An End to Forbearance

The U.S. last week junked its policy of "patience and forbearance" toward Fidel Castro's Cuba. Its patience was long since gone; its forbearance no longer seemed productive. Rather than wise restraint, it was beginning to look like mere helplessness and timidity.

Protest. The State Department, in a memorandum to the peace committee of the 21-nation Organization of American States, cited details of Cuba's systematic campaign of "distortions, half-truths and outright falsehoods'' against the U.S. Item: Despite U.S. denials and without producing evidence, Cuba repeatedly blames the U.S. for the March explosion of the ammunition ship La Coubre in Havana harbor, has repeated its accusation in Castro speeches and in pamphlets distributed by Cuban ambassadors throughout Latin America. The U.S. put up with such slander, but, said the State Department note in its key sentence, "this exercise of restraint has been in vain."

To avoid giving the impression that the U.S. was concerned more over property losses than violation of broad international principles, the State Department's note made no mention of Castro's confiscation of the property of U.S. citizens.

The memo was purposely presented in a form that did not call for action by the committee or by the OAS. Angry as the U.S. is at Castro's attacks, it bears in mind the fact that although almost every Latin American government is fed up with Castro, many among the peasant masses in these countries still have a misty, remote view of Castro as a savior of their kind, and as a symbol of rebellion against their miserable lot. A government that voted to condemn Castro in the OAS would risk popular wrath at home. Such being the case, the U.S. decided to present a formal list of Castro's excesses for the record, to justify the new U.S. policy of economic action against Castro that is beginning to take form.

Threat. Congress provides the means to put the new policy into action. With an election-year sensitivity to the ire that Castro has aroused among voters across the U.S., the House and Senate passed last-minute, pre-convention measures to give President Eisenhower power to eliminate or reduce Cuban sugar quotas. Sugar is Cuba's biggest crop, and the action can hurt--and can also lead to further Castro reprisals on the billion-dollar private U.S. investment in the island. But then, so long as Castro lasts, U.S. property exists at his whim anyway.

President Eisenhower could, at his discretion, restore any part of the sugar cuts, presumably adjusting the amount to the extent of reprisal he deems prudent. Ike's new powers would make sense out of the absurd system whereby the U.S., by paying 5-c- per lb., is subsidizing the losses that Cuba suffers in exporting sugar to the U.S.S.R. at the below-cost price of 2 1/4 per lb. in exchange for Russian crude oil. Cuba's quota would be shifted to other regular foreign suppliers.

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