Casey Symposia Illuminate Abiding, Multifaceted Threat Posed By Castro’s Cuba — And Imperative of Retaining Sanctions On It

(Miami, Florida): On 12 and 13 March, the Center for Security Policy’s William J. Casey
Institute held two informative and exceedingly timely symposia in South Florida. The purpose: to
discuss vital U.S. security interests in Cuba and to explore policy prescriptions being advanced
with increasing insistence⁽¹⁾ in the wake of Pope John Paul
II’s visit to that island. Of particular
concern are recommendations that the American sanctions on Cuba be eased, if not eliminated
altogether. The Casey Institute symposia, however, offered powerful reasons why such
recommendations should be rejected, lest the Castro regime be given a new lease on
life in
political, economic and moral terms — and the abiding threats to the U.S. posed by that
regime be actualized.

The first of these two Casey Institute symposia was held on 12 March at the
historic Biltmore
Hotel in Coral Gables, Florida. The second took place the following day at the Governors Club
in West Palm Beach, Florida. Among the participants were a leading Member of Congress,
several former senior policy-makers, defectors and other refugees from Castro’s Cuba,
representatives of the Coast Guard in Miami and U.S. Southern Command, and a number of
leading national and local journalists. (Portions of the symposia will be rebroadcast into Cuba by
Radio/TV Marti — the vital surrogate broadcasting operation that is, as was made clear by its
Director in the course of the first day’s discussion, serving a unique purpose in providing the sort
of news and other programming in Spanish that is denied the Cuban people by their government.)

Taking Stock

On both the 12^th and 13^th, the discussions began with a review of
several serious national security
risks that continue to be posed by Castro’s Cuba. These discussions featured presentations by the
Institute’s William J. Casey Chair, Roger W. Robinson, Jr. Mr. Robinson,
former Senior
Director of International Economic Affairs at the National Security Council, illuminated
the
threat to millions of Americans posed by the Russian-sponsored nuclear power complex at
Juragua, 180 miles upwind from the Florida coast. He also addressed the menace posed
to
American government and military communications, commercial interests and the privacy of
individual citizens by the vast signals intelligence facilities the Russians and Cubans operate in
Lourdes, Cuba.

Of particular interest were Mr. Robinson’s remarks concerning the myriad design and
construction problems with the Juragua complex — problems sufficiently severe as to ensure that,
if allowed to come on-line, these reactors will experience catastrophic failures.
This
appalling prospect was confirmed by Pelayo Calante, a Cuban refugee who
worked on quality
control and assurance aspects of the Juragua complex for seven years prior to his defection.
Although a different reactor design from that which exploded in Ukraine (i.e., water-cooled
VVER-440s versus the graphite system used in Chernobyl), a catastrophic accident in Juragua
would have similarly devastating effects for those downwind. Mr. Robinson cited analyses by the
National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration which predict that
such an accident
could release a plume that would expose as many as 50 to 80 million Americans across
the
southern United States to potentially dangerous levels of radioactivity. href=”#N_2_”>⁽²⁾

Russia’s recently announced release to Havana of a $350 million line of credit for
unspecified
“priority installations” on the island — of which the Juragua and Lourdes complexes are
almost
certainly preeminent — is particularly alarming. It comes on the eve of congressional action on the
Clinton Administration’s latest request for as much as $1 billion in new U.S. taxpayer aid
flows
to Moscow (over and above the expanded assistance being given through
multilateral
institutions). Mr. Robinson recommended a three-part strategy: 1) A
dollar-for-dollar
withholding from any future American assistance to the Kremlin in response to such
malevolent
Russian financial underwriting; 2) U.S. import controls should be readied for
use against any
foreign suppliers or funders of the Juragua nuclear plant; and 3) Should these (and other diplomatic
and/or legislative) mechanisms fail to deter the fueling and completion of this irretrievably flawed
complex, a U.S. air strike must be executed to ensure the reactor infrastructure
is destroyed
prior to delivery of nuclear fuel to the site.

In the West Palm Beach symposium, Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-FL)
addressed the
additional threats posed to the U.S. by the Cuban regime’s extensive involvement in
drug-trafficking, its persistent connections to terrorist
organizations throughout Latin America and
its suspected biological weapons program. Congressman Diaz-Balart
concluded that, despite
leaks to the effect that the Clinton Administration has concluded Fidel Castro no longer poses any
danger to this country, these activities — especially when taken together with the risk of a Cuban
Chernobyl in Juragua and the hostile use electronic surveillance from Lourdes — constitute an
abiding and clear danger to the United States.

Insights into the weakness of Fidel’s hold on power were provided by several participants.
Both
meetings were, for example, addressed by Commander James A. McKenzie of
the U.S. Coast
Guard who discussed the Cuban military’s increasingly unimplementable doctrine of people’s war
and its low and declining day-to-day readiness. And Roberto A. Weill, founder
and President of
La Universidad Latinoamericana de la Libertad Friedrich Hayek, assessed Cuba’s dismal
economic record under Castro’s corrupt and ideological mismanagement — and its even
more
bleak future should the regime be permitted to retain power.

