▲ (From left to right) Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz; the island’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel; former president Raúl Castro and Commander Ramiro Valdés at the celebration, on Friday, of the 71st anniversary of the assault on the Moncada Barracks in the province of Sancti Spíritus, Cuba, an episode that marked the beginning of the armed struggle against the dictatorship.Photo Ap
“C
uba, as he liked to observe Former Foreign Service member Wayne S. Smith, appears to have the same effect on American governments as the full moon on werewolves.”
Smith dedicated his career – inside and outside government – to promoting the cause of dialogue, diplomacy and normal relations between Washington and Havana.
He saw the fruit of his tireless efforts when then-President Barack Obama began normalizing relations in 2014, only for Donald Trump to reverse course and return to the failed policy of hostility and regime change.
At the time of Smith’s death on June 28, 2024, at the age of 91, the cause he championed—the restoration of diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana—remains as paramount and elusive as ever.
As a young diplomat, Smith was sent to Havana just months before the triumph of Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959. When the Dwight Eisenhower administration broke off relations in January 1961, Smith was one of the last U.S. officials to leave, taking with him the U.S. flag that had flown over the embassy.
Eighteen years later he returned as senior official in the interests section of Washington, reopened as part of the Carter administration’s growing, if hesitant, efforts to improve relations.
In a lengthy and clever options memo, titled Possible steps to improve relations with CubaSmith recommended a wide range of economic, cultural, military and diplomatic actions to move US policy toward normalization of relations.
He proposed lifting the blockade on food and medicine, which he described as inadmissible. He argued in favor of opening the door to select Cuban exports, including the renowned tobacco products (of which he was knowledgeable). He suggested an exhibition baseball game in Havana. Given the Cubans’ fanaticism for that sport, he argued, baseball diplomacy would emphasize the affinities between our two nations. The Soviet Union, he noted, He doesn’t play baseball.
Smith was one of the first officials to identify the advantages to U.S. security interests of collaborating with Cuba in the fight against drug trafficking. It seems to me an initiative that only the mafia could strongly object to.wrote.
When Reagan administration officials misinterpreted Cuba’s willingness to negotiate over Central America and threatened Castro with military force, Smith said threats would get them nowhere. Cubans have seen this beforehe wrote in a cable to Washington, and they are not likely to be any more receptive today than before..
He so disgusted with the mendacity of his own government that he refused an ambassadorial appointment on principle and resigned from the Foreign Service.
Leaving government freed him to publicly advocate for a more rational White House policy, which he did for more than 30 years, through countless op-eds, reports, and policy proposals. (He also wrote about Cuba in The Nation). He traveled frequently to the island to hold meetings and give lectures. For him, the freedom to travel to the island was a constitutional right. In December 1994, he organized the visit of a delegation of academics without the mandatory U.S. license, with the intention of having them fined so that he could challenge the restrictions in court.
A decade later, he created and chaired the Emergency Coalition to Defend Educational Travel (ECFDET), which filed a lawsuit against George W. Bush’s new restrictions on academic programs in Cuba. The suit was dismissed on national security grounds.
Wayne Smith’s penultimate visit to Cuba remains his most emotional: as part of the December 17, 2014 agreement between Barack Obama and Raúl Castro to normalize bilateral ties, formal diplomatic relations were restored in the summer of 2015. Accompanied by his daughter, Melinda, Smith attended the ceremony reopening the American embassy—the same building he had closed as a young attaché in 1961. Melinda recalls how, as she walked with her father to the embassy, Cubans in the streets would hold out their hands to him, shouting at him, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Thank you, Smith, thank you! The raising of the American flag to reopen the embassy represented the pinnacle of his life’s work, and he wept as the banner rose up the flagpoleMelinda recalls.
But the recognition and gratitude of the people for that work and for his personal sacrifice was what he appreciated most and he retained it until the day of his death.
Wayne Smith was prescient about what steps could begin to improve relations between the two countries, and many of his recommendations were eventually adopted. Baseball exhibition games were held under the Clinton and Obama administrations. U.S. Coast Guard cooperation with Cuba on anti-drug trafficking began under the Clinton administration, and was so successful that every president since has maintained it.
Food and medicine exports to Cuba were legalized (with limits) in the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 and the Trade Sanctions Reform Act of 2000. Even Cuban cigars can appear in the United States if they are produced by private farmers. However, what Henry Kissinger called the perpetual hostility The rift between Washington and Havana remains in place. Even as President Joe Biden has rolled back some of the draconian economic sanctions imposed by Donald Trump, he has maintained others, contributing to the current economic and humanitarian crisis on the island, a crisis that has forced nearly a million Cubans to leave their homeland in the largest exodus since 1959.
The fundamental failure of Biden’s Cuba policy is the failure to fulfill his 2020 campaign promise to return to former President Obama’s normalization policy. Instead, his policy has remained anchored in the traditional framework of hostility and regime change that he inherited from Trump.
The result is a dysfunctional hybrid policy, which pretends to be Tough on the regime, but gentle on the peopleas Brian Nichols, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, put it. As if it were possible to cripple the Cuban economy with sanctions without impoverishing the people of the island.
The reasons why Wayne Smith so often argued for normalisation are still relevant today. The policy of hostility and sanctions has failed to produce improvements in human rights or democracy, despite being in place for more than 60 years.
Washington’s quest for regime change has fostered a state of siege mentality among Cuban leaders, making them even less tolerant of internal opposition.
By stifling Cuban politics, sanctions reduce the standard of living on the island, forcing people to leave and thereby exacerbating migration problems in the United States. A policy of hostility limits Washington’s ability to cooperate with Cuba on issues of mutual concern, such as transnational crime, environmental protection, climate change, and public health. It can be argued that embargoed travel limits violate the right of American citizens to travel and restrict cultural exchanges. Trade limits deprive American companies of trade and investment opportunities.
Finally, American hostility encourages Cuba to turn to Washington’s global rivals, Russia and China, for assistance and security—even if they don’t play baseball. It has been a policy, as Wayne Smith liked to say, that has reached new heights of ridiculousness.
It’s better as an ally
Smith titled his memoirs The Closest Enemy, which captures the irrationality inherent in the perpetual hostility between two neighbors so closely linked by history and culture.
A new U.S. president will have the opportunity to reimagine and reshape relations with Cuba in ways that better serve the interests of the United States and the Cuban people. Whoever that new president is, he or she should pay tribute to the legacy of Wayne Smith and his wise counsel on how to rebuild the bridges between the United States and Cuba that were hastily burned down so many years ago.
*Peter Kornbluh directs the Cuba Documentation Project of the National Security Archive, an organization of the University of
George Washington in Washington, United States.
William M. LeoGrande is Professor of Government at American University and co-author with Peter Kornbluh of Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana (University of North Carolina Press, 2015).
Originally published in The Nation
Translation: Jorge Anaya
