CIPI Paper by Philip Brenner on the End of Ideology in US Policy

 

The End of Ideology in the Making of U.S. Policy toward Cuba

By Philip Brenner

American University

Prepared for Presentation at the XXIII Edition in a Series de Conversations, “Cuba in the Foreign Policy of the United States of America,” with the theme: “The Return of Trump: Current and Future Impact on Cuba,” 16 December 2025

 

Introduction

  Cuba’s rejection of U.S. hemispheric hegemony after 1959 took on a special meaning in the context of the Cold War, because U.S. policymakers’ perceptions of threats to U.S. power became more important than the reality of those threats. After the Cold War ended, the influence of U.S. ideology on U.S. policy diminished, although it was still evident as a justification for U.S. hostility. This paper examines whether ideology has diminished even further since the start of the Trump administration, and may no longer be a meaningful factor in shaping U.S. policy toward Cuba.

 

Cold War Ideology

National security analyst Gregory Treverton summarized the prevailing view among policymakers as late as 1989 in observing that “Cuban actions both in and beyond Latin America inject that country to the center of East–West, and U.S.–Soviet, relations. Whatever the fact, it is impossible for Americans not to regard Cuba as a kind of Soviet ‘hired gun’ in the Third World.”[1] In fact, the Soviet leaders did not perceive that they had Cuba leader Fidel Castro or Cuba under their control at all, and they repeatedly conveyed their displeasure about Cuban actions between 1965 and 1968. In turn, by 1968 Cuban leaders believed that the Soviet Union was engaged in efforts to replace them with the former leaders of the Popular Socialist Party.[2]

Despite the reality of the Soviet-Cuban relationship, Cuba’s rejection of U.S. hemispheric hegemony took on a special meaning in the context of the Cold War, because policymakers’ threat perceptions were guided by a set of ideological assumptions, established shortly after World War II, which divided the world into two hostile camps, the western one dominated by the United States and the eastern one dominated by the Soviet Union. Policymakers at the time believed that most global events could be tallied on a “zero-sum” balance sheet: a gain for the Soviet Union would necessarily be a loss for the United States, and vice-versa. They thus believed that U.S. policy toward a country should be guided by the single criterion of whether or not it stood with the United States against an imagined global communism whose head lay in Moscow.[3]  In this global war all areas of the world were of equal importance, as officials assumed that U.S. interests formed a seamless web. Just as a tear in a fish net will let the fish escape regardless of where the hole forms, so the resulting U.S. global containment strategy assumed that a defeat anywhere was a defeat everywhere.

This assumption rested on the view that global communism was monolithic and aggressive. If the United States did not defend supposed interests in its own backyard, then Soviet agents might be encouraged to attack U.S. interests in Asia and Africa, or even in Europe. As the dominoes fell so would U.S. security. Political scientists Peter Smith and Ana Covarrubias succinctly summarize the U.S. outlook: “In the eyes of Cold Warriors, the consolidation of any left-wing regime in the Western Hemisphere would have dire and dangerous implications for U.S. national security and for the global distribution of power.”[4] 

Policymakers were thus primed to believe that Cuba’s challenge would create the perception of U.S. weakness, regardless of whether the Soviet Union backed Cuba’s initial forays in Latin America. Cold War ideology took full control of U.S. policy toward Cuba, because the small island seemed to pose an enormous security problem, well beyond the harm it could inflict on particular U.S. interests in the hemisphere. For example, a May 1961 interagency task force report emphasized that Cuba and Fidel Castro himself were threats because of the damage they could inflict on U.S. prestige, and hence power, rather than as a result of the harm they might pose to particular U.S. interests.[5]

 

Post Cold-War Ideology

While the Cold War ideological framework was perhaps the major factor in explaining U.S. policy toward Cuba for the first thirty years of the Revolution, this ideological underpinning of U.S. policy did not disappear completely when the Cold War ended. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, some U.S. policymakers believed the global order had arrived at a “unipolar moment.” From this perspective, the United States would lead the entire world – not merely the Western Hemisphere – as a hegemonic power.[6]

