ABSTRACT
The year 1977 was the only one in which Cuba and the United States moved toward rapprochement. Contrariwise, under Ronald Reagan, relations between the two countries deteriorated badly, returning to the level of open animosity that characterized the 1960s. The Cuban-U.S. "problem" was removed from its original bilateral context. It became clear that an eventual accommodation between Reagan and Castro, a total impossibility on a strictly ideological basis, was an equally elusive commodity at a rational, pragmatic level of decision making. Cuba admitted receiving in 1981 "a considerable number of arms" destined for defense only—"in view of the plans for aggression against our country which have been openly proclaimed by the United States." Cuba's utilization of the principles of proletarian internationalism to justify its international behavior, in the eyes of Reagan, was nothing but a meaningless, thin license to rationalize its becoming a Soviet proxy in the Third World.
