No Apologies to Castro: Politicized Pentagon Study Misses Abiding Nature of Threat From Cuba, Promotes Wrong Response

(Washington, D.C.): According to leaks to the Miami Herald last week, the
Defense Department
will issue today a report discounting any residual threat to the United States from Cuba. Whether
intended as such or not, this report will have a predictable effect: The Pentagon’s
analysis will
be shamelessly exploited, like Pope John Paul II’s recent visit to the island, to provide
political cover for the campaign to add Fidel Castro’s regime to the growing list of
communist dictatorships with which the United States is “engaging” at the expense of its
traditional commitment to freedom — and quite possibly at peril to its national security.

Before President Clinton adds an apology to Fidel to his appalling
acts of contrition and
national debasement in Africa — or otherwise moves to normalize relations with the Castro
regime — a more clear-eyed view of the abiding threat, and the appropriate response to it,
is in order.

‘What, Me Worry?’

The Defense Department reportedly concludes that, without the support of its Soviet patrons,
the
Cuban army has withered to the point where it is no danger to the United States. Unfortunately,
this conclusion — which has the blessing of the recently retired and present Commanders-in-Chief
of U.S. Southern Command — Generals John Sheehan and Charles
Wilhelm, respectively —
offers an incomplete and highly misleading estimate of the abiding problem posed by Fidel.

For example, as the Casey Institute’s symposia in south Florida href=”#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾ established earlier this month
(just before President Clinton ill-advisedly eased some economic sanctions governing travel,
medicine and remittances to the island), a significant threat to the United States is posed
by
the two nuclear reactors Castro has been trying to bring on-line for over a decade and at
a
cost of some $1.2 billion. Thanks to myriad, fatal and irremediable flaws in the design and
construction of these Soviet-era VVER-440 reactors abuilding near Juragua, they are virtually
certain to experience a catastrophic failure.

Let us be clear: If Castro brings about such a disaster, it would qualify as a world-class
threat to
the United States. Based upon projections by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric
Administration, areas of the southern U.S. as far north as Washington, D.C. and as far west as
Texas — inhabited by as many as 50 to 80 million Americans — could find themselves
downwind from a dangerous radioactive plume emanating from an accident at one of
Juragua’s reactors.

Such a threat would likely eventuate under either of two scenarios:

1) If Russia makes good on the $350 million line of credit that —
notwithstanding the
impoverishment that is routinely cited as a justification for giving Moscow billions in U.S.
tax-dollars — the Kremlin recently announced would be available for “priority installations” in
Cuba, presumably including the Juragua complex.⁽²⁾

Or 2) if, as the Miami Herald anticipated last Saturday,
the United States allows the
International Atomic Energy Agency and/or other Western entities to involve
themselves in
trying to “make these reactors safe.” Since the safety showstoppers are
systemic — the result,
for instance, of grave construction flaws (such as concrete-imbedded, defective welds riddling the
plant’s vital cooling system) and design shortfalls (notably, a reactor containment vessel woefully
inadequate to deal with over-pressures associated with nuclear melt-downs), the only
way this
reactor complex can be made “safe” is to raze it to the ground and start over.

Other Persistent Threats from Castro’s Cuba

The Clinton Pentagon is apparently also willing to overlook other activities in which Castro is
engaged that pose potential, if not actual, dangers to American interests. Among those noted in a
letter sent to Secretary of Defense William Cohen on 19 March 1998 by a bipartisan group of
Congress’ leaders on U.S.-Cuban issues⁽³⁾ are the following:

• The use of giant eavesdropping facilities near Lourdes, Cuba by both
  Cuban and Russian
  intelligence — facilities used to vacuum up secret government, commercial and private phone,
  fax and e-mail communications throughout the eastern United States. A top Soviet defector
  has revealed that such facilities learned of the U.S. battle plan in the Operation Desert Storm
  and could be used in the future to compromise actions like Gen. Schwarzkopf’s famous “Hail
  Mary” end-around Saddam’s forces.
• Drug-trafficking in which both Fidel and his brother and presumptive heir, Raoul,
  are
  directly implicated. The lives of perhaps millions of Americans are being destroyed by
  narcotics smuggled into the United States with the connivance, if not active involvement, of
  the Cuban government. This reality, not Castro’s Potemkin “cooperation” with U.S.
  authorities on drug enforcement, should guide determinations of the actual threat.
• A continuing involvement on Castro’s part with terrorist and anti-democratic
  movements throughout Latin America. While these operations may currently pale by
  comparison to the corrosive effects of the region’s narcotics cartels, they remain a menace to
  U.S. allies and interests.
• Like virtually every other potential U.S. adversary, Castro’s development — and,
  presumably, production and stockpiling — of chemical and biological weapons (CBW) is
  alarming. Appropriately, the Congressional leaders devoted much of their letter to Secretary
  Cohen to this topic. They warned, in part, that:

“Castro has access to all the chemical and biological agents necessary to develop germ
and chemical weapons. Despite Cuba’s failed economy, Castro has constructed a
secretive network of sophisticated biotechnology labs fully capable of developing
chemical and biological weapons. These labs are operated by the military and Interior
Ministry, are highly secure and off-limits to foreigners and visiting scientists.

