office. On 23 November 1981, Haig did just that, sitting down for a secret meeting with Cuban Vice-President Carlos Rafael Rodriguez in Mexico City to discuss the issues that divided the United States and Cuba.

Of all the American presidential administrations that have dealt with Fidel Castro since 1959, Reagan's seemed the least likely to engage in a dialogue with Cuba's communist government; and of all the hardline officials in the Reagan Administration, Alexander Haig seemed the most unlikely choice for such a mission. "I want to go after Cuba," Haig told his then deputy Robert McFarlane in early 1981 as he demanded a plan for U.S. military pressure against Castro. As McFarlane reported in his memoirs, "it was as though Haig had come into office thinking, 'Where can we make a quick win?' and judged that place to be Cuba."1

For that reason, the HaigRodriguez talks stand as an extraordinary episode of U.S.-Cuban diplomacy at the height of the Cold War in the Western Hemisphere.

Extreme secrecy surrounded preparations for the talks: Reagan and Haig kept most of the U.S. government out of the loop; an unmarked car was used to ferry Haig from the U.S. Embassy to the private home of Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda; and Haig and Rodriguez agreed this would be an "unofficial, secret meeting." Yet it quickly leaked to the Spanish magazine El Pais, and then to the Mexican and U.S. press. In a televised interview with CBS News in January 1982, Reagan admitted that 2 such a meeting had, in fact, occurred." Moreover, since the 1984 publica3 tion of Haig's memoirs, historians have had a U.S. version of the Mexico meeting. Haig's rendition of events, and his summary of the substance of the talks, generally comports to the Cuban version printed in this issue of the Bulletin (although it omits discussion of how the secret meeting came to occur in the first place). This Cuban transcript-originally in Spanish, translated into Russian, obtained by scholars from the Russian archives and now translated into English-provides new details, as well as the flavor of the discussion and

insights into the style and personalities of the two diplomats involved.

The Mexican government was simultaneously intermediary, mediator, and catalyst for the Haig-Rodriguez meeting. Alarmed by the Cold War rhetoric emating from the Reagan Administration-much of it from Haig himself-in 1981 the government of President Jose Lopez-Portillo sought to mitigate the growing potential for U.S. intervention in Central America and the Caribbean by urging dialogue instead of what the Cubans described as "verbal terrorism." In an effort to preempt future hostilities, Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda called for "a ceasefire of silence." "Mexico," he offered, "is prepared to serve as a bridge, as a communicator, between its friends and neighbors."4

Lopez-Portillo's major opportunity to promote an agenda of negotiations came at the North-South Summit held at the Mexican resort of Cancun in October 1981. Cuba had been involved in the preparatory meetings for the summit, and Mexican officials hoped the gathering of world leaders might provide an opportunity for a "discreet" meeting between Castro and Reagan. But, according to one of the conference organizers, Andres Rozental (now Mexican ambassador to Great Britain), U.S. officials balked when they learned Castro was scheduled to attend. "If Fidel came, Reagan wouldn't," Rozental recalls being told. Although Mexico had long resisted U.S. pressure to isolate Cuba, Lopez-Portillo was forced to call Castro and essentially disinvite him. "Castro understood immediately," Rozental remembers, "and graciously "5 agreed not to make it an issue."

Instead of the summit, LopezPortillo invited the Cuban leader to a private meeting on the island of Cozumel in July. The two talked about a potential U.S.-Cuban dialogue. Through Mexico, Castro passed the message that he was willing to discuss all outstanding issues with Washington.

Haig and other administration hardliners, however, forcefully opposed talks with Cuba as anathema to a strategy of raising Castro's level of anxiety through verbal threats and U.S. military

maneuvers in the Caribbean. "There could be no talk about normalization, no relief of the pressure, no conversations on any subject except the return to Havana of the Cuban criminals [from the Mariel boatlift] and the termination of Cuba's interventionism," Haig wrote in his memoirs.6

During the limousine ride to the airport with Reagan after the Cancun summit, however, Lopez-Portillo and Castaneda put their appeal directly to the president of the United States. According to one Mexican official, LopezPortillo essentially called in his chips: he asked Reagan to return Mexico's favor of disinviting Castro to Cancun by authorizing a U.S. emissary to meet secretly with Cuba's vice president later in the year. Reagan readily agreed, and subsequently directed Haig to undertake this mission when the opportunity arose in November.