It is important to distinguish the idea of hegemony from that of imperialism. Both require a country with extraordinary military and economic power. An imperial state seeks power in order to dominate other states and extract wealth from them, or prevent them from gaining power that would potentially threaten the imperial state’s ability to dominate. In contrast, a state that aspires to hegemony seeks power in order to develop and maintain a system from which it benefits, largely because it shapes the rules that govern the system. An imperial power tends to fear and avoid any loss, because such a loss would seem to threaten its control and might encourage further losses. In contrast to an imperial state, a hegemonic power is willing to accept occasional losses that are generated by the system’s rules because it recognizes that other countries must believe the rules governing the system are fair. For example, in the 1990s, the United States was willing to abide by World Trade Organization decisions that did not favor the United States.[7]

From this point of view, Cuba continued to be an irritant if not a challenge to the U.S. aspiration of being the global hegemon, and in effect to the post-Cold War order itself. Even though Cuba was a member of the World Trade Organization, it rejected participation in the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank – key institutions by which the United States shaped the world order it hoped to stabilize. Cuba also opposed U.S. plans for a Western Hemisphere free trade pact (the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas), and in 2004 established an alternative, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA). In addition, as the United States sought to make electoral democracy a defining characteristic for each state in this new global order, Cuba’s exclusion from the Inter-American Democratic Charter made it a pariah state.

Thus in the immediate post-Cold War period, ideology did continue to play a role in shaping U.S. policy toward Cuba, as the U.S. vision of hegemonic domination was an ideological lens through which many policymakers defined U.S. national interests. However, domestic U.S. politics appears to have been an equal if not more important factor in this period.[8] As Saul Landau and I assessed in 1990:

With the Cold War against the Soviets nearly over, and ideological zealots replaced by pragmatic ‘realists’ in the White House, Cuba's importance on the grand strategy

board has diminished. Although belligerent rhetoric makes the Bush Administration's policy seem similar to Reagan's, the White House today has less interest and concern than its predecessor in the revolution 90 miles from the Florida coast. U.S. goals--the destruction or

surrender of the revolution--remain the same. But the administration has allowed the policy ball to move into Congress's court.[9]

In the legislature, the Cuban American lobby had acquired significant political power through carefully targeted campaign donations and the arrival of Cuban American members in the House of Representatives. By 1991 they succeeded in passing the Mack Amendment, which would have removed a 1975 executive order allowing third country subsidiaries of U.S. corporations to trade with Cuba, and would have prohibited ships that docked in Cuba from coming to the United States for six months. President George H.W. Bush vetoed the legislation in response to demands from U.S. trading partners such as Canada. But in 1992, at a point of desperation in his presidential campaign, Governor Bill Clinton endorsed the Cuban Democracy Act or CDA -- a new version of the Mack Amendment -- sponsored by Robert Torricelli, a New Jersey Democratic Representative. In turn, Clinton received nearly $275,000 in Cuban American campaign donations.[10] President Bush then felt compelled to sign the CDA, fearing that otherwise he might not be able to carry Florida and New Jersey in the 1992 election. Similarly in 1996, President Clinton felt compelled to sign the 1996 Helms-Burton Law (the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996) in his pursuit of Florida votes for his re-election campaign. The two laws became the major constraint on U.S. policy toward Cuba for the next two decades. 

 

The Role of  Ideology Diminishes Further

The importance of domestic policy became even more potent during the administration of George W. Bush. Cuban exiles had cemented Florida’s electoral votes for Bush – in voting for him and by disrupting the re-count in Miami -- which enabled him to claim victory in the 2000 election. But by 2003 he had given them little reward, which openly angered them. In response, Bush created the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, which, in its own words, “sought a more proactive, integrated, and disciplined approach to undermine the survival strategies of the Castro regime and contribute to conditions that will help the Cuban people hasten the dictatorship’s end.”[11]

