Air University Review,
July-August 1983Colonel James L. Cole, Jr.
The current situation and prospective developments in the Caribbean Basin pose some difficult challenges as well as some opportunities for the employment of U.S. air power. United States Air Force operations in the Western Hemisphere have traditionally focused on the security of the continental United States, particularly air defense. Most U.S. air assets have been dedicated, both in planning and operations, to the threat in overseas theaters. The security of the Western Hemisphere has been treated as a given assumption and received little attention in traditional and innovative planning for the employment of U.S. air assets. Conditions in the Western Hemisphere have changed, however, and it is incumbent on the U.S. Air Force to perceive the changes and employ our assets in a manner designed to guarantee U.S. security interests in the region. To do this effectively requires a careful look at the Caribbean Basin today and creative inquiry regarding the employment of U.S. air power in that changed environment.
Recent events in the Caribbean Basin and worldwide concern for that troubled region suggest that a closer look be taken for the causes of the difficulties. Emotionalism and rhetoric have clouded the issues and obscured U.S. interests in the region. It seems appropriate, if not obvious, to state that the defense of North America is our nation’s primary security concern. We have always taken that fact for granted since the United States has not been assaulted or invaded in our recent history. Potential adversaries have neither been inclined nor had the ability to threaten United States shores specifically or the Western Hemisphere generally. Yet the conditions that guaranteed a secure hemisphere no longer exist. The Cuban missile crisis in 1962 provided the first real clue that a secure hemisphere was no longer a foregone conclusion; and time, technology, and changing power relationships now dictate a strategic reassessment of our security interests.
Geographic proximity is a key consideration in addressing U.S. security interests in the Western Hemisphere, for the United States is a member of the community of nations in the Caribbean Basin. The Southeastern United States actually forms the northern section of the basin, and the flood of Cuban refugees in the Mariel Boatlift of 1980 highlighted the implications of geographical proximity as does the ever-increasing flow of illegal immigrants to the Southwestern United States. The fact that El Salvador is closer to New York and San Francisco than those two American cities are to each other underscores the grave implications of aggression and conflict in the Caribbean Basin.
United States strategic interests in the Caribbean Basin are taken for granted and often overlooked. The United States is a source of technology, machinery, and foodstuffs for the region, and they are a source of raw materials for us. Venezuela alone provides the United States with 28 percent of our iron ore imports and 23 percent of our petroleum product imports.1 Nearly half of our seaborne trade passes through the Caribbean Basin as do half of our crude oil imports. Half of our imported strategic minerals go through the Panama Canal, and denial or destruction of the canal would add 10,000 miles and approximately three weeks at sea to an east-west passage. Equally important from a military planning perspective is the fact that a large percentage of NATO’s reinforcements and resupply for a European war are slated to pass through the Straits of Florida.
A hostile Cuba raises serious problems for our military planners. Cuban combat forces in the Caribbean Basin represent a combat capability that must be contained or destroyed in the event of a general war with the Soviet Union. This requirement would demand and consequently divert significant U.S. combat forces from other priority requirements. Cuban combat capability is impressive, and the rate at which the Cubans are modernizing and expanding their forces is alarming. It is timely and appropriate to focus on this threat and formulate our strategy and develop our plans accordingly, for the planning factors now include more than just the radius of Cuban combat effectiveness around their island. Fidel Castro’s Cuba has been an obnoxious fact of life for U.S. diplomats and a minor planning factor for U.S. military strategists for more than twenty years. Despite a Soviet presence and Soviet trained and supplied armed forces, Cuba’s military capability was hardly sufficient to call into question our own economy of force planning and manning for the Western Hemisphere. All that has changed very abruptly, for in recent years the Soviets have sponsored a Cuban military modernization and expansion of unprecedented proportions. Soviet presence and Cuban capability now pose a serious threat to U.S. interests, and the magnitude of the threat is growing rapidly. Cuba is now a major base for Soviet presence and power projection and hosts one of their largest intelligence facilities outside the Soviet Union. Cuba’s role as a springboard for exporting Soviet-financed terrorism and subversion is also rapidly expanding. The Soviet presence in Cuba has increased to include 2000 military advisers, 7000 civilian advisers, and a 2600-man combat brigade near Havana. Four billion dollars in military and economic aid per year translates into $12 million per day to amplify Soviet presence and influence. Soviet arms deliveries to Cuba totaled 66,000 tons in 1981, triple the amount of the previous year and the largest annual total since the Cuban missile crisis.2
