El papel de la Unión Europea en el triángulo Cuba, EE.UU. y Venezuela

Abstract

Since the establishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1988, the European Union‘s policy towards the island shifted between a major political alignment with the United States (in 1996 and 2003) or with Cuba (1988-1993 and since 2014). Despite political changes, the EU maintained constant diplomatic and economic relations with the island that allowed authorities in Havana to use Brussels as a joker, first in 1990, when the strategic alliance with the former Soviet Union ended, and again, since 2013 at the beginning of the crisis in Venezuela. The article focuses on the EU and sustains that Brussels – as the third pillar in an asymmetric triangle – has played an important role in the Cuban-US conflict, on the one hand, and in Havana’s strategic partnerships with the Soviet Union and Venezuela. Within the framework of «engagement» Europe’s instruments towards Cuba shifted – depending on the context and internal power constellations (hardliner or softliner among EU member states) – between the «conditioned engagement» of the European Position and constructive engagement (Coker C., 1982) shaped by the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement established in 2015.

Keywords

• Venezuela
• foreign policy
• Cuba
• European Union
• democracy promotion