HIDDEN UNREST IN US BACKYARD

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000100420051-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 21, 2011
• Sequence Number: 51
• Publication Date: March 26, 1980
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/21: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100420051-2
STAT
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, meant sending 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 Mexico,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war and Yankee superiority are as outdated as a 17th cen-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 toa single distant ally; 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 famous 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 Nlkita Khrushchev to "blink" and pull his So-
viet missiles out of Cuba in 1962.- Today they see that US le-
verage largely eroded..'
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). - : -i
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 like Galveston, Texas.
Such convoys would be within easy range of Cuba's swift So-,
viet-built missile boats and two operational Soviet subma-
rines 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 - _. I
? 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
sold-timers as-"Rosie Roads"), Puerto Rico, provide year-
round training and deployment facilities for the US Atlantic ,
Fleet, home-ported at Norfolk, Virginia. , -
Just to the southeast of "Rosie Roads" lies the shell--+
scarred US island of Vieques. Over objections of local fisher-
men, -? eagerly echoed by Puerto Rico's - terrorist and
nonterrorist opposition movements (which have killed sev-
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
-Key West, Florida. . -- --_- .,
What does Caribbean defense really mean for a United.
States already burdened with crises in the. Middle East and
..the Indian Ocean?.
"In peacetime," answers a senior US service officer,
?s. major annoyance - one which Washington has too often
,.- hoped would simply go away if we didn't talk about it.
..
"In. wartime.:.." he says, .pausing, "it means big, big
trouble., It might mean bringing in sea and air task forces
from other theaters. And I'm talking about people and hard-
arp already Stretched to the limit around the world
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/21: CIA-RDP90-00965R000100420051-2