Trends adverse to U.S. interests are increasing at a rapid rate. The Cuban Air Force boasts more than 250 combat jet aircraft, and their MiG-23 inventory has tripled during the past year. A 200,000-man army and a small but capable navy raise Cuba’s total combat capability to a level that far exceeds any defensive requirements. Neutralizing these forces would be difficult and costly. The MiG-23 has a combat radius of more than 500 nautical miles, so much of the Southeastern United States would be vulnerable to air attack from Cuba during a general war. Consequently, significant air defense assets are required to defend our territory from the Cuban MiG-23 air regiment. Castro’s force of more than 160 MiG-21s represents a potent air-to-air threat and a formidable air defense umbrella over the island. The Cuban Air Force has become one of the largest and probably the best equipped and most powerful in Latin America, and its bases are defended by an equally capable and sophisticated air defense system.3 Its array of weapons includes SA-2, SA-3, and SA-6 surface-to-air missiles and 23-mm, 37-mm, 57-mm, 85-mm, and 100-mm antiaircraft guns in great quantities.
Cuba also has a small, capable navy that is being expanded and modernized. Two recently acquired Foxtrot class submarines are well manned and capably handled, and Castro will probably receive more of them in the near future. Cuba’s single Koni class frigate can operate effectively throughout the Caribbean Basin; it is the nucleus of a blue-water capability. Nearly two dozen Osa and Komar missile attack boats armed with the SS-N-2 Styx ship-to-ship missile and recently acquired Turya hydrofoil torpedo boats represent a significant wartime threat to military and civilian shipping throughout the Southern United States coastal area.
The Cuban Army enables Castro to intervene overseas as he effectively demonstrated in Angola in 1975. Few will dispute the fact that Cuban forces were the decisive element in Angola, and since then the Cubans have continued to improve their intervention capability. Additional transport aircraft, an impressive airborne-qualified force consisting of special troops, and a landing and assault brigade represent a particularly formidable capability for deployment and employment in the Caribbean Basin. Cuba is also receiving assault landing ships from the Soviet Union. The numerical superiority and combat experience of Cuba’s armed forces give them a significant intervention capability and a decided edge over every nation in the Caribbean Basin except the United States.
Cuba’s conventional capability is only part of the problem, however. Castro’s forces have the ability to intimidate weaker nations and reinforce the impact of terrorism and destabilization in the Caribbean Basin. Recent developments in Nicaragua and Grenada provide grim testimony to Cuba’s expanding presence and influence since those nations’ revolutions in 1979. Cuban engineers are constructing a large, modern runway at Point Salines in Grenada. Maurice Bishop’s government has declared the island’s availability for Cuban use, so Castro’s air force may have a refueling stop for its flights in support of operations in Africa as well as a base in the eastern Caribbean. Cuban instructors are supervising the expansion of Grenada’s armed forces, and neighboring islands view Grenada’s buildup as a threat to their security.
Events in Nicaragua portend a greater threat to peace and stability in the western region of the Caribbean Basin. Cuba aided and abetted the Sandinistas’ successful revolution in 1979, and Nicaragua has become a nation molded in the Cuban image. The Cuban presence in Nicaragua has grown to several thousand military and civilian advisers. Soviet and East European advisers are also present. Cuban engineers are lengthening and improving runways, and 30 Nicaraguan pilots have received training in Bulgaria. Cuba has underwritten the Nicaraguan buildup and mortgaged Cuban credibility to the Sandinistas’ success. Nicaragua now has the largest army in the history of Central America with 20,000 to 25,000 regulars and twice that number in the reserves and militia. At several camps throughout the island, Cuba is also providing training for revolutionary cadres from El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, Guatemala, and Columbia.4 The possible furnishing of MiG aircraft and Cuban instructor pilots could give Nicaragua undisputed military superiority in Central America and reinforce support for revolutionary cadres in the region.
