Can You Handle the Truth? The Case for Returning Guantánamo Bay to Cuban Sovereignty
In A Few Good Men, Jack Nicholson plays Colonel Nathan Jessup, a hard-charging Marine commander at Guantánamo Bay, a 45-square mile naval base on Cuba’s southeastern coast that American forces have occupied since the Spanish-American War. In one well-known scene, Colonel Jessup scornfully lectures Lt. Daniel Kaffee, portrayed by Tom Cruise, on the truth about the real world and its grave dangers, reminding him of the freedom his Marines protect by guarding the walls at Guantánamo. The U.S. Navy, institutionally, shares some of Colonel Jessup’s views. It locates the base “on the front lines for regional security in the Caribbean.” This overstates the Caribbean and Guantánamo’s strategic importance today. Indeed, from the perspective of the current world situation and our national-security requirements, the base, initially a coaling station, has become obsolete as well as a political liability. Given the Obama administration’s decision to begin normalizing U.S.-Cuban relations, the real truth is that the time has arrived to consider returning it to Cuban sovereignty.
Why did the United States originally occupy it? Primarily to preempt or counter conventional, extra-hemispheric threats. Strategic thinkers from John Quincy Adams to Alfred Thayer Mahan had recognized Cuba’s geographic importance, regarding it vital to American national security through the nineteenth century. It sat just off the Florida coast, occupying a position in the Caribbean that enabled whichever European empire controlled it — be it Britain, France, or Spain — to dominate or harass the sea lines linking the Mississippi and the Atlantic coast to European and Mediterranean ports and markets. The United States needed these sea lines to remain secure. Thus, Cuba eventually became part of an American system of colonies, naval bases, and coaling stations stretching from Guantánamo and the Panama Canal Zone to Chinese ports via Guam and the Philippines.
Europe’s expanding empires created the insecurity and sense of urgency that helped motivate American leaders, fearing possible exclusion or worse, to create this system. Europeans had been deploying warships to the Caribbean basin and the Gulf of Mexico to recover debts and exploit favorable opportunities since at least as early as the French declared Maximilian emperor of Mexico. This worsened during the Venezuelan debt crisis of 1904. British, German, and Italian ships blockaded the country, threatening to seize the customs house, demanding that the government repay them before its other creditors, who had not joined the blockade. The Venezuelan government, supported by the United States, appealed to The Hague’s Permanent Court of Arbitration for relief, but the court granted the blockading powers the preferential treatment they were seeking. This encouraged further European intervention, propelling President Theodore Roosevelt’s corollary to the Monroe doctrine.
Cultural attitudes we now recognize as racist also influenced this. Roosevelt’s generation, along with its European counterparts, doubted most non-Western peoples and cultures could defend themselves effectively against the major powers of the day or govern themselves responsively. It remained their generation’s burden to civilize these people through colonial institutions and long-term tutelage, or so they told themselves. Thus, Americans colonized the Philippines and conditioned their withdrawal from Cuba on Cubans’ including the Platt Amendment in their new constitution. This stipulated that the United States would supervise Havana’s foreign policy, particularly its financial dealings with other governments, that Washington reserved the right to intervene in Cuban affairs whenever it deemed it necessary, and that the U.S. Navy would occupy Guantánamo.
Over two decades of preemptive American intervention and gunboat diplomacy followed. Both Guantánamo and the Canal Zone remained expressions of American power and credibility during these years. But the strategic problems that made them necessary disappeared long ago, and Latin Americans’ increasingly vocal anti-Americanism was posing a new, political problem. President Franklin Roosevelt recognized this when he announced the Good Neighbor Policy in the 1930s. True, Roosevelt reaffirmed the United States’ claim to Guantánamo, which supported antisubmarine patrols from the Caribbean to the eastern seaboard during World War II, and then became a fleet training center. But German wolf packs no longer roam the Atlantic, no serious conventional military threat has menaced the homeland since then, and indeed conventional hemispheric defense has ranked among our lowest defense priorities for the last several decades.
Not only has the global balance of power changed, but mainstream Americans have long since abandoned their earlier cultural attitudes toward Cubans, Panamanians, Filipinos, and indeed others in the developing world. Roosevelt signaled this in the Atlantic Charter, where he and Prime Minister Winston Churchill declared their commitment to, among other things, self-government for all in the postwar world — that is, an end to colonial empires. The United States duly recognized Philippine independence after the war and then negotiated continuing basing rights there with the national government. The United States also withdrew from Subic Bay, Clark Airfield, and our other positions there in the 1990s. Meanwhile, the Carter administration negotiated America’s returning the canal to Panamanian control in the 1970s. The Clinton administration relinquished sovereignty in 1999. Filipinos have maintained their independence, and the canal has remained a smoothly running link in transoceanic trade. In contrast, Guantánamo has become a fixed and obsolete position in search of a contemporary mission.
