Does Cuba pose a threat to U.S. national security?

The case for the affirmative.

The first victims of Cuban communism are the Cuban people.

They were the ones that suffered the terrorism of the July 26th Movement that carried out a hundred bombings in Havana in one night.

They were the ones that suffered the summary executions in the early days of the revolution.

There are over a thousand political prisoners currently in Cuba’s prisons today.

Jose Daniel Ferrer was a member of the Christian Liberation Movement that sought through the existing legal system to pursue change through the Varela Project.

The response of the dictatorship was to lock up Jose Daniel Ferrer and 74 others in 2003 to long prison terms.

In his case they threatened him with a death sentence for gathering signatures in a citizen petition drive.

Oswaldo Payá who was the head of the initiative together with his youth leader Harold Cepero were murdered by agents of the Cuban government in 2012.

We also cannot forget that next year will be the thirtieth anniversary of the shoot down of two Brothers to the Rescue planes.

Brothers to the Rescue was an effort by Cubans and Cuban Americans to save the lives of Cubans in the Florida Straits.  Because they were nonviolently engaging with the dissidents on the island the regime felt  it was unacceptable and they sent out MiGs that blew two civilian planes out of the sky in international airspace.

However that is not our focus today but the harm Havana has done to U.S. national security, and the role the Cuban dictatorship has played in destabilizing the Western Hemisphere.

Cuba remains a threat to U.S. national security

I would like to begin by dispelling some myths that all too often are spread in the Academy. One is that Fidel Castro was driven into the arms of the Russians by the Americans.

This is not true. We now know thanks to the Soviet archives after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 that the initial contacts with the KGB and the Castro brothers was in 1953.

Early contacts with the KGB (1953)

Leonov (c). On his right, R. Castro. To his left, Bernardo Lemús

“The KGB’s leading Latin American expert, Nikolai Leonov, who was the first to make contact with [Raul] Castro, wrote later, ‘Cuba forced us to take a fresh look at the whole continent, which until then had traditionally occupied the last place in the Soviet leadership’s system of priorities.’- The charismatic appeal of Castro and ‘Che’ Guevara extended far beyond Latin America,” wrote Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin in The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the the Third World – Newly Revealed Secrets from the Mitrokhin Archive published in 2006.

Raul Castro and Nikolai Leonov first met in 1953, and struck up a relationship that would endure for 69 years, until Leonov’s passing in 2022. On March 11, 2016, Leonov was interviewed on official Cuban television in the Mesa Redonda program about his supposed first encounter with Raul Castro on a trans-Atlantic voyage. Vasili Mitrokhin, a former KGB archivist who defected to Britain in 1992, offers a different report obtained from classified files. Leonov and Raul Castro “became ‘firm friends’ in Prague in 1953 and then worked together with Fidel from 1956 and after he took power in 1959.”

The U.S. Arms Embargo on Batista

At the same time that the United States was placing an arms embargo on Fulgencio Batista in early 1958, and receiving representatives of Fidel Castro’s July 26th Movement in Washington DC, the Soviet KGB already had a firmly established relationship with the Castro brothers.

On March 17, 1958 Fidel Castro’s future candidate for provisional president, Manuel Urrutia, along with a delegation of other supporters in exile of the July 26th movement, met with officials at the State Department. They successfully lobbied the U.S. government arguing that arms shipments to Cuba were for hemispheric defense, and they claimed that Batista using them against Cuban nationals was in violation of the conditions agreed to between the two countries.

Batista’s regime presented to the U.S. Embassy in Havana a formal note protesting the delay in the shipment of M-1 rifles to the Cuban Army, and warned that it would weaken the Cuban government and lead to its possible downfall.

The United States placed an arms embargo on the Batista dictatorship in March 1958.

