The Cuban Piece
in China’s Puzzle:
T he Second Cuban Missile Crisis
(CMC2)
“To Win Without Fighting is Best” -Sun Tzu
By Ilario Pantano
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The Cuban Piece in China’s Puzzle: The Second Cuban Missile Crisis December 4,2009
“the essence of [active defense] is to take the initiative and to annihilate the enemy…While strategically the guideline is active defense, [in military campaigns] the emphasis is placed on taking the initiative in active offense. Only in this way can the strategic objective of active defense be realized.” -People!s liberation Army (PLA), Science of Campaigns, 20001
The Scenario :
The cavernous Ilyushin Il-76 cargo jets bleed out red light in the predawn as the tail sections part. Ramps are deployed quietly. The humidity level is high and some of the diesel engines struggle to life, but within moments of their arrival large dark trucks begin rolling out of the winged behemoths and onto the tarmac. 30 minutes later the trucks have been guided to their destinations led by blacked out vehicles with taped-over brake lights. For months planes and ships had been arriving on a regular schedule delivering bicycles and flat screen TVs. Hundreds of brightly painted ‘Yutong’ buses have rolled off of container ships, but not all the loads shuttled through the Cuban ports were benign.
With a series of midnight flights and inconspicuous freight containers, the Chinese had succeeded in turning Cuba into the world’s largest sea-based weapons platform. The offensive strike capability wouldn’t be the traditional (and vulnerable) piloted jets, but rather thousands of mobile ballistic missiles and remotely controlled Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAVs).
The defensive capabilities would like wise be highly mobile autonomous Surface Air Missile (SAM) systems protected by an umbrella decades in the making of Soviet (and subsequently Chinese) investment in truly state of the art signal intercept, jamming, and cyber warfare facilities at Lourdes (In 1993 Raul Castro claimed, “Russia obtains 75% of its SIGINT from Lourdes”) and Bejucal. A 2003 test run had demonstrated the island stations ability to jam American satellites2 and in the decade since the technologies had only improved.
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The Cuban Piece in China’s Puzzle: The Second Cuban Missile Crisis December 4,2009
The Chinese gamble was meticulously calculated. The U.S. retaliatory threats would be idle ones. It was suicide for any meaningful economic challenge, after all “the business of America is business.” But if U.S. Policy makers in fact chose to engage China economically, the carefully cultivated “ring of black pearls” (the secret Chinese euphemism for their Latin American and African engagement initiative) would allow them to weather the storm. For every U.S. dollar China might lose in a trade war, there was a metric ton of copper or barrel of oil to be offered up by an emboldened third-world partner.
While America waged the War on Terror, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) steadily focused on a different kind war, defied the Monroe Doctrine and amassed weapons of currency and debt. For more than a decade, the Chinese have meticulously arrayed their global relationships in such a way that the PRC can manipulate or delay, if not outright control, any global sanctioning bodies (UN, WTO, etc.). Bilateral trade between China and Latin America was exploding and had already increased 250% between 2000 and 2005 (to $7 billion).3 The wave of anti-democratic partnerships from Brazil to the Sudan would ensure access to emerging markets and natural resources, two of the elements China desperately needed to survive. The third element was the most crucial for Chinese Communist Party (CCP) political survival: A symbolic conflict in order to cement the CCP’s tenuous grasp while simultaneously conferring the mantle “super power” on Chinese terms.
“We don’t know what the hell is going on…We don’t know who is doing what to whom...We have nothing.”
-Sam Halpern, Deputy Chief of CIA!s Cuba Desk, 1962
Unlike the first Cuban missile crisis, which was tipped off when photo identification of construction sites for air defense systems implied nuclear missile installations were on the way, the second Cuban missile crisis will have no warning. While U.S. war planners haughtily focused on “platform parity” by measuring the size and count of ships and planes at the behest of defense lobbyists, the PRC opted instead to secretly skip several generations of platforms, favoring truck
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The Cuban Piece in China’s Puzzle: The Second Cuban Missile Crisis December 4,2009 mounted carrier-killer missiles instead of the carriers themselves. The strategic ruse will be aided by soft-pedaled deceptive rhetoric, influence operations and a failure of U.S. intelligence services that have “consistently underestimated Chinese capability and intent for over a decade” according to the commander of U.S. Naval forces in the Pacific.
