FEAR OF SOVIET STRATEGIC BASE IN NICARAGUA NAGS AT U.S.

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302320051-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 4, 2012
• Sequence Number: 51
• Publication Date: March 19, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302320051-9
ARTICLE APyARZI
ON PAGE .4='7?
WASHINGTON TIMES
19 March 1986
Fear of Soviet strategic base m
Nicaragua nags at U.S.
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The United States will face the
end of a long-standing "immunity"'
from threats to its security in the
Western Hemisphere if a Soviet
strategic base is established in Nica-
ragua, U.S. defense experts say.
'The immunity that the United
States has long enjoyed in its own
hemisphere ? which has been the
key to the American ability to be rea-
sonably effective in resisting the So-
viet threat elsewhere ? will be lost:'
Georgetown University strategic ex-
pert Edward N. Luttwak said yester-
day.
Mr. Luttwak said the real strate-
gic stakes in Nicaragua don't involve
the threat of "somebody marching to
Texas" but the fact that Nicaragua's
geographical location and its Soviet-
style foreign policy will generate
guerrilla movements and support
for terrorism.
"They will perform in the hemi-
sphere the way the Soviet Union per-
forms globally," he said.
As a result, the United States will
continue to experience "a very great
and unpredictable diversion of re-
sources from the other fronts like
NATO, and that will weaken us very
much," Mr. Luttwak said.
President Reagan said in his tele-
vision address to the nation last Sun-
day that the strategic threat posed
by Nicaragua lies in the country's
use by the Soviets as "a privileged
sanctuary for their struggle against
the United States."
"Will we permit the Soviet Union
to put a second Cuba, a second Libya
right on the doorsteps of the United
States?" the president asked during
his push for aid to the Nicaraguan
resistance forces.
A Sandinista regime character-
ized by the combination of large
military forces, sophisticated inter-
nal police controls, effective propa-
ganda networks, economic stagna-
tion and lack of social progress "by
its existence poses a threat to the
United States" because the regime
provides a stalking horse for re-
gional subversion, Mr. Luttwak said.
Nicaragua has advantages for ex-
pansion over both Cuba and the So-
viet Union, he said ? over the Soviet
Union because it is a Spanish-
speaking country and over Cuba be-
cause it is a continental, not island,
nation.
And in the long term, experts say,
Nicaragua's communist regime ulti-
mately could precipitate a repeat of
the 1963 Cuban missile crisis ?
when the United States faced down
a Soviet attempt to place medium-
range missiles in Cuba ? by at-
tempting to introduce the same type
weapons to Central America.
A major concern of defense plan-
ners who study the long-term conse-
quences of a Soviet base in Nicara-
gua is the threat to U.S. military
supply lanes in the Caribbean ? vi-
tal to support of American and Euro-
pean forces in wartime.
Nazi submarines caused major
damage in the early part of World
War II by sinking merchant ships
bound for Europe. A Defense De-
partment study shows that subma-
rines in 1941 and 1942 sank more
than 280 merchant ships in the Gulf
of Mexico and the Caribbean.
Maj. Fred Lash, a Pentagon
spokesman, said Soviet bases in
Nicaragua could cause a re- '
evaluation of U.S. military strategy
toward Europe because shipping
lanes vital to support for European
allies could be blocked in wartime.
"It's an important consideration,"
Maj. Lash said. "If Cuba is commu-
nist, and if Nicaragua is communist,
then that's two areas where they can
fly operational aircraft to interdict
our flow of equipment through sea
lanes."
Shipments through the Caribbean
Sea and Gulf of Mexico account for
44 percent of all U.S. foreign trade.
They would have to carry 60 percent
of reinforcements for Europe in the
first 60 days of a NATO-Warsaw Pact
conflict, according to a Pentagon
study.
Also, 66 percent of U.S. crude oil
imports must pass through areas
that could be threatened by Cuban
and Soviet-supported Nicaraguan
naval forces, according to Pentagon
figures.
Maj. Lash said most supplies des-
tined for NATO forces in Europe
during wartime would be shipped
across the Atlantic Ocean. But with
greater threats to ships from Nica-
ragua, those supplies would have to
be flown over in aircraft rather than
shipped by sea. That would limit the
amount of equipment and troops
that could be sent.
"With air transports, it takes
longer to get as much as a ship"
across the ocean, Maj. Lash said.
Current U.S. strategy, he said, calls
for transferring as much as 75
percent of NATO supplies by ship.
But all-out East-West war isn't the
only area in which a communist re-
gime in Nicaragua can threaten U.S.
interests.
