U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently visited China, seeking to restore high-level dialogue between Washington and Beijing.
Before Mr. Blinken’s China visit, I recently took a trip to Florida and drove from Miami to Key West; it was very impressive, with beautiful coastal sights on the way.
Most of Miami’s population is from South America or are descendants of South American immigrants, so Spanish is spoken there more than English. There is no Chinatown in Miami, but there is a Cuban neighborhood in the downtown area called Little Havana. With many music bars and cigar lounges, it is small yet vibrant, immersed in a Caribbean atmosphere.
There is the Bay of Pigs Monument, which features an eternal torch that has been burning for years as a symbol of freedom. The failed 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion was also part of a drama that nearly led to a nuclear war in what was known as the Cuban Missile Crisis one year later.
The Caribbean has a complex and close relationship with the United States. More than 30 years after the founding of the United States, President James Monroe proclaimed his Monroe Declaration in 1823, which warned European powers not to intervene in the affairs of the Americas, including ruling out any further colonizing. The focus was on the Caribbean; among them, Cuba was one of the most important places for the United States.
Many of Cuba’s independence movements of the 1800s had a presence in the United States; among them was poet Jose Marti who established the Cuban Revolutionary Party in New York. After more than 10 years in exile in the United States, he organized an armed struggle for Cuba’s independence but was killed in battle just a day after landing in 1895.
Four years later, the United States and Spain were at war following the mysterious explosion of the battleship U.S.S. Maine in Havana Harbor.
After winning the war, the United States gained control of Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines from Spain, which was also compelled to relinquish claims on Cuba.
The Philippines voted to become independent in the 1950s, and Puerto Rico remained under U.S. jurisdiction, neither independent nor a U.S. state, which is a U.S. version of “one country, two systems.”
Cuba became a republic in 1902 but was under a degree of control and influence from the United States. The success of a communist revolution in Cuba in the 1950s caught the world by surprise, creating a dilemma for the United States.
In November 1956, Fidel Castro led 80 revolutionaries and sneaked back to Cuba on a small yacht from Mexico. Two weeks later, only 20 revolutionaries were left when they entered the mountains of southeastern Cuba. But it was these 20 fighters who began to wage a guerrilla campaign that broadened in scope that would result in the defeat of the Batista military government, and in January 1959, Castro established his revolutionary regime in Havana.
The revolutionaries proved to be much more cruel than the military government they opposed. They executed former members of the army, arrested and imprisoned other “counter-revolutionaries,” and then confiscated private property, leading to many refugees fleeing abroad. The main destination of the escape was Miami, Florida, 100 miles away.
When he was waging his guerrilla campaign, Castro vehemently denied that he was a communist. At that time, a naive U.S. government was fooled and not only allowed Castro to propagate such falsehoods in the United States, but Washington even sanctioned the military government and stopped all military and economic aid.
After his victory, Castro immediately implemented various communist measures, confiscating private property and foreign corporate assets, including land and other property owned by U.S. corporations, and only then did Americans begin to panic.
Subsequently, the United States would go on to recruit thousands of Cuban exiles, and the CIA provided them with military training. On April 16, 1961, more than 1,000 armed Cubans disembarked at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba, but the operation ended in a complete failure.
According to an inscription on the Bay of Pigs Monument, the entire operation failed due to poor planning and logistics. It immediately encountered resistance from Cuban military forces after landing. Over 100 men died, and more than 1,100 were captured. The invasion failed within 72 hours.
Soviets in Cuba
Starting in 1960, Soviet weapons and military advisors began to enter Cuba.After the Bay of Pigs landing, Castro asked for greater protection from the Soviets which deployed nuclear weapons in Cuba in 1962. According to CIA intelligence, the Soviets installed at least 16 SS4 and SS5 missile launchers in Cuba and atomic bomb storage facilities. The missiles with nuclear weapons had a range of 2,200 miles and could directly attack most U.S. cities within ten minutes.
Unable to accept this, the United States conducted a naval blockade against the Soviet Union and Cuba, resulting in the Cuban Missile Crisis, which ended with a compromise.
More than 1,000 Cuban exiles who had been captured were later released as U.S. military personnel and returned to Miami, where they would go on to live their lives.
The Soviet’s concession in Cuba: that it would remove its nuclear weapons from Cuba, was known worldwide, while the U.S. withdrawal of its nuclear weapons from Turkey and Italy was kept secret.
In the eyes of strategic experts, the Cuban Missile Crisis was a failure of the United States. With three times the economic power of the Soviet Union and nine times the size of the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons, the United States made many strategic concessions. In addition to withdrawing its nuclear weapons from Europe, it also promised not to invade Cuba, making what many Americans consider a humiliating concession in its own backyard.
Then U.S. President John F. Kennedy, the chief decision-maker during the missile crisis, was, on the one hand, a hero for defusing a possible nuclear war, but on the other hand, staunchly anti-communists in the United States detested him.
Cuban exiles, in particular, felt that Kennedy had betrayed his original promise and compromised too much with the communists.
Meanwhile, some have linked Kennedy’s 1963 assassination in Dallas to the Cuba issue.
Taiwan Issue Similarities
Cuba was initially colonized by Spain, then controlled by the Americans, and then became independent. Before Castro, Cuba was always under the influence of the United States. This relationship is not that different from the relationship between Taiwan and mainland China.The United States can leverage its power against communism through Taiwan, while the communist camp often leverages its power against the United States through Cuba.
After understanding this relationship, we can better understand the impact of the CCP’s military presence in Cuba on the Americans.
The article published in Politico on June 21 stated that the United States has a strong military presence around mainland China, with intelligence collection bases in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, as well as joint military operations with local forces. Therefore, the CCP believes that the United States should be given “reciprocity” by forming a stronger communist military and intelligence presence in Cuba.
On the issue of Cuba, the CCP’s move has a bigger impact than arresting a few Americans to be used as hostages in alarming American society.
Although the CCP has atomic weapons, it has not formed an integrated nuclear strike comparable to the United States. Yes, China has intercontinental missiles and nuclear submarines, but they are limited in number and can be easily intercepted. In terms of China’s strategic air force, it has not yet developed a real combat capability, and its strategic bombers cannot fly over the Pacific Ocean.
But with a joint military base in Cuba, it can make up for this deficiency to an extent. The Chinese strategic bomber, the H-6, has a maximum range of only 4,500 miles, which is less than half the distance between the geographic centers of China and the United States. If taking off from Shanghai, it cannot fly to California. But if it takes off from Cuba, it can enter the United States in minutes and reach the industrial centers of the eastern United States in an hour.
Of course, it will be a long time before Chinese military forces enter Cuba, but when (or if they do), it will be a very confronting moment for the United States.
Given this, the U.S.-China relationship will enter a new situation, with U.S. strategy toward the CCP becoming more like that of the past U.S. vs. the Soviet Union relationship, resulting in American Big Tech and Wall Street finally turning their back on Beijing. All this may happen within the next two to three years.
