Did Fidel Castro's decades-long defiance doom Cuba?

When Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, Cuba was legally sovereign but in an extraordinarily asymmetric relationship with the United States. As Earl E. T. Smith, U.S. ambassador prior to the revolution, told Congress in 1960, “the American ambassador was the second most important man in Cuba; sometimes even more important than the (Cuban) president.”Castro’s revolution changed that relationship. This is an essential part of his legacy — one worth exploring as Cuban authorities celebrate the centenary of the long-time leader’s birth. Under Castro, Cuba went from a country whose foreign policy