The meeting took place in the spacious home of foreign minister Castaneda, located in a suburb of Mexico City. According to a member of Castaneda's family, the Mexican foreign minister introduced the two protagonists to each other in his library, and then left them to talk privately, aided only by a Cuban translator.

The house, according to family members, had no secret taping system. Yet, the Top Secret 38-page transcript of the discussion, which Vice President Rodriguez provided in Spanish to the Soviet ambassador to Havana in December 1981, suggests that the meeting may in fact have been recordedperhaps by the Cuban interpreter. In any event, the existence of an apparently verbatim record allows historians to chart the issues, diplomatic positions, and tenor of the discussion.

The central issue on Haig's agenda was Cuba's alleged role in supporting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and funneling aid to the El Salvadoran guerrillas. Drawing on what he called "volumes, records of radio broadcasts, data from technical reconnaissance photographs," Haig charged that Cuba, in "tacit agreement" with the Soviets, was fueling revolution in Central America. "We regard this as a serious threat to our vital interests and the

...

interests of peace and stability in the hemisphere," he stated.

In response, Rodriguez spent considerable time and detail attempting to refute the U.S. "evidence" of Cuban involvement in revolutionary movements from Central America to Africa. "I am aware that the Secretary of State is a great lover of philosophy," he said to Haig, noting that

Since the time of Hume, it has been considered proven that the factual appearance of 'B' following the appearance of 'A' does not signify that 'A' necessarily is the cause of the appearance of 'B'.

The U.S. had a "mistaken interpretation" of Cuba's role in Nicaragua and El Salvador, Rodriguez asserted, which he blamed on CIA distortion of intelligence. In response, Haig reasserted that the U.S. possessed "proof" that Cuba was "exporting revolution and bloodshed on the continent." Dismissing Rodriguez's lengthy version of world. events since 1975, Haig declared: "I can assure you that the benign picture that you have painted does not conform to reality."

Notwithstanding the acrimonious disagreement on the nature of Cuba's role abroad, the Haig-Rodriguez discussions did produce a surprising commitment toward coexistence. Unlike the Democratic Clinton Administrationwhich a decade later would demand that Cuba democratize as a prerequisite for normalizing relations-Haig made it clear that Washington took a realpolitik position on Cuba's internal political setup. "I do not believe that President Reagan has some kind of preconceived notion regarding the social system in Cuba," Haig stated. "This must be determined by the people of Cuba." Later in the conversation Haig noted that "President Reagan considers trade with Cuba a possibility." While dismissing past “moments of rapprochement" as "a series of delaying tactics" on the part of the Cubans, Haig stated that “if you are prepared to talk seriously, we are also prepared."

According to the transcript, Rodriguez and Haig agreed that Mexico "could be a uniting link in this matter"

of continuing talks, and that conducting "an even more direct exchange of opinions" would be desirable. Haig, at his own initiative, suggested that special U.S. envoy General Vernon Walters visit Havana for additional talks. "We can meet, in turn, in Havana and New York, because, in my view, we must commence a dialogue immediately," Haig is recorded as saying at the close of the meeting. "I believe that this is important, and we are ready to do it," replied Rodriguez.

In the immediate aftermath of this meeting, both the Mexican interlocutors and the Cubans believed that a positive step had been taken toward dialogue between Washington and Havana. "We had accomplished what we wanted— to get them together," recalled Andres Rozental. Face-to-face, the Cubans found Haig to be far more level-headed, respectful, and reasonable than his vitriolic Cold War rhetoric had led them to expect. In Rodriguez's opinion, shared later with Mexican officials, Haig was "neither crazy nor stupid, but a reasonably intelligent, experienced person with whom conversation was possible." Rodriguez was said to be impressed that Haig was willing to send Walters an official of "great authority, close to President Reagan"-as an envoy to continue the talks, and that the Secretary of State had emphasized the need to make a supreme effort to settle issues through "la via pacifica”-the peaceful road.

