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The Second Cuban Missile Crisis December 4,2009 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 [email protected] Page 1 of 12 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. [email protected] Page 2 of 12 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 [email protected] Page 3 of 12 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 [email protected] Page 4 of 12 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 [email protected] Page 5 of 12 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.
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