HOW TO RESPOND TO THE CUBAN K.A.L. 007: SHUT DOWN THE CUBAN CHERNOBYL

(Washington, D.C.): The premeditated ⁽¹⁾, cold-blooded
murder of four American citizens by the Cuban government
last Saturday should be the last straw for those who
understand that there will be no transition to democracy
and no respect for human rights in Cuba until Fidel
Castro is removed from power. If even the likes of Sam
Donaldson — who on “This Week With David
Brinkley” initially, reflexively described the Cuban
action as warranted if the planes transited Cuban
airspace — are obliged to condemn this action, the rest
of us must do no less than bring about an urgent end to
Castro’s odious regime.

Too Little, Too Late

Certainly, it is not enough for the Clinton
Administration to engage in symbolic gestures like the
pre-election housecleaning it did a few weeks ago when
the architects of its plan to normalize relations with
Fidel — notably, the National Security Council’s Morton
Halperin — were summarily dismissed.

Similarly, it is not enough for the
Administration to rescind recent decisions by curtailing
travel, telephonic communications and Cuban-American
remittances to Cuba or reducing America’s diplomatic
presence there. First of all, these initiatives should
never have been undertaken as long as Fidel was in power.
They are transparently intended to be steps on the
Vietnam-style “roadmap” to normalization. And
they have afforded Castro something of a new lease on
life by offering desperately needed cash flow and a
measure of international legitimation he has been denied
by Washington for over thirty years. Second, they have
merely served to whet the appetite of American businesses
anxious to exploit new cheap labor pools and favorably
disposed to the “disciplined” business climate
promised by a totalitarian regime. And third, the
rescinding of these concessions in the wake of the
shoot-down can — and likely will — be quietly undone a
few months down the road in one of the Administration’s
trademark Friday afternoon press announcements if it
thinks it can get away with doing so.

And it is surely not enough for the
Administration belatedly to embrace the Helms-Burton Libertad
act. Legislation like this, aimed at curtailing American
allies’ efforts to end-run and undermine the U.S. embargo
against Cuba, should have enjoyed President Clinton’s
support from the get-go. While his belated endorsement is
welcome — and should ensure that the steps taken at his
Administration’s behest to water it down are fully
reversed — in the aftermath of the Cuban KAL 007, Mr.
Clinton’s signature on the Libertad act should be
deemed a necessary but not sufficient condition.

To Remove Fidel from Power, Cut off His Power

What is clearly needed now is a formal declaration
that Castro’s Chernobyl- equivalent-in-the-making — the
two nuclear reactors under construction in the Cuban
province of Cienfuegos — will never be allowed to come
on-line. The United States has a compelling
self-interest in effecting such an outcome: These
reactors are fatally flawed (as a result of shoddy
construction, defective components, an unsafe design,
inadequate quality control and operating skills and a
tropical site reported to be seismically active); if, as
is predictable, such reactors experience a major
accident, within four days its lethal radioactive plume
would extend over much of the southeastern United States
(westward to Texas or north to Washington, D.C.,
depending upon the prevailing winds and season).

The other advantage of this stance is that, more than
anything else, it will make Castro’s rule genuinely
problematic. As Pedro Miret, a vice president of the
Cuban Council of Ministers and a senior lieutenant to
Castro, put it in the New York Times yesterday
(2): “Nobody is more interested in not having to
build this power plant than us. But the problem is we
have no choice.” (Emphasis added.) In fact,
unless the regime in Havana can secure near-term sources
of inexpensive or foreign-subsidized energy, its economy
will remain in a free-fall and the pressure for
fundamental political change will intensify inexorably.
For example, it is hard to see how the European and
Canadian investments in tourism and mining upon which
Castro is literally banking will bear fruit without
reliable sources of energy.

For these reasons, Castro is determined to complete
the reactors at Juragua, with help from the Kremlin and
from Western governments and/or companies. It is entirely
possible, however, that he will try to parlay the threat
of a Chernobyl-equivalent less than 200 miles off the
U.S. coast into a major break in the embargo so as to
allow U.S. official and/or private assistance or,
alternatively, to secure a North Korean-style buy-out of
his dangerous reactor program.

