Word: soviet
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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When Castro first took power in 1960, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was in danger of heating up. Cuba would have made an ideal base for Soviet missiles, and the U.S. policy of isolating Cuba economically and politically was intended to dissuade Castro from cooperating with the Soviets. Also, the embargo was intended to turn the Cuban population against Castro...
After the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was quite clear that a Soviet base in Cuba would spell disaster for American security. The United States's hard-line policy grew even harder, faithfully perpetuated by a succession of presidents, both Democrats and Republicans. Through Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, through the Vietnam War, Woodstock, disco, and Reaganomics, Castro still ruled in Havana, a perennial thorn in the side of the United States despite the crushing weight of the trade embargo...
Then, with little warning, the Soviet empire collapsed, shedding its Baltic republics, and leaving small Communist dictators around the world without sponsors. Suddenly, Castro was not a lethal security threat, but only a second-rate, graying tyrant on a small island off the coast of Florida...
...security objectives have almost always taken precedence over even the most egregious violations of human liberty. Castro is a bad man, but he is hardly the worst, and he would not have received such strong treatment from the U.S. if there had been no threat of a Soviet military presence in Cuba...
Deborah E. Kopald '95 spent the summer researching energy issues pertaining to the Former Soviet Union for a Cambridge-based consulting firm...