NOTE T(Sanitized)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80B01554R003300140042-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 6, 2004
• Sequence Number: 42
• Publication Date: May 5, 1980
• Content Type: NOTES

25X1 Approved For Release 2005/01/13 : CIA-RDP80BO1554R003300140042-9
Approved For Release 2005/01/13 : CIA-RDP80BO1554R003300140042-9
 Approved For,piease 2005/01/13 : CIA-RDP80BO1554 03300140042-9
ON P?JS- /-
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
26 March 1980
Caribbean key to US- security.
By John K. Cooley..:
Staff correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
Washington
Gone are the days when defending the Caribbean, for
United States military planners, meantsending a few ma-
rines or a Navy frigate to punish a peg-legged pirate or a
"banana republic" that had transgressed against US citi-
zens or property.
Since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and even before,
the US has in effect been facing the token power of the So-
viet Union from just 90 miles across the Florida Keys..
US strategists, in the- words of one, now see "Cuban-
supported subversion spreading like red. ink, on a blotter-
up Central America, from Costa Rica to Nicaragua to El
Salvador"- approaching closer and closer to the vast oil
and gas fields of Mexic%'an ultimate Soviet-Cuban target,.
some believe.
The young and restless people of the newly liberated
Caribbean republics see things very differently. They be-
lieve yesterday's slogans of the 1898 Spanish-American
war and Yankee superiority are as outdated as a 17th cen-
tury buccaneer's treasure map. They hanker after jobs,
education; and a decent life.
They see Fidel Castro's revolutionary Cuba offering
help when they need it: They forget that the Soviets pay
Dr. Castro's heavy bills to keep him in power. They often
ignore the millions of US dollars and thousands of man-
hours expended in humanitarian relief by the US armed
services, as in last year's floods in Jamaica. Honduras,
Belize, Colombia, and Nicaragua.
So the United States finds itself on the defensive. When
a leftist- coup. seized power :in Grenada in March 1979,
Washington did little but mutter its mild disapproval.
.Cuba, within days, rushed arms, teachers, and social
workers to the victorious leftists. Now, Cuban engineers in
Grenada are-building a major airfield extension. Soon it
-will be able to accommodate. the huge Soviet jet trans-
ports connecting Cuba with the Cuban military outposts in
Africa.
The United States, meanwhile, sends all the Caribbean
countries less economic or military aid in one year than it
-supplies to.a-single distant all- y; such as Turkey: And-while-
Washington-worries about spreading, Cuban-influence It
also grows more concerned about the increasing. ~ Soviet
presence In-Cuba itself
US intellingence experts seethe iamous' Soviet"brigade"
of 3,000 men or so in Cuba slowly but surely improving the:
quality, if not the numbers, of their armament: These experts
are convinced that it was only US nuclear and naval superior-
ity that caused Nikita Khrushchev to "blink" and pull his So-
viet missiles out of Cuba in 1962 Today they see that US le-
Approved
. Cuba provides what Gen. David S. Jones (USAF). chair
man of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently called "a wide
range of activities inimical to US interests." These include
"ports and repair facilities for Soviet ship visits, airfields for
Soviet reconaissance flights, and a readily available surro-
gate force which can support anti-US movements in the
area" - as it did for victorious guerrillas in. Nicaragua last
year, and is ready to do, say intelligence sources, in El Salva-
dor and other insurgencies to come.
Added to this is the probable monitoring of US communi-
cations, of air and ship movements,, and oil tanker lifelines
northward from Venezuela to the United States, as well as
the Caribbean island oil refineries and US strategic bauxite
sources in Jamaica, Guyana, and Surinam (where Army ser-
geants staged their own successful coup last month). :
In a European,-Mideastern, or African war scenario, US
troops and ships would have to move rapidly outward to the
Atlantic from US Gulf of Mexico ports tike Galveston, Texas.
Such convoys would be within easy range of Cuba's swift So-_
Z t-built missile boats and two operational Soviet subma
es at the expanding naval base of Cienfuegos.
Soviet aircraft on the island, now including a squadron of
12 to 18 MIG-23s (some still in crates) ; at San Antonio air- base
in southwestern Cuba, and eight or nine squadrons of older
jets, also could challenge other US strategic sea lanes. These
stretch from US- West Coast ports through the Panama Canal
toward the Atlantic-
Neither the Soviets nor~the Cubans, however, can forget
,Uncle Sam's foothold on Cuban soil, the giant, 45-square-mile
land area around Guantanamo Bay, at Cuba's eastern tip..
Guantanamo, a thorn in Fidel Castro's side, and its big-
-sister US naval base at Roosevelt Roads (known to US Navy
old-timers as "Rosie Roads"), Puerto Rico, provide year-
round training and deployment facilities for-the US Atlantic
is Fleet..home ported at Norfolk, Virginia.
Just to the southeast of "Rosie Roads" lies the shell--I
scarred US island of Vieques. Over-objections of local fisher-_k
men,- eagerly: -echoed by Puerto Rico's- terrorist and i
nonterrorist opposition movements (which have killed sev- j
eral US service personnel in ambushes since last year),.the.
-Navy tests its guns and missiles on Vieques:
To demonstrate that the US is not a "paper tiger" in the
'.Caribbean, President Carter and Defense Secretary Harold
Brown, during the clamor last October over-the Soviet "com-
bat brigade" in Cuba, created a new Caribbean contingency
task force command under Rear Adm. Thomas Replogle at ;
for a Umted
Key West, Florida. What does Caribbean defense really mean
;:.States already burdened with crises in the.Middle East and
...the Indian Ocean?.
"In peacetime," answers a senior US service. officer, "a 1
major. annoyance one which- Washington has too often--1
hoped would simply go away if we didn't talk about it_
"In. wartime.:-.".he. says,.pausing, - "it means big; big
It might mean bringing in sea and air task forces;
trouble.
.
hard-
bout people a
For Release 2005/01/13~~ ~h8worid't; -
 25X1 Approved For Release 2005/01/13 : CIA-RDP80BO1554R003300140042-9
Approved For Release 2005/01/13 : CIA-RDP80BO1554R003300140042-9