Haig, on the other hand, appears to have interpreted the meeting as evidence that U.S. pressure on Castro was working. "Clearly the Cubans were very anxious. They had read the signs of a new American policy."7 Haig returned to Washington to push, again, for a blockade. Walters did make a secret trip to Havana in March 1982-Mexican officials contributed once again to the arrangements-and spent five hours conferring with Castro and Rodriguez conferring with Castro and Rodriguez on Central America. But nothing concrete came of the talks.

In the end, as Ambassador Rozental puts it, the Mexican initiative was a "failure in getting anything going” be

tween the United States and Cuba. Moreover, U.S. military involvement in

the Central America conflict escalated dramatically in the months and years that followed, and for most of the decade, Nicaragua and El Salvador were wracked with the violence and bloodshed that Mexico had hoped could be avoided if the Reagan Administration and Castro's government could achieve a modus vivendi.

Yet, the fact that the HaigRodriguez talks occurred at all may well have mitigated against the further development of the even more overtly bellicose U.S. policy toward Cuba that Haig, among others, initially sought. The talks also set the stage for negotiations between Washington and Havana over immigration that took place in 1984. At the very least, the U.S.-Cuba meeting in Mexico demonstrated that a "moment of rapprochement”—a civil, rational high-level dialogue- was possible, even at a peak of acrimony in bilateral relations.

1 McFarlane recalled that Haig wanted to "close Castro down," and directed McFarlane to "get everyone together and give me a plan for doing it." McFarlane writes that when he came up with an options paper that pointed out the practical drawbacks of blockading Cuba or other types of unprovoked hostility, Secretary Haig harshly reprimanded him. "Six weeks ago I asked you to get busy and find a way to go to the source in Cuba. What you've given me is bureaucratic pap... Give me something I can take to the President so that he can show a substantial gain during his first year in office. I want something solid, not some cookie-pushing piece of junk." Eventually, McFarlane reports, calmer heads prevailed and the Reagan Administration decided to stick to the agreements on Cuba worked out with the Soviets during the Cuban missile crisis. See Robert McFarlane, Special Trust (New York: Cadell & Davies, 1991), 177-181.

2 See "Reagan Says Haig Met Key Cuban," New York Times, 28 January 1982. State Department officials, according to the story, “described themselves as 'quite surprised' that the President had said what he did. They still insisted they knew of no such meeting."

3

Alexander M. Haig, Jr., Caveat: Realism, Reagan, and Foreign Policy (New York: Macmillan, 1984), 133-136.

Editor's Note: "New Evidence on the Cold War in Asia" was not only the theme of the previous issue of the Cold War International History Project Bulletin (Issue 6-7, Winter 1995/1996, 294 pages), but of a major international conference organized by CWIHP and hosted by the History Department of Hong Kong University (HKU) on 9-12 January 1996. Both the Bulletin and the conference presented and analyzed newly available archival materials and other primary sources from Russia, China, Eastern Europe and other locations in the former communist bloc on such topics as the Korean and Vietnam/ Indochina Wars; the Sino-Soviet Alliance and Split; Sino-American Relations and Crises; the Role of Key Figures such as Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Joseph Stalin, and Nikita Khrushchev; the Sino-Indian Conflict; and more. The new information presented via both activities attracted considerable media attention, including articles or citations in the New York Times, Washington Post, Time Magazine, Pravda, The Guardian, and Newsweek, as well as a report on the Cable News Network (CNN); garnering particular notice in both popular and scholarly circles were the first publication of conversations between Stalin and Mao during the latter's trip to Moscow in Dec. 1949Feb. 1950, Russian versions of correspondence between Stalin and Mao surrounding China's decision to enter the Korean War in the fall of 1950; and translations and analyses of Chineselanguage sources on the 1958 Taiwan Straits Crisis, particularly in light of the resurgence of tension in that region (including Chinese military exercises) in the period leading up to the March 1996 Taiwanese elections.

