The Untold Story of the U.S. and Cuba’s Middleman

The Untold Story of the U.S. and Cuba's Middleman
New documents show how hard Switzerland worked to keep the Cold War from
turning hot.
BY JOHN HUDSONAUGUST 3, 2015JOHN.HUDSON@JOHN_HUDSON

On the day the United States and Cuba restored full diplomatic ties
after a half-century of acrimony, the scene at the newly opened Cuban
Embassy in Washington was euphoric. A boisterous band played the Cuban
national anthem as a three-man honor guard marched onto the front lawn
and mounted the island nation's flag. Five hundred dignitaries,
including senior U.S. diplomats, a large visiting Cuban delegation, and
U.S. lawmakers filled the nearly century-old mansion. Even Hollywood
B-lister Danny Glover made an appearance.

But on that same day in mid-July, less than two miles away, another
historic milestone occurred without a single reporter or media
photographer to document it. In silence, the Swiss ambassador to the
United States, Martin Dahinden, took out a screwdriver and removed a
small golden plate from the Swiss Embassy that identified the Swiss
government as the "protecting power" of Cuban interests in the United
States.

With a few turns of the screw, Switzerland was out of a job after 54
years of playing the middleman between Havana and Washington — the
longest stretch of time that the Swiss government, and perhaps any
government in history, has represented the interests of a foreign power
in another country. Due to the resumption of diplomatic ties, Cuba and
the United States no longer need Switzerland to communicate with each
other, ending an assignment the Swiss formally accepted in 1961 when
President Dwight Eisenhower cut off ties with Fidel Castro's communist
regime.

Lost in the fanfare surrounding the July 20 opening of the embassies in
Havana and Washington was the unusually outsized role that Switzerland
played between the longtime adversaries. Now, in a new set of documents
provided to Foreign Policy by the Swiss government, historians are
getting a fresh look at the Central European government's nail-biting
role in everything from the Cuban missile crisis to the mass exodus of
Cuban refugees to the United States in the 1960s and '70s.

"This is a rich and relatively untold story of a government that
dedicated itself to pushing diplomacy and engagement between Washington
and Havana, even during the most antagonistic of times," said Peter
Kornbluh, a historian and co-author of Back Channel to Cuba, an
exhaustive book on the secret negotiations between the United States and
Cuba during the Cold War.

Typically, the role of a "protecting power" like Switzerland is fairly
mundane, filled with processing passport and visa documents, relaying
diplomatic notes, and looking after the citizens of the relevant
country. But during the dark days of the Cold War, Swiss archives show,
a generation of diplomats cultivated exceptionally close relationships
with Castro and senior U.S. officials and helped de-escalate a conflict
that nearly triggered World War III.

The very existence of the U.S. Embassy in Cuba — a seven-story building
on Havana's seaside Malecón boulevard — owes a massive debt to its
former Swiss caretakers.

According to Swiss records, the Cuban government attempted to
nationalize the U.S. Embassy in 1964 and convert it into the Cuban
Ministry of Fishing. If not for the stubborn resistance of the former
Swiss ambassador to Havana, Emil Stadelhofer, the United States may have
permanently lost ownership of the imposing seaside edifice.

"It took a lot of courage, but for Stadelhofer, Cuba was the role of his
life," Dahinden, the current Swiss ambassador to the United States, told
Foreign Policy.

The tense standoff was set in motion on Feb. 2, 1964, when the U.S.
Coast Guard arrested four Cuban fishing vessels and detained their
crews. In response, Cuba cut off the water supply to the U.S. naval base
at Guantánamo Bay and made moves to occupy and confiscate the U.S.
Embassy building in Havana. According to Swiss archives, that's when
Stadelhofer intervened personally. He barred the embassy door shut and
declared that "this was diplomatic property and that the Vienna
Convention would be violated only over his body." He warned the Cubans
that Switzerland would consider this "the most unfriendly and severest act."

"Stadelhofer drew a red line. Without him being in the right place at
the right time, things may have been different," said Dahinden. After
the tense standoff, the authorities backed off, and the incident marked
the last time Cuba tried to nationalize the U.S. Embassy.

"What strikes me as most interesting and important is that the Swiss
played a far more important role than being a caretaker, or 'protecting
power,' said Kornbluh, after reviewing the Swiss documents. "They became
a key player and trusted interlocutor in ongoing efforts to bridge the
Cold War gap and bring Washington and Havana closer together."

Beyond mountain ranges, money-laundering, and instant hot chocolate mix,
Americans typically associate Switzerland with its implacable
neutrality: a distinction that is at times regarded as refreshing and
principled or cowardly and bloodless. But for a country populated by
French, German, Italian, and Romansh speakers — and sandwiched between
the imperial strongholds of Europe — Switzerland's neutrality guaranteed
its survival during a chaotic 20th century.

With the country neutral during both world wars, Switzerland's
experience in representing foreign countries ballooned during World War
II as it accepted more than 200 mandates from belligerent parties
needing to communicate with sworn enemies.

When the Eisenhower administration first proposed, in 1960, that
Switzerland represent the United States in Cuba, it caught the Swiss off
guard, according to government documents, "especially given the small
size of the Swiss diplomatic mission compared with the staff of other
countries such as the United Kingdom." But the government's
long-standing experience as a protecting power of foreign governments,
dating back to the 1870-1871 Franco-Prussian War, made it an attractive
candidate.

After Switzerland agreed to represent the United States, the first
priority of Swiss diplomats on the Caribbean island was to educate
Castro's new revolutionary government on the international laws
governing a protecting-power relationship — and add staff as quickly as
possible. "Nine Swiss personnel were dispatched immediately to replace
the 60 or so U.S. officials," according to Swiss records.

