Cuba and the United States: Ties of Singular Intimacy (review)

Louis A. Perez Jr. Cuba and the United States: Ties of Singular Intimacy. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003. 336 pp.There is an enduring and popular myth in the United States that we went to war with Spain in 1898 to free Cuba from the Spanish empire. Lou Ferez, for my money the best historian writing about United States-Cuban relations in the English language today, effectively explodes that myth and does so in such a way as to cast an insightful light on American attitudes that even a century later stand in the way of a sensible U.S. policy toward the island.Perez begins by pointing out that all during the nineteenth century, American political leaders had regarded Cuba as of great strategic importance to the United States, given its position in the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico through which, with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, ran the trade routes from the western interior of the United States to the rest of the world. Spain was by then a weak power. Hence, a Spanish controlled Cuba posed no threat to those trade routes. There were several efforts to purchase the island and there was a sense among many American political leaders that Cuba inevitably would become part of the Union - since, as John Quincy Adams put it in 1823, "there are laws of political as well as physical gravitation . . ." (38). Meanwhile, the United States could bide its time.What it could not contemplate with equanimity was Cuba's possible transfer to another power, for then those trade routes might be threatened. Hence, defense of Spanish sovereignty became a U.S. policy, as did the "no-transfer" principle. The latter, as stated by secretary of State John M. clayton in 1849, was quite clear: "The news of the cession of Cuba to any foreign power would in the United States be the instant signal for war" (42).And just as the United States was opposed to Cuba's transfer to any other power, so was it opposed to the island's independence. American political leaders tended to believe the Cubans incapable of ruling themselves; hence, they calculated, independence would inevitably lead to instability and turmoil, which could then open the way to the island's seizure by another power. Hence, during Cuba's first war for independence (1868-1878), the United States supported Spain. And it did so again as the final struggle began in 1895. By 1897, however, it was clear that Spain would be defeated, that the forces of Cuban independence would win. And so, as Perez puts it: "The implications of the "no transfer" policy were now carried to the logical conclusion. If the United States could not permit Spain to transfer sovereignty over Cuba to another power, neither could it permit Spain to cede sovereignty to the Cubans" (91).First, the United States encouraged Spain to grant the Cubans some degree of self-government, while retaining sovereignty. But that was unacceptable to the insurgents. Then it urged a cease-fire and began working to convince Spain to transfer sovereignty to the United States (91-92). But the insurgents would not accept the cease fire and Spain equivocated on the transfer of sovereignty. If the United States did not act, Cuba would be lost to the United States as well as to Spain.Then, on 15 February 1898, an explosion sent the battleship Maine, anchored in Havana harbor, to the bottom with heavy loss of life. That provided a pretext not to be passed up, and in April, President McKinley requested of Congress the authority to intervene militarily in Cuba. As Perez puts it: "Ostensibly the war was against Spain, but in fact it was against Cubans" (94).Not all Americans saw it that way, of course. The so-called yellow press had done a good job of painting the Spanish as blood-sucking monsters and the Cuban insurgents as akin to our own forefathers fighting for national independence (the latter, in fact, was not an invalid parallel). Popular opinion therefore tended to favor independence for the island, and there was a strong contingent in Congress calling for immediate recognition of a free Cuban state. …