CHAPTER 7:
U.S. AND USSR SQUARE OFF OVER CUBA
“Now boys, if you don’t intend to go through with this, let’s stop talking about it,” President Eisenhower told a small group of aides at a meeting in the Oval Office over highballs in January 1960. Eisenhower thought the covert actions they had proposed for Cuba were too limited to accomplish the objective.
CIA Deputy Director for Plans (DDP) Richard Bissell recalled, “On January 13, 1960, a formal decision was made at a meeting of the Special Group that Castro’s regime must be overthrown.” The Directorate of Plans was the CIA’s clandestine service, and the Special Group was a subcommittee of the National Security Council (NSC), which supervised U.S. intelligence operations.276
Dulles told the Special Group, “[W]e do not have in mind a quick elimination of Castro, but rather actions designed to enable responsible opposition leaders to get a foothold.” Eisenhower pushed his national security aides to take bolder measures than the joint CIA–Department of State plan that he approved in November 1959.277
In February, Dulles returned to the Oval Office to brief Eisenhower on the new plan. He brought with him photographs of Cuba taken by a high-altitude U-2 spy plane. National Security Advisor Gordon Gray remembered, “There were schematic drawings of sugar refineries, colored drawings, because Allen was showing the President how this sabotage was going to be effected.” After the briefing, Eisenhower replied, “Well, Allen, this is fine, but if you’re going to make any move against Castro, don’t just fool around with sugar refineries. Let’s get a program which will really do something about Castro.”
Dulles delegated the task to a Cuba Task Force led by Bissell.278 On March 9, 1960, Col. J. C. King discussed the assassination option with the Task Force: “Unless Fidel and Raúl Castro and Che Guevara could be eliminated in one package—which is highly unlikely—this operation can be a long, drawn-out affair and the present government will only be overthrown by the use of force.” Likewise, when Dulles outlined the CIA covert action plan for Cuba to the NSC on March 10, Chief of Naval Operations Arleigh Burke “suggested that any plan for the removal of Cuban leaders should be a package deal, since many of the leaders around Castro were even worse than Castro.” The assassination option was discussed when the Special Group met on March 14, according to minutes of the meeting.279
Although the CIA plan was evaluated by the NSC and the Special Group, the actual policy decisions on Cuba and other covert intelligence operations were taken by Eisenhower and his aides in the Oval Office. On March 17, Dulles brought Bissell with him to brief Eisenhower on the CIA’s new “Program of Covert Action Against the Castro Regime.” Vice President Richard Nixon, Secretary of State Christian Herter, Admiral Burke, and Colonel King also attended the secret meeting in the Oval Office.
The paramilitary phase of the CIA covert action plan would be preceded by a propaganda campaign. A long- and short-wave radio facility would be set up on Swan Island, in the Caribbean off the coast of Honduras, to broadcast propaganda into Cuba.
Bissell later disclosed that a paramilitary force of 100 to 150 Cuban commandos was to be “the prime vehicle for achieving Castro’s overthrow.” The Cuban guerrillas “would be infiltrated into Cuba, where they would be placed with various dissident groups… and with enclaves in the Escambray Mountains and elsewhere.”
According to the plan, a secret “intelligence and action organization” would be set up inside Cuba. “Its role will be to provide hard intelligence, to arrange for the illegal infiltration and exfiltration of individuals, to assist in the internal distribution of illegal propaganda, and to plan and organize for the defection of key individuals and groups as directed.”
Bissell pointed out a separate paramilitary force “of a few hundred Cubans… would land on the island and detonate a coordinated resistance at the appropriate moment.” Sabotage operations against economic targets on the island would be complemented by U.S. economic sanctions to destabilize the island’s economy.
The CIA-sponsored Frente Revolucionario Democrático (FRD) (Democratic Revolutionary Front), a Cuban government-in-exile, would be inserted into Havana at the start of the paramilitary action. The FRD would declare itself the new government with the slogan “Restore the Revolution.” Bissell estimated the $4.4 million CIA covert action plan would be operational in six to eight months. On March 17, Eisenhower approved the CIA plan with one caveat. He insisted, “Our hand should not show in anything that is done.” He added, “The great problem is leakage and breach of security. Everyone must be prepared to swear that he has not heard of it.”280 Eisenhower turned to the CIA in Cuba as an alternative to his Cold War strategy of massive retaliation, which was designed to counter the USSR—not radical nationalist movements in the third world.
In January 1954, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles spelled out the Eisenhower Administration’s Cold War strategy of massive nuclear retaliation in a nationally televised speech to the Council on Foreign Relations. Henceforth, the United States would retaliate for acts of international aggression with massive nuclear strikes against the source of aggression, not at the point of aggression. U.S. troops would not get bogged down again in a big conventional war like the Korean War.