As historian Jonathan Hansen illustrates in a recent study of Guantánamo, the base has irritated the Castro regime since it seized power in 1959 and helped fuel the Yankee-imperialist diatribes that continue to trouble U.S.-Latin American relations. More significantly, it has become a political liability in a context far larger than inter-American affairs. The Carter administration and its successors began exploiting Guantánamo’s availability to solve political problems having nothing to do with hemispheric defense in the late-1970s. They argued that since the base fell inside Cuban borders, even if American officers managed it, the United States’ constitution did not apply there. Further, as a purely naval base with no other departments or agencies present, it became a place where the Pentagon could operate unilaterally through the U.S. Navy, bypassing bureaucratic Washington.
Thus, as Hansen further illustrates, both the Carter and Clinton administrations used Guantánamo to temporarily hold Haitian asylum seekers and other refugees captured at sea before returning them to their country without having to follow the administrative and legal procedures that due process would have required had they set foot on American territory, which these administrations insisted they had not done. The Bush administration expanded these arguments after 9/11, using Guantánamo to detain terrorists it called “enemy combatants” rather than prisoners of war or criminals under arrest who would otherwise have fallen under the Geneva Convention and/or the United States constitution’s protections. Their detention and the harsh treatment they received blackened America’s image and provoked outcries abroad, The Guardian‘s Andy Worthington’s Guantánamo Files representing but one example.
Returning Guantánamo then, to Cuban sovereignty as part of the ongoing U.S.-Cuban normalization process would liquidate an obsolete naval position, deny a useful trial exhibit to prosecutorial critics who characterize the United States as an empire of bases, and also make meaningful progress in changing our relationship with Havana. This matters deeply to the Castro regime, which has signaled this by cashing Washington’s checks for rent only once, and even then only by mistake. Our returning the base to the regime would not only alleviate these longstanding resentments, clearing the way for the kind of reconciliation both our nations need to begin a new chapter in the history of our relations, but putting it on the negotiating table would also give us powerful leverage when demanding that the regime fully compensate the American corporations and others whose property it seized in the revolution’s early years — something Colonel Jessup might even approve of. This, of course, leaves the issue of what exactly to do with the terrorist Khalid Sheik Mohammad and the other detainees who remain there unresolved. This represents an intractable issue the Obama administration or its successors would have to resolve before returning Guantánamo.
James Lockhart is a Ph.D. candidate in history at the University of Arizona and adjunct professor at Embry-Riddle’s College of Security and Intelligence. He specializes in US-Latin American relations.
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An excellent, well weitten analysis. And a policy we should pursue.
History does not have to be rewritten by liberals in a pursuit of an agenda. This has strategic and locational benefits for our country and should not be given back. Would you do that for Okinawa? Forget it.
Excellent analysis concerning the strategic justification, or lack thereof, for the Navy retaining possession of the Guantanamo Naval Station. Any mission efforts the Navy or Coast Guard are going to carry out in the Caribbean can easily be handled using Ships operating from and Aircraft flying from other Bases in that operating area.
It is time to close one of the last of our bases whose primary historical purpose was to support U.S. dominance over a body of water — gunboat style. We moved out of Subic Bay, now it is time to depart from Gitmo.
That’s an oversimplification of the factors which led to the withdrawal from Subic Bay. It also ignores recent developments in which the United States is poised to return a significant military presence to the Philippines.
https://medium.com/war-is-boring/base-plan-puts-american-troops-on-chinas-doorstep-c4db264157b
How can an analysis that has nothing more than historical origins have strategic justification? Time to stop being a follower and start being a person with some intelligence that see that giving anything back to Cuba is a loose loose situation.
Russia would be the first to have a party and send anything they want into the Gulf.
Comparing an island (Okinawa) from which strategic air ops can be conducted to a small base (less than 90 miles from the U.S. mainland) is ludicrous.
Lastly, a few years from now, when relations with Cuba will be largely normalized, implying that Russia will benefit from closing Gitmo demonstrates antiquated thinking stemming from the 1960s.Time to join the 21st century.
I’m sorry, but I found this article to be long on irrelevant history, and short on actual strategy. Just because Gitmo served a different purpose after the Spanish-American War and was at one time associated with antiquated ideas does not make it strategically obsolete or a political liability. In point of fact, a criticism leveled at both the Bush and Obama Administrations has been their poor records of engagement with Central and South America, which wouldn’t be particularly well served by ceding America’s nearest military facility to those regions (let alone the Caribbean). The author also presumes widespread support for the normalization of relations with Cuba, which is not in evidence. The fact that Gitmo serves a different strategic purpose in 2015 than it did in 1905 is not a particularly compelling case for returning the facility to Cuban sovereignty, particularly when one considers that President Obama’s recent overtures did not bring any real gains. Perhaps Mr. Lockhart might read the recent series of travel reports from Cuba by Michael Totten, or even purchase a shortwave radio in order to listen to the English propaganda broadcasts from Radio Havana Cuba, in order to understand just how adversarial the Castro regime remains; in so doing, he may begin to gain an understanding of how ill-advised unilateral overtures such as the one for which he advocates actually are.
