Cuba's once-ambitious foreign policy has been scaled back and redirected as a result of economic hardship and the end of the Cold War. Cuba aims to find new sources of trade, aid, and foreign investment, and to promote opposition to U.S. policy, especially the trade embargo and the 1996 Libertad Act. Cuba has relations with over 160 countries and has civilian assistance workers -- principally medical -- in more than 20 nations.

Cuban intervention abroad

Without Soviet financial aid, Cuba appears to have largely abandoned the support for guerrilla movements that typified its involvement in regional politics in Latin America and Africa. In the past, Cuba's support for Latin guerrilla movements, its Marxist-Leninist government, and its alignment with the U.S.S.R., had contributed to its isolation in the hemisphere. In January 1962, the Organization of American States (OAS) suspended Cuba. Cuba now has diplomatic or commercial relations with most countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Cuba expanded its military presence abroad, spending millions of dollars in exporting revolutions; deployments reached 50,000 troops in Angola, 24,000 in Ethiopia, 1,500 in Nicaragua, and hundreds more elsewhere. In Angola, Cuban troops, supported logistically by the U.S.S.R., backed the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) in its effort to take power after Portugal granted Angola its independence. Cuban forces played a key role in Ethiopia's war against Somalia and remained there in substantial numbers as a garrison force for a decade. Cubans served in a non-combat advisory role in Mozambique and the Congo. Cuba also used the Congo as a logistical support center for Cuba's Angola mission.

In the late 1980s, Cuba began to pull back militarily. Cuba unilaterally removed its forces from Ethiopia; met the timetable of the 1988 Angola-Namibia accords by completing the withdrawal of its forces from Angola before July 1991; and ended military assistance to Nicaragua following the Sandinistas' 1990 electoral defeat. In January 1992, following the peace agreement in El Salvador, Castro stated that Cuban support for insurgents was a thing of the past.

Cuba's once-ambitious foreign policy has been scaled back and redirected as a result of economic hardship and the end of the Cold War. Cuba aims to find new sources of trade, aid, and foreign investment, and to promote opposition to U.S. policy, especially the trade embargo and the 1996 Libertad Act. Cuba has relations with over 160 countries and has civilian assistance workers -- principally medical -- in more than 20 nations.

Cuban-American relations

Because of Cuba's Marxist-Leninist government and also the power of the Cuban-American lobby , especially in Florida, relations between Cuba and the United States have long been very poor. Under President John F. Kennedy, the CIA launched the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in an attempt to topple Fidel Castro. The CIA also embarked on a number of failed assassination attempts. As a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 the United States promised to not invade Cuba, but continued to employ strict economic sanctions.

Despite the end of the Cold War and the normalization of American relations with such countries as the People's Republic of China and Vietnam, the U.S. still has a strong policy against trade with Cuba. This includes travel restrictions and laws against American companies operating there. These measures were further strengthened by the Helms-Burton Act of 1996 which attempted to punish any foreign companies operating in Cuba.

The US continues to operate a naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. It is leased to the US and only mutual agreement or US abandonment of the area can terminate the lease.

According to the CIA's Factbook, Cuba's territorial waters and air space serve as transshipment zone for cocaine bound for the US and Europe.

Cuba is listed by the U.S. as one of the "outposts of tyranny".

Cuban-Canadian relations

Mostly because of the restrictions the United States has placed on Cuba, Canada had a strong trade relations with the country, Cuba is also one of Canadians' most popular travel destinations. Relations between Cuba and Canada have always been close. Following the Cuban revolution Canada-based banks were the only ones not nationalized. Canada reacts angrily to American attempts to pressure it to stop trading with Cuba, the Helms-Burton Act being particularly aggravating.

Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau was a personal friend of Castro. In fact Castro was among Trudeau's pallbearers at his funural (some commentators speculated this was partially to aggravate the United States one last time).

See also

Cocktail Wars

External links

• http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/cuba/cuba003.htm