If the United States wishes to secure the two-fer of
protecting its people against a immense nuclear disaster and
putting Castro out of business once and for all, it must
foreclose his options to secure outside help. Toward that
end, the following steps should be taken at once:

• Declare that there will be no U.S. bail-out of
  the Juragua project — either through
  technical assistance, financial support or a
  swap-out of advanced Western reactors for the
  flawed Soviet-era systems — as long as Fidel
  and his clique remain in power.
• Warn that any allied governments or companies
  found to be providing equipment, financing or
  assistance to this project — even that
  advertized as “safety enhancement
  measures” — will face the closure of the
  U.S. market to their imports (i.e.
  across-the-board import controls).
• Announce that Russian ships or aircraft
  believed to be bringing enriched uranium to fuel
  the reactors at Juragua will be intercepted and
  prevented from reaching their destinations in
  Cuba.
• Should these measures prove insufficient to
  prevent the Cienfuegos reactors from coming
  on-line, the United States will use whatever
  means are necessary — including, but not limited
  to the use of surgical military force — to
  ensure that does not happen.

The Bottom Line

Castro’s nuclear program is but the latest and most
palpable manifestation of a government that is
indifferent to the well-being of its own people and a
menace to those of the United States. As such, it is
fitting that this symbol of the hemisphere’s last
totalitarian regime is also its Achilles heel.

There should be no underestimating the difficulties
associated with preventing the actualization of the Cuban
VVER-440 reactors. After all, U.S. allies will vehemently
oppose American actions to terminate the Juragua reactor
program, witness their hostility to any effort to
sanction Cuba for the deliberate murder of four Brothers
to the Rescue at the U.N. Security Council last night.

For its part, the Russian government of Boris Yeltsin
— having just secured a $10.2 billion campaign
contribution primarily from the United States and other
Western taxpayers via the International Monetary Fund —
will work hard to protect its client, Fidel Castro, from
coordinated retribution (e.g., multilateral sanctions). ⁽³⁾ And Castro
himself will, in due course, play his ultimate hole card:
the threat of yet another Mariel exodus timed to damage
Bill Clinton’s election prospects in vote-rich Florida.

Still, as a practical matter, the United States has
no choice but to prevent Castro and his friends in the
Kremlin and Western capitals from creating a mortal
nuclear threat to the American people and homeland. There
is no better time to make that clear than in the wake of
Fidel’s latest outrage. If President Clinton will not do
so, the Republican candidates who want to replace him
should make the most of that failure and pledge to
rectify it at the earliest possible moment. ⁽⁴⁾

(1) The Cuban government
reportedly asked retired Rear Admiral Eugene Carroll —
director of the Center for Defense Information and one of
the subjects of a recent Center for Security Policy Decision
Brief entitled ‘Useful Idiots’: Why Would Any
Americans Help Fidel Castro Bring his Cuban Chernobyls
On-Line? (No. 96-D 13,
10 February 1996) — what the U.S. reaction would be if
it shot down “Brothers to the Rescue” aircraft.
Adm. Carroll says that he subsequently passed that
question along to the State Department and Defense
Intelligence Agency upon his return from Cuba.

(2) See “Cuba’s Nuclear Plant
Project Worries Washington”, 25 February 1996, p.3.

(3) A delegation from Russia’s
odious Ministry of Atomic Energy (MinAtom) was in
Cienfuegos just last week in an effort to accelerate
construction and financing for the nuclear complex. For
more on this subject, see the href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=95-P_51at”>1 August 1995 testimony of
Roger W. Robinson Jr. before the House International
Relations subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere.

(4) Interestingly, on the eve of
the Arizona primary and the day of the Cuba shoot-down,
the Phoenix Gazette published the href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=96-D_19at”>attached important editorial
encouraging the Presidential candidates to take public
positions on this matter immediately.