A country that tries to hold itself above the fray of its bickering neighbors may have good intentions, but disengagement puts it at risk of pleasing neither — and of offending both. This may be the bitter lesson that the Bahamas must learn as it tries to be friend and partner to both the United States and Cuba.
History is replete with examples that suggest such a delicate balance of competing interests is difficult if not impossible to sustain over the long term. The United States learned this lesson — at great cost to its treasury and in lives lost — in World War I and again in World War II. The message was the same for other countries that tried but failed to avoid the conflagration of World War II.
The stakes are not nearly so great for the Bahamas as it attempts to tip-toe through the morass of legal and humanitarian issues raised by, on the one hand, its strong ties with the aggressively democratic United States and, on the other, its friendly embrace of the communist regime in Cuba. But the lesson, writ smaller, is the same.
Cuban dentists detained
The Bahamas’ precarious position was brought to a head by its recent detention of two Cuban dentists. Although the dentists had visas to enter the United States, Cuba refused to give them visas to leave the island.
So the dentists attempted the journey by boat, as so many others do. Their boat stalled in Bahamian waters and the Bahamian government took them into custody, ill-advisedly holding them for 10 months.
The international brouhaha that ensued included pressure from the U.S. government, intense lobbying of U.S. and Bahamian officials by outraged members of Congress and a threatened U.S. boycott of tourism, the economic lifeblood of the Bahamas.
Competing interests
The Bahamas is a sovereign country and, as such, it is free to follow whatever foreign policy that it deems necessary. After releasing the dentists, Fred Mitchell, the Bahamian foreign minister, said with characteristic pluck: ”The matter was Bahamian driven. No foreign agenda or foreign pressure drove this matter.” Sure.
Those words speak more to the fierce and understandable Bahamian pride than to reality. The fact is that the Bahamas are trying to juggle the competing and conflicting interests of its colossal neighbor with those of a smaller neighbor burdened by a failed socialist experiment. With one neighbor the Bahamas share a common language, heritage, culture, destiny, economic interests and, most important, democratic values. With the other, it shares little more than close proximity in a vast ocean.
From where we sit, the choice should be an easy one. But the Bahamas must make its own decision. We hope the lessons that history teaches haven’t been lost — again.
Editorial Opinion from The Miami Herald