Thanks for the responses!
Tom, just to clarify I never meant to suggest I approved (or disapproved, for that matter) of the Castro regime or its politics and propaganda. I didn’t mean to suggest unilaterally handing Guantanamo over to Havana, either. But I think it’s time to leave, and I think we should use the base as leverage — it’s probably in the top three things the regime cares most about in US-Cuban relations.
Indeed, I saw in my newsfeed today that Raul Castro brought the base up only twelve hours ago or so.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-31029946
I also don’t think maintaining this base or projecting conventional military power into Latin America represent good strategies to engage the region. We can do much better through the OAS, other international institutions, and bilateral relations on every issue.
Please tell me what has the regime done to warrant our good will? We are currently not a war, however Cuba has continued to create havoc through out the region at every opportunity even with its limited resources, witness Venezuela. Why cede any assets or bases to a hostile power, which it still is, until Cuba has shown a willingness to move toward real peaceful relations.
If the Caribbean is not important why is Nicaragua planning a Canal through their country with Chinese money?
How sure can we be in the event of a conflict with Russia, or China, that Cuba will not be a critical asset to protect shipping lanes or staging base to prevent incursions into the Caribbean.
History has shown us if anything that events could unfold very differently than we might see now. The only thing i see from this president is a continued willingness to negotiate out of weakness with our enemies or Geopolitical foes.
As a former Gitmo Marine, I fully support this idea. In a time of sequestration and struggles with outfitting our military for the next war; it seems like we are holding on to this tiny piece of land for pride sake and historical sentiment.
I might be alone on this, but I don’t see any strategic advantage like Okinawa is/was for staging in the pacific.
A major gap in your case study of Gitmo and Cuban operations is the Missile Crisis. At various times this chunk of dirt has been an obstacle and an asset; as the political winds change (or as Obama pursues de-populating it during the last two years with recidivist jihadi terrorists) a more strategic few may wish to retain a ‘piece of the rock” for any number of reasons. The historical cycles of Caribbean or Asian real estate(PI) or even European properties(consolidation/Euro-bracking in Germany and England now)may call into question the wisdom or lack of strategy for retention. Japan still serves a classic example for global issues; now an ally, but the neighborhood growing increasingly concerned about Chinese ambitions and the desirability of a US presence in the ‘hood. Some growing footprint in ops in Australia and the front line states in the Mideast and growing in Africa-Niger, Chad may speak to basing rights both land and sea.
We pulled out of Subic in the 90s, and yet here we are today wishing we hadn’t. Gitmo is definitely a political liability, but makes up for it in strategic usefulness. A few quotes that I find suspect:
” But German wolf packs no longer roam the Atlantic, no serious conventional military threat has menaced the homeland since then”
What about the Cold War?! Was 25 years really so long ago, especially geopolitically speaking?
“I also don’t think maintaining this base or projecting conventional military power into Latin America represent good strategies to engage the region. We can do much better through the OAS, other international institutions, and bilateral relations on every issue”
Again, that’s an enormous assumption that things will be as calm in 25 years as they are now– a huge lack of foresight.
” deny a useful trial exhibit to prosecutorial critics who characterize the United States as an empire of bases”
But they are right, we are an empire of bases. That’s literally exactly what we are, and for a damn good reason.
” liquidate an obsolete naval position”
You’re gonna have to back that up. I see no reason to think fixed naval bases are obsolete in the slightest, and few regions are as important to us as the Caribbean. Back yards and all that.
Overall, this seems like a plan thought up with the underlying assumption that great wars and cold wars are a thing of the past, a dangerous gamble to make when creating policy.
The USSR gave back Sevastopol for goodwill’s sake; how’s that working out for them?
I’ll respond to some of the issues that appear here.
The Cuban missile crisis involved intermediate-range and tactical nuclear weapons and not an actual, material conventional military threat to the United States or American interests in Latin America and the Caribbean. Historians have shown that the Soviet military had planned to establish a naval base on Cuba to to project power into the western hemisphere in 1962. This plan would have involved deploying eleven ballistic-missile submarines, two cruisers, two destroyers, and twelve Komar-class missile boats for operations based out of Cuba. Had things gone as planned, the Soviets would have patrolled the Caribbean and American east coast with these submarines. (See Aleksandr Fursando and Timothy Naftali’s book for the sources on this.)
