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    Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana
    Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana
    Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana
    Audiobook18 hours

    Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana

    Written by William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh

    Narrated by Robertson Dean

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    About this audiobook

    Since 1959, conflict and aggression have dominated the story of U.S.-Cuban relations. From John F. Kennedy's offering of an olive branch to Fidel Castro after the missile crisis, to Henry Kissinger's top-secret quest for normalization, to Barack Obama's promise of a "new approach," William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh reveal a fifty-year record of dialogue and negotiations, both open and furtive, indicating a path toward better relations in the future.


    LeoGrande and Kornbluh have uncovered hundreds of formerly secret U.S. documents and conducted interviews with dozens of negotiators, intermediaries, and policy makers. The authors describe how, despite the political clamor surrounding any hint of better relations with Havana, serious negotiations have been conducted by every presidential administration since Eisenhower's through secret, back-channel diplomacy.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJan 20, 2015
    ISBN9781494578183
    Author

    William M. LeoGrande

    William M. LeoGrande is professor of government at American University. A specialist in Latin American politics and U.S. foreign policy, he has been a frequent adviser to the government and private foundations and has served on committee staffs in both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives.

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    • 3/5
      This book is useful for collecting in one historical volume the long diplomatic back and forth between Havana and Washington. That said, you have to read past the pro-Castro bias, although subtle, the authors cannot repress.

      The authors had bad timing, publishing their book before the Obama Administration's rapprochement with Raul Castro, a subject not covered in this volume.

      The underlying assumption in the book is that the lack of formal diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba was a missed opportunity that reflected Washington's shortsightedness.

      There is no real examination on why not extending diplomatic relations to a dictator and human-rights abuser like Castro actually served legitimate U.S. interests and American values. There is also no treatment on why the United States Interests Section, established in Havana in 1977, effectively created full de facto diplomatic relations between the countries. USINT did everything that an embassy would have done.

      The authors are also gullible in viewing Castro's entreaties with Washington as being sincere and not duplicitous, while Washington politicians are criticized for their connivances in dealing with Havana.

      I think the authors believe they were genuinely even-handed. One looks forward to the day when the Castro romanticism that blinds so many historians that work this portfolio is replaced by a new generation. Castro was the Pinochet of the Latin American Left. Only more dangerous.