The Cuban missile crisis, in particular, was a proving ground for Swiss
diplomats — and a crucial example of how Washington relied on
Stadelhofer's close ties to Castro.

During his time on the island, Stadelhofer nurtured a surprisingly close
personal relationship with El Comandante, who was known to drop by
his residence and consult with the diplomat day or night. "Stadelhofer
was a man who had very direct access to Fidel Castro. They met
frequently and had social contacts," said Dahinden. That rapport would
be key as the world's two superpowers — the United States and the Soviet
Union, which served as Cuba's communist patron — came closer to a
nuclear war than at any other time in history.

In October 1962, U.S. President John F. Kennedy imposed a blockade on
all military equipment to Cuba and demanded that the Soviet Union remove
missiles detected on the island. Even after Moscow relented and removed
the missiles in exchange for the removal of American ballistic missiles
in Italy and Turkey, the crisis wasn't over: The United States needed to
send reconnaissance planes over Cuba to verify that the arms were no
longer there. But to establish a clear picture of the sites in the dark,
U.S. pilots would have to deploy military flares, which could easily be
mistaken for bombs and prompt a counterattack from Cuba.

According to Swiss archives, the Cubans needed to be convinced that
America's air campaign was strictly for surveillance purposes. But given
the CIA's botched attempt to overthrow the Castro regime in the
disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion a year earlier, Washington had zero
credibility with the Cuban government.

As a result, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk contacted the Swiss
ambassador to the United States, August Lindt, with an urgent request.
"If I have called you it is to ask a favor of you that only you, as the
Swiss representative in charge of our interests in Cuba, can provide,"
said Rusk, according to an account in a memoir by Swiss diplomat Edouard
Brunner. Lindt was asked to assure Castro that the reconnaissance
flights were peaceful and that the military flares should not warrant a
response from Cuban air defenses. After the conversation, Lindt
immediately called Stadelhofer in Havana, who forwarded the message to
Castro. Within an hour, Stadelhofer called Lindt back confirming that
the message had been transmitted to Castro. Lindt was then able to call
Rusk and assure him that no military response should be feared. On Oct.
28, the Cuban missile crisis ended with an exchange of letters between
Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Reflecting on the intense
flash point in his notes, Brunner noted, "and thus could be avoided,
thanks to this rapidly conveyed message, an escalation of the crisis."

But that wasn't the only time the Swiss were helpful in a pinch. After
the Cuban missile crisis subsided, the most pressing job of the Swiss
was facilitating the safe passage of Cuban refugees to the United
States. This responsibility expanded greatly in late September 1965,
when Castro declared that any Cubans who desired to leave the country
for Florida were free to do so by their own means. As a result,
thousands of Cubans set sail from the port of Camarioca in substandard
vessels that often capsized, in some cases with children on board.
According to Swiss records, Stadelhofer was "moved by the drownings" and
pressed for an alternative solution. Washington, also alarmed by the
number of deaths at sea, authorized the Swiss to negotiate an airlift
from the resort town of Varadero to Miami.

By December, the Swiss had helped secure an agreement between Havana and
Washington to provide two flights each day for five days a week,
enabling the departure of 3,000 to 4,000 Cubans monthly from the
Varadero military airport. The arrangement held for the next seven years
and became the most labor-intensive aspect of Switzerland's
protecting-power mandate in Cuba. Some tasks were mundane, like
interviewing each person who wanted to leave to help gain Washington's
approval. Other issues were trickier, like when Cuba initially refused
to let 700 Americans and their relatives in Cuba leave the country.

But by the end of the operation's run in April 1973, a massive number of
Cubans had been airlifted into the United States: 260,737 in all.
According to Swiss records, Stadelhofer's efforts maintaining the lift
garnered the attention of the British ambassador in Cuba at the time,
who confided to the Swiss: "Your ambassador is the most outstanding
diplomat in Havana. He did miracles. But he is tired now. You should
take him away before he has a breakdown."

Four years after the airlift, in 1977, a partial rapprochement between
Washington and Havana resulted in the formal establishment of the U.S.
Interests Section in Cuba. Although the Swiss flag continued to fly over
the former U.S. Embassy building, American diplomats returned to Cuba,
which reduced the United States' reliance on Swiss diplomacy.

Beyond Cuba, the Swiss saw their protecting-power mandates elsewhere in
the world decline as open conflict between nation-states became much
more infrequent. With the resumption of full diplomatic ties between the
United States and Cuba on July 20 of this year, Switzerland currently
has only four protecting-power mandates: It represents the United States
in Iran, Georgia in Russia, Russia in Georgia, and Iran in Egypt.

Although Switzerland's diplomatic efforts between the United States and
Cuba have been largely thankless over the decades, U.S. Secretary of
State John Kerry did express his gratitude in a July 1 speech in Vienna
announcing the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Cuba. "I also want to
thank the government of Switzerland," said Kerry, "for the essential
role that they have played in serving as the United States' protecting
power in Cuba for more than 50 years."

In Washington, where embassy parties and receptions celebrating far less
significant milestones are ubiquitous, Switzerland's modesty stands out.
On the day its protecting-power mandate ended, four Swiss colleagues
simply stood outside the Swiss Embassy and watched the ambassador remove
the Cuban Interests Section sign from the building. "The Swiss media
were interested in having an event, but we decided against it," said
Dahinden. "We did it amongst ourselves. Four or five people."

A photograph from the occasion screams "anticlimactic" in a way that
words can't convey. But for Dahinden, that's the way it should be.

"This is very much part of our diplomatic culture in Switzerland," he
said. "You're not working well when you're at the forefront. You need to
work in a very discreet way."

Source: The Untold Story of the U.S. and Cuba's Middleman | Foreign
Policy -
https://foreignpolicy.com/2015/08/03/the-untold-story-of-the-u-s-and-cubas-middleman/