But things did not go as planned and the Soviets withdrew their offensive systems, agreeing to limit their military involvement in Cuba to defensive means (the Cubans and their Soviet friends feared an American invasion, imagine that). So not even Soviet involvement during or after the missile crisis made for an actual, material conventional military threat against the United States.
As is very well known, the Kennedy administration responded with a blockade, but other possible responses involved an invasion of Cuba, not staged from Guantanamo, which would have perished quickly in any war scenario during this crisis, but from bases in the United States. Also, this happened over fifty years ago. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. And none of it has anything to do with assessing current military threats to the United States or American interests via the Caribbean.
Some are asserting that Guantanamo and the Caribbean remain strategically important, and that Latin America remains or may become something akin to an area of strategic conflict, comparable, I suppose, to Russia and eastern Europe, Iran or ISIS/ISIL and the Near East, and China or North Korea in East Asia today.
This is nonsense.
Latin America emerged as a basically stable region following its wars for independence in the early-nineteenth century. It experienced several localized and not international wars concerning border disputes in the newly-emerging post-imperial western hemisphere — the Mexican-American War representing but one of them. Some of these arguments continue today, but Latin Americans have resolved them through mixed commissions and other diplomatic means and not war.
There have indeed been no conventional wars there since this period. There have been no credible extra-regional conventional threats to the region since the Second World War — unless we count our interventions. And there have been no extra-hemispheric conventional threats since the Second World War, either.
The Cuban revolution, with Soviet support, threatened American and all anticommunist interests in the region from 1959 to 1991. This remained a political issue, however, not conventional (the Soviet military’s plans just before the missile crisis notwithstanding). We met it not with conventional forces, but with aid programs and counterinsurgency, some of it coordinated through the Canal Zone, but none of it coming from Guantanamo, at least as far as I know from the declassified record available today.
Some minor irritants — primarily political and not military irritants — remain today, including vocal and sometimes clownish critics in the Venezuelan and a few other regional governments. This is, however we may feel about it, these governments’ prerogative, and it has nothing to do with conventional military threats or the need to keep posting Marine sentries at Guantanamo.
Indeed, a stable inter-American system has gradually emerged through the OAS, the IADB, and other international institutions, including longstanding hemispheric defense arrangements not premised on Guantanamo Bay but rather regional cooperation. And Latin America ranks low in our conventional defense priorities — it’s not eastern Europe, the Near East, or East Asia. Far from it.
Some here speculate that only a lack of foresight would assume or predict that Latin America would remain calm twenty-five years from now. My own view is that not only will Latin America likely remain generally as calm as it is now, but it will probably become far more developed and even calmer in the next twenty-five years. Its leaders’ and publics’ primary interests have to do with social and economic issues, particularly those having to do with trade, development, and growth. What specific, actual or probable, and not hypothetical, military threats to Latin America or to the United States or American interests there can anyone here cite to challenge this? What exactly are you seeing in the coming decades? Chinese fleets in the Caribbean?
I approach these matters as an historian and not a policymaker. I don’t have access to current estimates, threat assessments, or other classified information re: Latin America and the Caribbean. But I find it hard to imagine that much has changed since the exchange within the intel community I read while researching the Cold War’s origins in Latin America in the Truman Library where Naval Intelligence analysts ridiculed another agency for suggesting the Soviets might attack Latin America in a scenario where the Third World War had broken out. Indeed, didn’t Secretary of Defense Robert Gates mock a Russian-Venezuelan agreement involving military cooperation just a few years ago?
It seems to me that national strategies and defense postures should be very fluid and adaptive, and we should constantly reassess them, rather than become trapped in fixed and permanent conventional Maginot-line-like positions like Guantanamo. Guantanamo served its purpose in its time. But it remains the last outpost of a larger naval system that no longer exists today. We created it and it stood against a late-nineteenth-century European threat that receded long ago. Our entire relationship with Europe and indeed Europe itself has dramatically changed since then. There may be an angle I’m not seeing, and there is almost certainly information I haven’t seen. But surely there must be better reasons for treating Guantanamo as if it were as important as Washington, DC itself than those I’ve seen expressed here. jdl
And, why is the answer to abandon what is ours? The country spent blood to gain it. You want it? Come take it.
Why not invite a new Cuban government to apply for statehood? Everyone prospers….except the Castros.
A slight correction, we didn’t ‘gain it’, we took it by treachery and force.
While talking about getting rid of Guantanamo perhaps we could cut loose our Puerto Rican stepchild at the same time since all it’s good for is producing junk bonds to keep the crappy and corrupt public administration there afloat.
The abandoned and empty Roosevelt Roads Naval Station there had the same general purpose as Guantanamo: To guard one of the general approaches to the canal. And so was made redundant when the canal was given away and the Cold War ended.
Similar reason why we suddenly bought the Danish Virgin Islands in 1917.