Join the author, Néstor T. Carbonell, as he shares a critical analysis of the Castro-Communist regime and explores the challenges and opportunities that will likely arise when freedom finally dawns in Cuba.

CHAPTER 11: Castro’s Detente Game: From Johnson to George H. W. Bush

Ethiopia Foray

There was indeed some complacency toward Castro in the State Department. Our diplomats did not seem particularly alarmed by Cuba’s 1977 foray, jointly with the Soviet Union, into yet another African country, Ethiopia. As a result of this impassive attitude, a clash ensued between Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. Vance held that the so-called Ethiopian crisis was a local incident triggered by a territorial dispute between two African nations, whereas Brzezinski maintained that the issue could mushroom into an international conflict with geopolitical implications.

Anticipating the influx of Cuban soldiers and Soviet war materiel to Ethiopia, Brzezinski warned that if Ethiopia and South Yemen were to link up with Moscow, access to the Suez Canal could be threatened. Given this potential risk, Brzezinski recommended the deployment of an aircraft carrier to the area as a show of US force.

Brzezinski was very much alone in his advocacy of a strong stance in Ethiopia. Wayne S. Smith, who oversaw Cuban affairs at State at the time, displaying what Jeane Kirkpatrick called a «Blame America First» proclivity, sharply criticized Brzezinski for his alleged «irresponsible rhetoric and his loose cannon approach to foreign policy.»» And Secretary Vance, evincing uncharacteristic bursts of temper, flatly rejected any show of force in the Horn of Africa that could put US prestige on the line.

In the course of heated discussions, Brzezinski cautioned that lack of a meaningful US response to deter or restrain the Soviets and their Cuban proxies in Africa and elsewhere could jeopardize not only the desired detente but also a high foreign policy priority of the Carter administration: the ratification by the Senate of SALT II—the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Missiles Treaty to be signed by Carter and General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party Leonid Brezhnev.

Brzezinski lost this battle, but the ensuing developments gave credence to his concerns. By February 1978, Cuban troops in Ethiopia had increased to ten thousand or eleven thousand; Moscow had sent there four hundred tanks and some fifty MiG jet fighters; and the first deputy commander in chief of Soviet ground forces, Petrov, was the one providing direction for the Ethiopian military operations.

On May 25, 1978, Carter felt compelled to declare, «There is no possibility that we would see any substantial improvement in our relationship with Cuba as long as [its government] is committed to this military intrusion into the [internal] affairs of the African people.”

The Soviet Combat

Brigade in Cuba

There were other nails in the coffins of Cuban detente and of SALT II. One of these was the disturbing news, leaked in November 1978, that the Soviets had shipped to Cuba MiG-23 fighter-bombers, which could potentially be reconfigured for a nuclear role. Much more serious, however, was the subsequent report of a Soviet combat brigade in Cuba. US intelligence agencies knew that Moscow had stationed on the island several thousand military personnel to advise and train Castro’s army. But the encampment in Cuba of an actual three-thousand-strong motorized Soviet brigade with headquarters and readiness to strike, if necessary, seemed to have caught Washington by surprise and created quite a stir in the Senate.

Thinking that the United States had no real leverage to induce Moscow to back down short of threatening military action, the president in his televised address on October 1, 1979, tried to deemphasize the implications of the brigade, indicating that such a small force, with no airborne or seaborne capability, posed no threat to the United States.

Then, in an effort to salvage the SALT II treaty signed in June 1979, the president stated that «the brigade issue is … no reason for a return to the Cold War. … The greatest danger to American security is the breakdown of a common effort to preserve the peace, and the ultimate threat of a nuclear war.» Carter ended his remarks by making an impassioned plea to the Senate to ratify SALT II, but to no avail. The treaty was doomed.

The Mariel Exodus

The Mariel exodus, masterminded by Castro, was another incident that jolted the Carter administration. It was set off in April 1980 when a handful of desperate Cubans trying to flee the country crashed into the former residence of my wife’s great-uncle in Havana, occupied by the Peruvian Embassy. When the ambassador refused to surrender those who had sought asylum to the Cuban authorities, Fidel exploded and said something like, «If you people want to leave, go ahead and leave! Everyone who wants to leave, go to the Peruvian Embassy.»

Within hours, some ten thousand men, women, and children thronged the courtyard and spacious garden of the embassy. The police had to cordon off the area because there were thousands more trying to get in.

