Andrew Meador, NPTS ’18

Cuba J-Term Practica with Global Exchange, 2017

I grew up in the thrall of Hemingway’s rugged characters, from bullfighters in Spain to Cuban fishermen and African safari hunters. I loved reading tales of the Battle of San Juan Hill, of the charge of the Buffalo Soldiers and Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, though I’ve since learned better than to believe in heroic fairy tales. My father was a lawyer and had Cuban-American clients in Miami, and I remember developing a fondness for Cuban sandwiches and key lime pie, for the Spanish language and eventually for Latin dance. As a Special Forces soldier I went to Key West for training, and while there visited the Hemingway house, went out to the sea and fished, and thought that one day, when I got out of the military, I’d visit that mythical island just 90 miles away (though I’ve since learned the real distance is about 103 miles). The Cuba practicum gave me the opportunity to finally go, to experience the country and culture for what they are and not what I wished them to be. As most awakenings are, this one was sobering, at least as much as the free-flowing Cuban pour allows for such sobriety.

Cuba has always been a source of fascination for me, so for my paper topic, chose the Cuban Missile Crisis. For me, the decision was easy. Firstly, the Crisis is a story about people and the decisions they make. The main players are all compelling characters, for good and ill. The second reason was that it allowed me to reinvestigate an episode I thought I already understood, but to explore it from the angle of how people make decisions of consequence under enormous stress. The last reason is that it is the closest that humanity has ever come to bringing about its own destruction. It is incumbent on students to security issues and nonproliferation, and of foreign relations generally, to understand this issue. For those of us trying to solve intractable dilemmas, having a knowledge of the most consequential and dangerous episode in our history is essential to fulfill the fundamental challenge we face: how to avoid another one.

Read Andrew’s Project: MidnightinHavana

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