The national security threat of China’s base in Cuba

The revelation that communist China has an expanding base in Cuba is a direct threat to U.S. national security for five major reasons.

First, what is true in real estate is also true in intelligence collection: location matters. The base offers China the ability to collect intelligence some 90 miles from U.S. shores, which provides China with a permanent intelligence collection vector over much of the eastern United States that China had lacked. This includes important bases, including the Navy’s King’s Bay port for half of the U.S. ballistic missiles submarine fleet, critical U.S. Air Force Bases at Eglin and Tyndall, and Central Southern, and Special Operations Command bases at MacDill Air Force Base and Miami. The Chinese base increases the burden on the U.S. intelligence community and military. It requires that U.S. intelligence and the military adopt measures to negate the ability of bases to collect intelligence against them.

Second, the base provides China with the ability to project power against U.S. military and civilian targets, including infrastructure like the electrical grid and cyber networks. Cuba provides China with the ability to monitor and possibly interdict the U.S. sea line of communication (SLOC) from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic. This would be an important vector for Chinese attacks in the event of a crisis or war against the United States. The base fundamentally increases the threat posed to the U.S. homeland and other interests, including U.S. allies.

Third, apart from the United States, the base is an important facility to support covert action or wars that the Chinese regime might fight outside of the region or to support Beijing’s interests and military campaigns in the Western Hemisphere, Africa, or Asia. This was the case in the Cold War when Cuba was an important base for the Soviets. The Soviets also employed Cuban soldiers as proxies in Angola, Ethiopia, Grenada, Nicaragua, and Yemen. The world might again witness Cuban deployments in advance of China’s interests.

Fourth, the base is a significant blow against the United States in the realm of political warfare. Overtly planting communist China’s flag in Cuba is a poke in the eye of the Monroe Doctrine and Article 6 of the 1947 Rio Treaty, as the Chinese regime’s presence threatens the hemisphere’s peace. It is Beijing’s effort to show that the United States is a weak and declining power, as the United States is unable to prevent a base on its doorstep. The base provides China with the ability to increase its military capabilities to include missiles and aircraft, and the ability to signal a political equivalency with Taiwan, which is about 110 miles from China at its closest point.

Fifth, also in the realm of political warfare, this base forces the United States to recall its history with communist Cuba. Two incidences are relevant. First, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Cuba has been the source of U.S. diplomatic defeats, including the Kennedy administration’s secret agreement with the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis to trade the removal of Soviet medium and intermediate missiles in Cuba for the removal of Jupiter medium-range ballistic missiles from Italy and Turkey by April 1963. Second, in 1979, the presence of a Soviet combat brigade on the island was leaked and caused the Carter administration some difficulty. The brigade had been in Cuban since 1975 or 1976 but was only revealed at this time. The brigade was rightfully seen as an example of growing Soviet might, expanding global presence, and strong support for its Cuban ally, as well as a symbol of U.S. decline. Then-President Jimmy Carter was unable to coerce its removal. The Chinese regime’s presence shows that Cuba’s location remains strategic, a key location to target the U.S. homeland and further the encirclement of the United States by China, but Cuba is also a political warfare symbol for the United States and its adversaries.

That the Biden administration initially denied before acknowledging the Chinese base is not reassuring. It suggests that the administration will not take the right action to neutralize the base. As the base has intelligence, military, and political warfare value for China, each of those categories must be addressed. As during the Cold War, coercive pressure will have to be brought to bear on the Cuban government, without which Havana will never eject the Chinese base.

The humiliation of the Chinese base in Cuba jeopardizes U.S. national security, weakens its credibility and influence in global politics, and emboldens aggression from communist China. Allies and partners like Taiwan note the loss of U.S. credibility upon which their security depends. The most recent examples of concern are the supplication of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Beijing and President Joe Biden’s cancellation of visits to Papua New Guinea and Australia after the G-7 summit in Hiroshima.

Given these U.S. setbacks, the political warfare victory the base provides China should be offset now. It is the culmination of Beijing’s increasing influence in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean that must be reversed. The visit of Indian Prime Minister Modi would have been an ideal occasion to announce significant measures to improve conventional deterrence in the Indo-Pacific such as that a joint Indian-U.S. force was being created to deploy to Taiwan, the Philippines, and Japan to deter Chinese aggression while Taiwanese, U.S., Japanese, and Australian forces are deploying to India to conduct a new series of permanent military exercises.

The United States should not allow itself to be on the back foot, so bold measures are needed. Its foundation may be laid now by allies and partners if the Biden administration will not act.