50 years after Cuba missile crisis, US influence in hemisphere waning
Investment from emerging economies like China and Russia are diminishing Latin America's reliance on the US, making it more difficult for Washington to isolate regimes like Cuba.
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Most of these relationships are economic in nature among emerging economies. If Russia, for example, once eyed Cuba to buoy its political project close to the American border, today it is inking energy deals and selling arms in Latin America because it finds willing partners and purchasers there.
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“Russia is going to sell all kinds of arms to Venezuela, not because [Venezuelan President] Hugo Chávez is saying he is socialist. It’s because he has money to pay for it,” says Alex Sanchez, a senior research fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs.
The flurry of investment in countries ranging from Venezuela to Bolivia helps to further undermine US global dominance in the region, a scenario that many leaders welcome today. Chief among them is Mr. Chávez, who just won another six-year term in office, and his allies including President Evo Morales in Bolivia and President Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua.
Indeed, the anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis will likely provide an opportunity for the “extreme left” in Latin America to express support for Cuba, says Johns Hopkins Latin American expert Riordan Roett. “They will be in solidarity about the survival of the Castro brothers,” Mr. Roett says.
'A linchpin' in the region
That kind of defiance – showing respect for a nation that for so long the US has considered a thorn in its side – would have been unthinkable 50 years ago. Before the Cuban missile crisis, after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, the US pressured Latin American countries to suspend Cuba’s membership from the Organization of American States (OAS). At the same time, Cuba signed onto the nonaligned movement, and Brenner says it was that move that the US feared other countries in Latin America might follow. At the time, US thinking on the movement was, ‘you are with us or you are against us.’
The politics surrounding Cuba at the OAS highlights the declining influence of the US in the region. Fifty years ago, the US advocated Cuba’s suspension and was successful; but during the group’s summit in April, leaders across political spectrums said they would question attending another summit without Cuba at the table.
“This comes from [Colombian President Juan Manuel] Santos, our most loyal ally in the region," says Brenner. "Cuba was once the pariah state; it is now a linchpin for all the other countries.”
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