CUBA: What Should the U.S. Do?

President James Monroe's 1823 warning to the Holy Alliance, led by Russia and France, was the voice of a brash new nation, and it served to fence Europe out of Latin America. "We should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portions of this Hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety," said the Monroe Doctrine. In exercise of the pre-eminence that it thus conferred on itself, the U.S. subsequently—and mistakenly, as 1960 sees it—intervened freely in Latin American affairs, by force in seven countries. Last week, in the wake of modern Russia's deepest penetration of the Hemisphere—the broad trade-and-aid agreement with Fidel Castro's Cuba—thoughts of Monroe and of intervention were inevitably voiced in Washington.

Fears. Part of the price of Castro's $100 million in Russian assistance will probably be a flourishing traffic in Soviet technicians to get machinery running.

Another part is Castro's agreement to "collaborate actively" with Russia in the United Nations, breaking the Hemisphere's façade of cold-war solidarity.

(Snorted one Latin American President: "Can you imagine what would happen to my government if I signed on the dotted line to support U.S. policies in return for U.S. aid?") Secretary of State Christian Herter described Cuba frankly as a "deteriorating situation." A flustered Congress, turning to the only weapon it had, considered more than 60 bills designed to clip Castro's wings by cutting back his 300,000-ton quota on the high-priced U.S. sugar market.

Raw sugar sells on the world market for 3¢ per lb., on the protected U.S. market for more than 5¢.* The quota system, designed to protect U.S. growers and support traditional trading partners, including Cuba, nets Castro an outright subsidy of more than $100 million a year, or 4% of Cuba's gross national product of $2.6 billion. Sugar producers such as Brazil and Mexico argue that this boon should go to friends of the U.S. rather than to Castro's Cuba. The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Robert Hill, long an advocate of a get-tough line with Castro, flew back to Washington last week and drew loud cheers in the Mexican press by lobbying in Congress for a bigger sugar share for Mexico, at Cuba's expense.

But a quota cut, while damaging Cuba's economy and discommoding Castro, might seem a petty action for a great power, and probably an ineffective one as well. The State Department would like to get the issue away from Congress through a bill giving the White House the power to change quotas at will. Congress shows little interest in waiving its power, but Administration pressure can probably stave off any drastic changes in the sugar law this year.