All of the technologies employed by the PRC in this scenario will be highly mobile, self- contained, and turn-key and will be supported by a world class cyberwarfare capability. The superior Chinese and Cuban intelligence*, counter intelligence, and influence operation capabilities will further ensure that U.S. policy makers are caught completely unaware. A localized “demonstration” cyberwarfare** attack would impose a “fog of war” on distressed policy makers and hint at greater disruption that might follow if demands were not met. [*NOTE: American attempts to gather Human Intelligence on Cuba would be characterized as a massive failure by Major Florentino Aspillaga Lomabrd. In 1987, Lombard defected from his post as the Cuban Intelligence Chief in Czechoslovakia. Lomabrd’s debrief would astound American intelligence: Every single Cuban who had been recruited to spy for the CIA over the past twenty years had been turned to a double agent. CIA analysts would later conclude that the Major was telling the truth when he reported that the agents were faking loyalty to the US, but instead were still loyal to Castro.4]
[**NOTE: A full on attack with only modest funding ($500 million) like the one modeled in the 2002 planning exercise, “Dark Angel,” would cripple or destroy railway, oil and gas pipelines, power infrastructure, financial and emergency services (911 system) and general internet service. The result of such an attack would be a destabilized U.S. with a reduced ability to project combat power and a diminished will to fight.]5
The Chinese threat via Cuba will probably not be nuclear for three reasons: 1) PRC will have identified that a nuclear threat off America’s shore would raise the level (“bright red line”) of escalation in an emotionally unpredictable fashion thus hindering PRC strategic goals.
2) PRC has successfully developed and employed first and second strike capable nuclear missiles on mobile platforms (ground and submarine) in regions it can positively control and that are “seemingly” less threatening to U.S. interests while in fact no less lethal.
3) The Conventional weapons (missiles and UCAVS) that the PRC will have secretly
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The Cuban Piece in China’s Puzzle: The Second Cuban Missile Crisis December 4,2009
built up and deployed en masse will be sufficient to achieve the goal of “negotiation.”
What is the goal of this near doom’s day scenario that might be triggered on the eve of an American electoral cycle? Taiwan. Imagine the following communiqué to the White House:
- THIS “NEGOTIATION” NEED NOT BE PUBLIC. Publicity will favor the PRC by demonstrating America!s blindness and present military disadvantage.
- THIS “NEGOTIATION” WILL ONLY BECOME A CONFLICT IF THE U.S. INITIATES HOSTILITIES. The U.S. Fleet has no defense against the 3,000 Anti Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBMs) we are prepared to deploy against it. Additionally, PRC conventional ballistic missile capability on Cuba can eliminate 50% of U.S.- based air and ground forces as well as economic/political hubs along the Eastern seaboard, both in port and at Sea. Consider 1,000 Pearl Harbors. Furthermore, the PRC is prepared to initiate an EMP and/or nuclear first strike. The U.S. is not.
- END ALL U.S. SUPPORT FOR TAIWAN AND WITHDRAW U.S. FORCES AND PRC WILL END ALL SUPPORT FOR CUBA AND WITHDRAW PRC FORCES. Appreciate the irony of a tiny island that was once part of your territory now being used as leverage by a foreign power to dictate terms. The PRC will no longer allow political or military decisions on the future of Taiwan to be dictated by the United States.
Is a “Second Cuban Missile Crisis” (CMC2) likely? No one in the Kennedy administration was prepared for Khrushchev’s audacious stroke to balance power in 1962 which nearly brought the world to war and subsequently led to the removal of U.S. missiles from Turkey. And despite many ills, the USSR did not have the socio-political imperative of the “Taiwan problem.”
China must be viewed honestly as the potentially threatening Super Power that it is, and not as the “developing nation” amidst a “peaceful rise” that it pretends to be. Noted Asian scholar Robert Sutter has called China’s strategy of a peaceful rise a “tactical approach designed to specifically offset that widely held view in the United States, parts of Asia, and else where of rising China as a threat.” The external messaging is so tightly calibrated that even the perception of “rise” has been deemed too aggressive. According to Sutter, “by late 2004 Chinese officials and media muted reference to ‘rise,’ referring to China’s ‘peaceful development’.”6
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The Cuban Piece in China’s Puzzle: The Second Cuban Missile Crisis December 4,2009
Consider the recent history of communist superpower influence in Latin America and Cuba specifically. The first Cuban Missile Crisis was only seventeen years after the U.S. fought with the Soviets against the Nazis and three years after Castro met Eisenhower. A week after Soviet SAMs were spotted in Cuba, a U-2 spy plane was shot down over China on September 9, 1962. The ensuing tensions would come to be known as one of the gravest chapters in the history of the World. Within weeks of the initial SAM discovery, ninety-nine soviet nuclear missiles, each with the destructive power of 70 Hiroshima explosions, arrived at Cuba undetected. Each of the Medium Range Ballistic Missiles (MRBMs) off the coast of Florida could deliver a one megaton warhead to the U.S. capital.7
“We are linked by Bonds that are completely different from those that are customary in the capitalist world. For the Soviet Union, Cuba is not an object of exploitation and capital investment, not a strategic base or a so-called sphere of influence. Our friendship, our closeness, is an expression of the socialist nature of our countries, a living embodiment of the lofty principles of socialist internationalism.”