The last five chapters of the report described a post-Castro, U.S.-governed transition to a market democracy that were reminiscent of halcyon days in the early twentieth century when U.S. proconsul governors ruled Cuba. While few analysts treated the pie-in-the-sky transition plans as if they were serious, their attention was drawn to the first chapter – “Hastening Cuba’s Transition” – because it contained several proposals that the president accepted and put into immediate effect. These included: restrictions on family visits, so that Cuban-Americans would be able to return to the island only once every three years and would be allowed to spend no more than $50 per day on lodging and food; restrictions on remittances, so that U.S. citizens would be permitted to send money only to immediate family members in Cuba; restrictions on educational travel, so that U.S. colleges and universities would be licensed only for programs lasting at least ten weeks; increased funds for political opponents of the government inside Cuba and for U.S.-based programs designed to support dissidents; and stepped-up propaganda efforts, using U.S. military aircraft to transmit Radio and TV Martí broadcasts to Cuba.[12] This comprised a wish list that hard-line Cuban Americans has been advocating for more than a decade.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama focused on the unpopularity within the Cuban American community of Bush’s draconian policy. He promised to reverse some of the measures that constrained family engagement, and he won almost a majority of Florida’s Cuban vote. As promised, early in his administration, he ended restrictions on their travel and the sending of remittances. In 2013, when he directed his Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes to pursue negotiations with Cuba, he appears to have been motivated largely by a hope of increasing U.S. influence in Latin America. According to Rhodes, he also hoped an opening might catalyze “reforms on the island,” which suggests ideology did play a small role in his initiative.[13]  

 

Trump and the Return of Power Politics

Trump’s Western Hemisphere foreign policy emerged with clarity when John Bolton became National Security Adviser in 2018. While Trump issued the bellicose National Security Presidential Memorandum NSPM–5 (entitled ‘‘Strengthening the Policy of the United States Toward Cuba’’) in June 2017, he kept in place nearly all of the agreements the Obama administration had completed with Cuba. He imposed new sanctions only in September, after members of Congress repeatedly demanded the White House respond to claims by U.S. diplomats that they had experienced health anomalies associated with the so-called Havana Syndrome. But their symptoms started occurring in November 2016, so that Trump could have used their health as an excuse for a more hostile policy from his first day in office. His main action in 2017 was to reduce the size of the Havana embassy’s staff and insist that Cuba also reduce the size of its embassy’s staff in Washington, which had the effect of limiting migration.

Bolton, though, sought a muscular foreign policy in Latin America. In November 2018 he included Cuba in what he called a “Troika of Tyranny,” asserting that “this triangle of terror stretching from Havana to Caracas to Managua, is the cause of immense human suffering, the impetus of enormous regional instability, and the genesis of a sordid cradle of communism in the Western Hemisphere.”[14]  He promised the United States would aggressively pursue the overthrow of each country’s government. In the next two years, the Trump administration followed up with a series of sanctions that culminated in returning Cuba to the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism and in choosing not to waive Title III of the Helms-Burton law. While Bolton claimed that the policy was rooted in an ideological commitment to democracy, his and Trump’s support of authoritarian governments belied their pretense that the policy was engendered by a desire to promote democracy. As with their general approach to foreign policy, hostility towards Cuba (as well as toward Venezuela and Nicaragua) was based on their quest for dominance and Cuba’s refusal to acquiesce to U.S. power.

In addition, it was not mere coincidence that Bolton announced the policy in Miami. He pointedly observed: “I’m here on behalf of the President because we’ve got some important policy concerns to address with respect to Latin America, and I couldn’t think of a better place really to try and discuss them.” Thus, in addition to asserting the right to dominate the Western Hemisphere, a second factor that shaped the policy was domestic electoral politics, namely, appealing to emigres in Florida from Cuba and Venezuela to secure their votes.

