Until I read this report in the Miami Herald, I got migraines thinking
about those Cuban commies coming up here to Buffalo, New York, and
destroying everything I hold precious in life. I am SO!!!!!! relieved.
Paul Z.
*************************************************************************
Paul Zarembka, on OS/2 and supporting RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY at
********************** http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka
On Mon, 30 Mar 1998, Thomas Kruse wrote:
> Pentagon calls Cuban forces weak; Military seen as severely diminished
> Published Sunday, March 29, 1998, in the Miami Herald
> By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS Herald Staff Writer
>
> WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has concluded that Cuba poses no significant
> threat to U.S. national security, and senior defense officials increasingly
> favor engaging their island counterparts to reduce existing tensions.
>
> In a classified report to be given to Congress by Tuesday, Secretary of
> Defense William Cohen plans to portray Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces as
> a severely diminished military and to downplay the dangers posed by chemical
> or biological weapons, or by another refugee exodus, according to people
> briefed on the findings.
>
> At the same time, retired Marine Gen. John Sheehan has just returned from a
> weeklong tour of the island -- the highest-ranking U.S. officer to visit
> Cuba since the 1959 revolution -- and is urging the Clinton administration
> to ``regularize contacts'' between Cuban and American military chiefs.
>
> Sheehan, who spent several days in the company of Cuban Defense Minister
> Raul Castro and dined with Fidel Castro, said he ``starts with the premise
> that the Cuban military is not a threat to the U.S. The question is how do
> we institutionalize this? It doesn't mean diplomatic recognition in the near
> term.''
>
> The dovish assessment expected from the Defense Department has already drawn
> cries of dismay from some exile leaders and lawmakers, including the three
> Cuban-American members of Congress.
>
> Advocates of maintaining a more guarded position on Cuba cite a historical
> record that includes Castro's recommendation that the Soviet Union launch a
> nuclear strike against the United States during the 1962 Cuban Missile
> Crisis, Cuban defectors' accounts in the last decade that Havana's
> contingency bombing targets included a South Florida nuclear reactor, and
> the 1996 downing of two exile planes over international waters.
>
> ``We are appalled by current attempts to downplay the Castro threat,'' the
> Cuban-American lawmakers and six House colleagues wrote in a March 19 letter
> to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
>
> ``There is a pathologically unstable tyrant in the final years of his
> dictatorship just 90 miles from our shores. His four-decade record of
> brutality, rabid hostility toward the Cuban exile community,
> anti-Americanism, support for international terrorism, and proximity to the
> United States is an ominous combination.''
>
> Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Miami Republican, said in an interview that the
> Pentagon report is part of a broader administration strategy to normalize
> relations with Cuba. The report, mandated last year in an amendment
> introduced by Sen. Bob Graham of Florida, emerges just days after President
> Clinton restored direct flights and exile remittances to Cuba and vowed to
> get more medical and food aid to the island.
>
> ``These Pentagon types are very politicized,'' Ros-Lehtinen said. ``They get
> their instructions very directly from the White House.''
>
> But interviews with current and former Pentagon officials counter that it is
> the politicians who have misrepresented the security threat posed by Cuba,
> particularly since the Castro government lost its Soviet patron in the early
> 1990s. Exile leaders are determined to maintain maximum U.S. pressure on
> Castro, even after he has been revealed as a toothless tiger, they say.
>
> No `rational dialogue'
>
> ``We really don't have much of a rational dialogue on this,'' said Alberto
> R. Coll, principal deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Bush
> administration, who echoed Sheehan's views. ``Anybody who admits there's a
> problem with existing policy is branded a pro-Castro apologist.''
>
> A senior Pentagon official appointed by President Reagan who considers
> himself an ``anti-communist hard-liner'' said the context of relations has
> changed so completely that it is time to engage Cubans at all levels, even
> trade with them.
>
> ``It's very difficult for exile groups,'' said the official, who asked not
> to be named for fear of offending friends. ``They're always the last ones to
> dismount from the horses they're riding.''
>
> In recent years, a chasm has grown between exile leaders and important
> political allies such as Sen. Graham and Rep. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., and
> U.S. officials charged with assessing the risks posed by Cuba.
>
> The staunchest Castro foes accept as a given that Cuba is a haven for drug
> traffickers and abets and trains anti-American terrorists. Administration
> officials maintain they have no evidence of such activity.
>
> Marine Gen. Charles Wilhelm, chief of the U.S. Southern Command in Miami
> with responsibility for Cuba, provided important input for Cohen's report.
>
> In a recent interview with The Herald, Wilhelm described ``dramatically''
> weakened Cuban armed forces, cut in half from a peak of 130,000 active
> personnel a decade ago. He also noted that much of Cuba's military equipment
> is unusable, particularly tactical aircraft like Soviet MiGs.
>
> Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba had one of Latin America's
> most disciplined, best-armed forces, which became an important tool of
> Castro's efforts to expand Marxism in South America, Angola, Central America
> and the Caribbean.
>
> Times have changed
>
> Today, Wilhelm said, ``that armed force has no capability whatsoever to
> project itself beyond the borders of Cuba, so it's really no threat to
> anyone around it. As much as 70 percent of the armed forces' effort is
> involved in their own self-sustainment, in things like agricultural
> pursuits. . . . It doesn't even begin to resemble the Cuban armed forces
> that we contemplated in the '80s.''
>
> But Erneido Oliva -- a Cuban-American Bay of Pigs veteran who rose to become
> a major general in the U.S. Army Reserve before his retirement in 1993 --
> argues that the United States should not measure Castro's threat in
> conventional terms.