The Hong Kong Conference, as well as the double-issue of the Bulletin, culminated many months of preparations. The basic agreement to organize the conference was reached in May 1994 between CWIHP and the HKU

History Department (particularly Prof. Priscilla Roberts and Prof. Thomas Stanley) during a visit by CWIHP's director to Hong Kong and to Beijing, where the Institute of American Studies (IAS) of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) agreed to help coordinate the participation of Chinese scholars (also joining the CWIHP delegation were Prof. David Wolff, then of Princeton University, and Dr. Odd Arne Westad, Director of Research, Norwegian Nobel Institute). Materials for the Bulletin and papers for the conference were concurrently sought and gathered over the subsequent year-and-a-half, climaxing at the very end of December 1995 and beginning of January 1996 (in the midst of U.S. shutdown of the fedthe midst of U.S. shutdown of the federal government and the worst blizzard to strike Washington, D.C. and the East Coast of the United States in many years) with the production of the double-issue and the holding of the conference, after some final fusillades of emails and faxes between the Wilson Center in Washington (CWIHP's director as well as Michele Carus-Christian of the Division of International Studies and Li Zhao of the Asia Program) and Priscilla Roberts at HKU.

Despite last-minute obstacles posed by weather and bureaucrats (i.e., visa troubles), more than 50 Chinese, American, Russian, European, and other scholars gathered in Hong Kong for four days of discussions and debates. CWIHP provided primary organizational support for putting the program together and financial backing to bring the participants to Hong Kong (with the aid of the National Security Archive and the University of Toronto), while HKU provided the venue and covered on-site expenses, with the help of generous support from the Louis Cha Foundation. In addition, as noted above, the IAS, CASS in Beijing helped coordinate Chinese scholars' participation; and Profs. Chen Jian (Southern Illinois University/Carbondale) and

Zhang Shuguang (University of Maryland/College Park) played a vital liaison role between CWIHP and the Chinese scholars. The grueling regime of panel discussions and debates (see program below) was eased by an evening boat trip to the island of Lantau for a seafood dinner; and a reception hosted by HKU at which CWIHP donated to the University a complete set of the roughly 1500 pages of documents on the Korean War it had obtained (with the help of the Center for Korean Research at Columbia University) from the Russian Presidential Archives.

Following the Hong Kong conference, CWIHP brought a delegation of U.S., Russian, Chinese, and European scholars to Hanoi to meet with Vietnamese colleagues and to discuss possible future activities to research and reassess the international history of the Indochina and Vietnam conflicts with the aid of archival and other primary sources on all sides; the visit was hosted by the Institute for International Relations (IIR) of the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry. Contacts between CWIHP and IIR and other Vietnamese scholars continue on how best to organize activities to exchange and open new historical sources; these are likely to include the publication of a special Bulletin devoted to new evidence on the conflicts in Southeast Asia, and, in coordination with other partners (such as the National Security Archive, Brown University, and the Norwegian Nobel Institute), the holding of a series of conferences at which new evidence would be disseminated and debated.

To follow up these activities, CWIHP plans to publish a volume of papers from the Hong Kong Conference (and related materials); this volume, in turn, will complement another book containing several papers presented at Hong Kong: Odd Arne Westad, ed., Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945-1953, scheduled for publication in 1997.

In addition, this section of the present Bulletin presents more information on several topics addressed both at Hong Kong and in the previous Bulletin:

* Russian and Chinese documents on the Mao-Stalin summit in Moscow that help flesh out the conversations between the two leaders published in the previous Bulletin;

* an analysis by William Taubman (first prepared for Hong Kong) of the personal conflict between Khrushchev and Mao and its role in the Sino-Soviet split, as well as contemporaneous Russian documents (from both Moscow and East Berlin archives);

* another paper prepared for Hong Kong, by M.Y. Prozumenschikov, on the significance of the Sino-Indian and Cuban Missile Crises of October 1962 for the open rupture between Moscow and Beijing, along with supplementary Russian and East German archival materials;

*and, perhaps most intriguingly, a Chinese response to a controversy opened in the previous Bulletin about the discrepancy between Russian archival documents and published Chinese documents regarding communications between Mao and Stalin on Beijing's entry into the Korean War in October 1950 (along with new evidence on a key omission from a Russian document in the last Bulletin).