-Soviet Premiere Leonid Brezhnev, On the state of Sino-Cuban bilateral relations during a visit with Cuban President Fidel Castro in Havana, 19748
The year following Brezhnev’s visit would begin an era of Cuban expansionism in Africa and Latin America. First in Angola and later in Ethiopia, Nicaragua and Grenada, joint Soviet- Cuban operations benefited Moscow and enabled Castro’s vision of leading the third World. The Collapse of the USSR quickly bankrupted Cuba and unwound their expeditions, but some legacies remain: Today, Angola is China’s primary supplier of foreign oil, ahead of Saudi Arabia and Iran.9 Picking up where the Soviets left off ($75 billion in subsidies10), China has already positioned itself as Cuba’s ideological and economic patron with bilateral trade reaching $2.28 billion in 200711. After an extended courtship, Cuba’s new president, Raul Castro, has demonstrated his interest in emulating the Chinese model by increasing integration of Cuban military personnel in government run business activities.12
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The Cuban Piece in China’s Puzzle: The Second Cuban Missile Crisis December 4,2009
China’s pursuit of regional influence is serviced by proxy in a “Neo-Bizmarckian” effort to avoid attention or backlash. For example, Venezuela provides Cuba a $3 billion year (90,000 bbls/day) oil subsidy13 but would that be possible if China had not invested over $12 billion into Venezuelan energy production and escalated its own imports 300%?
"History has proved that we [China and Cuba] are worthy of the name of fast friends, good comrades and intimate brothers,” -Chinese President Hu Jintao, On the state of Sino-Cuban bilateral relations during a visit with Cuban President Raul Castro in Havana, 2008.14
Soviet adventurism in Latin America has already been eclipsed by China’s hard currency soft power projection. Even before the most recent economic downturn, a 2002 poll reflected Latin American desire for centralized control: only 35% polled said they wanted the private sector to run the economy. In a further blow to western free-market democratic reforms, more than half of the Latin Americans polled agreed that they “wouldn’t mind if a non-democratic government came to power if it could solve economic problems.”15 Whether China is the merely the beneficiary or also the prognosticator of growing Anti-Americanism is beyond the scope of this article. Regardless, the PRC is rapidly consolidating its regional gains which will help buffer blow-back in the event of Sino-U.S. confrontation. Sinologist Robert Sutter referred to such phenomena as a, “Gulliver Strategy that would tie down and impede possible US efforts to engage in sharp pressure or containment of China.”16
Other seemingly “pre-strike” signals were evidenced in a 2008 policy paper in which the PRC boldly declared its intent to provide military and intelligence support to all Latin American nations that accept the “One China” policy:17 “The Chinese side will actively carry out military exchanges and defense dialogue and cooperation with Latin American and Caribbean countries. Mutual visits by defense and military officials of the two sides as well as personnel exchanges will be enhanced. Professional exchanges in military training, personnel training and peacekeeping will be deepened. Practical cooperation in the non-traditional security field will be expanded. The Chinese side will, as its ability permits, continue to provide assistance for the development of the army in Latin American and Caribbean countries.”
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The Cuban Piece in China’s Puzzle: The Second Cuban Missile Crisis December 4,2009
In looking at the relationship between Cuba and China and its ultimate effects on American national interest, the perspective one brings to the table will color the analysis. If for example, one views China’s global emergence in the terms dictated by the Chinese state controlled media as a “peaceful rise” then there is seemingly no need for concern.
