Word: cubans
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...latest Soviet flotilla reached Cienfuegos on Sept. 9. Daily U-2 reconnaissance flights were ordered, and the Cuban reaction to them showed that something unusual was afoot. MiG fighters scrambled after our first flight. A U.S. Navy antisubmarine aircraft was shadowed for 60 miles while a MiG made several strafing passes. I was sufficiently concerned to warn the Soviet Union publicly on Sept. 16 that operating missile-carrying submarines or nuclear weapons from Cuba or servicing them from there would have grave consequences. Since we did not yet have any concrete evidence, I stopped just short of making a direct...
...Soviets ever works this simply. The Soviet sub tender and salvage tug left Cienfuegos on Oct. 10, but rounded the island and arrived once again in Cienfuegos on Nov. 7. I protested angrily to Dobrynin on Nov. 14 and told him later that servicing submarines in or from Cuban ports would "lead to the most grave situation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union...
Almost everyone acknowledges that the Soviet brigade does not violate the 1962 Soviet-American agreement that ended the Cuban missile crisis. Nor does it come anywhere near as close to straining the spirit of that agreement as did the berthing of Russian atomic submarines in Cuba in 1970 (see Kissinger: White House Years) or the stationing of MiG-23s on the island in 1978.* Nor is the brigade plausibly a strike force for an assault on Guatemala or Key West. Nor did it arrive recently enough to be a deliberate, mischievous test of Jimmy Carter's will. Nor does...
...course Cuba is a fortress, and of course it is reinforced by the Soviets. It has been so for decades. There is legitimate, longstanding concern over the island's use as a training ground for Soviet-Cuban adventures in the Third World, including the Caribbean. But Castro's reprehensible conduct as a global mischief-maker bedeviled American foreign policy long before the ratification of SALT II or the re-election of Frank Church was an issue. Cuba's predatory military probably will continue to be a problem for a long time to come - until the U.S. recovers...
...climb out of its hole - and Frank Church can climb out of an even deeper one. If Vance succeeds, and the Russians agree to tinker with the command structure, deployment and definition of the brigade, then Americans will have to live with the uncomfortable knowledge that in the overblown Cuban crisis of September 1979, Soviet flexibility rescued the U.S. Government from its own clumsiness. If Vance fails, there is a good chance that a sensible debate on the merits of the SALT treaty, will be impossible. The treaty might well have to be shelved until the silly season...