According to a Pentagon study, se-
curity officials see three conse-
quences for so-called low-intensity,
or regional, conflicts in Nicaragua's
continuing military buildup:
? Communist military superiority
will politically intimidate neighbor-
ing states into neutralization.
? Nicaragua will become a major
staging area for supplying arms to
subversive movements that once re-
lied on small arms shipments.
? Cuban and Soviet control over
regional insurgent groups will grow
through control of arms deliveries.
Communist strategy since 1979,
according to the study, has sought to
use Nicaragua as a central point for
a military takeover of El Salvador.
Collapse of El Salvador then
would provide a broad front for a
subsequent takeover of Honduras.
The combined states would give the
communists the resources of a bloc
of 12 million Central Americans.
"Encouraged by the successful
implementation of their strategy . . .
the Soviets would not hesitate to in-
crease military support ? Guate-
mala and Mexico could become the
next targets:' the paper states.
In the long run, a thoroughly con-
solidated Communist state in Nica-
ragua could also present the United
States with a strategic dilemma ?
accepting the introduction into Nica-
ragua of advanced Soviet weapons
capable of threatening U.S. defenses
directly or using force to keep them
out.
Catinud
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302320051-9
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302320051-9
4 ?
A defense department study last
year on U.S. strategic interests in
Latin America examined the possi-
bility that medium-range ballistic
missiles (MRBM) could be deployed
in Nicargua, including the advanced
SS-20 and older SS-4 and SS-5 mis-
siles.
"From Managua, the SS-20 would
cover the majority of defense instal-
lations in the United States, which
today could be covered only by [long-
range] Soviet bombers, ICBMs and
[submarine-launched ballistic mis-
siles]," the paper concludes.
Such deployments, however,
would only occur if "Soviet dom-
ination of Central America were
greatly advanced and if the Soviet
leadership were to judge that de-
ployment would not lead to armed
conflict with the United States," the
paper states.
"Anything could be based there,"
Maj. Lash said. "They haven't intro-
duced anything like that, but it's all
possible."
The Pentagon estimates that the
Sandinista regime has received $600
million worth of Soviet arms since it
seized power in 1979 as part of more
than $1 billion in overall Soviet bloc
aid.
The most recent Pentagon esti-
mates of Soviet bloc weapons deliv-
eries indicate that more than 44,000
metric tons of arms were delivered'
to Nicaragua in the past three years,
Maj. Lash said.
"For the Soviets, this is the world's
best investment," Mr. Luttwak said.
"Every ruble spent in Nicaragua to
deliver helicopters or tanks gener-
ates much more strategic advantage
to them because of the fact that we
are so confused and divided and
paralyzed in responding to it."
Besides "flying tank" Mi-24/1-lind
D attack helicopters ? first de-
ployed in the fall of 1984 ? Soviet
arms shipments have included
scores of tanks, amphibious tanks,
armored personnel carriers, anti-
aircraft guns, artillery, chemical
weapons vehicles, patrol boats and
minesweepers.
So far, no evidence exists that the
SOviets nave deployed advanced
-LI ana MR-2i jet lighters. But
gatettite pnotograprrs nave revearea
hew Nicaraguan air bases witn aug-
out aircratt snetters almost mentical
to shelters tor Ma's basea in Luba.
On both Nicaraguan coasts.? at
El Bluff in the east and Corinto in the
west ? construction is under way on
two deep-water ports that could pro-
vide naval facilities for Soviet sub-
marine and naval squadrons, ac-
cording to Pentagon experts.
Other than vessels delivering the
arms shipments, however, the Soviet
navy has not yet made a port call to
any Nicaraguan port, Maj. Lash said.
Manpower in the Sandinista army
? in 1979 only 6,000 strong ? today
includes 120,000 troops, with nearly
70,000 active duty forces, he said. By
contrast, the only other Central
American military counterforce is
the Honduran Army's 22,000 sol-
diers.
Cuban troops stationed in Nicara-
gua number 3,000 with about SO So-
viet advisers and an unspecified
number of East Germans, Bulgar-
ians, North Koreans, Libyans and
Palestinians, Maj. Lash said.
Other recent evidence indicates
that international terrorist groups
such as Germany's Baader-Meinhoff
Gang, Italy's Red Brigades, the Pal-
estine Liberation Organization. the
Spanish Basque ETA and Iranian
and Libyan terrorists have found
sanctuary in Nicaragua under the
Sandinistas.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/10/04: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302320051-9