- Hubert Walas
Cuban crisis 2.0?
The threat of war is felt differently when the flashpoint is thousands of kilometers from our home rather than at our doorstep. And it is precisely this fundamental principle that the Russians have decided to resort to in their risky attempt to change the security architecture in Europe. Moscow has subtly hinted that it is considering the possibility of installing missile systems in Venezuela and… Cuba, or just 150km from the borders of the United States. Are the Americans in danger of a second Cuban Missile Crisis?
New front?
During the many hours of negotiations between the Russian Federation and the United States on the Russian military buildup and potential invasion of Ukraine, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov raised yet another issue that could have been overlooked in the multitude of incoming information. The Russians, looking for advantages over the Americans, decided to shorten the front and outlined a scenario in which Russian missile systems would be relocated to Venezuela as well as to the closest vicinity of the US heartland, meaning Cuba.
Asked by a Russian journalist whether Russia was considering deploying military infrastructure in Venezuela or Cuba, Ryabkov replied: "I don't want to confirm anything and deny anything." In turn, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister, indicated that Vladimir Putin, during a recent telephone conversation with the Presidents of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, reached an agreement on comprehensive cooperation with these countries, including cooperation in the military-technical sphere. As vague as it sounds, the situation is worth a closer look.
Russia's ties with Venezuela have been close for a long time. The Kremlin actively supports the Caracas regime. Three times since 2008, the Russians have sent a pair of Tupolev T-160 bombers halfway around the world to Venezuela to help legitimize the government there. The last time it happened was in 2018 to actively support the tottering regime of Nicholas Maduro. The Caracas dictator is also helped by mercenaries from the Kremlin's proxy, the Wagner Group. This is mainly for two reasons: oil and arms sales. Since 2006, Russia has sold $11 billion worth of military equipment to Venezuela, including T-72 tanks, Su-30 fighter jets, and Mi-17 and Mi-35 helicopters, making Caracas Moscow's largest military partner in the region.
Since the formation of Hugo Chavez's government, virtually all Russian companies from the oil sector, including Gazprom, TNK, Lukoil, and Rosneft, have been looking for a comfortable foothold in Venezuela to take advantage of the country's seemingly unlimited wealth in raw materials. Eventually, Igor Sechin's Rosneft took over the entire pool of Russian stakes. However, after the Venezuelan economy collapsed during Maduro's presidency, Rosneft was suddenly left with a $4.8 billion debt. The regime had to repay the Russian giant with additional oil supplies.
Russian Ambassador to Venezuela, Sergei Melik-Bagdasarov, two weeks after Ryabkov's statement quoted above, again raised the issue of Russian military relocations. He noted that while the Venezuelan constitution prohibits the establishment of bases of foreign powers on Venezuelan territory, it does not rule out joint collaborations at ports, thus further sowing the seeds of uncertainty.
The Russian Federation's ties with Cuba have recently been less significant than with Venezuela, but Russian threats to deploy troops there are more serious for two reasons. First, the Cuban constitution, unlike the Venezuelan, does not prohibit the stationing of foreign powers on its territory. Second, Cuba has a much more important geostrategic position than Venezuela.
The Monroe Doctrine
On the news of potential Russian relocations to the Caribbean, many have only one association - the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The Soviets, in response to the American deployment of nuclear payloads in Turkey - a NATO ally - decided to respond by deploying nuclear missiles in Cuba. The US Navy responded with a naval blockade to block any attempts by Soviet cargoes to enter Cuban waters. The two superpowers were headed for, possibly nuclear, war.
The Kennedy and Khrushchev administrations, however, managed to reach an agreement. In exchange for the Americans removing their missiles from Turkey and a commitment not to invade Cuba, the Soviet Union withdrew its ships from the Caribbean Sea. So the move paid off for Moscow at the time. Can similar Russian play today be completely ruled out?
Such a move is logically justified. Russia by deploying symbolic missile forces in the United States' underbelly, draws large military and diplomatic resources away from Europe. Nevertheless, Western analysts agree that the probability of such a scenario is low. Same with the US administration. Jake Sullivan, the US President's security advisor, called the Kremlin's insinuations a "bluster." Still, would anyone, a year ago, have considered as likely a Russian-made crisis of the magnitude we are dealing with today?
As James Holmes notes in his article for the National Interest, such a situation somewhat forces Americans to dust off the nearly 200-year-old "James Monroe Doctrine." In 1823, Monroe and his secretary, John Quincy Adams, put forth a doctrine designed to prevent European empires from regaining their dominion in Latin America after being driven from there following a series of revolutions.
Interestingly, Monroe and Adams created the doctrine in response to requests, among others, from the Tsar's palace in St. Petersburg. Imperial Russia had a common interest with the Americans in stopping the European colonial powers in the Western Hemisphere, specifically on the northwestern coast of North America. Not many people know this, but the Russians at the time, in addition to Alaska, owned land as far south as California. In 1812, the Russians had their own outpost, Fort Ross, by Bodega Bay. Today this is a suburb of San Francisco.
