The Foreign Service Journal, May 2013

46 MAY 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL L ike Captain Ahab’s preoccupation with van- quishing Moby Dick, the threat posed by Fidel Castro drove U.S. policy in the Americas throughout the Cold War. My own involvement with Castro began as an undergraduate and continued through two tours in the Atlantic as a Navy officer and 31 years in the Foreign Service. Those years spanned most of the Cold War and included four assignments in Latin America, as well as a stint as a deputy assistant secretary in what was then the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs. As in the case of Ishmael’s Pequod , the ship of state on which I sailed pursued an obsession. I kept bumping up against events and threats that seemed to be Castro’s doing. Indeed, reflect- ing on my Foreign Service experience, it appears that no figure loomed larger in the formulation of U.S. policy in the Americas than Castro, our great white whale, against whom so much U.S. policy reacted. For our nation, locked in a global struggle with the Soviet Union, his improbable success in ousting a corrupt and harsh leader threatened to spread to other countries of the Americas, most of which had similar political and social prob- lems. Unlike Ahab and the Pequod , however, the United States survived the encounter—but so has the whale. In retrospect, the U.S. diplomatic, economic and military reactions to Castro and his allies throughout Latin America turned out well. Democracy and economic development now thrive widely. Our policy’s big- gest failure, in my judgment, was in Cuba itself, where it helped perpetuate the Castros’ authoritarian regime. “Communism Will Be Dead” Like others of my generation, I welcomed the arrival of Fidel Castro in January 1959. In reasoning that is echoed in reactions to the Arab Spring, it seemed to me that any alternative to the unsavory dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista would be an improve- FEATURE Paul D. Taylor’s 31-year Foreign Service career (1963-1994), spent mostly in Latin America, included appointments as ambassador to the Dominican Republic and as deputy assistant secretary in the Inter- American Affairs Bureau (now the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Af- fairs). Prior to joining the Foreign Service, he was a Navy officer during the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Since retiring from the Service, he has taught strategy, international economics and Latin American affairs at the Naval War College. FIDEL CASTRO ASMOBY DICK: DISPATCHES FROMTHE COLDWAR In this reminiscence, an FSO traces U.S. policy in the Americas from the 1950s through the 1980s. BY PAUL D. TAY LOR