But not all China watchers take this claimed “benevolence” at face value. The schism was high lighted ten years ago by preeminent China scholars Ross Munro and Richard Bernstein when they sounded an early warning in their book, The Coming Conflict with China. “Many Experts, including many in the State Department and some leading China hands in the United States, contend that China and America have far more reason to cooperate than to collide, and therefore the relationship is fundamentally sound. …In fact the argument continues, China is militarily weak and poses no threat of expansion either to the United States or its neighbors.” On the contrary, Munro and Bernstein contend, “…that the growing Chinese economic and military strength linked to the nation’s ambitions and to its xenophobic impulses, are making it more rather than less aggressive. The important thing here is that Beijing’s rulers will risk war with America not because of their country’s interest but because it is in the interests of the governing clique.” 18
The China lobby (“Panda-huggers”) will note the joint economic interests which suggest hostilities would be avoided, but the lessons of World War One Europe prove that a gross fallacy according to historian John Keegan. To those that would argue, “the Chinese would never take such a provocative step like CMC2”, consider the 1990’s when PRC economic, political and military power was a fraction of what it is today (and US power was much greater). Sinologists Munro and Bernstein identified a number of the previous flash points: • Chinese missile tests near Taiwan and two (American) aircraft carriers patrolling the seas not far from China!s shores. • Warnings from Beijing to Washington about “keeping out of the Taiwan Strait,” an international waterway. • Sinister admonition from an unnamed Chinese official about nuclear missiles “targeted on Los Angeles.” • Sales of missile technology to Iran and large amounts of conventional weapons to both Iran and Iraq.
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The Cuban Piece in China’s Puzzle: The Second Cuban Missile Crisis December 4,2009
• Sales of special magnets that can be used in nuclear weapons building to Pakistan. • China has built a secret plutonium-capable nuclear reactor in Algeria; • Sales of chemical weapons materials and nuclear technology to Libya; • Smuggling 2000 illegal fully automatic Ak-47 rifles into the United States.19
Chinese nationalism accelerated during the turn of the millennia according to Joshua Kurlantzick, author of Charm Offensive: How China’s Soft Power is Transforming the World. Kurlantzick credits two disastrous events, the 1999 Chinese embassy bombing in Belgrade and the 2001 EP-3 collision (resulting in the death of a Chinese pilot), with nationalist protests and calls for military retaliation against America. Chinese media suggested the bombing, which killed three Chinese and wounded 15 others, was deliberate. “The Belgrade bombing and the EP-3 incident fostered the most significant domestic discussion of China’s global role in years. Across China’s Eastern cities, business people, academics, students, and other intellectuals began to consider whether China should abandon playing defense with the rest of the world- a debate captured by growing coverage in the Chinese press suggesting that China Should develop a more aggressive foreign policy. The September 11 attacks further exposed China’s nationalist sentiment…In a broader study of post-September 11 opinion, researchers found that ‘most Chinese college students…were immediately excited because the United States, an abhorrent, overbearing, and arbitrary country in their minds, suffered an unprecedented heavy strike.”20
“Strategic bombers are entitled to use airfields in any country, including Cuba, as long as its leaders do not object.”
-Anatoly Kornukov, Former Russian Air Force Commander-in-Chief, 2008
Would Cuba be a willing partner in such a Gambit? Following a 2008 flare-up over U.S. missile defense programs in Europe, a news report leaked to the Russian media of strategic nuclear bombers landing on Cuba. "While they are deploying the anti-missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, our long-range strategic aircraft already will be landing in Cuba." Izvestia said this apparently refers to long-range nuclear-capable bombers. President Raul Castro did not comment, but Fidel said Cuba is not
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The Cuban Piece in China’s Puzzle: The Second Cuban Missile Crisis December 4,2009 obligated to offer the United States an explanation about the newspaper report, "nor ask for excuses or forgiveness."21 While there is no certain answer to the role that Cuba might play in a stand-off, it is important to recall that the US hasn’t always guessed correctly. “Many serious observers feel his regime will collapse in a matter of months,” predicted the CIA Station chief in Havana, Jim Noel, fifty years ago.22 Another intelligence officer, after briefing Castro in Washington DC, would describe him as the “new spiritual leader of Latin American democratic and anti-dictator forces.” Within a year, the tone would change as Castro’s “removal from Cuba” (assassination) was formally considered although unsuccessful. Recall also that it was the Cubans who asked for missiles again in the 80s, but were denied by their Soviet handlers.
Conclusion: Is Cuba “the USA’s Taiwan”?
Two islands sit off the coasts of two of the world’s most powerful nations where they have become bastions of opposing cultures. Neither Cuba nor Taiwan could exist without the security guarantees or subsidies of an ideological patron on the other side of the globe. Time capsules, their very existence challenges the central identities of the super powers whose shadows they scornful occupy. Symbols in a complex psychology of global power identity, Cuba and Taiwan both strike emotional chords well beyond their purely quantitative import. Threat of invasion and nuclear war has been tested and nearly realized in scenarios that would be laughable were they not so gravely serious.