“The basic decision was to depend primarily upon a great capacity to retaliate, instantly, by means and at places of our own choosing,” Dulles declared. In a subsequent essay he wrote, “A potential aggressor must not be left in any doubt that he would be certain to suffer damage outweighing any possible gains from aggression.”
Dulles said the threat of “massive retaliation” would deter aggression. He attributed aggression in the world to the Soviet Union, but he himself gained a reputation for brinkmanship, a willingness to threaten the use of nuclear weapons up to the brink of war as a means by which to compel the Soviet Union to back down in international conflicts. “You have to take chances for peace just as you have to take chances in war,” he stated in an interview with Life magazine. “The ability to get to the verge without getting into war is the necessary art. If you cannot master it, you inevitably get into war. If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.”281
The United States maintained a quantitative and qualitative advantage in nuclear weapons capability over the Soviet Union in the 1950s. But the strategic environment changed as Soviet Unions’s nuclear arsenal proliferated. According to U.S. strategists, the United States could still “win” a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union. But, as the number of Soviet atomic warheads grew, so, too, did the liklihood of Soviet warheads hitting targets in the United States, causing catastrophic numbers of casualties and unprecedented destruction of civilian infrastructure.
Nuclear scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer described the nuclear paradox at the heart of the Cold War, when he compared the United States and the Soviet Union to “two scorpions in a bottle.” “We may anticipate a state of affairs in which the two Great Powers will each be in a position to put an end to civilization and the life of the other, though not without risking its own,” Oppenheimer wrote in Foreign Affairs in 1953. “We may be likened to two scorpions in a bottle, each capable of killing the other, but only at the risk of his own life.” Oppenheimer was the director of the Los Alamos, New Mexico laboratory, which developed the world’s first atomic bombs in 1945.282
With his choice of Allen Dulles as Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), Eisenhower signaled that covert operations would play a bigger role in U.S. foreign policy. Dulles, an unabashed advocate of covert operations, had gained notoriety in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in World War II in Europe. He had been DDP since 1950.
Eisenhower learned the value of intelligence operations in World War II working with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Intelligence operations played a big role in Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy that Eisenhower commanded.283
Allen Dulles’ influence on U.S. policy was unprecendented for a DCI in light of his close working relationship with his brother, the secretary of state. The Dulles brothers had collaborated with each other on international affairs since the Paris Peace conference at the end of World War I. Allen Dulles biographer Peter Grose writes, “Foster respected the techniques of covert action that CIA had developed, largely under Allen’s prodding, in pursuit of a cold but holy war against communism. Yet he often chose to adopt the State Department mentality of knowing as little as possible about sordid operational details of intelligence.”284 But the CIA covert operation in Cuba got off to an uncertain start.
Manuel Antonio Varona met with the CIA station in Havana to win backing for his bid to lead a “unified command” of Cuban counterrevolutionary groups in exile in the United States, according to a March 10, 1960, CIA cable. Varona wanted the CIA to deny “assistance to splinter groups or individuals” as a means by which to pressure them to “to join in the common cause.”285
Varona arrived in New York in May 1960. In the following weeks, Varona traveled from New York to Washington, Miami, Houston, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela, politicking to be the leader of the CIA-sponsored Frente Revolucionario Democrático (FRD).
In the meantime, the FRD executive committee took shape: Varona, representing the Auténticos; Manuel Artime, representing the Movimiento de Recuperación Revolucionario (MRR); Justo Carrillo, representing the Montecristi Group; and José Ignacio Rasco, representing the Movimiento Democrático Cristiano (MDC).286
The CIA backed Varona’s bid for leadership because the Agency believed that he was the only Cuban leader capable of bringing new groups into the Frente Revolucionario Democrático. But it soon became evident that Varona was a polarizing personality—petty rivalries were made worse by Varona’s abrasive personality and his barely concealed ambition to be president in post-Castro Cuba.287
On July 21, 1960, Allen Dulles sought approval from the Special Group for the CIA to conduct limited sabotage missions in Cuba. According to the minutes of the meeting, “He stressed that any such operations would be governed by the provisos that the U.S. hand should not show in any way, and also that the action contemplated would be directed against machinery, installations, etc., which would entail minimum risk to human life.”288
On August 18, National Security Advisor Gordon Gray summoned Eisenhower’s deputies to the Oval Office for an assessment of the CIA covert plan for Cuba.