“Under the guise of genetic, biological and pharmaceutical research, Castro
is developing a serious germ and chemical warfare capability. [He] has the
ability to deliver biological and chemical weapons with military aircraft, various
unconventional techniques, and perhaps, missile systems increasingly available in
the black market.”

Even if the evidence of such activities is less than conclusive, given the ease with which
covert CBW programs can be concealed — and the United States’ abject vulnerability to the
kinds of attacks they make possible — the Defense Department would be foolish and
irresponsible
to disregard these telltale signs of a serious BW threat from Cuba.

Time to Rethink, Not Compound the Policy of
‘Engagement’

It is time to take stock — but not in the way or for the reasons advocated by General Sheehan
and
others promoting warming of relations with Castro’s government. The reality is that
“engagement” is not working out in China, Vietnam, North Korea or
Russia. Not only is
the form of “capitalism” being practiced in these countries more of the fascist or kleptocratic
variety than of the genuinely free-market type. Worse yet, access to Western investment and
technology — and the involvement of companies supplying such valuable commodities — is not
producing promised progress toward the establishment of democratic institutions or respect for
fundamental human freedoms.

Consider the following items from a report on the situation in China published in yesterday’s
New
York Times:

• “Back in 1987, when China’s leaders began an experiment of holding elections at the village
  level, Deng Xiaoping predicted that it would be 50 years before China held nation-wide
  elections. At the rate things are going, that may have been optimistic.”
• “The village elections are no herald of real democracy. They are held without
  exception
  under the control of the local Communist Party organization. Even in the cases where
  voters have a genuine choice between two candidates, both have arrived on the ballot only
  after being deemed acceptable to the higher authorities.”
• “China has undergone sweeping economic and social change in the 1990’s, but remarkably
  little political change. The people have gained an enormous amount of personal freedom — to
  choose where they work, where they live and how they spend free time — without gaining any
  real say in how their national political leaders are chosen. For now, political power
  resides
  firmly in the hands of a small group of self-selected men.”
• “Village elections and the government overhaul in Beijing are each attempts by
  China’s
  leaders to improve their outdated political system without sacrificing central control.
  Chinese leaders, when asked why they did not speed up political reform, have often responded
  that a large percentage of China’s population is still illiterate, and that it would be dangerous to
  allow them to vote.” (Emphasis added throughout.)

The Bottom Line

In fact, the principal beneficiary of the West’s life-support appears to be the worst
autocratic impulses of these nations’ regimes — all of whom continue, to varying degrees, to
pursue policies hostile to American interests. If anything, the potential for such
beneficiaries of
“engagement” to threaten those interests is actually increasing, thanks in part to their
access to
advanced technology with significant military applications. It would be a scandalous insult to
Americans’ intelligence, to say nothing of a further blight on U.S. security and other interests, to
add Cuba’s odious communist government to this litany.

Neither the Pentagon’s politicized low-balling href=”#N_4_”>⁽⁴⁾ of the threat Castro’s government can pose to
this country and its citizens, nor its reported concern that a post-Castro transition could require
American military intervention, should be allowed to conceal a fundamental reality:
We owe no
apology to Castro for resisting his malevolence and we must not stop doing so
now.

– 30 –

1. See the Casey Institute’s Press Release entitled
Casey Symposia Illuminate Abiding,
Multifaceted Threat Posed By Castro’s Cuba — And Imperative of Retaining Sanctions On
It
(No. 98-R 46, 15 March 1998).

2. Fortunately, thanks to the leadership of Congresswoman Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), last
Thursday the House of Representatives adopted a measure designed to deny U.S. aid to Russia or
any other country providing financial, technical or material support to Cuba’s nuclear program in
an amount equal to the value of such assistance. The Ros-Lehtinen amendment also requires the
President to prepare an annual report of countries cooperating with Cuba to finish the Juragua
nuclear complex.

3. The strongly worded letter was signed by: Lincoln
Diaz-Balart (R-FL), Robert Menendez
(D-NJ), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Dan Burton (R-IN),
Gerald B.H. Solomon (R-NY),
Christopher Smith (R-NJ), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA),
Randy “Duke” Cunningham
(R-CA) and Peter Deutsch (D-FL).

4. For other examples of the Clinton Administration’s politicized
analyses see the following
Center for Security Policy products: Well Done, Weldon: Senior Legislator
Refuses to Accept
Factually Incorrect ‘Political Correctness’ From Gen. Lyles ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_167″>No. 97-D 167, 6 November
1997); It Walks Like A Duck…: Questions Persist That Clinton CIA’s Missile
Threat Estimate
Was Politically Motivated (No. 96-D 122,
4 December 1996); and ‘There You Go Again’: More
Chinese Proliferation, More Clinton Politicization of Intelligence ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-D_56″>No. 96-D 56, 12 June
1996).