NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL ON CARIBBEAN BASIN 10 FEBRUARY 1982

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84B00049R000802100020-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 10, 2009
• Sequence Number: 20
• Publication Date: February 10, 1982
• Content Type: REPORT

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NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL
on Caribbean Basin
10 February 1982
The threat to Central America and the Caribbean h
start with Cuba. For a nation of 10 million people, Cuba has displayed a
remarkable reach on a worldwide scale. It has 70,000 military and civilian
advisors abroad in almost 30 countries. Of these, more than half are military.
Over 40,000 are in Africa, and some 7,000 in the Middle East. There are 12,000
Cuban technical trainees working in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, and
5-6,000 studying in the Soviet Union.
How did this phenomenon develop? Part of it springs from the demographics--
the same source--a combination of overpopulation and youth unemployment.
Since 1980, there has been a surge in the 15-19 year old age group of 50
percent. Castro has admitted that tens of thousands of youths are out of
work. Recently, he said in a speech that he would like to send 10,000 Cuban
youths to Siberia to cut timber for Cuban construction projects. They have
lots of young men to train and send into other countries--and that's the way
to get preferment in government employment in Castro's Cuba.
The other source of Cuba's aggression is Soviet influence and support.
The Soviets sell their weapons. Arms sales earn about 20 percent of their
hard currency. Last year they gave a billion dollars worth of weapons to Cuba--
66,000 tons of equipment, compared with the previous ten-year annual average of
15,000 tons. The new stuff includes 34 MIG-21s and -23s, SA-6s, T-62 tanks,
MI-24 helicopters, mine sweepers, and guided missile attack boats.
/.5-d)60
Today Cuba sits astride the Caribbean with a modernized army of /50,000 troops,
reserves of 100,000 and 200 Soviet MIGs.
NSC review completed.
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In addition to free military equipment, the Soviet Union gives Cuba
$8 million a day, or $3 billion a year, to keep its economy going. The Russians
buy sugar at a premium and sell oil at a discount. There is no way that Cuba
could play the role it does in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East
.without this cash and military support from the Soviet Union.
The Soviets do not extend that kind of support without getting something back
that is valuable to them. If the Soviets are to be credited as rational,
Cuba's activity as a base and a wedge on our door step has great value to
Soviet interests and aspirations.
After trying to export revolution unsuccessfully for over a decade, Cuba
scored its first big successes in Angola and Ethiopia, and then just two and a
half years ago its most important success in Nicaragua.
There is every indication that Nicaragua is being built up to a superpower
on the Central America scale. With a population of about 2 1/2 million, its
army of 20,000 active duty troops plus a militia reserve force of an additional
20,000 with 25 T-55 tanks and an expected arrival in coming months of MIG
aircraft will achieve military domination over neighboring Honduras, El Salvador,
Guatemala and Costa Rica with a combined population seven times theirs. With
the help of 1,800 Cuban military and security advisors, 50 Soviets, smaller
numbers of East Germans and Bulgarians, Vietnamese, North Koreans, and radical
Arabs gathered in Managua, the insurgency in El Salvador is being directed,
trained and supplied. Under Cuban and East German guidance, the Sandinista
junta is imposing a totalitarian control with a block system of population control
on the Cuban model, repression of newspapers, opposition politicians, labor unions,
and other private sector leaders.
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The repression has created a significant anti-Sandinista movement. The
Argentine and Honduran governments are training about 1,000 men in four camps
in Honduras. In Caracas, an organization protesting a Cuban takeover in Honduras
has been formed with members in Colombia and Mexico as well as Nicaragua and
other Central American countries. It's holding a symposium in Caracas on
February 22 to offset a Socialist international meeting which will probably
support the El Salvador insurgents in Caracas two days later. The reaction
of the Sandinistas is to clamp down harder, particularly in the remote eastern
part of the country where villages of 100,000 Miskito Indians living there have
been attacked by raids from the air. A lot of, Indians have been killed and
some 5,000 have fled to Honduras where some are being trained for resistance
activities.