On March 26, 1958 in another telegram from the State Department to the U.S. Embassy in Havana the view was expressed how the arms embargo could lead to the fall of Batista’s regime:

“Department has considered the possibility its actions could have an adverse psychological effect on GOC and could unintentionally contribute to or accelerate eventual Batista downfall. On other hand, shipment US combat arms at this time would probably invite increased resentment against US and associate it with Batista strong arm methods, especially following so closely on heels of following developments:
Government publicly desisted from peace efforts.Government suspended guarantees again.Batista expressed confidence Government will win elections with his candidate and insists they will be held despite suspension guarantees but has made no real effort to satisfy public opinion on their fairness and effectiveness as possible means achieve fair and acceptable solution.Batista announced would increase size arms and informed you he would again undertake mass population shift Oriente, and otherwise acted in manner to discourage those who supported or could be brought to support peaceful settlement by constructive negotiations.”

The United States would continue to pressure Batista to hold free elections and leave office for the remainder of 1958. Earl E. T. Smith, the U.S. ambassador to Cuba, on December 17, 1958 delivered a message from the State Department to Fulgencio Batista that the United States viewed “with skepticism any plan on his part, or any intention on his part, to remain in Cuba indefinitely.”

The U.S. government had dealt the Batista regime a mortal blow, and fourteen days later the Cuban dictatorship fell.

Fulgencio Batista fled into exile on January 1, 1959, and the United States quickly recognized the revolutionary government of the Castro brothers.

The Castro brothers’ newly established Cuban government was acknowledged by the U.S. on January 7, 1959. The new regime was recognized in a mere seven days. Comparatively, after Fulgencio Batista’s March 10, 1952 coup, it took the US seventeen days to recognize his government.

Fidel Castro visited Caracas on January 23, 1959 and met with Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt, a social democrat, “to enlist cooperation and financial backing for ‘the master plan against the gringos.’”In April 1959 Fidel Castro visited the United States on an eleven day trip that concluded with a three hour meeting with Vice President Richard Nixon on April 19, 1959.

The Castro brothers carried out mass executions, expropriated U.S. companies, and sent armed expeditions to overthrow governments in Latin America beginning in 1959.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara, representing Fidel Castro’s new regime, visited Gaza in June 1959, and encouraged Palestinian refugees to “continue the struggle to liberate their land” “through resistance to occupation,” according to the publication Palestine Land Society. He asked, “where are the training camps? Where are the factories to manufacture arms? Where are people’s mobilization centers?” … According to the publication Palestine Land Society, “Guevara was accompanied by General Caprera, an expert in Guerilla warfare. Caprera met with community leaders to advise on methods of resistance.”

 

Soviet Vice Premier Anastas Mikoyan visited Havana in February 1960. The Soviet Vice Premier arrived in Cuba on February 4, 1960.

Regime insider Carlos Franqu in his book Family Portrait with Fidel described the visit as follows.

In the early days of February, Anastas Mikoyan, vice-prime minister of the Soviet Union, came to Cuba. Fidel Castro, Raúl, Che Guevara, and President Dorticós met him at the Havana airport. He was given a huge reception and an extended tour of the island-with Fidel at his side-which lasted for weeks. A major topic was the Soviet Union’s purchase of Cuban sugar and our purchase of Russian oil.

Castro diplomatically recognized the Soviet Union on May 8, 1960.

To say that the United States pushed the Castro brothers into the arms of the Soviet Union is absurd. The Castro brothers had already been conspiring with Moscow for six years in 1959.

[ Continue here ] 

Imagine what Cuba would be like today if Fidel Castro was never born.

 

Fidel Castro: A better world if he had never been born.

Totalitarians and aspiring totalitarians today celebrate the birth of Fidel Castro over social media, but others try to imagine what state Cuba would be in now if it weren't for him.

What if Fidel Castro had never been born and his 66-year tyranny had never existed? Let us compare where Cuba was before 1959 to where it is now and speculate on "what might have been."