Additional materials are slated for publication in CWIHP Working Papers, future Bulletins, and via the Internet on the CWIHP site on the National Security Archive's home page on the World Wide Web: http://www.nsarchive.com

Following is the program of the Hong Kong Confernce:

Cold War International History Project
Conference on New Evidence on the
Cold War in Asia
University of Hong Kong,
9-12 January 1996

"Mao, Stalin, and the Struggle in Manchuria, 1945-46: Nationalism or Internationalism?"; Yang Kuisong (Inst. of Modern History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences [CASS], Beijing), "On the Causes of the Changes in Mao's view of the Soviet Union"; Niu Jun (Inst. of American Studies [IAS], CASS), "The Origins of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945-50"; Brian Murray (Columbia Univ.), "Stalin, the Division of China, and Cold War Origins"; Commentators: James Tang (Hong Kong Univ.), O.A. Westad (Norwegian Nobel Inst.)

Panel II: New Evidence on the Korean War

Chair: Jim Hershberg (CWIHP):

Session 1: The North Korean Dimension

Papers: Alexandre Mansourov (Columbia Univ.), "Did Conventional Deterrence Work? (Why the Korean War did not erupt in the Summer of 1949)";

Hakjoon Kim (Dankook Univ., Seoul), Hakjoon Kim (Dankook Univ., Seoul), "North Korean Leaders and the Origins of the Korean War"; David Tsui (Chinese Univ. of Hong Kong), “Did the DPRK and the PRC Sign a Mutual Security Pact in 1949?"

Session 2: The Course of the War

Papers: Shen Zhihua (Ctr. for Oriental History Research, Beijing), “China Had to Send Its Troops to Korea: PolicyMaking Processes and Reasons"; Kathryn Weathersby (Florida State Univ.), "Stalin and a Negotiated Settlement in Korea, 1950-53"; Chen Jian (Southern Illinois Univ./Carbondale), "China's Strategy to End the Korean War"; Fernando Orlandi (Univ. of Trento, Italy), "The Alliance: Beijing, Moscow, the Korean War and Its End"

Revolution in Asia, 1949-58"

Panel III: New Evidence on SinoAmerican Relations in the Early Cold War

Chair: W. Cohen (Univ. of Maryland/ Baltimore); Papers: Zhang Bai-Jia (Inst. of Modern History, CASS), "The Limits of Confrontation: Looking at the Sino-American Relations during the Cold War Years from the Chinese Perspective"; O.A. Westad (Norwegian Nobel Inst.), "The Sino-Soviet Alliance and the United States: Wars, Policies, and Perceptions, 1950-1961"; Tao Wenzhao (IAS, CASS), "From Relaxation to Tension in China-US Relations, 1954-58"; Xiao-bing Li (Univ. of Central Oklahoma), "The Making of Mao's Cold War: The 1958 Taiwan Straits Crisis Revised"; Yongping Zheng (IAS, CASS), "Formulating China's Policy on the Taiwan Straits Crisis, 1958"; Comment: Nancy Bernkopf Tucker (Georgetown Univ.); Gordon Chang (Stanford Univ.); He Di (IAS, CASS)

Panel IV: Chinese Policy Beyond the Superpowers: Engaging India and the "Nationalist States"

Chair: Samuel F. Wells, Jr. (Wilson Center); Papers: Ren Donglai (Nanjing Univ.), "From the 'Two Camp' Theory to the `Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence': A Transition of China's Perception of and Policy Toward the Nationalist States, 1949-1954"; Roderick MacFarquhar (Harvard Univ.), “War in the Himalayas, Crisis in the Caribbean: the Sino-Indian Conflict and the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962"; M.Y. Prozumenschikov (TsKhSD, Moscow), "The Influence of the Sino-Indian Border Conflict and the Caribbean Crisis on the Development of Sino-Soviet Relations" [presented in absentia by J. Hershberg (CWIHP)]; Comment: Norman Owen (Hong Kong Univ.)

Panel V: From Alliance to Schism: New Evidence on The Sino-Soviet Split

Chair: Zi Zhongyun (IAS, CASS); Papers: Dayong Niu (Beijing Univ.), "From Cold War to Cultural Revolu