The flip side of this coin was the sense that the United States was so powerful on the island, indeed, nearly omnipotent, that nothing ever happened there--nothing, certainly, of any real importance--without its permission. Therefore, Cuba's failure to fully replicate the "American way of life" was ultimately America's, not Cuba's, fault.

       Here, then, lie the roots of a conflict that for 100 years has made the United States and Cuba what one former U.S. diplomat called "the closest of enemies." For Cubans, anti-Americanism is the ultimate explanation for all their miseries and problems. But, paradoxically, this country is also regarded as holding the solution to these problems. In either case, the United States is found wanting: either for being too powerful and omnipresent, or for failing to fully exert its power to put Cuba's house in order.

       It is remarkable how consistently this love-hate relationship has expressed itself, surviving successive political upheavals, social revolutions, even a major realignment of Cuba in world affairs. In the 1920s and `30s, the same Cuban politicians who railed against U.S. Embassy interference in domestic affairs or the threat of military intervention from Washington connived at both when it suited their convenience. Though there was much unhappiness with an economy tied to a single product, sugar, this did not prevent Cuban businessmen and politicians alike from demanding ever-larger shares of the U.S. domestic market.

       In the 1950s, both dictator Fulgencio Batista and his opponents, each unable to eliminate the other, sought decisive advantage by appealing to Washington. In the end, the Eisenhower administration imposed an arms embargo too late to strengthen the moderate opposition but also too late to save the regime from the Castroite alternative.