The Conservative Caucus Research, Analysis 8. Education Foundation, Inc.
June 28, 1983 TRUSTEES Howard Phillips President Michael A. Valerio Ki'ce President MEMORANDUM FOR JOEL SKOUSEN Rep. Louis Jenkins Secretary FROM: HOWARD PHILLIPS' J. Alan MacKay Treasurer Please let me know if you think this article on Edward E. McAteer Central America is suitable for Conservative Digest. U.S. Rep. Lawrence P. McDonald Brig. Gen. .Albion Knight, USA (Ret) HP :dyb Mrs. Helen Marie Taylor Hank Harkins Enclosure ADMINISTRATION .Miss Jan K. Finn Director, Administration and Publications Miss Michele N. Rossi Director. Research Mrs. Helen Gombert Executive Assistant
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450 Maple Avenue East, Vienna, Virginia 22180 Telephone (703) 281 -6782 Telex 710-831-0630 MR. PRESIDENT, •_
EL SALVADOR IS THE SYMPTOM.
SOVIET POWER IN NICARAGUA AND CUBA IS THE CAUSE,
RESTORING THE MONROE DOCTRINE IS THE SOLUTION.
by Howard Phillips
Copyright 1983 Policy Analysis Inc. America's vital interests are on the line in the struggle for control of Central America:
* The U.S. imports 40% of its energy and 93 of 95 strategic minerals. Three-fourths of the energy imports transship or
transit the Caribbean.
* In time of war, some 65% of NATO's supplies and most of the U.S. reinforcements and petroleum for our forces in Europe
would embark from Gulf ports and sail through the Florida
straits. According to Navy Secretary John Lehman, 85% of the
Army's combat logistics come out of Gulf ports. Harold Rood
points out that "Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor from January to August 1942, over 260 Allied merchant ships
totaling 11/2 million tons were sunk by German submarines in
the region between Florida and the entrance to the Panama
Canal. Forty-one merchant ships were sunk in the Gulf of
Mexico in May alone. Almost half the ships lost were oil tankers. However, in all of those months there were never more than 12 and usually around eight U-boats operating in
American waters to the west and south of Cuba. Those
submarines were operating four thousand miles away from their
bases on the coast of France outside the range of the German
airforce and without support from the German surface fleet.
There were no long-range aircraft to help direct the U-boats
to fruitful targets or to defend them against attacks by
Allied escort vehicles and patrol planes. And when the subs
had fired all their torpedoes and were running short of fuel,
they had to return to their bases in the Bay of Biscay. In
1942 Cuba was an ally of the United States..."
* The Caribbean is one of the world's fourteen major maritime
"choke points" and one of only five inland seas. The Panama
Canal is one of only two interoceanic canals in the world.
Shifting forces and supplies through the Panama Canal, between
our Atlantic and Pacific assets, saves a 7,400 mile journey
around Cape Horn. The petroleum fields of southern Mexico are
also a ripe target for Marxist conquest.
* The U.S. economy is buttressed by imports of $30 billion
annually from Central America in bauxite, petroleum, sugar.
-2- coffee, and meat. Job-producing exports of $31 billion
include transport equipment, industrial machinery, chemicals,
grain, and manufactured goods. Americans have privately
invested more than $13 billion in the Caribbean Basin
countries.
* The Kennedy-Khrushchev agreement of 1962, even if enforced,
would only preclude the introduction of new offensive weaponry
to Cuba. Unlike the Monroe Doctrine, the Missile Crisis
agreement does not restrict Soviet missile, plane, and naval
buildups elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere. In Nicaragua,
Grenada, and Suriname, as well as Cuba, the Brezhnev Doctrine
is being permitted to supersede the Monroe Doctrine.
K The Soviet Union, since the 1962 Kennedy-Khrushchev Agreement, which ratified a continuing Soviet military presence in the
Western Hemisphere, has incrementally strengthened its offensive war-waging capabilities in America's "frontyard".
(1) Five Caribbean nations are now part of the Soviet military
axis Cuba, Nicaragua, Grenada, Guyana, and Suriname. Each is preparing major airstrips capable of handling the big
TU-95 Soviet Bear bombers. These strategic aircraft, with a range of 5,100 miles, are equipped to carry 385-mile
Kangaroo nuclear warheads each one 40 times more
-3- devastating than the Hiroshima bomb.