Nicaragua’s neighbors have neither the resources nor the means to oppose a well-armed Cuban surrogate in Central America, and the deployment of U.S. forces without clear Nicaraguan provocation would be politically difficult and financially expensive. Trends adverse to U.S. interests are accelerating rapidly, and inaction will encourage subversion and aggression. United States strategic interests in the Western Hemisphere as well as U.S. credibility are at stake. Economic ills aggravated by political instability have disrupted peace and stability in the Caribbean Basin, and Cuba and Nicaragua are exploiting and aggravating already difficult conditions.
If Nicaragua and Grenada become potential bases for United States adversaries as Cuba is now, it would impact directly on U.S. capability to pursue our interests in the region. Central America borders major sea lines of communication that are vital to our nation in peace and war. Central America also constitutes the land bridge between the United States and the Panama Canal. Potentially hostile forces operating from Central America would threaten our friends in the hemisphere and the United States itself. The cost of deterring or neutralizing those forces in terms of U.S. air, sea, and land forces would be tremendous and require diversion from other priorities or other theaters in times of crisis. The United States cannot afford to back away from this challenge, but there are no simple or easy solutions.
United States strategy addresses economic, political, and military challenges in a carefully calculated manner consistent with U.S. interests. The Caribbean Basin Initiative aims at the economic ills of the region, attacking the causes rather than the symptoms of poverty and distress. Political difficulties in the region are receiving increased U.S. attention, including reinforcement and support of governments favorably disposed to U.S. interests and opposed to Cuban and Nicaraguan subversion and aggression. U.S. political initiatives include fostering and encouraging multinational cooperation to solve regional problems and deter Cuba and Nicaragua. Mechanisms such as the Rio Treaty and regional political coalitions such as the Central American Democratic Community formed in 1982 strengthen regional security, helping to deter Cuba and Nicaragua, and thus warrant U.S. support.
The military threat in the region requires a comprehensive response, though, and it need not be shaped solely in terms of U.S. armed intervention. Bilateral initiatives with friendly nations are a key facet of our strategy, and an aggressive security assistance program will bolster our friends and help them counter Cuban and Nicaraguan subversion and aggression. Strong and capable allies greatly decrease the likelihood of any requirement for U.S. forces in the region.
Combined exercises with U.S. allies will also enhance their capability to defend themselves and deter aggression by maximizing the effectiveness of our security assistance program, improving their combat capability, and demonstrating U.S. resolve to improve regional security and deter aggression. Such exercises represent a prudent and well-reasoned response to a significant Cuban and Nicaraguan threat. These exercises are not provocative in themselves and represent a rational, restrained approach to Nicaragua’s rapid pursuit of the Cuban political and military model. Security assistance and combined exercises are preferable to unchecked regional arms races, which could bankrupt the economies of our friends and aggravate an already explosive situation.
United States policy for the Caribbean Basin consists of distinct but interrelated economic, political, and military dimensions. We are responding to a very real threat of unprecedented proportions in our own hemisphere. U.S. policy and strategy are constructed in a prudent, reasonable manner to do what is necessary to protect our vital security interests in the Caribbean Basin. United States actions stand on their own merits, and those merits and our effectiveness are considerable, as indicated by the aggressive propaganda offensive launched by the Soviet Union, Cuba, and others sympathetic to the Communist world.
Nicaragua has joined the disinformation campaign by disclaiming Cuban support and accusing the United States and Honduras of aggressive provocation. No doubt the Nicaraguans will continue to proclaim this falsehood even if they receive jet fighters and as the size of their army. The Sandinista regime is now attempting to extend its anti-U.S. campaign by soliciting support for its cause in the Western European media. Such deliberate attempts at disinformation deserve to be exposed for what they are: obvious efforts to cloud the issues and obscure a growing Cuban and Nicaraguan threat to peace and stability in the Western Hemisphere peace and stability in the Western Hemisphere.
