Carter, Cuba and the Monroe Doctrine

By Rense Johnson, Chairman
Citizens for Term Limits

Former President Jimmy Carter, will be remembered for his boast that he sought foreign policy advice from Amy, his barely teen-age daughter, as he debated Ronald Reagan during the 1980 presidential campaign. Now Mr. Carter is embarking on a pilgrimage to Cuba to try to make things right between that country and the United States. Carter is old enough to know better, but one might think he has lost touch with reality.

He has certainly lost touch with history.

In 1961 John Kennedy lost his nerve at the Bay of Pigs and withdrew promised support from Cuban freedom fighters in their efforts to retake their native land from Communist Fidel Castro. This not only betrayed the freedom fighters, it put the coup de grace to the Monroe Doctrine, which had served as a cornerstone of American foreign policy for nearly a century and a half previous. It gave the Soviet Union, an unfriendly power, a foothold in the Western Hemisphere.

Cuba, supported by the Communist Soviet Union, then became a breeding ground for exportation of Communism to other Latin American Countries. This Communist expansion continued for 20 years without serious impediment from the U. S. until Ronald Reagan became president.

In eight short years the Reagan Administration managed to eliminate Communism from the hemisphere everywhere but in Cuba which, when Reagan retired was still under the protective wing of the Soviet Union. The liberating momentum begun by Reagan had not yet culminated — as it would — in the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Since President Carter seems to have forgotten his American history, we should point out that the Monroe Doctrine was a bedrock for American security for 140 years. The crux of the Monroe Doctrine reads as follows:

". . .with the governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power, in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States . . ."

That included the Soviet Union.

Only one president in the last nine has moved to take a strong national defense posture in Latin America and reestablish the Monroe Doctrine, which Kennedy kissed off without a murmur from the compliant press. And that one President — Ronald Reagan — was busy using all of his resources to stop the spread of Cuba-spawned Communism elsewhere in Latin America.

The fact that the cold war is over — thanks also to the efforts of Ronald Reagan — does not mean that Communism has changed. It remains as evil as ever, and it still resides in Cuba.

Carter, by traveling to Cuba, seems to want to bestow respectability on that island prison.. Instead, he should urge Castro to renounce Communism, permit other free political parties and hold free elections. Then the US might be able to gauge Castro's sincerity and make an informed judgment as to what its posture should be toward Cuba.

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