(2) Russian Echo II nuclear submarines operating out of Cuba are
also equipped to carry the Kangaroo, with its 800-kiloton
nuclear warhead. The Shaddock missile, even more powerful
than the Kangaroo, has a 540-mile range.
(3) , Cuba's armed forces total more than 225,000 personnel,
including 15,000 air force and 10,000 navy. One hundred
forty SAM-3 missiles were delivered to Havana in December,
1982.
(4) This year, Cuba has completed building 190 concrete,
bombproof shelters for its fleet of 225 MIG Soviet-built
fighter-bombers (at least 40 are nuclear-capable). The MIG
23s can carry Kitchen missiles with nuclear warheads
equipped to travel 480 miles at 3,000 miles per hour.
Counting fixed-wing combat aircraft and combat helicopters,
Cuba deploys 555 planes. Communist Cuba has among its
numerous military attack bases, submarine and airbase
facilities so "hardened" that they could only be knocked out
by nuclear barrage.
(5) The Soviets have supplied Cuba with at least 650 tanks
(3,000 according to Eden Pastora) and 90 helicopters. (6) With Soviet aid, the Cubans have developed an amphibious
attack capability based on six Foxtrot patrol submarines
(with 20 torpedoes each), 26 fast attack craft armed with
Styx surface-to-surface missiles, 10 large patrol craft, 40 Zhuk and Turya hydrofoil attack boats, fully armed with guns
and torpedoes. (
(7) More than 13,000 soviet personnel are stationed in Cuba)
including a combat brigade of soldiers under arms (reinforced during June and equipped with tanks, armored personnel carriers, long-range artillery, and long-range air
transport capabilities) plus civilian and military
advisers. (Perhaps this is to help offset the more than
40,000 Cuban troops assigned overseas to fight the
U.S.S.R.'s battles in Angola, Ethiopia, and elsewhere.)
(8) With increasing regularity, Soviet nuclear submarines are
being serviced out of Cuba's Cienfuegos naval base. Soviet
Bear bombers, operating out of Cuba, regularly skirt the edges of U.S. air space. There are reports that as many as
10 of the "Bears", possibly designed for anti-submarine
warfare, possibly equipped with air launched cruise
missiles, have recently been stationed in Cuba. The Chief
of Naval Operations has confirmed that at least two of these
Soviet nuclear bombers are fully equipped with operable bomb
-5- bays. Nine Cuban airfields are set up to handle TU-95s.
In 1967, the U.S. plus all Latin American countries except
Cuba signed the "Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear
Weapons in Latin America". Why not Cuba? Fifty-five
important U.S. cities, with 74 million people, are in range
of Soviet missiles, aircraft, and subs operating off our
shores.
(9) The Soviet intelligence collection unit in Lourdes, Cuba
covers 28 square miles the largest non-American center in
the Western Hemisphere to monitor, by electronic means,
U.S. military and scientific activity in more than twenty
states. It can jam satellite transmissions as well as
civilian and military communications.
(10) Sixty-three thousand tons of Soviet military equipment was
shipped to Cuba in 1981, plus another 68,000 tons in 1982.
The Soviet Union is giving 20 times more military assistance
to Cuba than the U.S. is providing all Latin America.
There are reports of Soviet/Cuban biological and
chemical warfare production, storage, and training
assistance to FLO, SWAPO, and Central American Marxist
forces in Cuba.
(11) Two prime targets for the Soviets are Norfolk, Virginia
-6- (home of our Atlantic fleet) and Charleston, South Carolina
(East Coast base for the nuclear missile submarine leg of
our strategic defense triad). America has no defense
against a Soviet strategic offensive launched from
Caribbean-based submarines, airfields, or missile
emplacements.