Given that President Joe Biden essentially maintained Trump’s policy until his last few weeks in office, one might argue that his Cuba policy was rooted in power politics also. But Biden actually devoted little attention to Latin America except for concerns about immigration and drugs which were, in effect, domestic electoral concerns. Similarly, the ultimate source of his Cuba policy was his misguided hope that antagonism towards Cuba would ultimately gain votes for Democrats in Florida, and even help him win re-election in 2024.[15]

When he returned to the presidency in 2025, Trump immediately reversed Biden’s relaxation of sanctions. No surprise here. The surprise was that he did not do much more. In June 2025, he re-issued the 2017 National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM-5), but did little else beyond adding some Cuban officials and hotels to sanction lists and discontinuing the issuance of visas for family visits and ending a humanitarian parole program.[16] While Trump asserted in NSPM-5 that “I will seek to promote a stable, prosperous, and free country for the Cuban people,” Cuba policy seemed to be guided more by fear that worsening economic conditions and more U.S. pressure might lead to an uncontrollable and unwanted influx of migrants from Cuba.

To be sure, there have been some policymakers who have sought to resurrect a new Cold War ideological justification for U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere. For example, in his February 2025 posture statement, Admiral Alvin Holsey, Commander of the U.S. Southern Command, asserted that “China’s long-term global campaign to become the world’s dominant geostrategic power is evident in the Western Hemisphere.”[17] Identifying such an alleged threat unquestionably served the interest of his usually under-supported Command. But the November 2025 National Security Strategy emphasizes the economic “inroads” made by “non-Hemispheric competitors,” which it proposes to counter with more assertive economic initiatives.

Notably, the National Security Strategy does not even mention Cuba, and the document may not even guide policy. It seems to be a patchwork of assertions – some contradicting others -- aimed at  satisfying different interests within the Trump administration. But its general thrust is consistent with Trump’s goal of global retrenchment and establishing the United States as a regional hegemon. It boldly states, “we will assert and enforce a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine.[18] As with the original Monroe Doctrine, and the Roosevelt and Wilson Corollaries, this is not a statement of ideology. It is an assertion of crude power in pursuit of extracting wealth and privilege. Indeed, in the manner of would-be emperors before him, Trump’s actions in the region may also reflect his whims of the moment and corrupt interests. For example, it would be difficult to explain Trump’s pardon of former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, or similarly his effort to manipulate the verdict against former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, as evidence of a coherent ideology.

Cuba policy now seems to fit the general pattern. Cuba is a nuisance, an “infernal little republic” as President Theodore Roosevelt remarked, because it will not succumb to U.S. dictates. Trump and Rubio may invoke “democracy” in NSPM-5, declaring that the “Cuban people have long suffered under a Communist regime that suppresses their legitimate aspirations for freedom.” But Trump’s support for brutal, authoritarian rulers, and his hollowing out of democratic institutions, procedures and norms in the United States, make a mockery of any claim that he has professed about a genuine concern for democracy. Power politics and domestic political interests govern U.S. policy toward Cuba. The role of ideology has been declining for more than thirty years, and it is now at its end. Ideology is no longer a meaningful factor in shaping U.S. policy toward Cuba policy.

 

Notes

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[1] Gregory F. Treverton, “Cuba in U.S. Security Perspective,” in U.S.–Cuban Relations in the 1990s, eds. Jorge I. Domínguez and Rafael Hernández (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1989), p. 71. For example, in 1967 President Lyndon Johnson thought he could curtail Cuban support for liberation movements in Latin America by asking Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin to pressure Fidel. See: “Telephone Conversation Between President Johnson and Former President Eisenhower,” June 25, 1967, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964–1968, Volume XIV, Soviet Union, doc 237 at: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v14/d237.

[2] James G. Blight and Philip Brenner, Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba’s Struggle with the Superpowers After the Missile Crisis (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002), chapter 4.

[3] These assumptions were embodied in a 1950 policy paper prepared for and adopted by the National Security Council, “NSC-68: United States Objectives and Programs for National Security.” See: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950, National Security Affairs; Foreign Economic Policy, Volume I, Document 85, April 14, 1950; available at: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1950v01/d85. Also: Ernest R. May, American Cold War Strategy: Interpreting NSC 68 (Boston: Bedford Books, 1993).