Dulles briefed Eisenhower on the Frente Revolucionario Democrático. “This has been successful up to a point but the problem is that there is no real leader and all the individuals are prima donnas,” Dulles reported. “Their theme is to restore the revolution to its original concepts, recognizing that it is impossible to change all of the revolutionary trends.” Dulles pointed out that “twenty to thirty instructor cadres” had already completed their paramilitary training course in the Panama Canal Zone. The Cuban instructors were sent to Guatemala, where they were training an additional 500 Cuban counterrevolutionaries. He said the paramilitary training in Guatemala would be completed in early November.
The DCI added that the covert plan would be more costly than the Agency had projected. He said unless more money was authorized, he would have “to go to the [CIA] reserve for funds to finance the various operations described in the meeting.” Eisenhower approved an additional $13 million to the $4.4 million already budgeted for the CIA covert action plan for Cuba.289 As the Eisenhower Administration refined its covert policy on Cuba, diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana spiraled out of control.
On March 4, an explosion rocked the Havana waterfront. La Coubre, a freighter sailing out of Antwerp, Belgium, under a French flag, blew up in mid-afternoon while its cargo of small arms and ammunition was being unloaded. More than seventy-five Cubans were killed and another 300 injured by the blast. In a speech at a funeral for the dock workers, Castro charged that La Coubre was blown up by the “enemies” of the revolution, pointing the finger of blame at the United States. He declared, “We have the right to believe that those who did not wish us to receive arms and tried to prevent that by diplomatic means are among those guilty of this sabotage. We do not have proof but we have the right to believe that these are the guilty ones.”
A Department of State official dismissed Castro’s allegations as “unfounded and irresponsible,” but he did not deny the United States had tried to block Belgium’s sale of munitions to Cuba. “We have indicated to a number of friendly governments our concern over arms shipments to the Caribbean which increase tension in the area.”
Cuba hired a Belgian arms expert to investigate the La Coubre incident. Treasury Minister Rufo López-Fresquet later wrote, “This expert ruled out the possibility of improper handling, heat, and all other accidental causes.” López-Fresquet added, “He maintained that it was sabotage, but could not determine whether the action took place in port, during the trip, or while loading.” López-Fresquet was involved in Cuban arms purchases in 1959.290
In a speech at a May Day parade in Havana, Castro warned that the likelihood of war with the United States was growing. The New York Times reported, “In an atmosphere where patriotic and revolutionary fervor blended with the good-natured gaiety of a country fair… unit after unit of soldiers, policemen, sailors and uniformed civilians filed past the reviewing stand on the stone steps of the huge white statue of José Martí, hero of Cuban independence.” The marchers chanted and carried signs proclaiming “patria o muerte” and “¡Cuba sí, Yanquís no!”
For the first time, Castro flatly ruled out holding elections. He asked, “Why is it considered that the only democratic governments are those elected by votes? A revolutionary government is brought to power not by a pencil but by the blood of the people.” He said that democracy was building new homes and schools and creating jobs and “delivering arms to the workers, peasants, students, women, and Negroes.”291 As tensions mounted between Cuba and the United States, a confrontation appeared inevitable.
Fidel Castro had good reason to believe Cuba could not win a confrontation with the United States. The United States enjoyed an overwhelming advantage over Cuba in economic and military power. To counterbalance the growing military threat posed to Cuba by the United States, Castro negotiated an alliance with the Soviet Union. Aleksandr Alexiev, a Spanish-speaking KGB officer, traveled to Cuba for get-acquainted talks with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in October 1959. Guevara and Alexiev held a marathon session, talking almost until dawn on October 13. Guevara stated, “Our revolution is truly progressive, anti-imperialist and anti-American, made by the people.” Guevara asserted, “But we cannot conquer and maintain it without the aid of the global revolutionary movement, and above all, from the socialist bloc and the Soviet Union.” When Castro met with Alexiev three days later, he said “a true revolution” had taken place in Cuba, but it was necessary to “go slow” because of widespread anticommunism on the island. “We want to build a just society without man exploiting his fellow man, and an armed people to defend their victories,” he stated. “If Marx were to arise now he would be pleased to see me giving arms to the people.”
Castro said he wanted “to talk” with the Soviet Union. In their discussions with Alexiev, Castro and Guevara stressed the radical nature of the Cuban revolution, as if they believed Moscow needed to be convinced they were genuine revolutionaries. In fact, the Kremlin was, indeed, skeptical of the politics of the Cuban revolution, according to historians Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov.