The increased threat in the Caribbean Basin obviously necessitates the preparation of contingency plans to deal effectively with the threat in the event of hostilities and a subsequent requirement for combat operations by the U.S. Air Force. Such planning is as necessary for the Western Hemisphere in general and the Caribbean Basin in particular as it is for any other theater on the globe. Though much planning has been done, more remains involving the effective use of U.S. air assets to promote our national interests and guarantee our security interests in the Caribbean Basin.
the Air Force role
Even with an increased regional threat, the peacetime environment offers many operational opportunities for the U.S. Air Force as we pursue an integrated economic, political, and military strategy for the region. We must seek and exploit these opportunities in a carefully calculated manner to reinforce our regional strategy and maximize the effectiveness of our finite resources. A variety of elements and events that promise great utility are available. The history of air power is relatively short and focuses primarily on wartime combat operations and peacetime strategic deterrence. We must consider that experience but also look beyond it and seek innovative applications of air power for contemporary operations.
U.S. Air Force presence in a region demonstrates a tangible commitment and indicates the depth of U.S. resolve to protect our interests. Assets in place also tend to deter adventurism by potential enemies and bolster the confidence of our friends. U.S. presence in the Caribbean Basin gradually decreased after the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. A newly enhanced U.S. presence has begun with the increasing of the numbers and capability of U.S. air forces in the northern Caribbean Basin along the Southeastern United States coast. Placing F-15s on air defense alert at Tyndall AFB, Florida, increased the USAF presence and capability and sent a signal to the Cubans and their Soviet sponsors. Selective reopening of U.S. air bases in the Caribbean Basin would also enhance our presence and does not necessarily require the permanent presence of United States air units.
USAF deployments to available bases in the region are also an effective means of amplifying U.S. presence and demonstrating U.S. capability. Performed in a timely manner, deployments of fighters or other aircraft send important political signals and contribute to USAF training and experience as well, but the deployments need not be limited to U.S. bases. The scope and duration of USAF deployments would depend on the preferences of host governments and need not be linked necessarily to U.S. or combined exercises with the host nation. For example, in July 1982, USAF C-130s airlifted a Honduran Army battalion to its new post at Puerto Lempira, a remote area near the border of Nicaragua. USAF C-l4ls have airdropped South American paratroopers in highly visible and highly successful specialized deployments for a specific purpose.5 Similar airdrop exercises in Central America have also been very effective and promise significant returns in the future. Humanitarian airlifts are also very useful. The recent Air Force Reserve C-123K shuttle missions carrying food and medicine from Tegucigalpa to Choluteca, Honduras, supplied refugees made homeless by early summer floods and bolstered the images of the United States and Honduran governments. These examples represent only a few of the potential opportunities for the creative employment of air power. The mutual benefits for all participants are significant and impressive.
Airfield access agreements with friendly nations in the Caribbean Basin enhance our operational flexibility and do not demand the financial expenditures and presence associated with building permanent facilities in the region. Airfield access agreements with military construction funds for airfield improvement represent an effective political and economic instrument with significant military benefits. This translates into operational bases for deployments and employments at minimum cost and risk to the United States. Such agreements also demonstrate United States commitment and resolve and bolster the confidence of our friends.
combined exercises
Combined exercises with other air forces present another opportunity to gain realistic and valuable training for our aircrews and improve the capability of the air forces of our friends. The Honduran Air Force is generally acknowledged to be the best in Central America. Its fighter and attack aircraft include fourteen aging Super Mystères and eleven A-37Bs. Honduran pilots are very good, but they cannot overcome a Cuban Air Force with 250 combat aircraft and more than twenty years of Soviet training. If Nicaragua modernizes and expands her air force with Cuban or Soviet assistance, Honduras’s only deterrent against Nicaraguan aggression would be neutralized. Exercising with deployed U.S. Air Force units would improve Honduran capability and bolster their confidence.
