The United States maintains the Guantanamo Naval Base on the island nation of Cuba, some 90 miles off the coast of Florida. This naval base has been in continuous operation under U.S. control in Cuba since the Cuban-American Treaty of 1903 set forth conditions giving the U.S. a perpetual lease for the 45 square miles upon which the base sits.
Since 2002, the naval base has also housed a detention camp run by the Joint Task Force Guantanamo. This prison, nicknamed "Gitmo," is a source of controversy in international affairs. Since the Platt Amendment to the Cuban constitution, a result of Spanish American war and American imperialism efforts in the early 1900s, Cuban-U.S. relations on the issue of the base have been an ongoing source of contention.
Spanish American War and American Imperialism
In the short Spanish American War, fought from April to August 1898, the United States supported Cuban rebels focused on toppling the Spanish crown's imperialist government. In 1897 U.S. President William McKinley offered to buy Cuba outright from Spain for $300 million. Spain rejected the offer; the following year the U.S. and Spain went to war.
In April 1898, as the U.S. government considered declaring war on Spain to aid Cuban independence, Senator Henry Teller proposed adding the Teller Amendment to the declaration of war, clarifying that the U.S. did not intend to annex or control Cuba. Anti-imperialists, such as noted author and satirist Mark Twain, pushed for the Teller Amendment out of concern for U.S. overreach in international affairs.
However, American imperialism and expansionism motivated U.S. involvement in Cuba, as later evidenced in the Platt Amendment, part of the eventual Cuban constitution and which protected U.S. interests. By the end of the Spanish American War the U.S. gained Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam and appeared to be well on its way to replace European imperialism with American imperialism.
Guantanamo Naval Base and the Platt Amendment
Article VII of the Platt Amendment applies directly to the U.S. maintenance of Guantanamo Naval Base:
"To enable the United States to maintain the independence of Cuba, and to protect the people thereof, as well as for its own defense, the Government of Cuba will sell or lease to the United States lands necessary for coaling or naval stations, at certain specified points, to be agreed upon with the President of the United States."
Other articles of the Platt Amendment gave the U.S. the right to intervene in Cuban affairs when U.S. interests were threatened, a form of "Yankee Imperialism" that remained in effect until 1934, when the amendment was repealed.
Gitmo and Cuban-U.S. Relations Today
In 1934, a new treaty was negotiated, more than doubling the lease amount paid by the U.S. government and permitting the lease to continue unless both governments agreed to end it, or until the U.S. ended the arrangement. When Cuban President Fidel Castro gained power in 1959 he declared the treaty null and void and has cashed only one of the U.S. government's lease checks.
The United States considers the cashing of that check to be a tacit agreement to honor the treaty. The Cuban government claims that the use of coercion by the U.S. government during the formation of the Cuban constitution, which included the threat to keep U.S. troops in Cuba if the Platt amendment was not adopted in the new Cuban constitution in 1903, violates international law and abrogates Cuban sovereignty.
In response, the U.S. has continued to pay the land lease and made Guantanamo Naval Base as self-sufficient as possible, completing renewable wind energy projects and bringing outside fresh water supplies.
The decision to house unlawful combatants captured by the U.S. government in military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan at Gitmo may violate the terms under which the land may be used under the Platt Amendment. The original 1903 treaty stated that the land could be used only for coaling, fueling or naval concerns. The Cuban government has argued against the development of Gitmo and used this rationale to request that the naval base be dissolved. The matter remains unresolved as of 2009.
References:
Hamilton, Richard. President McKinley, War, and Empire. Transaction Publishers, 2006.
Kaplan, Amy. Where Is Guantanamo? American Quarterly, Vol. 57, No. 3, September 2005, pp. 831-858.
McCartney, Paul T. American National Identity, the War of 1898, and the Rise of American Imperialism. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2006.
"Platform of the American Anti-lmperialist League," in Speeches, Correspondence, and Political Papers of Carl Schurz, vol. 6, ed. Frederick Bancroft (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1913), p. 77, note 1.
Schlesinger, Arthur Jr. "The American Empire? Not So Fast" World Policy Journal, Vol. 23, No. 1, Spring 2005, pp. 43-46.
Platt Amendment, 1903, Mount Holyoke College
Teller and Platt Amendments, Library of Congress
Melanie Zoltan - Melanie Zoltan is a former college professor and administrator who has written for About.com, PCWorld, Brain Child, Thomson Gale, and ...
Comments