>
> ``Cuba is a threat and will be a threat to the U.S. as long as Fidel Castro
> and Raul are in power,'' said Oliva, who now heads the Cuban-American
> Military Council. ``You have to look at history and at what this individual
> [Fidel Castro] has done, and how they have trained their armed forces.''
>
> Oliva ticked off a list of risky behaviors he ascribed to the Castro
> brothers, including allowing a Russian eavesdropping base at Lourdes, just
> outside Havana; assisting drug traffickers; cooperating with other
> U.S.-designated terrorist nations like Iraq and Iran; cultivating anthrax
> and other biological weapons; and trying to complete the construction of an
> ``unsafe'' nuclear plant at Juragua.
>
> Current and former Pentagon officials largely downplay such concerns, though
> they offer little specific information, claiming a need to protect U.S.
> intelligence.
>
> They say they have no evidence of high-level Cuban complicity in
> drug-running to the United States. They do not think Cuba has ``weaponized''
> biological agents against the United States.
>
> And they say the best way to ensure that the Juragua plant is safe -- if
> Cuba ever obtains financing to complete it -- is to provide cooperation and
> scrutiny under the International Atomic Energy Agency. It was reported last
> month that Russia had extended a $350 million line of credit for investors
> to complete Juragua. But construction has not resumed, according to sources
> monitoring the plant closely.
>
> Cuban listening post
>
> Even the Russian-staffed electronic listening post at Lourdes, which
> officials say is capable of intercepting U.S. commercial and military
> transmissions across the eastern United States, merits a collective shrug.
> Officials say the Russians run the facility independently of Havana, and add
> that Washington has entered a post-Cold War modus vivendi with Moscow in
> which the Russians have not demanded the dismantling of U.S. posts in Japan
> or Turkey.
>
> This arrangement has some strong critics, who point to the Lourdes facility
> as a menace.
>
> ``During the Gulf War, the Lourdes facility intercepted the details of our
> battle plan. [The Soviets] were going to give it to the Iraqis, except for
> the personal intervention of [Soviet Premier Mikhail] Gorbachev,'' said Bob
> Filippone, Sen. Graham's aide on national security affairs.
>
> But exclusively in terms of U.S.-Cuban relations, a Pentagon consensus is
> emerging:
>
> Castro is viewed as a rational player who does not want to provoke the
> United States, because he knows it would invite his own annihilation. U.S.
> contingency plans do allow for a ``Goetterdaemmerung scenario,'' in which
> the dictator, under siege at home, lashes out at the United States. But
> military planners say U.S. defenses would be on a high state of alert in
> such circumstances and could effectively repel any Cuban attack on South
> Florida or elsewhere.
>
> ``I can tell you Fidel Castro is not a madman,'' said Coll, the Bush
> appointee. ``He wants to stay in power. . . . If out of the blue tomorrow,
> he decided to attack our reactors at Turkey Point, that would be the end of
> him. He knows that he has to behave very well. It's one thing to repress
> your people at home. But it's another to engage in international adventurism.''
>
> The most immediate risk to U.S. interests is posed by unchecked emigration
> from Cuba, say Pentagon officials who point to the rafter exodus of 1994, in
> which tens of thousands of balseros set out across the Florida Straits.
>
> Despite recent spates of new rafters, U.S.-Cuban migration accords signed in
> 1994 and 1995 have somewhat checked a new tide of refugees.
>
> Sheehan, who spoke with Castro at length about the issue, said the Cuban
> leader is determined to protect the accords, which call for the repatriation
> of Cubans intercepted by U.S. vessels at sea and allow for the orderly
> migration of at least 20,000 Cubans a year to the United States.
>
> ``He went to great lengths to say, `I don't want to do anything to embarrass
> President Clinton,' '' Sheehan said of Castro. ``He holds him in high regard.''
>
> The Defense Department has no stomach for being drawn into a Cuban civil
> war or an eventual occupation of the island. For that reason, U.S. military
> officials are reflexively uncomfortable with a U.S. policy that some say is
> predicated on provoking a popular uprising or an economic ruin.
>
> ``I believe the U.S. military is concerned that were the situation in Cuba
> to deteriorate, and widespread unrest were to break out, there would be
> considerable pressure on the U.S. to intervene militarily,'' said Ed
> Gonzalez, a Cuba expert at the Rand Corp., a Santa Monica-based think tank
> with Pentagon contracts.
>
> ``In that event, they probably would fear becoming involved in a terrible
> mess on the island and becoming a virtual army of occupation.''
>
> Contacts advocated
>
> Partly as a hedge against such an outcome, Sheehan advocates lifting the ban
> on U.S. food and medical sales to Cuba and urges professional contacts among
> senior military officers of both countries.
>
> Sheehan, a much-decorated veteran of Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, traveled
> to eastern Cuba with Raul Castro during his visit. Contrary to some accounts
> that the younger Castro brother inspires little loyalty among the troops,
> Sheehan said, ``There clearly is an affection for him. . . . You can see the
> admiration in the young kids' eyes.''
>
> Sheehan said both Castro brothers appear to be in good health, ``clearly are
> more comfortable talking to a military officer than they are to some
> politicians,'' and preside over a military with a wholly ``defensive'' mission.
>
> He said Cuba is plainly in transition and it behooves the United States to
> ensure that it remains peaceful.
>
> ``There is a consensus being developed on both sides of the aisle saying,
> `Wait a minute, we're working in a different world. How are we going to move
> toward conflict control?' '' he said. ``You're never going to solve the
> ideological problem.''
>
> Copyright © 1998 The Miami Herald
>
> Tom Kruse / Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia
> Tel/Fax: (591-42) 48242
> Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