Back to the "Monroe Doctrine" - it stated that any attempt to claim rights in the Western Hemisphere by the great European powers threatened American peace and security. Monroe and Adams announced that they considered aggression against Latin American countries to be aggression against the United States. In effect, they designated the United States as guarantor of Latin American independence and guardian of the regional status quo.
Cuban Missile Crisis 2.0?
Since the "Monroe Doctrine," the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico have become of vital interest to America. Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, known by some as the chief theorist and father of US naval power, also knew this. In his 1897 study "Strategic Features of the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico," he sought the answer to the question: what locations in the area were crucial to advancing American interests? Mahan wanted to know where the US Navy should have bases to guarantee American warships and merchant ships free access to Panama and the canal, then under construction, was to become the real starting point for American naval power. The Panama Canal was the United States' new portal to the Pacific Ocean, shortening transoceanic travel by thousands of miles. After all, ships no longer had to circle South America to cross between the Atlantic and the Pacific or vice versa.
Mahan plotted the sea lanes running from the Panama Canal toward Europe and toward US ports in the Gulf of Mexico and on the East Coast. From this, he considered sites for island naval bases from which US Navy warships could control the flow into the Isthmus. And then he evaluated them in terms of strategic location, natural conditions for creating ports, and proprietary raw materials. It turned out that Cuba, which is a sort of "mini-continent," was very difficult to encircle by sea, and was thus ideal in almost every aspect. The following year, after the release of Mahan's analysis, the United States was already at war with Spain, under whose rule Cuba was at the time. The Spanish lost the war, while the Americans established a base on the eastern end of the island at Guantanamo Bay. Today, it is still operational, being the oldest foreign base of the US Navy.
Russian strategists have known the strategic value of Cuba since the post-war years. It is the perfect position to cause havoc in the near overseas of the United States. Hence the 1960s,t he height of the Cold War, saw a crisis in Cuba. Now, the Kremlin is raising the possibility of returning Russian installations to the Caribbean. Anti-ship missiles would threaten shipping traversing the narrow inlets between Cuba and the US. The Russian military has the SS-27 Sizzler and SS-N-26 Strobile anti-ship maneuvering missiles with a combat range of more than 180 nautical miles. The West Coast Passage bypass is the widest of the main three and is approximately 167 miles, the East Passage is 70 miles wide, and the North Passage, separating Cuba from Florida, is 90 miles wide. In other words, these crossings are within the range of any potentially deployed Russian missile forces. Missile batteries at the island's east and west ends and along the north coast near Havana would pose a threat that American leaders could not ignore.
Of course, the idea of relocating military forces to Cuba would be very expensive for Russia and would siphon resources from many of the more important theaters that Moscow now has to watch over - the Black Sea, the Caucasus, the Baltic Sea, the North Atlantic, and above all, Ukraine. Even though all this may sound surreal, superpowers like to turn improbable situations into surprising ones and thus gain strategic initiative. Did anyone expect China to dig artificial islands in its coastal waters and saturate them with military installations? Or that Russia would mobilize the greatest land forces since the Cold War and scare the world with an invasion of Ukraine? The Kremlin is negotiating their place in this system by undermining the current global security system. By applying a policy of intimidation against Ukraine or by making unrealistic demands against NATO, the Russians use the old Soviet tactic of ultimatums, taking action, and then collecting dividends. The Kremlin’s current moves may very well be another iteration of this old - and often used - play.
Even when the probability of a given event is low, every developed country prepares for the worst possible result. Thus, one can assume that - in case of Russian military relocations to Venezuela and, above all, Cuba - plans are already being prepared in the halls of the Pentagon.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/16/world/europe/russia-ukraine-invasion.html
https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/01/would-russia-really-send-missiles-and-troops-to-cuba-and-venezuela/
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/will-russian-aggression-revive-monroe-doctrine-199882
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/will-russia-send-missiles-cuba-200403
https://geopoliticalfutures.com/venezuela-could-be-the-next-front-in-the-us-russian-standoff/
https://carnegiemoscow.org/2019/02/03/russia-s-support-for-venezuela-has-deep-roots-pub-78276
https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-gamble-ukraine
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/13/russia-says-talks-with-nato-over-ukraine-are-hitting-a-dead-end
https://theglobalamericans.org/2022/01/russia-return-latin-america/
https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2022/01/29/russia-has-become-a-crucial-ally-of-venezuelas-dictatorship
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/02/06/cuba-us-relations-isolation-sanctions/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/putin-is-already-in-cuba-and-venezuela-south-america-influence-western-hemisphere-ukraine-11643567547
https://secretmag.ru/news/v-kremle-prokommentirovali-vozmozhnost-razmesheniya-raket-na-kube-17-01-2022.htm
https://ria.ru/20220128/bezopasnost-1769926781.html