Most conventional approaches to how China may solve its Taiwan problem, and if that solution will involve force, are focused on the locality of the Pacific. This conventional wisdom trap stems from territorial responsibilities delineated on a map. In Pentagon parlance: China is a Pacific Command problem, which artificially constrains both scenarios and solutions to the Pacific. By establishing the concept of CMC2, I am suggesting that broader consideration be given to a problem which has historically been very narrowly defined.
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The Cuban Piece in China’s Puzzle: The Second Cuban Missile Crisis December 4,2009
A good warfighter, or street fighter, knows not to attack an opponent’s strength. You attack his weakness. You don’t strike your enemy’s fist, you strike his groin or his throat. Admittedly, we know very little about actual Chinese strategy or intent, except that for thousands of years they have been practicing the art of “deception.” So why have we continued to wear “white shoes” and assume that the only fight will be at the time, place and in the fashion of our choosing?
A thoughtful tactician may see the opportunity of using Cuba as leverage in a swap for Taiwan. Such a showdown may not be inevitable, but it cannot be dismissed. Make no mistake, Cuba is an economic failure, but unlike Haiti or other Latin American countries that have been unable to find their footing, Cuba has succeeded in making itself an attractive dance partner to powers that seek to threaten or marginalize the US interests. Cuba is a “fixer upper”, but with fresh paint and a full complement of missiles, it might just fetch the right market price.
“…it is worth remembering that former paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping, liked to cite an old Chinese aphorism to the effect of “conceal your real capabilities until it is time to employ them.”
- Marvin Ott, Professor, National Security Strategy, National War College A U.S. Security Strategy for Southeast Asia, July 25, 2008
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The Cuban Piece in China’s Puzzle: The Second Cuban Missile Crisis December 4,2009
EndNotes
1 Office of the Secretary of Defense, Annual Report To Congress: Military Power of the People!s Republic of China 2009, 2009, pg.11
2 U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), Press release: “BBG Condemns Cuba!s Jamming of Satellite TV Broadcasts to Iran”, July 15, 2003, http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2003/07/bbg071503.html
3 Sheng Ding (Essay),“To Build a New Harmonious World”, published in Harmonious World and China!s New Foreign Policy, edited by Sujian Guo and Jean Marc Blanchard, Lexington Books, 2008, pg. 118
4 Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The Secret History of the CIA, Anchor Books, 2007, pg. 482
5 Brian Mazanec, “The Art of (Cyber) War”, The Journal of International Security Affairs, Spring 2009, Number 16, http://www.securityaffairs.org/issues/2009/16/mazanec.php
6 Robert Sutter, China!s Rise in Asia: Promise and Peril, Rowman & Littlefield, 2005, Pg. 269
7 Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The Secret History of the CIA, pg. 224
8 Mervyn J. Bain, Soviet-Cuban Relations 1985 to 1991: Changing perceptions in Moscow and Havana, Lexington Books, 2007, pg. 27
9 Office of the Secretary of Defense, Annual Report To Congress: Military Power of the People!s Republic of China 2009, 2009, pg.4
10 Emma Brossard, Power and Petroleum, Venezuela, Cuba and Columbia, A Troika?, Canaima Press, 2001, pg. 142
11Yinghong Cheng, “Beijing and Havana: Political Fraternity and Economic Patronage”, China Brief, Volume: 9 Issue: 9, April 30, 2009, http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5btt_news%5d=34921&tx_ttnews%5bbackPid%5d=7&cHash=f5aa7b5e 32
12 Adrian H. Hearn, Cuba: Region, Social, Capital, and Development, Duke University Press, 2008, pg. 186
13 Michael Janofsky, “Cuba Irks U.S. With Plans for Oil Drilling,” New York Times, May 9, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/09/world/americas/09iht-cuba.html
14 Yinghong Cheng, “Beijing and Havana: Political Fraternity and Economic Patronage”,
15 Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive: How China!s Soft Power is Transforming the World, Yale University Press, 2007, pg. 134
16 Robert Sutter, China!s Rise in Asia: Promise and Peril, Pg. 9
17 China's Policy Paper on Latin America and the Caribbean, Xinhua News Agency, November 5, 2008, http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-11/05/content_10351493.htm
18 Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Munro, The Coming Conflict with China, Vintage Edition, 1998, pg.11
19 Ibid, pg.7
20 Joshua Kurlantzick, Charm Offensive: How China!s Soft Power is Transforming the World, pg. 28
21 AP, Report: “Russia May Send Nukes To Cuba”, CBS/AP, July 23, 2008http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/24/world/main4288940.shtml
22 Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The Secret History of the CIA, pg. 179.
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