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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 PUBLICATIONS Congressional Report Senate Report Senate Issues Yearbook Eve on Bureaucracy Inside Bureaucracy CONSERVATIVE SPEAKERS BUREAU .\A TIONAL SECURITY T.4SK FORCE legislative DATA BANK PRESIDENTIAL POUCYPROJECT 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.