Cuba

2005-2023 | 18 years

Cuba is a topic that comes up a lot in The West Wing. It is a subplot of the first episode and almost the whole plot in the Season Six episode Ninety Miles Away. Aaron Sorkin, the writer of the West Wing, seems to feature Cuba as a recurring topic in his work. For example, A Few Good Men, one of his most recognizable works, takes place at the Military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

This week is the 62nd anniversary of the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion, which happened in Cuba from April 17-20 in 1961. The invasion was approved by JFK to overthrow Fidel Castro’s communist regime but was poorly executed and ended up being a major American foreign policy failure. The invasion caused the loss of life of over 100 people and over 1,000 people to be taken prisoner. In addition to this, it put Cuban-American relations at an all-time low, widening the political divisions between them and pushing Cuba closer to the Soviet Union, a precipitate for the next year’s Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest we’re ever been to nuclear war. The invasion was not only an embarrassing foreign policy disaster for the Kennedy Administration and CIA for these reasons but also because it helped Fidel Castro by making him look like a national hero.

Castro was criticized until his death in 2016 for his restriction of free speech, repressive government, and strict media among other things. In this episode, there is a rumor that he is dying, and Leo goes to Cuba to try to make a deal with him. President Bartlet wants to remove the embargo that has been on Cuba (and is still in place) since 1958. By the end of the episode, he has done this, a perhaps especially unrealistic plot point for the show. President Obama took big steps in thawing icy relations with Cuba by, like in the episode, having secret negotiations with the Cubans facilitated by Canada, and also the Vatican. He, rather than fully ending the embargo, lifted some travel restrictions, lightened remittance restrictions, allowed US banks to access the Cuban financial system, reopened the US embassy in Havana and the Cuban embassy in D.C., and removed Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. President Obama was also the first US President to visit Cuba since 1928. Former President Trump reversed some of these policies, but President Biden returned most of them to how they were under President Obama.

The episode also highlights the politics of Cuba. Throughout the episode, the characters are considering the political ramifications for themselves and their party. This part of the plot is definitely not an overdramatization. In fact,  leading up to the 2000 Gore-Bush election, there was an incident regarding a young Cuban boy named Elián González and whether or not he should be allowed to remain with family in Miami or return to his family in Cuba. After the Clinton Administration sent him back, much of the Cuban community (which has a very strong presence in Florida) was outraged. Although many of them had initially voted for Clinton, after this they flipped their votes from Gore (Clinton’s Vice President) to Bush. The Presidential election came down solely to the state of Florida, where Gore lost by only 537 votes. It is very likely that if it were not for this incident and the turn of the Cuban Community, Vice President Gore would have assumed the presidency instead of George H. Bush. This proves just how important Cubans are in the American electorate and how much influence they have had on our country.

As pointed out in the episode, Cuba is only 90 miles away. Whether we lift the embargo or not, we need to learn from our historic foreign policy failings the dangers of being so aggressive to nations so close to us.