Secret meetings with Cuba finally pay off

Presidents frequently conduct sensitive diplomatic dialogues in secret, because the furor of public attention makes it politically impossible to reach the compromises necessary for agreement. These secret talks are often crucial for diplomatic advances — as we learned Wednesday with the stunning revelations about the impending talks between Washington and Havana that have been underway secretly for the past few months. President Barack Obama’s far-reading initiatives are reminiscent of the secret talks Henry Kissinger held with Beijing to lay the groundwork for President Richard M. Nixon’s historic diplomatic opening to China.

When the mere act of talking to an adversary is too politically sensitive, presidents can resort to private emissaries, despite the risks created by relying on amateur diplomats. Obama had help from both Canada and the Vatican in reaching these new agreements.

In our recent book, Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana, we uncovered literally dozens of secret diplomatic contacts and negotiations. Despite what Kissinger called the “perpetual antagonism” between the United States and Cuba, there is a rich and colorful history of dialogue between these two nations over the last 50 years.

There are lessons to be learned from this half-century of back-channel talks about what works and what doesn’t when conducting secret negotiations.

First, a history of animosity makes adversaries wary. Neither wants to appear weak by making concessions too easily. Goodwill gestures may go unrequited and the apparent obstinacy of one side or the other can doom a diplomatic process before it gets off the ground. When Fidel Castro was in power, for example, he worried constantly that any concession to U.S. demands would be read as weakness and lead to a redoubling of U.S. efforts to overthrow him.

When Castro sent a secret message to President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 offering to talk, he added the warning, “Tell the president he should not interpret my conciliatory attitude, my desire for discussions, as a sign of weakness.”

So Havana has typically wanted Washington to take not just the first step toward rapprochement, but the first several. “Fidel Castro wants to negotiate an improvement in relations with the U.S.,” stated one July 1975 classified CIA analysis. But “he is in no hurry,” “his demands will be stiff” and “he expects the U.S. to make the first formal move.”

Second, confidence-building measures can gradually alleviate such suspicions. Negotiators often start with small issues in hopes that resolving them can open the door to progress on bigger, more contentious problems. This approach seems logical — but with Cuba case, even significant progress on small issues has not led to normal relations.

The reason is timing. Clearing away the underbrush of secondary issues will only lead to major diplomatic breakthroughs if both sides have the political will to make the leap. In U.S.-Cuban relations, the timing has never been quite right – until now.

When Washington was most interested in normalization, Cuba placed a higher priority on its independent foreign policy in Africa and Latin America. When Havana was most interested in normalization — essentially since the end of the Cold War — Washington has seen little to gain.

Third, domestic politics is always a factor. Sometimes a crucial factor. Governments, even undemocratic ones, always face domestic constraints on their latitude in foreign policy. Successful diplomatic accords must meet not just the foreign policy interests of the two sides, but must also be politically defensible at home. Since the 1980s, the political clout of conservative Cuban-Americans has been a major obstacle to any significant improvement in U.S.-Cuban relations.

But their political influence is on the wane. In the past few years, second- and third-generation Cuban-American opinion has shifted toward a more moderate stance, making it politically safe for presidents to openly call for a changes in U.S. policy toward Cuba — as Obama has done repeatedly. And it has finally allowed for talks about opening full diplomatic relations.

When the United States sits at the bargaining table with a smaller, weak nation, it often makes demands that it would never make of an equal. The weaker power often insists on being treated as an equal, realpolitik notwithstanding. Cuba’s desire to be treated with full respect for its national sovereignty has been a constant theme in communications with Washington since 1959.

As Castro said to U.S. diplomats during secret 1978 negotiations, “Perhaps it is because the United States is a great power, it feels it can do what it wants. Perhaps it is idealistic of me, but I never accepted the universal prerogatives of the United States. I never accepted and never will accept the existence of a different law and different rules.”

Washington, on the other hand, has long felt entitled to do whatever realpolitik demands. The inability of U.S. policymakers to give up the idea that they should be able to negotiate the terms of Cuba’s domestic social and political system has long been an insurmountable obstacle.

However the most compelling lesson in the long history of U.S.-Cuban confrontation since Castro’s 1959 revolution was also, in some ways, the most surprising. Despite the CIA’s secret wars and assassination attempts against Castro, the Bay of Pigs, the Missile Crisis, Cuba’s support for revolution in Africa and Latin America and myriad lesser battles over the years, every U.S. president since Dwight D. Eisenhower has found reason to negotiate with Cuba. There has always been some common ground and some hope for settling differences at the bargaining table.

Over the years, negotiations have produced important successes ranging from prisoner releases to peace in southern Africa.

Now, after half a century of hostility, negotiations have finally moved Cuba and the United States back toward a normal relationship that can only benefit the people of both countries.