The economy
In 1959, in terms of per-capita GDP, Cuba was second to Chile and was doing better than Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and Panama. In 2015, Cuba lagged well behind the other four countries. It would be fair to say that in economic terms, despite billions in Soviet and Venezuelan subsidies, the past six decades have been a disaster for Cuba.

 Cuban death toll

There are tens of thousands of Cubans who would be alive today if Fidel Castro had never been born.

"University of Hawaii historian R. J. Rummel, who made a career out of studying what he termed “democide,” the killing of people by their own government, reported in 1987 that credible estimates of the Castro regime’s death toll ran from 35,000 to 141,000, with a median of 73,000."

Democracy restored in a post-Batista Cuba

 

Many of the leaders of the July 26th movement, who did the heavy lifting in the fighting in the field, and lobbying Washington DC to place an arms embargo on Fulgencio Batista in the spring of 1958, authentically wanted a democratic restoration in Cuba. As did the majority of the Cuban people. This is why Fidel Castro lied systematically through the 1950s and into 1960 denying that he was a communist and claiming to respect civil liberties and democracy.  

While Fidel Castro paid lip service to civil liberties, and locked up his compatriots, who had complained that communists were infiltrating the revolution as slanderers, he carried out the consolidation of power and formed a communist totalitarian dictatorship. 

Fidel Castro turned Cuba's diplomatic corps into a weapon of subversion and violence, recruited Nazis to train his repressive apparatus in the mid 1960s, and linked up with cocaine traffickers in an effort to target the soft underbelly of the United States.

Without Fidel Castro, the democratic transition in a post-Batista Cuba would not have been side-lined and the old democratic order that had done pioneering work on international human rights would have been restored. 

Nicaragua

If Fidel Castro had never been born, then Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas would not have taken power in 1979. Without the assistance of the Cuban secret police to take over Nicaragua again in 2007 and turn it into the dictatorship it is today with Cuban advisers and Nicaraguans fleeing the country.

 

Venezuela

 

If Fidel Castro was never born, then Hugo Chavez would not have had a mentor and the assistance of the Cuban secret police to take over Venezuela and turn it into the dictatorship it is today with Nicolas Maduro and the humanitarian crisis threatening the region.

 

 

Human rights in Cuba

 

If Fidel Castro had never come into existence, then Cubans would not be going to prison for not sufficiently mourning the dictator's death in 2016, or worse yet providing a negative assessment of the regime he created. Thousands of men and women would not have spent decades in Cuban prisons for their political beliefs.

  

Opposition leaders such as Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and Harold Cepero Escalante would not have been killed on July 22, 2012 by Castro's state security agents. Nor the games played by Castro to invite the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture in order to get positive media coverage but then not follow through. There would not have been the massacre of refugees slaughtered by Castro regime agents for trying to flee Cuba.

Education

 

Cuba in 1953 had the fourth lowest illiteracy rate in Latin America with an illiteracy rate that was 23.6%. Costa Rica's at the time was 20.6%, Chile's was 19.6%. and Argentina's was the lowest at 13.6%.  The rest of Latin America showed similar or greater gains without sacrificing civil liberties. 

There are also great concerns about the Cuban educational system today. First the issue of a system of education being transformed by the Castro dictatorship into a system of indoctrination and secondly following the collapse of Soviet subsidies the material decline of the entire system along with shortages of teachers. 

Without Fidel Castro intervention Cuba was on track to having a first class education system without sacrificing civil liberties. Now it has neither.

 

Healthcare

 

Castro regime officials decided early on in the COVID-19 pandemic that they wanted to “be the first country in the world to vaccinate their whole population with their own vaccines” and were willing to let Cubans die while they developed their domestic vaccines instead of importing them, including from their allies Russia and China, in order to advance their “healthcare superpower” narrative.

 

According to official regime statistics, by August 2022 COVID had killed 8,529 of Cuba’s 11m people. But The Economist model estimates that the true death toll was up to 62,000 Cubans. This is not the first time that Havana has under reported numbers killed in a disease outbreak.

