WI: "Reverse-Finlandized" communist Cuba friendly with the US

During the Cold War, Finland, while democratic, did not join NATO and was closer diplomatically to its neighbor the USSR than it was to the US. Was there a possibility that Castro's Cuba becoming a Caribbean version of that - Marxist, but still friendly with the US? What effect would this have had on the Cold War/US policy in Latin America?
 
The effects would be.....weird to say the least. This would obviously prevent the Cuban missile crisis which might mean that the USSR would be more threatened by american nukes as the Americans would have no reason to take them out of turkey and they might update their stockpiles there. Honestly other than making the USSR slightly more cautious in its foreign policy I think its most likely that the US still wins the cold war. What happens to cuba after the cold war is where it gets tricky. With finland it being a democracy after the war it could very easily join the international community but for cuba it would be really strange being officially communist but heavily allied to the US.I can see the Cuban state becoming more democratic after the cold war and peacefully becoming a democracy. Or there might be some little violence. I might be being optimistic however.
 
I don't think this would be plausible - the US did basically everything possible to keep communism out of the Americas, including installing dictators in democratic countries that got too left-leaning for America's taste. The issue is if that communism got a hold in Cuba, it could easily spread to other American countries if Cuba became succesful enough - and those countries might take a more positive stance to the USSR than Cuba. So the US was always bound to be hostile towards Cuba, whether Cuba wanted to be friendly with the US or not.
 
Castro's Cuba? I'm not an expert on any of this, but I do have some understanding of the Cuban Revolution/how the US responded to it at the time and I have to say that it strikes me as unlikely he'd ever follow a truly pro-American doctrine. Neutral at best, but even that requires some leniency by the US that i'm equally unsure would ever exist with Castro in charge.
 
During the Cold War, Finland, while democratic, did not join NATO and was closer diplomatically to its neighbor the USSR than it was to the US. Was there a possibility that Castro's Cuba becoming a Caribbean version of that - Marxist, but still friendly with the US? What effect would this have had on the Cold War/US policy in Latin America?

I think that is an oversimplification with regard to Finland itself but in any event the problem with an analogy with Castro is that his anti-Americanism was deeply embedded in his outlook, even before he came to power. As he wrote to Celia Sanchez in 1958 "When I saw the rockets being fired at Mario's house, I swore to myself that the Americans would pay dearly for what they are doing. When this war is over a much wider and bigger war will begin for me: the war that I am going to wage against them. I know that this is my real destiny." https://books.google.com/books?id=4T9dAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA171
 

Dave Shoup

Banned
During the Cold War, Finland, while democratic, did not join NATO and was closer diplomatically to its neighbor the USSR than it was to the US. Was there a possibility that Castro's Cuba becoming a Caribbean version of that - Marxist, but still friendly with the US? What effect would this have had on the Cold War/US policy in Latin America?

I think you'd need a Cuban Tito, rather than a Cuban Castro.
 
During the Cold War, Finland, while democratic, did not join NATO and was closer diplomatically to its neighbor the USSR than it was to the US. Was there a possibility that Castro's Cuba becoming a Caribbean version of that - Marxist, but still friendly with the US? What effect would this have had on the Cold War/US policy in Latin America?

Isn't this all heavily dependent on what the US policies towards Cuba are? Castro's attitude wasn't the only problem: I understand that at first he would have been ready to work with the US, but the Americans soon alienated him with their hard line politics. If Washington treated Cuba in the way Moscow treated Finland, not in an openly hostile manner but on the surface appearing to respect its sovereignty and only seeking to slowly subvert it through politics, diplomacy and the economy, I think Washington and Havana could have the kind of relationship you want.
 
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