Had Castro lost his mind in a rage? Not so. His emotional outburst seemed irrational, but the actions he took were coldly devised and meticulously carried through. Aware of the restlessness in the country, beset by stagnancy, repression, and despair, Fidel needed a safety valve to release tensions. The embassy incident (contrived or not) served him well to stage a mass exodus. After encouraging the Cubans to break into the Peruvian Embassy, he himself publicly announced, «All those who want to leave [the island], go to the docks at Mariel» (a port west of Havana).

About one hundred twenty-five thousand people flooded the Mariel area before it was shut off. A «freedom flotilla,» composed mainly of small, leaky boats manned by Cuban exiles from Miami, came to the rescue of relatives and friends. Most of the refugees belonged to the working class—poor fishermen, state tillers, laborers: the very Cubans Castro had promised to save from «capitalist exploiters» and «Yankee imperialism.»

Among the refugees who were sealifted, Fidel infiltrated several thousand ex-convicts, misfits, and spies—a malicious surprise that angered and embarrassed the Carter administration. But more serious than that was the implied warning embedded in the exodus itself—an unspoken Castro warning that overhanged the United States like a sword of Damocles: «If you continue to blockade our country with economic sanctions, we’ll unleash an even bigger mass exodus that will overwhelm Florida.»

Amid the Mariel exodus that rattled Carter’s administration and may have contributed to his reelection defeat, the president did not confront Castro but rather offered him a deal if he would close Mariel and end the migration crisis with US cooperation. Carter would then be prepared to hold bilateral negotiations in the first quarter of 1981 to address all major issues with the ultimate goal of lifting the US embargo and normalizing relations between the two countries.

According to William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh, the offer was first conveyed to Castro in Havana by Paul Austin, CEO of the Coca-Cola Company, who apparently exceeded the terms of the White House offer, and subsequently by Peter Tarnoff, executive assistant to the secretary of state, who set the record straight. Both returned to Washington buoyed by Castro’s seemingly positive frame of mind, which was not put to the test because of the president’s electoral defeat. Yet to this day Carter regrets not having been more flexible with Castro and established full diplomatic relations with Cuba.

Who Lost Nicaragua?

Carter ended his presidency facing major crises not only in Iran and Afghanistan but also in Central America with the emergence in Nicaragua of a Marxist-Sandinista government linked to the Castro regime and intent on subverting neighboring countries.

There are those who lay the blame for «losing» Nicaragua squarely on Carter’s dithering. This skewed accusation is unfair as there is enough blame to go around. No one is more culpable than the dictator Anastasio Somoza, who obstructed a democratic transition. The non-Sandinista opposition and the governments of several Latin American countries, particularly Costa Rica, Venezuela, and Panama, also share responsibility for eventually joining or supporting the insurrection led by the radicals. And the Carter administration bears blame for belatedly and half-heartedly attempting to avert the Sandinista takeover without any show of force or credible clout.

The inside story of this unfortunate development was shared with me by Washington’s man in Managua during the critical 1977-79 period, Ambassador Mauricio Solaun. A short, dark-haired, unassuming scholar who peppers his intellectual acuity with dashes of wit and banter, Solaun was born and raised in Cuba. He studied law in Havana, earned an MA degree in economics at Yale University and a PhD in sociology at the University of Chicago, and for ten years was professor of sociology at the University of Illinois.

Given my long-standing friendship with Mauricio, which goes back to our college years at the University of Villanueva in Havana, I asked him point-blank: Considering his Cuban experience, was he truly unable to detect the Marxist ideology or tendency of the Sandinista leaders and their road map to seize power? Mauricio told me that he was well aware of the danger, but his hands were tied.

This is how he described his predicament. «I was to be a catalyst for change [pressing human rights] amid increasing turmoil, but I was forbidden to mediate the crisis, steer the process, and help to avert a political vacuum that could be filled by the radicals.”

Robert A. Pastor, director of Latin American and Caribbean affairs on the National Security Council from 1977 to 1981, seemed to concur with Solaun’s portrayal of his quandary in Managua. Pastor wrote, «There was a special poignancy in Solaun’s service in Nicaragua. As a Cuban American, he, more than anyone, knew the cycle of events that had led to Castro’s triumph and wanted to avoid a repetition. Yet Solaun could do little as he watched the worst-case scenario unfold before his eyes.»

( WILL CONTINUE NEXT WEEK)