Cuba Does Still Represent a Threat: Despite Administration Low-Balling, Drug Trafficking, Radiation dangers are Real
(Washington, D.C.): For months the Clinton Administration has been trying to lay the
groundwork for the gradual normalization of relations with Fidel Castro’s Cuba. A centerpiece of
this effort has been official and private assertions that Cuba no longer represents a threat to U.S.
security interests. Now comes evidence to the contrary: Press reports indicate that
Cuba’s
drug trafficking into the United States is continuing; in fact, it is at an all time high.
What
is more, the Defense Department is spending two million dollars putting into place
systems
capable of detecting radiation that might emanate from Castro’s fatally-flawed nuclear
reactors in Juragua, Cuba if they are ever brought on line.
An oft-cited classified Pentagon report of April 1998 is said to have concluded that Cuba no
longer poses a tactical threat to the United States. This finding has been strongly challenged by
the Casey Institute on the grounds that it focused exclusively upon traditional “offensive” threats
— which have attenuated somewhat with the withdrawal of Soviet military subsidies. In fact, this
analysis seems to have ignored altogether the sorts of capabilities that the Defense Department is
supposedly seized with in this post-Cold War world: “asymmetric
threats,” namely non-conventional techniques for attacking this country, its
infrastructure and/or population. 1
The Cuban Connection
According to a 29 January article in the London Financial
Times, drug traffickers have capitalized
on the increased flow of trade and tourism with Cuba in the post-Soviet period, as well as the
Castro regime’s rampant official corruption and its ideologically-driven desire to damage its
American enemy. These operations use Cuba both as a drug market and as a favored “cleansing
route” employed to reduce the opportunities for detection. Several instances reported in the
Financial Times article illustrate this alarming development:
- The frequency of drug cargoes dropped by air traffickers into Cuba waters for pickup by
smugglers more than doubled in 1998 over previous years.
- Last November, Cuban “police” seized the largest amount of narcotics ever reported. Not
surprisingly, the sheer magnitude of the bust — 54 Kilograms of cocaine and hashish —
suggested that the so-called Cuban “docking station” is doing a huge volume of business.
- On 3 December, a seven ton shipment of cocaine bound for Cuba was seized by
Colombian
police.
Further evidence of such “offensive,” albeit asymmetrical, activities — and indications that
the
Clinton Administration is finding this behavior to be inconvenient, and therefore to be suppressed
— was presented in Robert Novak’s syndicated column in today’s Washington Post.
Such is the concern of the House International
Relations Committee about the actual
status of Cuban drug-running that it has reportedly asked the State Department to place Havana
on its “narcotics blacklist.” For its part, the Administration (in the person of Drug Czar General
Barry McCaffrey) has vituperatively rejected any suggestion that it is downplaying or concealing
Cuba’s involvement in narco-trafficking.
A Radioactive Source Upwind from the United States
Last April’s Pentagon report similarly failed to cite the prospective threat posed by the
completion
of Cuba’s two VVER 440, Soviet-designed nuclear reactors — on which work has been
temporarily suspended, due to financial downturns in Russia and Cuba. As the Casey Institute has
documented, assurances from the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy to the effect that these
reactors “are in excellent condition and meet all contemporary safety requirements” are
unconvincing. In fact many Western experts, including the U.S. General Accounting Office, and
Cuban defectors from the Juragua complex have warned about myriad design and construction
flaws. Among the items of concern are the fact that much of the facilities’ sensitive equipment has
been exposed to corrosive, tropical weather conditions for almost six years and a large percentage
of the structural components, building materials and fabrication — for example of critical welds —
has been defective. 2
As an article in today’s Washington Times reports, the Pentagon
is currently emplacing a
Caribbean Radiation Early Warning System (CREWS) around the southern United States,
downwind from the Juragua reactors. According to Norm Dunkin, the lead contractor on
CREWS, this system will monitor the activity of reactors such as the ones being built in Cuba; in
the event of an accident, Mr. Dunkin avers, the CREWS system would “allow for an immediate
response.”
Just what that “immediate response” would be remains far from clear. Will
this “early warning”
system enable the mass evacuation of as many as 50 to 80 million Americans who might,
according to official U.S. estimates, be exposed to Cuban radiation within four days
of a
meltdown? Even if that extraordinary logistical feat could be accomplished, what would happen
to the food supply, animals and property left behind?
Bottom Line
In short, Fidel Castro’s Cuba continues to represent a significant, if
asymmetric, threat to
the United States. The Clinton Administration needs to be honest with the American
people
about these and other dangers (perhaps including the menace of biological or information warfare,
with which the President says he is seized). It must dispense with further efforts to dissemble
about or otherwise low-ball them. Under these and foreseeable circumstances, it would be
irresponsible to ease the U.S. embargo and, thereby, not only legitimate but offer life-support to
the still-offensively oriented Castro regime.
1 See the Casey Perspective entitled,
Castro’s Cuba: A Classic ‘Asymmetric’ Threat (
59, 3 April 1998).
2 For a more exhaustive and detailed accounting of the specific
engineering deficiencies of the
Juragua complex, please see the Casey Perspective entitled, Will
Moscow Be Allowed To
Recreate In Cuba The Nuclear Nightmare It Has Bequeathed To Bulgaria? (
July 1997)
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