Wayne Smith devoted his career to dialogue and diplomacy (+Espanol)
By Peter Kornbluh and William M. LeoGrande / The Nation
(Editor’s Note: On June 28, we lost Wayne S. Smith, 91, a former US diplomat who courageously quit the Reagan administration over Cuba. He would then go on to spend more than 30 years championing the cause of rapprochement between the US and Cuba. He saw his life’s work come to fruition when diplomatic relations were restored in 2015 as part of Barack Obama’s and Raúl Castro’s December 17, 2014, agreement to normalize bilateral ties between the two countries. That sense of accomplishment was short-lived, though, when Donald Trump became president. The Nation authors Peter Kornbluh and William LeoGrande co-authored this fitting tribute to Wayne S. Smith that we now reprint for our readers.)
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“Cuba,” as former Foreign Service officer Wayne S. Smith was fond of observing, “seems to have the same effect on American administrations as the full moon has on werewolves.” Smith devoted his career—in and out of government—to advancing the cause of dialogue, diplomacy, and normal relations between Washington and Havana. He lived to see his tireless efforts come to fruition when President Barack Obama began normalizing relations in 2014, only to have President Donald Trump reverse course, returning to the failed policy of hostility and regime change.
At the time of Smith’s death at age 91 on June 28, 2024, the cause he championed— rapprochement between Washington and Havana—remains as critical, and as elusive, as ever.
As a young diplomat, Wayne Smith was posted to Havana just months before the triumph of Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959. When the Eisenhower administration broke relations in January 1961, he was one of the last US officials to leave, carrying with him the American flag that had flown over the Embassy. Eighteen years later, he returned as “principal officer” of the reopened US “Interests Section”—part of the Carter administration’s incremental and halting efforts to improve relations.