 

The Castro regime in the past failed to report Dengue (1997) and Cholera (2012) outbreaks in Cuba that killed scores of Cubans. Jailing those who warned the world of the threat.  In 2017 the Cuban dictatorship failed to report thousands of Zika virus cases in 2017.

On November 29, 2018 The New York Times reported that the  Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), a division of the World Health Organization (WHO) "made about $75 million off the work of up to 10,000 Cuban doctors who earned substandard wages in Brazil." A group of these Cuban medical doctors are now suing PAHO for the organization's alleged role in human trafficking.

This may also raise new questions on the relationship between PAHO, Cuba and reporting not only on outbreaks but the healthcare statistics that present the regime in a positive light.

Without Fidel Castro, Cuba would be another normal country that would be reporting health statistics that were accurate because there would be both an independent press and civil society to keep the government honest. Both were destroyed by Fidel Castro and his dictatorship.

 

Imagine what Cuba would be like today if Fidel Castro was never born.

Fidel Castro: A better world if he had never been born.

 

Totalitarians and aspiring totalitarians today celebrated the birth of Fidel Castro over social media, but others tried to imagine what state Cuba would be in now if it weren't for him.

What if Fidel Castro had never been born and his 64-year tyranny had never existed? Let us compare where Cuba was before 1959 to where it is now and speculate on "what might have been."

The economy
In 1959, in terms of per-capita GDP, Cuba was second to Chile and was doing better than Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and Panama. In 2015, Cuba lagged well behind the other four countries. It would be fair to say that in economic terms, despite billions in Soviet and Venezuelan subsidies, the past six decades have been a disaster for Cuba.

 Cuban death toll

There are tens of thousands of Cubans who would be alive today if Fidel Castro had never been born.

"University of Hawaii historian R. J. Rummel, who made a career out of studying what he termed “democide,” the killing of people by their own government, reported in 1987 that credible estimates of the Castro regime’s death toll ran from 35,000 to 141,000, with a median of 73,000."

 

Democracy restored in a post-Batista Cuba

Many of the leaders of the July 26th movement, who did the heavy lifting in the fighting in the field, and lobbying Washington DC to place an arms embargo on Fulgencio Batista in the spring of 1958, authentically wanted a democratic restoration in Cuba. As did the majority of the Cuban people. This is why Fidel Castro lied systematically through the 1950s and into 1960 denying that he was a communist and claiming to respect civil liberties and democracy.  

While Fidel Castro paid lip service to civil liberties, and locked up his compatriots, who had complained that communists were infiltrating the revolution as slanderers, he carried out the consolidation of power and formed a communist totalitarian dictatorship. 

Fidel Castro turned Cuba's diplomatic corps into a weapon of subversion and violence, recruited Nazis to train his repressive apparatus in the mid 1960s, and linked up with cocaine traffickers in an effort to target the soft underbelly of the United States.

Without Fidel Castro, the democratic transition in a post-Batista Cuba would not have been side-lined and the old democratic order that had done pioneering work on international human rights would have been restored. 

 

 

Nicaragua

If Fidel Castro had never been born, then Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas would not have taken power in 1979. Without the assistance of the Cuban secret police to take over Nicaragua again in 2007 and turn it into the dictatorship it is today with Cuban advisers and Nicaraguans fleeing the country.

 

 

 

Venezuela

If Fidel Castro was never born, then Hugo Chavez would not have had a mentor and the assistance of the Cuban secret police to take over Venezuela and turn it into the dictatorship it is today with Nicolas Maduro and the humanitarian crisis threatening the region.

 

 

 

 Human rights in Cuba

If Fidel Castro had never come into existence, then Cubans would not be going to prison for not sufficiently mourning the dictator's death in 2016, or worse yet providing a negative assessment of the regime he created. Thousands of men and women would not have spent decades in Cuban prisons for their political beliefs.