The conflict in El Salvador pits 5,000 full-time guerrillas and 5,000
support militia against a government army of 16,000 and a national guard,
border guards and police aggregating about 9,000 men. Put these uniformed
forces together and you have a force with a superiority of 3 or 4 to 1, counting
some of the part-time guerrillas. The rule of thumb is that a margin of between
8 and 10 to 1 is needed to defeat a well armed insurgency. The insurgents are
being supplied with arms by air, by sea and by land through Honduras from
Nicaragua. They are being directed by experienced Cubans and Nicaraguans over
a sophisticated communications net located in Nicaragua. The conflict has
been stalemated for over a year. Government forces can make large sweeps, and
after they return to their bases the guerrillas regain control of many roads,
villages and large segments of the countryside. They are now attacking provincial
towns and economic targets to intimidate voters from going to the polls in the
March election and to depress the economy. As long as the insurgents are able
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to attack economic targets, any possible level of economic assistance will not
keep up with the economic loss the insurgents can inflict. In an insurgency
conflict, unless the government wins it ultimately loses, and that is a prospect
for El Salvador as long as the insurgency can be supplied and trained from
outside the country.
To achieve a military victory, the government would have to double its
forces. Even though there is no trouble recruiting soldiers in El Salvador,
there is little insurance as to how long it would take to build the government
forces up sufficiently to give them an advantage as long as additional trained
guerrillas and the continued flow flow of arms can be provided from Nicaragua.
In addition, the direction of the combat from a central command headquarters
through a sophisticated communications system that reaches all the guerrilla
factions and units in Nicaragua gives the guerrillas an increasingly valuable
advantage over the unsophisticated El Salvador military command. While this
is being done, the dynamism of subversion from Cuba and Nicaragua is being
extended to Guatemala and Honduras to make it even more difficult to turn the
tide.
The insurgency has spread to Guatemala where during this year the number
of insurgents more than doubled to 4,500 and trained leaders and arms came in
from Cuba and Nicaragua. The Guatemalan government is under heavy pressure
and if El Salvador falls there is little chance that Guatemala can survive.
The Honduran government is helping El Salvador by trying to reduce the
flow of arms by road and sea from Nicaragua through Honduras into El Salvador.
There is no active insurgency in Honduras, but about 100 guerrillas have been
trained in Cuba.
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To evaluate what is happening here it is important to know that there
has been a consistent pattern in developing these insurgencies. Before getting
started in-Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, leaders of some
4 or 5 leading leftist factions were brought to Havana and promised support
in money, arms and training if they would unify. The resulting cohesion has
made the ensuing insurgency more effective. Thus far the Cubans and Nicaraguans
have seen their efforts succeed and there have been no indications of a readiness
to pull back and negotiate away this success, particularly in El Salvador.
There has been a growing concern on the part of other Latin American countries.
Fifteen of them spoke out against the declaration of support for the El Salvador
insurgency promulgated by Mexico and France. OAS, by a vote of 22 to 3,
supported the elections in El Salvador with only Nicaragua, Mexico and Grenada
voting against. This last month Costa Rica, Honduras and El Salvador joined
in requesting protection from the United States, Venezuela and Colombia
against the threat they perceived in the growing militarization of Nicaragua.
A National Intelligence Estimate made in September concluded that a
continuation of the present trends could result in victory for the extreme
left in El Salvador, and such a victory would heighten prospects for the
revolutionaries in Guatemala. Today the outlook is even more alarming.
When Nicaragua receives Soviet MIGs it can threaten the Panama Canal.
Tanks can roll into Honduras and also through Costa Rica to the borders of
Panama. In short, Nicaragua will be able to intimidate its neighbors by
military force. We see Cuba active training or planting guerrillas in virtually
every Latin American country, 600 of them in Colombia. Looking beyond that,
a Cuba and a communist Central America organized on the Cuban style with a
high level of militarization could constitute a formidable armed force in
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Central America that could threaten the Panama Canal and the sea lanes of
the Caribbean. An NIE of September 1981 concurred in by the entire Intelligence
Community pointed out that success of the Central American subversion "would
bring the revolution to the Mexican border, thereby raising the risks of the
internal destabilization."
No loss for Soviet - let situation continue - portray as impotent -
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