Fewer opportunities exist for combined exercises with host air forces in the eastern region of the Caribbean Basin, but U.S. air assets can still make a significant contribution to regional security for nations with minimal defense establishments. Small defense forces and the island geography of Barbados, Antigua, Dominica, and others in the eastern Caribbean heighten their vulnerability to subversion and aggression and minimize their opportunities for mutual assistance and support when threatened. USAF airlift aircraft can provide the means for mutual assistance and support among the eastern Caribbean island nations, and exercising this capability with those nations will deter aggression and decrease the likelihood of intimidation and accommodation with Cuba and Grenada.
training for allies
Quality training for our allies’ air forces produces significant results and probably yields the best return on security assistance dollars. International Military Education and Training (IMET) funds are relatively scarce in the security assistance budget, but we have used them well and given the Caribbean Basin priority when additional IMET funds became available through reprogramming. Honduras has gained a slot for U.S. undergraduate pilot training next year, and two experienced Honduran pilots are currently attending USAF fighter lead-in training. Solid training is a prerequisite for skillful flying and effective air operations, and we must aggressively seek additional opportunities to provide quality training to our allies. Reprogramming foreign military sales credits represents another opportunity to improve training and equipment for our friends. Nations of the Western Hemisphere deserve top priority in reprogramming actions, for the marginal return on the additional funds probably exceeds that of any other region of the world.
The Inter-American Air Forces Academy (IAAFA) at Albrook Air Force Station in Panama has made significant contributions to hemispheric cooperation and defense by providing quality technical and specialized training for nearly thirty years. Course subjects include aircraft maintenance, avionics main-officer and airman supervisory courses. The IAAFA represents the training and equipment available in USAF technical schools transferred to Latin America and presented in Spanish. Nearly 20,000 graduates have contributed significantly to their countries’ air forces and aviation industries. The return on U.S. security assistance dollars has been outstanding, and IAAFA represents a splendid opportunity to improve and expand the capabilities of our friends. Quality training is vital for quality air forces, and quality air forces are essential to the security of our friends as well as ourselves.
A secure hemisphere is a prerequisite for an effective and resource-efficient defense of North America. Political and economic problems in Central America are being exploited by Cuba and Nicaragua with supply and support from the Soviet Union. It is in our best interest to help the friendly governments of the region meet this challenge and assist them in strengthening their ability to defend themselves, counter subversion, and deter aggression. Our policy and strategy are multidimensional in scope and consist of carefully constructed economic, political, and military measures. President Reagan stated the case directly in a speech to the Organization of American States when he asserted that "the well-being and security of our neighbors in this region are in our vital interest. . .We are in a fundamental sense fellow Americans."6 The United States cannot avoid the challenge. If the Carribbean Basin is threatened, so is the United States. To neglect the threat is to invite disaster.
Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Washington, D.C.
Notes
1. Margaret Daley Hayes, "The Stakes in Central America and U.S. Policy Responses," The Crisis in Central America, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, vol. 4, no. 2, 1982, p. 14.
2. "Cuban Armed Forces and the Soviet Military Presence," United States Department of State Special Report #103, August 1982, State Department Bureau of Public Affairs, p. 2.
3. "The Military Balance 1982/83," Air Force, December 1982, p. 137.
4. "Cuba’s Renewed Support for Violence in Latin America," United States Department of State Special Report to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 14 December 1981, p. 9.
5. USDAO Message 2621l4Z Nov 82 to USCINCSO Quarry Heights, Panama; subject: After Action Report—Joint and Combined Interoperability Exercise— USAF C- 141B Airdrop of Paratroops.
6. Address by President Reagan before the Organization of American States, Washington, 24 February 1982. United States Department of State Current Policy Pamphlet No. 370.
Contributor
Colonel James L. Cole, Jr.
(USAFA; M.A., Ohio State University; M.B.A., Auburn University), is Chief, Caribbean Basin Branch, Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff/ J-5, Plans and Policy Directorate, Hq USAF. He has held positions as an AC-47 commander in Vietnam; Chief, Combat Operations, 63d Military Airlift Wing; and Commander, 53d Military Airlift Squadron at Norton AFB, California. Colonel Cole has published in Aerospace Historian and the Review. He is a graduate of Squadron Officer School, Air Command and Staff College, Industrial College of the Armed Forces, Armed Forces Staff College, and Air War College.Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.Air & Space Power Home Page | Feedback? Email the Editor