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Caribbean Islands The Soviet Presence
United States hegemony in the Caribbean in the twentieth
century had remained until the Cuban revolution in 1959, an event
that made the Soviet Union recognize the vulnerability of America's
"backyard." By 1962 the Soviet Union had established a military
outpost in Cuba and later that year began to emplace strategic
missiles on the island. Although forced to withdraw the missiles as
a result of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, the Soviets
retained a combat brigade there. The Soviet Union also began to
devise a more sophisticated strategy designed to exploit the new
opportunities opened up by the Cuban revolution, but without
risking another direct military confrontation with the United
States. The main objectives of the new Soviet strategy in the
Caribbean region, as assessed by American analysts, were to erode
American influence further, expand Soviet influence and power,
establish Soviet proxies, expand Soviet military and intelligence
facilities and capabilities, make the United States withdraw from
other parts of the world in an effort to consolidate defense of its
vulnerable southern flank, and complicate American defense planning
by increasing the sea-denial capabilities of the Soviet Union and
its proxies.
In the early 1960s, the Soviet Union reportedly also began
preparing for future naval activity in the Caribbean region by
using its oceanographic research fleet to survey the area around
Cuba and the Mona, Windward, and Anegada passages. The resulting
data facilitated the Soviet attempt to develop surface and
underwater weapons, surveillance systems, antisubmarine warfare,
mine warfare, and amphibious landing data. Meanwhile, Soviet
merchant vessels opened the Caribbean to Soviet maritime power.
Seventy-eight Soviet merchant vessels were reported sighted in
1963; by 1968 the number had increased to 247 ships.
Prior to Castro's seizure of power, Soviet naval warships
rarely visited the Western Hemisphere. They first entered the
Caribbean region in July 1969 but caused little concern in the
United States because world attention at the time was focused on
the Apollo 11 moon landing. The Soviet military presence in the
Western Hemisphere became more pronounced during the 1970s. The
completion of the Soviet submarine base at Cienfuegos on Cuba's
southern coast in 1970 (under the guise of a sugar terminal)
allowed nuclear-powered and conventionally powered Golf-class
submarines of the Soviet Union and later Cuba to begin operating in
Caribbean waters. In the spring of 1970, the Caribbean played an
important role in the Soviet Union's first global naval exercise,
Okean-70. In addition, the first Soviet Tu-95 Bear D reconnaissance
and antisubmarine aircraft landed in Cuba that April. Since 1975
these aircraft have operated out of the San Antonio de los Banos
airfield and, beginning in September 1982, along the eastern coast
of the United States and in the Caribbean. In 1983 Tu-142 Bear F
aircraft began using the same airfield, marking another gradual
improvement in Soviet antisubmarine warfare capability in the
region. During the 1969-86 period, twenty-six Soviet task forces
were deployed to the Caribbean, and almost all of them visited
Cuban ports, usually Havana and Cienfuegos. The early deployments
included port visits to Jamaica and Barbados.
According to the United States Department of Defense, the
Soviet naval deployments are used to show the flag in the Caribbean
and occasionally in the Gulf of Mexico and to exercise with Cuban
navy and air force units. The Soviets have deployed a wide range of
ships and submarines, including guided missile cruisers, guided
missile frigates, destroyers, and nuclear-powered cruise missile
and attack submarines.
The Soviet Union traditionally has viewed the Caribbean as
America's "strategic rear," according to American academic and
military specialists on Soviet naval strategy. Cuba has served
Soviet interests not only by promoting activities inimical to
American and Commonwealth Caribbean interests, such as narcotics
smuggling, regional subversion, support for radical regimes, and
military intervention in Africa, but also by developing into a
potential military threat in the event of war. Soviet strategy in
the Caribbean region has called for gaining control, directly or
indirectly, over the four major choke points in the region's sealanes , as well as developing the capability to interdict the major
maritime routes transiting the area.
The German U-boat threat in the Caribbean during World War II
clearly demonstrated the vulnerability of the Caribbean sea-lanes
to interdiction and of the refineries to attack. The Nazi
submarines wreaked havoc on shipping even though they were few in
number, never totaling more than a dozen, and operated in the area
without benefit of friendly regional ports or air cover. Moreover,
during the war the United States could avail itself fully of Cuba
as a naval base and source of supply. By contrast, in the event of
a general war in the late 1980s, Soviet and Cuban submarines
operating from Cuba would have advantages that the Germans lacked.
The Soviet nuclear submarine base in Cienfuegos would make the
island a potential base for submarine warfare in the Caribbean.
Furthermore, since the 1970s the Soviets have tracked the movement
of United States warships from the Soviet signals intelligence
collection facility in Lourdes, Cuba. Given these advantages,
American naval analysts believe that, in the event of a major war
Soviet and Cuban submarines might succeed in cutting off the four
main choke points in the Caribbean, interdicting American shipping
heading eastward from the Persian Gulf to the western coast of the
United States, and attacking the United States mainland.
The Soviet choke-point strategy may help to explain why the
Soviets apparently coveted Grenada, a small island with no
significant resources. In 1983, when Maurice Bishop was still in
power in Grenada, United States government military strategists
feared that use of the island in conjunction with bases in Cuba and
Nicaragua would enable the Soviet Union to project tactical power
over the entire Caribbean Basin. According to this scenario, in the
event of a major war Soviet-controlled air and naval forces
operating from all three of these countries would have an ideal
capability for sabotaging the United States-NATO "swing strategy"
through harassment of the NATO supply lines. According to American
naval analysts, Soviet strategy projected that Cuba- and Nicaraguabased Soviet forces would engage in persistent harassment and seadenial operations in an effort to close the four major choke points
in the Caribbean sea-lanes.
Data as of November 1987
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