  

Opposition leaders such as Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and Harold Cepero Escalante would not have been killed on July 22, 2012 by Castro's state security agents. Nor the games played by Castro to invite the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture in order to get positive media coverage but then not follow through. There would not have been the massacre of refugees slaughtered by Castro regime agents for trying to flee Cuba.

 

 

 Education

 Cuba in 1953 had the fourth lowest illiteracy rate in Latin America with an illiteracy rate that was 23.6%. Costa Rica's at the time was 20.6%, Chile's was 19.6%. and Argentina's was the lowest at 13.6%.  The rest of Latin America showed similar or greater gains without sacrificing civil liberties. 

There are also great concerns about the Cuban educational system today. First the issue of a system of education being transformed by the Castro dictatorship into a system of indoctrination and secondly following the collapse of Soviet subsidies the material decline of the entire system along with shortages of teachers. 

Without Fidel Castro intervention Cuba was on track to having a first class education system without sacrificing civil liberties. Now it has neither.

 

 Healthcare

Castro regime officials decided early on in the COVID-19 pandemic that they wanted to “be the first country in the world to vaccinate their whole population with their own vaccines” and were willing to let Cubans die while they developed their domestic vaccines instead of importing them, including from their allies Russia and China, in order to advance their “healthcare superpower” narrative.

 

According to official regime statistics, by August 2022 COVID had killed 8,529 of Cuba’s 11m people. But The Economist model estimates that the true death toll was up to 62,000 Cubans. This is not the first time that Havana has under reported numbers killed in a disease outbreak.

 

The Castro regime in the past failed to report Dengue (1997) and Cholera (2012) outbreaks in Cuba that killed scores of Cubans. Jailing those who warned the world of the threat.  In 2017 the Cuban dictatorship failed to report thousands of Zika virus cases in 2017.

On November 29, 2018 The New York Times reported that the  Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), a division of the World Health Organization (WHO) "made about $75 million off the work of up to 10,000 Cuban doctors who earned substandard wages in Brazil." A group of these Cuban medical doctors are now suing PAHO for the organization's alleged role in human trafficking.

This may also raise new questions on the relationship between PAHO, Cuba and reporting not only on outbreaks but the healthcare statistics that present the regime in a positive light.

Without Fidel Castro, Cuba would be another normal country that would be reporting health statistics that were accurate because there would be both an independent press and civil society to keep the government honest. Both were destroyed by Fidel Castro and his dictatorship.

 

 

 

Imagine what would Cuba be like today if Fidel Castro had never been born.

Aspiring totalitarians today celebrated the birth of Fidel Castro over social media, but others tried to imagine what state Cuba would be in now if it weren't for him.

What would have happened if Fidel Castro had never been born and his 63-year dictatorship had never existed? Let us examine where Cuba was prior to 1959 and where it is today and imagine "what might have been."

The economy
In 1959, in terms of per-capita GDP, Cuba was second to Chile and was doing better than Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and Panama. In 2015, Cuba lagged well behind the other four countries. It would be fair to say that in economic terms, despite billions in Soviet and Venezuelan subsidies, the past six decades have been a disaster for Cuba.

 

Cuban death toll

There are tens of thousands of Cubans who would be alive today if Fidel Castro had never been born.

"University of Hawaii historian R. J. Rummel, who made a career out of studying what he termed “democide,” the killing of people by their own government, reported in 1987 that credible estimates of the Castro regime’s death toll ran from 35,000 to 141,000, with a median of 73,000."

 

Firing squad in Cuba.

 

 

Democracy restored in a post-Batista Cuba

Many of the leaders of the July 26th movement, who did the heavy lifting in the fighting in the field, and lobbying Washington DC to place an arms embargo on Fulgencio Batista in the spring of 1958, authentically wanted a democratic restoration in Cuba. As did the majority of the Cuban people. This is why Fidel Castro lied systematically through the 1950s and into 1960 denying that he was a communist and claiming to respect civil liberties and democracy.  