(12) Thirty-six military bases (including 2 ports and 3 big
airstrips) have been created in Nicaragua, which has
recently received 50 Soviet tanks, 1,000 East German trucks,
100 anti-aircraft guns, three brigades of Soviet artillery,
plus Soviet-built assault helicopters and transport
aircraft. Nicaragua's military buildup is unprecedented in
Central America-r-more than 138,000 already under arms
(thirty-nine percent of all males over 18 in Nicaragua are in uniform), 2,000 Cuban military advisers (plus 6,000 civilians), 36 new military bases and Soviet bloc weaponry (including 45-50 tanks, three brigades of artillery, 100
anti-aircraft guns, armored personnel carriers, mobile
rocket-launchers, transport aircraft, and assault
helicopters), as well as an undetermined number of MIG
fighter planes.
(13) As many as 50 Libyan and PLO advisers have been active in
Nicaragua. PLO leader Yasser Arafat agreed to provide
-7- military equipment to Nicaragua, including arms and
aircraft, when he was in Managua on July 22, 1980. Arafat
affirmed to a group of Palestinian journalists in Beirut on
January 11, 1982, that "there are Palestinian
revolutionaries with the revolutionaries in El Salvador..."
PLO personnel are, for example, providing pilot training and
aircraft maintenance in Nicaragua.
(14) The Soviets are preparing a huge drydock in Spain to be
towed to the Nicaraguan Pacific port of San Juan del Sur, in
connection with the Moscow-Managua agreement for a new
trans-Isthmian canal. This could be used to justify long
years of future Soviet presence required to turn over
drydock functions and dig the new canal. Indeed, the Soviet
brigade might be sent over from Cuba to the Central American
mainland to guard canal construction. San Juan del Sur is a
secure beachhead commanding the Pacific approaches to the
Panama Canal. One hundred Soviet engineers, plus their
families, are due to arrive soon.
(15) Nicaraguan pilots are currently being trained in Bulgaria.
There are over 5,000 Cuban, Russian, East German, Bulgarian,
PLO, and other East Bloc advisers in Nicaragua. These are
now ICQ times more numerous than all American military
advisers in all of Central America.
-8- (16) There are 10 airstrips in Guyana, 3 in Grenada. The new
Russian airbase in Grenada expands the radius of operation
of all Soviet and Cuban aircraft in the region allowing them
to fly 1,000 miles into the heartland of South America.
Cuban aircraft can refuel in Grenada on flights to and from
Africa.
(17) Grenada provides several strategic aspects for the Russians:
56% of all the oil consumed on the Eastern U.S. seaboard
(over 6 million barrels per day) comes from the refineries and oilfields within 500 miles of Grenada (i.e., the giant
Amerada Hess refinery and oil storage complexes in St. Croix (U.S. Virgin Islands), and St. Lucia), could be taken out by
MIG 23/27 tactical aircraft in less than 20 minutes.
(18) The 75 kilowatt transmitter, given by Cuba to Radio Free
Grenada, is about to start broadcasting 'revolutionary'
messages across the Caribbean and into Latin America.
(19) Soviet airbases in Nicaragua and Grenada will soon enable
the Russians to dominate the airspace over Mexico, all of
Central America, northern South America, and the entire
eastern Caribbean.
(20) With the Communist take-over of Suriname, the Soviet MIGs
-9- will be able to reach into Central Brazil from the
U.S.-built airfield in Suriname. With Suriname and Grenada
as Soviet/Cuban bases in the region, it is feared that any
or all of the tiny islands in the region could be easily
knocked out overnight by 20 or 30 armed Cuban
revolutionaries in a boat (just as Grenada was taken by the
Communists in 1979).
(21) Soviet/Cuban trained and financed terrorists and guerrillas
operate throughout the Western Hemisphere not just in El
Salvador and Guatemala, but in Colombia, Honduras, Peru,
Haiti, Argentina, Chile, and Venezuela as well. Indeed
there is hardly a country among the island and continental
nations of Latin America which lacks a disciplined Communist
subversive entity loyal to Moscow and its objectives of
global conquest.
(22) The Soviet/Cuban command have long since plotted Caribbean
seabottom trench routes linking the four Sovietized
countries (Grenada, Nigaragua, Cuba, Suriname) there. Along
those trenches, Cuban or Russian submarines can shuttle nuclear-missile cargos undetected. So at any of the
four surrogate base countries, TU-95s could be armed with
sub-delivered Kangaroos at any time. Thus, with nukes
inside the U.S. early-warning arc, the Kremlin can play a
-10- shell-game far more effective than the costly
"racetrack" basing once considered for our MXs. The
Kangaroo nuclear warheads are forty times more
devastating than the Hiroshima bomb. Loaded on TU-95 Soviet bombers with a range of 5,100 miles, these 385-raile range
Kangaroo missiles can hit any target in the United States
within 5 minutes of launch.
