BOOK: Back Channel to Cuba: Washington/Havana . . .

[Oscar]

Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana

[ http://www.amazon.com/Back-Channel-Cuba ... 1469617633 ]

by William M. LeoGrande (Author), Peter Kornbluh (Author) Hardcover – October 13, 2014

Challenging the conventional wisdom of perpetual hostility between the United States and Cuba--beyond invasions, covert operations, assassination plots using poison pens and exploding seashells, and a grinding economic embargo--this fascinating book chronicles a surprising, untold history of bilateral efforts toward rapprochement and reconciliation. Since 1959, conflict and aggression have dominated the story of U.S.-Cuban relations. Now, William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh present a new and increasingly more relevant account. From John F. Kennedy's offering of an olive branch to Fidel Castro after the missile crisis, to Henry Kissinger's top secret quest for normalization, to Barack Obama's promise of a "new approach," LeoGrande and Kornbluh reveal a fifty-year record of dialogue and negotiations, both open and furtive, indicating a path toward better relations in the future.

LeoGrande and Kornbluh have uncovered hundreds of formerly secret U.S. documents and conducted interviews with dozens of negotiators, intermediaries, and policy makers, including Fidel Castro and Jimmy Carter. The authors describe how, despite the political clamor surrounding any hint of better relations with Havana, serious negotiations have been conducted by every presidential administration since Eisenhower's through secret, back-channel diplomacy. Concluding with ten lessons for U.S. negotiators, the book offers an important perspective on current political debates, at a time when leaders of both nations have publicly declared the urgency of moving beyond the legacy of hostility.

- - -

About the Author

William M. LeoGrande, professor of government at American University, is the author of Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992, among other books.
Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C., is the author of The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, among other books.

- - - -

Editorial Reviews

[ http://www.amazon.com/Back-Channel-Cuba ... 55&s=books ]

Told in clear prose, this richly detailed book underscores how diplomacy makes headlines, but many exchanges happen far from official negotiation tables.--Publishers Weekly Starred Review

LeoGrande and Kornbluh's exhaustive and masterful diplomatic history will stand as the most authoritative account of U.S.-Cuban diplomatic relations during the five decades of Cuban President Fidel Castro's rule.--Foreign Affairs

An exceedingly well-written and well-documented account. . . . Essential for libraries that support research into the political and diplomatic history of America foreign relations with Cuba in the latter half of the 20th century.--Library Journal Starred Review

Challenging the prevailing narrative of U.S.-Cuba relations, this book investigates the history of the secret, and often surprising, dialogue between Washington and Havana. The authors, who spent more than a decade examining classified files, provide a comprehensive account of negotiations beginning in 1959. . . . suggesting that the past holds lessons for future negotiators." --The New Yorker

Back Channel to Cuba tells a dynamic, expansive, and anecdote-rich story drawn from compelling primary sources, interviews and declassified documents. Generational change in the ranks of Cuban leadership and transformation on the ground and in the Cuban diaspora in the United States make Back Channel to Cuba a particularly timely contribution: history can and should serve as a guide to present and future decisions about the art of the possible by Cuban and American leaders, policy makers, and citizens.--Julia E. Sweig, author of Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know


See all Editorial Reviews

[ http://www.amazon.com/Back-Channel-Cuba ... 55&s=books ]

- - - - -

"Cut Loose the Shackles of the Past": U.S. and Cuba Announce a New Dawn in Diplomatic Relations

[ http://www.democracynow.org/2014/12/18/ ... les_of_the ]

December 18, 2014

President Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro announced Wednesday that the United States will restore full diplomatic relations with Cuba for the first time in more than half a century. The historic deal will include the opening of a U.S. embassy in Havana and comes with a prisoner exchange. Live from Cuba, we go to Havana for reaction from Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive at George Washington University. "Finally after 55 years, an element of sanity and effectiveness and modernization has arrived to the insane U.S. policy that U.S. presidents have been pursuing towards Cuba or all these years," Kornbluh says. He is the co-author of the book, "Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana."

Transcript: This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

MORE:

[ http://www.democracynow.org/2014/12/18/ ... les_of_the ]