change, but not attempt to bring it down.
Since back in ‘61 we horribly fugged up on an initial promise to help them take Cuba back by force, US governments have felt pretty much obligated to hold the tough line on sanctions. Of course, since we are about the only ones actually maintaining sanctions against Cuba, while the rest of the freakin’ planet goes ahead and does business with them, we’re not being too damn effective in bringing down Castro…
The US terminated diplomatic relations with Cuba around the time Castro declared he was a communist. It was common procedure at the time: when China went communist, we didn’t recognize them and had no diplomatic relations.
In addition, the US set up an embargo to try to starve Cuba economically.
As time went on, more Cubans moved to the US. They hated Castro. About the time the US was thinking of normalizing diplomatic relations, the Cubans in the US became a political force. Because of that, the US has had to move very slowly and probably won’t change things until Castro is gone.
Why does the US not recognize Cuba?
Because it was wearing sunglasses.
Nah. It was the fake beard that fooled us.
If anyone holding political power in the US is reading this, I beg you, please remove the embargo. I want to be able to smoke my beloved Cuban Montecristo #2 cigars without breaking any laws. Just do like my wife and I do when we have a fight, pretend it never happened and start taking again. I’d vote for Al Sharpton as long as he would promise to lift the embargo.
Sorry, I know politics are forbidden in GQ but I need my cigars!!!
Still banned there, huh? Bummer.
In Martin Cruz Smith’s book Havana Bay, he describes Americans visiting Cuba by pleasure boat. Is this correct? Do American citizens therefore “illegally” visit Cuba?
I also read somewhere else that Cuba does not stamp tourists visas in order to prevent US retaliation against visitors…is this correct?
Yes, Americans do illegally visit Cuba. Usually via a third country, Canada or Mexico or something. And yes, Cuba doesn’t always stamp passports in order to protect Americans visiting.
From a distance all those little Carribean islands look the same.
Sheesh. Where am I/ I thought this was SDMB General Questions. You know, one of the ‘fact’ boards. But then I’d have expected the easy links to have been posted early on, and much less misinformation,
The US does recognize Cuba. James C. Cason is Chief of Mission there, and the State Department maintains an office in Havana (in the surprisingly large 7-story Swiss Embassy building), but not our own full diplomatic mission.
Maybe the best place to get the official US version is the US US State Department (This article is dated Dec 15, 2003)
Also, according to another State Department article: " The United States is now the largest foreign source of humanitarian aid for Cuba. Sales of medicine to Cuba have been legal since 1992; sales of food since 2000." (scroll down to the heading “U.S.-Cuban Relations” near the bottom of this long article)
Thanks everyone, especially friedo and JRDelirious.
Consider that the U.S. conducted a war in Vietnam, lost 55,000 soldiers and the current administration has recommended that we normalize all relations with Vietman. This all happened within the time of the embargo of Cuba. Huh?
There’s only one theory that makes any sense to me and it’s just my conjecture.
There must be evidence that Fidel Castro was involved in the assassination of JFK. There have been 8 presidents of different political affiliations and economic priorities yet none will deal with Castro. Is it an unstated policy (and rightfully so) that if you are involved in the assassination of an U.S. president you can forget about forgiveness?
I can’t believe that the anti-Castro lobby it that strong. The tobacco and gun lobbies have had major setback in that time and they are incredibly strong.
Certainly, as soon as Castro dies the U.S. will start to normalize relations. Of course, this will be bad news for Puerto Rico because major tourist dollars will be diverted to Cuba.
besides being a brutal dictatorship, supporting and funding guerrila groups in SA, having an abysmal human rights record, aiming missiles at us, etc., etc.
And we still acknowledge the CIA, Mafia, and Oliver Stone even though there is evidence they were involved in the JFK assassination. 
Any group of a few thousand dedicated, hardcore Republican voters in Florida can rightly claim to have put G.W. Bush in the White House. The Cubano-Americanos are one such group, and we’re unlikely to see any change in the US-Cuba position as long as Mr. Bush remains there.
Of course, there are a lot of governments with which we trade that fit that description. Have you ever heard of China? It’s getting difficult to find stuff in the U.S. that doesn’t say “Made in China.”
Why didn’t we recognize Cuba? Probably because they were allied with our enemy at the time. Why don’t we recognize them now? The answer is we why should we? Except for cigars what does Castro have to offer us for recognizing his regime?
Of course i was being a little sarcastic in the last post and there are problems with China and other countries. That discussion is not for this forum. The question was why don’t we recognize Cuba - and I gave, IMO, some valid reasons.
One major factor in keeping the status quo is the existence of Castro himself. If had died, retired, gotten replaced, etc., the push to normalize things would be nearly unstoppable. And it looks like he’s going to stay around for quite some time more.
Once Castro is gone, expect all sorts of changes, on both sides.
Agreed.