[4] Peter H. Smith and Ana Covarrubias, Talons of the Eagle: Latin America, the United States, and the World, 5th  ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022), p. 160.

[5] “Paper Prepared for the National Security Council by an Interagency Task Force on Cuba, Washington, May 4, 1961, FRU.S. 1961-1963, Vol 10, Document No. 202; at: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v10/d202.

[6] Hal Brands, Making the Unipolar Moment: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Rise of the Post-Cold War Order (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016).

[7] For example, see World Trade Dispute Settlement DS174: “European Communities — Protection of Trademarks and Geographical Indications for Agricultural Products and Foodstuffs,” at: https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds174_e.htm.

[8] Philip Brenner, Patrick J. Haney and Walter Vanderbush, “The Confluence of Domestic and International Interests:  U.S. Policy Toward Cuba, 1998-2001,” International Studies Perspectives, May 2002.

[9] Philip Brenner and Saul Landau,  “Passive Aggressive,” NACLA Report on the Americas, 24:3 (November 1990), p. 14.

[10] William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh, Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations Between Washington and Havana (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2014), pp. 270-71;  Walt Vanderbush and Patrick J Haney, “Policy toward Cuba in the Clinton Administration,” Political Science Quarterly, Fall 1999.

[11] The report is available at:  https://www.american.edu/centers/latin-american-latino-studies/upload/bush-commission-report.pdf.

[12] This paragraph is drawn from Soraya M. Castro Mariño and Philip Brenner, “The George W. Bush-Castro Years,” in Fifty Years of Revolution: Perspectives on Cuba, the United States, and the World, eds. Soraya M. Castro Mariño and Ronald W. Pruessen (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012), p. 306.

[13] Ben Rhodes, The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House ( New York: Random House, Kindle Edition, 2018), p. 212.

[14] “Remarks by National Security Advisor Ambassador John R. Bolton on the Administration’s Policies in Latin America,” November 2, 2018; available at: https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-national-security-advisor-ambassador-john-r-bolton-administrations-policies-latin-america/.

[15] Kelly Hayes, “DNC launches ad promoting Joe Biden support for Cuban liberty,” Florida Politics, July 25, 2021; at: https://floridapolitics.com/archives/443447-dnc-launches-new-ad-promoting-joe-biden-support-for-cuba/. Also see: Guillermo J. Grenier and Qing Lai, “THE 2024: FIU CUBA POLL: HOW CUBAN AMERICANS in

South Florida View U.S. Policies Towards Cuba, Critical National Issues and the Upcoming Elections,” Cuban Rersearch Institute, Florida International University, October 2024; at: https://cri.fiu.edu/research/fiu-cuba-poll/the-2024-fiu-cuba-poll-report-final.pdf.

[16] William M. LeoGrande, “Trump Appears to Move off Regime Change Approach to Cuba,” Foreign Policy, July 10, 2025, at: https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/07/10/trump-cuba-regime-change-united-states/; “National Security Presidential Memorandum/NSPM-5,” June 30, 2025, at: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/06/national-security-presidential-memorandum-nspm-5/.

[17] “Statement Of Admiral Alvin Holsey Commander, United States Southern Command Before the 119th Congress Senate Armed Services Committee,” 13 February 2025; at: https://www.southcom.mil/Portals/7/Documents/Posture%20Statements/2025_SOUTHCOM_Posture_Statement_FINAL.pdf.

[18] National Security Strategy of the United States of America, The White House, November, 2025, p. 5 (available at: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf. Also see: Jack Nicas, “The ‘Donroe Doctrine’: Trump’s Bid to Control the Western Hemisphere,” New York Times, November 17, 2025; at: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/world/americas/trump-latin-america-monroe-doctrine.html. Also see: Jordana Timerman, “Un Imperio Sin Pretextos,” Le Monde Diplomatique, Edicion 318, diciembre 2025; at: https://www.eldiplo.org/318-las-garras-de-estados-unidos-sobre-america-latina/un-imperio-sin-pretextos/.