The announcement by the Obama administration in the United States of the re-opening of diplomatic relations with Cuba shows that the contest between the irresistible force and the immovable obstacle has been won by the latter.
© Reuters/Enrique De La Osa
The restoration of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States has provoked enormous interest.
This is in no way surprising. Since the rupture in diplomatic relations in 1961 the United States and Cuba have been the most consistent adversaries on the international stage.
In that period relations between the United States and other countries with which it has had adversarial relationships such as Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, Iraq or Vietnam, have gone through ups and downs. This has not been true of relations between the United States and Cuba. Relations between them have always been bad.
This hostility between the United States and Cuba has been one of the most stable factors in international relations over the last half-century. Though its effect in Europe and elsewhere is mitigated by distance, this hostility has had an enormous influence in shaping the present political geography of Latin America especially.
The possibility that this hostility may change has therefore come to many people as a surprise if only because the general expectation was that there would be no significant improvement in relations between the two countries at least until the two Castro brothers, Fidel and Raul, had died.
What explains this enduring hostility and this abrupt shift in relations?
Will it endure or is it as many appear to think a trap the United States has laid for Cuba preparing the grounds for regime change there?
The breakdown in relations between the United States and Cuba was the consequence of the Castro Revolution of 1959. This was a revolution launched from the countryside against a corrupt oligarchic elite based in Havana.
That elite in turn had extremely close connections with the United States. These extended back decades to Cuba's liberation war against Spain in the 1890s. The United States intervened in that war in a manner that achieved for it a dominant position in Cuba right up to the point of Castro's revolution in 1959.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that throughout this period Cuba was essentially a protectorate of the United States.
Comment: It's the old argument: "If you have nothing to hide ...", but only the most gullible and naive (or corrupt) people really believe that. Imagine your neighbour having full access to your home, laptop, email, etc. Would you tolerate that?
Certainly not!