Under the Brezhnev Doctrine, once any Communist regime seizes power, it will be maintained and supported in power by Soviet armed force as in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Yet Soviet in^erialist intrusion as a permanent source of conflict in the Western Hemisphere is contrary to a fundamental principle of American foreign policy the Monroe Doctrine.
In May 1982, you and three other top officials of your administration explicitly stated that the Soviets had violated the 1962 Kennedy-Khrushchev Agreement ending the Cuban Missile
Crisis. Under this agreement, the Soviets were required to halt the further introduction of offensive weapons such as nuclear missiles, light bombers, and troops into Cuba.
-11- In addition to the threat of nuclear blackmail, it does not take much imagination to project what would happen if Central America is dominated by Marxist regimes with the support of the Cubans and the Soviets. It would be only a matter of time before Mexico would become a Marxist state on our own southern border. Already the Communists are building subversive infrastructures along the
Mexican border towns from San Diego in the west to Brownsville,
Texas, in the east. If you think we have problems with illegal aliens now, think of the problems we would come to have if a
Communist Mexico were intent on mounting the kind of terrorist war in southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas that we have seen in Central America^
We cannot afford a norwin war in El Salvador in which we tinker with the symptoms while ignoring the cause. Land reform, for example, in the sense it means expropriation of private property, is no more desirable when imposed by Ronald Reagan, than when enforced by Joseph Stalin.
It should not be the Reagan Administration's objective to institute democratic socialism in the nations of Latin America, but rather to defend the vital interests of the United States.
In Vietnam, four major factors contributed to America's defeat:
-12- (1) A policy of gradualism which prevented decisive application
of superior U.S. force and capability,
(2) A policy of pennitting the enemy to retain privileged
sanctuaries,
(3) A failure to enunciate a clear policy rationale, based on
the defense of America's vital interests, and
(4) A failure to rally the American people behind a policy of
victory based on the defense of our vital interests.
We cannot achieve a victory in Central America "covertly", or
with less than a total effort, anymore than we were able to in
Vietnam.
We therefore urge that you adopt, articulate, and seek public support for the following policies, which, in our opinion, are essential to preventing Soviet conquest of the Western
Hemisphere.
(1) Share with the American people the precise terras of the 1962
Kennedy-Khruschev Agreement and the full extent of the
Soviet Union's disregard for it.
-13- (2) Recognize and declare that the illegitimate governments of
Cuba and Nicaragua are at war with the United States of
America.
(3) Establish diplomatic relations with anti-Soviet alternative
governments in Cuba and Nicaragua and declare that it is your policy to help install and empower these newly
recognized governments.
(4) Cede Guantanamo to a duly recognized anti-Communist Cuban
leadership to give them a territorial foothold on their
island of Cuba.
(5) End the restrictions on Cuban exiles and harassment of their
anti-Castro radio stations.
(6) Seek popular support and Congressional ratification of
action to assist the newly recognized anti—Communist Nicaraguan government regain full control of its territory.
(7) Institute a naval and air blockade of Cuba and Nicaragua to
stop the flow of arms and personnel to the Communists from
the Soviet Union, Libya, Bulgaria, North Korea, East
Germany, the PLO, and other sources.
-14- (8) Mine Cuba's harbors to help enforce the blockade.
(9) Provide for the defense of Florida and the Gulf states from
attack by Soviet missiles and aircraft based in the
Caribbean. Recall AWACS aircraft from Europe to help defend
America.
(10). Declare your intention to fully reassert the premise of the
Monroe Doctrine that the U.S. will not permit European
imperialism to continue anywhere in the Western Hemisphere.
Mr. President, you are confronted with a challenge that grows more serious each day. Your failure to act courageously now may result in an unprecedented military challenge to America's independence and security. The question in the 1980*s is the same as in the 1820*s: Sovereign survival or subjugated submission on the installment plan. Our choice today is between the Brezhnev and the Monroe Doctrines.
■15-