An Analysis on Cuban Overseas Intervention Policy

Since the victory of Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution in January 1959, Cuba has received international attention in view of the advent of the first socialist regime in Latin America. In the aspect of international relations Cuba is a small country but it has a big country's foreign policy. It has tried to carry out such a policy since the beginning of the revolution, but only in the second half of the 1970s did it have the condition-internal resources, lack of U.S. opposition, and an African context that welcomed what Cuba seemed able to provide a visible and important actor actually shaping the course of events. In the process of such a policy, it, despite Cuba's resource limitation has maintained more diplomatic missions, inteligence operatives, and military advisers and troops abroad, especially in the Third World covering Africa, Central America and Caribbean Basin, than other developing nations. What are main factors that have influenced Havana's internalistic or globalistic foreign policy behavior from the second half of 1970s to the present? And how can we define the characteristic of its concrecte policy realized in the Third World? One school of thought holds that Cuba's foreign policies and activities are essentially Soviet-directed. It might be called the "surrogate thesis." A second line of interpretation maintains that Cuba has its autonomous foreign policy motivated by ideology. One might call it "autonomous thesis." A third school of interpretation of Cuba's behavior atresses factors of economic and pragmatic necessity. That is "economic-pragmatic thesis." I think that each of these interpretations provides a useful but only partial insight into the matter. Therefore, it will be more logical to analyze Cuban foreign policy on the basis of complexities combined by the mentioned three elements than on the basis of only one element. The most important goal of Cuban foreign policy is to secure the survival of revolutionary regime and to realize ideological purposes. Obviously these two goals are very important, but don't explain the dynamics of Cuban foreign policy satisfactorily. Hence in order to explain cuban behavior more usefully, it, in addition to these two elements is necessary to view it in terms of Castro's particular world view and mindset ; his power motivations and strategic relationship with Soviet Union and the major institutional interests of his regime. In conclusion, since the establishment of Castro regime, an autonomous characteristic reflecting this particular world view and mindset combined with nationalistic and Marxist-Leninist elements has been dorminant in its foreign policy. In case of African policy, we might to a certain extent see surrogate characteristic of Cuban policy reflecting Cuba-Soviet relationship, but we have to understand this in the context of the first characteristic. More recently, especially after the early 1980s, Cuba stresses pragmatic elements coping with internal and external environment changes