Further context for considering any possible changes to U.S. policy toward Cuba prior
to its
liberation from Castro’s tyranny was provided by:

• The Director of Radio/TV Marti, Herminio San Roman, who, on 12
  March, discussed the
  systematic repression of independent sources of news and information by the regime and the
  need for the United States to supply surrogate broadcasting as a means to offset Cuban
  government propaganda and disinformation campaigns and as an indispensable building block
  for any transition to democracy;
• José Basulto, President of Brothers to the Rescue, who eloquently
  discussed, on 12 March,
  the as-yet-unrelieved repression of human rights in Cuba, notwithstanding the recent Papal
  visit. Recalling the premeditated murder two years ago of four Brothers to the Rescue flying
  in international airspace by Cuban warplanes acting on Castro’s orders, Mr. Basulto
  spoke
  authoritatively of the regime’s willingness to use force ruthlessly against those whose
  commitment to democracy and freedom Fidel perceives to be a threat to his hold on power;
  and
• Ambassador José S. Sorzano, former Special Assistant to the
  President for National Security
  Affairs and U.S. representative to the United Nations, who on 13 March discussed the alienation the Cuban
  people feel from their government as a result of a policy that amounts to apartheid. Fidel
  denies the majority of Cuban citizens access to services, food, medicine or compensation
  available to foreign nationals in Cuba. Dr. Sorzano emphasized that Fidel Castro’s
  personal
  charisma is the last vestige of his government’s legitimacy and warned against enhancing it by
  abandoning or weakening the sanctions regime — to say nothing of providing it with billions of
  dollars in life support via renewed Cuban access to the resources of the International Monetary
  Fund, World Bank and other multilateral lending and grant-making institutions.

What Should Be Done Now

Luncheon remarks on 12 and 13 March by Frank Calzon, Director of the
Center for a Free
Cuba, and Rep. Diaz-Balart, respectively, concluded the symposia with a focus on the future of
American policy toward Cuba. Both men disputed disinformation being promoted by
Fidel
Castro and embraced by Americans and others interested in ending or weakening the U.S.
economic sanctions regime: Cuban policy, not access to U.S. medical supplies, is causing
health problems for the people of Cuba. Mr. Calzon noted, for example, how
tourists who seek
medical treatment in Cuba have no difficulty securing drugs or medical procedures whose
systematic denial to Cuban nationals is said to justify liberalizing restraints on trade with the
island.

Mr. Calzon also decried the complicity of many foreign companies with
Castro’s abusive
behavior (e.g., with respect to the regime’s pocketing of nearly all of the funds ostensibly paid
by Canadian and other entities for compensating their Cuban workers and its willingness to allow
the despoiling of the island’s environment). Such conduct — with its parallels in China, Vietnam,
the former Soviet Union and elsewhere — sharply challenges the assertion that capitalist
“engagement” will inexorably foster not only economic but also political liberalization on
the part of
totalitarian governments.

In Palm Beach, Rep. Diaz-Balart described his belief that Cuba would probably
enjoy a
transition to democratic capitalism unless the U.S. embargo were lifted. In
that case, he
warned, the chances that Castro would be succeeded by a government determined to pursue the
“Little China” model of fascist capitalism — under which foreign infusions of capital are welcome,
provided they are effectively controlled by the state (e.g., through joint ventures,
state-owned
entities, etc.) and political control remains firmly in the hands of the regime and its adherents.

Both of the luncheon speakers called for greater transparency and candor on the part of the
U.S.
government about the true state of affairs in Cuba, a redoubling of efforts (through the Catholic
Church, Radio/TV Marti and other mechanisms) to encourage the development of a civil society
and an end to Castro’s repression and the rejection of (presumably) well-meaning, but
counter-productive, attempts to suggest that that objective will be advanced by dismantling the
American
sanctions on Communist Cuba.

A more detailed summary (with accompanying
Press Release) of the Casey Institute symposia on Cuba will be released shortly. It
can be obtained by contacting the Center for Security Policy by phone (202-835-9077), fax
(202-835-9066) or here on its World Wide Web site.

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1. Among the most recent of these calls has come in the past few days
from the recently retired
Supreme Allied Commander, Atlantic, General John Sheehan (USMC).

2. For more on the dangers posed by the Juragua nuclear complex,
see the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Clinton Legacy Watch # 19: Will Gore-Chernomyrdin At
Last Put a Halt to
Russia’s Dangerous Nuclear Sales to Cuba, Iran? (No.
98-D 40, 6 March 1998) and the Casey
Institute’s Perspective entitled ‘Show Me’: The Allies Must
Demonstrate Their Commitment
to Changing Cuba By Halting the Cuban ‘Chernobyl-In-The-Making’ ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-C_03″>No. 97-C 03, 6 January
1997).