The Foreign Service Journal, May 2013

50 MAY 2013 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that U.S. ColdWar policy had its most glaring failure in Cuba itself. sionism, personified by Castro’s threat, served as the driver. Subsequently, as a deputy assistant secretary in the Inter- American Bureau, I co-chaired the CBI Policy Committee and saw Guatemala and the Dominican Republic begin to prosper through enhanced trade opportunities, often with the contribu- tion of U.S. investors who provided the technology and organiza- tional expertise that the Alliance for Progress had lacked. During this assignment, I accompanied Vice President George H. W. Bush to Guatemala in January 1986 for the presi- dential inauguration of Vinicio Cerezo. By then, military govern- ments throughout the hemisphere had permitted elections, and popularly chosen presidents had succeeded them. The occasion was full of democratic euphoria. Among the attendees, however, was Fidel Castro, the longest-serving dictator in the hemisphere. What still strikes me as perverse is that Castro was the man most of these elected presidents wanted to stand with for photo- graphs. He remained a celebrity, apparently admired for resist- ing the United States. Assigned to the Dominican Republic as chief of mission in 1988, I found a country without a significant terrorist threat and an opportunity to wrap up one legacy of the Cold War. After gaining the presidency, Juan Bosch had been seen as too cozy with Castro. He was overthrown in a coup d’etat sup- ported by Washington in 1963, and had remained off limits to the embassy. By the time we arrived, U.S. policy in support of democracy as a counter to Marxism had pushed for the ouster of Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay and Augusto Pinochet in Chile. If for no other reason, consistency required recognition of the right of the Dominican people to choose their leaders without a U.S. filter, and the diminished threat of Soviet interference in the region made this possible. So we were able to resume contacts with Bosch on the same basis as those with other politicians. Time to Declare Victory The captains of the U.S. ship of state did not follow their obsession, like Ahab, to their own destruction. Were they, none- theless, mistaken to be so preoccupied by Castro? Perhaps the United States exaggerated the challenge, but policymakers faced Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes (Rebel Armed Forces) apparently intended to kidnap him in order to negotiate an exchange, but instead shot Mein when he attempted to escape. The 1979 victory of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua had heart- ened Marxists elsewhere in Central America and afforded them new opportunities for logistical support and training. On my first weekend as chargé d’affaires, guerrillas attacked the chancery on a Saturday just before 10 p.m. At that hour, their 28 rounds of automatic weapons fire were intended more to make a statement than to kill Americans, but an 18-year-old Guatemalan security guard died in the incident. In a later attack, a rocket-propelled grenade penetrated two offices just after close of business, but injured no one. Later, a small bomb at my family’s residence created more drama than damage. In this situation, some of the greatest dangers were posed by the reactions of edgy Guatemalan security personnel. Our 17-year-old son, for example, was interrogated at gunpoint on the way home from school by a squad of security agents. They may have been suspicious of his backpack and the carton of yearbook proofs he was carrying, documents that could have looked to them like terrorist dossiers. Fortunately for the Guatemalan government, the Marxists’ effort was divided among four separate, competitive guerrilla groups. A lack of coordination frustrated their work, and Castro tried in vain to force them to unite in exchange for his sup- port. Two military coups and repeated human rights violations pushed the U. S. government away from an intimate relationship with Guatemala in the early 1980s. Promoting Democracy By then, U.S. policy in the Americas had evolved to empha- size democratic governance and economic growth through trade. The Reagan administration focused on elections as the best antidote to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, crafting the Carib- bean Basin Initiative to foster private-sector investment and growth through preferential access to the U.S. market. These initiatives were the most innovative in the Americas since the Alliance for Progress. Again, U.S. obsession with Soviet expan-