Playing Down the Cuba Crisis
FONTAINE, ROGER
Perspectives PLAYING DOWN THE CUBA CRISIS BY ROGER FONTAINE In this hard-to-face town, where every crisis is cause for a game of wit (in both senses of the word), insiders and outsiders had been...
...Moreover, unlike East Germany, which acts as a cordon sanilaire between the West and volatile Poland, Cuba is not in a geographically sensitive spot for the Russians...
...Would it be substantive or cosmetic...
...Perspectives PLAYING DOWN THE CUBA CRISIS BY ROGER FONTAINE In this hard-to-face town, where every crisis is cause for a game of wit (in both senses of the word), insiders and outsiders had been busy speculating on the kind of deal the U.S...
...As for the Kremlin's assurances, their worth is debatable at best...
...and (2) the brigade will not be a threat to the United States or any other nation...
...From this Republic's infancy—long before the Monroe Doctrine was announced—its leaders have regarded the presence of a major power in Cuba as unacceptable...
...Even Fidel Castro cooled his blood-and-thun-der anti-Americanism in his remarks before the U.N...
...General Assembly, an ideal forum for yanqui baiting...
...A week later, Leonid I. Brezhnev made a conciliatory speech in East Berlin that avoided the touchy topic altogether, while promising a unilateral reduction of Soviet troops in East Germany...
...This, of course, is not news to students of Soviet-American relations, yet it is singularly depressing that Carter, untutored in almost 40 years of that relationship, can be so naive...
...But there is another, more important difference between the two situations...
...And the siring of Kremlin imnes from Afghanistan to the Caribbean remains unchecked and unchallenged...
...There was, for instance, Senator Frank Church's explanation of why he decided to break the troop story: Some "responsible official," said the Idaho Democrat, had to do it —as though the Executive branch of the United States government did not exist...
...The real problem, ultimately, is not so much that the Administration was unable to resolve the crisis, as that it wrongly defined it...
...So unlike 1962, Moscow and Havana came out the clear winners...
...A more accurate analogy, he suggested, was the building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961...
...Better yet was Castro's misquoting "someone" to the effect that history repeated itself, first as tragedy, then as farce...
...It should be noted, too, that the Marine landing at Guantanamo will be conducted 1,000 miles from the Soviet brigade's position...
...In addition, how much confidence we can place in the Kremlin's promises about the future depends on how much we can trust their statements about the present—which is not at all...
...Reallocating naval resources to the Caribbean means fewer ships available for vital theaters like the Persian Gulf...
...It is small wonder these moves caused so little consternation in Moscow: None endanger Soviet interests...
...At issue is not simply the brigade's status, but the steady buildup of Soviet military and intelligence capability in the Caribbean...
...He thereby intended to let the Administration off the hook...
...The Task Force, with some 60 officers, is not militarily significant...
...Instead, he reassured the West Germans and West Berlin-ers by reinforcing the Berlin garrison and sending Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson to pledge America's guarantee of the city's security...
...Although the implications of his historic turnaround are appreciated in Moscow, they apparently are not in Washington...
...Judging from the available poll data, many Americans could not understand, afterward, why Carter bothered making the speech, and some viewers resented the delay of the Monday night football game...
...3) establishment of a Caribbean Joint Task Force in Key West, Florida...
...Protecting our neighbors from direct attack is the answer to a nonexistent threat, since neither the Soviets nor the Cubans have ever operated that way in this Hemisphere...
...The German Democratic Republic erected the Wall as a defensive measure, to stop the mass emigration of its populace—an emigration that, had it continued unchecked, would have spelled an ignominious end for the police state...
...To everyone's surprise, when President Carter finally provided the answer in his October 1 prime-time TV speech, it turned out to be "neither...
...The package of statements elicited by the Administration from the Soviets in the past month are subject to widely different interpretations...
...The maneuvers are more meaningful, yet it is important (o bear in mind that there is a price to be paid for them...
...On the other hand, the 3,000-man brigade could not be wished away and therefore continues to be a matter of "serious concern...
...Consider the President's address to the nation, his attempt to explain the matter to the public...
...Only Granma, Havana's Party daily, was allowed to crow a bit over the outcome of this latest crisis...
...But they did not rub it in...
...The Administration basically accepted the status quo...
...and our soldiers will fire blank ammunition, recalling the Administration's earlier "show of force" in Saudi Arabia, where unarmed F-15s were flown in...
...Let it never be said the Russians have no sense of irony...
...The Soviet buildup in Cuba is plainly offensive in nature...
...For nothing the President said suggested that the celebrated Soviet combat brigade discovered 90 miles from Miami would go away, or perhaps hide beneath the palm trees...
...2) protection for any nation in the Hemisphere from overt attack by Moscow or Havana forces...
...Carter further played down the Soviet troops by stressing his previous measures to improve our defenses, and by making a fervent plea for salt ft—a peroration that occupied the final quarter of his speech...
...On the one hand, Carter wanted to reduce the issue's importance, even hinting that the "highly publicized" Russian combat brigade was a creature of the press...
...The President's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, surely the Administration's most agile mind, has claimed that the latest crisis was nothing like the one in October 1962...
...tion of the media with the tense, top level negotiations, the hot line messages and the unprecedented formation of a blue ribbon panel of notables that numbered many former Secretaries of State...
...On the whole, however, the situation called more for tears than for laughter...
...The President also cited the "assurances" that he had received "from the highest level . . . of the Soviet government"—i.e., (1) the brigade in Cuba is for training purposes only and will so remain, changing neither its size nor function...
...In fact, it was the Administration that tried to attract the attenRooer Fontaine is a senior researcher at Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies...
...Just as the Wall never came down, he was telling us, so the Russian troops may not be removed—but that will not prevent the world we know and love from going on...
...The whole range of Russian military and intelligence activity has been ignored...
...Resuming surveillance is the least Jimmy Carter could do after prematurely canceling aerial reconnaissance in 1977...
...surveillance over Cuba...
...The "someone" Castro could not remember is Karl Marx, whose Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon began with the aphorism...
...and (5) increasing economic aid for the Caribbean area...
...Accordingly, the Chief Executive announced a series of measures to counter, if not contain, the Soviet presence in Cuba...
...The analogy, though, is a false one...
...and the USSR would cut to calm last month's sudden storm over Cuba...
...By his lack of action, the President has reversed this policy...
...Following Carter's TV appearance, the Kremlin issued a tepid condemnation of American "gunboat" diplomacy...
...Indeed, it could cause confusion with Norfolk, the Atlantic Command's headquarters...
...Finally, greater economic aid will be a plus, but hardly sufficient to stop the Cubans or the Soviets from expanding their influence in the Hemisphere...
...John F. Kennedy, while caught by surprise, did not panic and call the situation unacceptable only to declare it acceptable later...
...By contrast, the bottom line of the present sorry affair is that the Soviet combat troops will stay in Cuba...
...They were: (1) resumption of U.S...
...The Soviets in particular were remarkably restrained...
...4) stepping up military maneuvers in the region, including a Marine landing at Guantanamo Bay...
...Still, the entire affair was not without its humorous moments—mostly unintended...
Vol. 62 • October 1979 • No. 20
