Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume X, Cuba, January 1961–September 1962

114. Memorandum From the Presidentʼs Special Assistant (Schlesinger) to President Kennedy⁰

Washington, April 17, 1961.

SUBJECT

• Cuba: Can We Recognize a Provisional Government?

I raised last week with the State Department the question of the conditions under which we could take formal diplomatic cognizance of an anti-Castro regime in Cuba. I have now received a memorandum from the Legal Adviser dealing with this question.¹

1. The memorandum makes clear that the United States can not, under international law, recognize an insurrectionary group which has control of only a relatively small area in Cuba. The tests for recognition include possession of the machinery of state, administering the government with the assent of the people and without substantial resistance, and capacity to discharge international obligations. Obviously the Revolutionary Council will not meet these tests until it is established in Habana and until fighting has substantially ceased. Recognition of the insurgents at an earlier stage would probably constitute a casus belli.

2. The memorandum also makes it clear that, if the insurgents gain control over a particular area and if they organize a framework of government within that area, a case can be made for US recognition of a state of belligerency in Cuba.

If the US recognized a state of belligerency, we would have the position, under international law, of a neutral. Both parties to the war would have the rights of belligerents. While the US Government would be required to practice impartiality in its relations with the two belligerents, private persons and companies in the US could make loans, sell arms, etc., to the insurgents. The Castro regime, on the other hand, would have the right under international law to blockade ports held by the insurgents and to stop and search American vessels on the high seas and seize vessels carrying contraband of war.

The State Department points out that the recognition of belligerency in Cuba by the US would create, in the words of the Rio treaty, a “fact or situation that might endanger the peace of America,” and would thereby open the situation up to action by the OAS. Recognition of belligerency, in other words, could lay the basis for multilateral OAS action calling for an end to hostilities and supervised elections; or, failing this, for OAS quarantine of Cuba or general OAS recognition of belligerency in Cuba.

Arthur Schlesinger, jr.²

0. Source: Kennedy Library, Papers of Arthur Schlesinger, Cuba 1961, Box 31. Secret.
1. This memorandum, entitled “Various Considerations If an Insurrectionary Movement Gains Control of a Specific Area in Cuba,” is dated April 7, and was forwarded to Schlesinger on April 17 under a covering memorandum from Executive Secretary Lucius D. Battle. (Ibid.)
2. Printed from a copy that bears this typed signature.