While Fidel Castro paid lip service to civil libertie, and locked up his compatriots, who had complained that communists were infiltrating the revolution as slanderers, he carried out the consolidation of power and formed a communist totalitarian dictatorship. 

Fidel Castro turned Cuba's diplomatic corps into a weapon of subversion and violence, recruited Nazis to train his repressive apparatus in the mid 1960s, and linked up with cocaine traffickers in the 1980s in an effort to target the soft underbelly of the United States.

Without Fidel Castro, the democratic transition in a post-Batista Cuba would not have been side-lined and the old democratic order that had done pioneering work on international human rights would have been restored. 

 Cuban diplomats pushed for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948

Venezuela

If Fidel Castro had never been born, then Hugo Chavez would not have had a mentor and the assistance of the Cuban secret police to take over Venezuela and turn it into the dictatorship it is today with Nicolas Maduro and his Cuban advisers and the humanitarian crisis threatening the region.

 

Fidel Castro had designs on Venezuela since 1959.

 

Human rights in Cuba

If Fidel Castro had never come into existence, then Cubans would not be going to prison for not sufficiently mourning the dictator's death in 2016, or worse yet providing a negative assessment of the regime he created. Thousands of men and women would not have spent decades in Cuban prisons for their political beliefs.

 

Cuban family arrested for not mourning death of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro

Opposition leaders such as Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and Harold Cepero Escalante would not have been killed on July 22, 2012 by Castro's state security agents. Nor the games played by Castro to invite the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture in order to get positive media coverage but then not follow through. There would not have been the massacre of refugees by Castro regime agents slaughtered for trying to flee Cuba.

 

 

Education

 Cuba in 1953 had the fourth lowest illiteracy rate in Latin America with an illiteracy rate that was 23.6%. Costa Rica's at the time was 20.6%, Chile's was 19.6%. and Argentina's was the lowest at 13.6%.  The rest of Latin America showed similar or greater gains without sacrificing civil liberties. 

There are also great concerns about the Cuban educational system today. First the issue of a system of education being transformed by the Castro dictatorship into a system of indoctrination and secondly following the collapse of Soviet subsidies the material decline of the entire system along with shortages of teachers. 

Without Fidel Castro intervention Cuba was on track to having a first class education system without sacrificing civil liberties. Now it has neither.

 

Students entering the University of Havana

  

Healthcare

Castro regime officials decided early on in the COVID-19 pandemic that they wanted to “be the first country in the world to vaccinate their whole population with their own vaccines” and were willing to let Cubans die while they developed their domestic vaccines instead of importing them, including from their allies Russia and China, in order to advance their “healthcare superpower” narrative.

 

According to official regime statistics, by August 2022 COVID had killed 8,529 of Cuba’s 11m people. But The Economist model estimates that the true death toll was up to 62,000 Cubans. This is not the first time that Havana has under reported numbers killed in a disease outbreak.

 

The Castro regime in the past failed to report Dengue (1997) and Cholera (2012) outbreaks in Cuba that killed scores of Cubans. Jailing those who warned the world of the threat.  In 2017 the Cuban dictatorship failed to report thousands of Zika virus cases in 2017.

On November 29, 2018 The New York Times reported that the  Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), a division of the World Health Organization (WHO) "made about $75 million off the work of up to 10,000 Cuban doctors who earned substandard wages in Brazil." A group of these Cuban medical doctors are now suing PAHO for the organization's alleged role in human trafficking.

This may also raise new questions on the relationship between PAHO, Cuba and reporting not only on outbreaks but the healthcare statistics that present the regime in a positive light.

Without Fidel Castro, Cuba would be another normal country that would be reporting health statistics that were accurate because there would be both an independent press and civil society to keep the government honest. Both were destroyed by Fidel Castro and his dictatorship.

 

Cholera patients in Cuba (CNN)