“Initially, in 1959 and early 1960, the Soviet leadership did not believe that there could be any chance for ‘proletarian’ revolution on the semicolonial island with a small monoculture economy,” Zubok and Pleshakov write. “The survivors of the old Comintern network in Cuba [the Partido Socialista Popular] described Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and other Cuban revolutionaries as anything but Marxists, and discounted their chances for success.”292
But Alexiev’s report on his meetings with Castro and Guevara convinced Chairman Nikita Khrushchev to take a closer look at the Cuban revolution. Khrushchev dispatched Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan, his closest associate in the Kremlin, to the Cuba to learn more.
On February 4, 1960, Mikoyan arrived in Havana with the traveling Soviet trade exhibition. Cuba needed a new trading partner, given its growing confrontation with the United States. The Soviet exhibit included models of Soviet homes, factories, and farm and industrial equipment. But Mikoyan’s mission also marked the first talks between a senior Soviet official and the young leaders of the Cuban revolution. Mikoyan traveled with Castro to La Plata, Castro’s former comandancia (military headquarters) in the Sierra Maestra mountains. He, Castro, and Guevara stayed up late into the night discussing the Cuban revolution, according to Sergo Mikoyan, who accompanied his father to Cuba.
“Fidel then launched into a soliloquy about how his rebel victory had proven Marx wrong,” Sergo Mikoyan later wrote. “Fidel said that according to Marx, the revolution could not have happened except along the paths proposed by his Communist party and ‘our’ [Cuban] Communist party… mass struggle, strikes, and so forth. ‘But we have overtaken Marx, we have proven him wrong.’ My father contradicted him, he said: ‘You think this way because your Communists are dogmatic, they think Marxism is just A, B, C, and D. But Marxism is a way, not a dogma. So I don’t think you have proven Marx wrong, I think you have proven your Communists wrong.’” [Emphasis in original]
Sergo Mikoyan did not question Castro’s sincerity, but doubted that he was a Marxist. “Castro made no pretense of being a Marxist-Leninist,” Mikoyan said. “He was a progressive Third World leader. He wanted to reduce his dependence on the United States, yes, but no one who knows anything about Marxist-Leninist doctrine and who spent an hour with Fidel at that point could have thought he was a communist.”293
In February 1960, Anastas Mikoyan signed a trade agreement with Cuba. Under the terms of the five-year trade agreement, the USSR would purchase nearly a million tons of Cuban sugar a year. The Soviets granted a $100 million loan for the purchase of machinery and construction materials to build factories in Cuba. Moscow also agreed to help drain the Zapata swamp in south-central Cuba.294
On returning to Moscow, Anastas Mikoyan briefed his colleagues on his mission in Cuba, according to a February 1960 Russian Intelligence Service document. “Yes, he [Castro] is a genuine revolutionary,” Mikoyan reported.
Cuba had a special meaning for the old Bolsheviks in the Kremlin. Mikoyan recalled, “We have been waiting all our lives for a country to go communist without the Red Army, and it happened in Cuba. It makes us feel like boys again.” Mikoyan’s report on his mission to Cuba took the wind out of the sails of the Kremlin skeptics of the Cuban revolution.295 Meanwhile, Castro sought another meeting with Alexiev in the aftermath of the La Coubre incident. Castro was increasingly anxious about Cuba’s vulnerability to a U.S. invasion.
Alexiev recalled, “For the first time, Fidel spoke of arms.” Alexiev added, “He said that after the explosion the intervention might be inevitable, imminent. ‘We have to arm the people,’ and he wanted the Soviet Union to sell him some weapons he needed. He spoke of arms, light machine guns.”
Alexiev relayed Castro’s message to Khrushchev, who replied the next day, “Fidel, we share your worries about the defense of Cuba and the possibility of an attack, and we will supply you with the arms you need.” On May 7, 1960, Cuba and the USSR restored diplomatic relations, which had been broken off by Batista under pressure from Washington in 1952. Soon thereafter the Soviet Union began to make deliveries of Soviet crude oil to Cuba.296
Castro’s diplomatic overture to the USSR began as a response to the U.S. effort to regain control of its former neocolony. But Havana’s alignment with Moscow intensified Cuba’s confrontation with the United States and further radicalized the revolution. It would also draw Cuba deeper into the Cold War conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union.
In the meantime, Secretary of Treasury Robert Anderson took aim at Soviet oil deliveries to Cuba when he lobbied Standard Oil of New Jersey (ESSO) and Texaco not to refine Soviet crude oil at their facilities in Cuba. On June 7, Esso and Texaco, joined by the Anglo-Dutch Shell Oil, refused to refine Soviet oil. Congress voted to cut off U.S. imports of Cuban sugar before the Fourth of July recess. On July 6, Eisenhower announced that the United States would not purchase the remaining 700,000 tons of sugar of the U.S. import quota for Cuban sugar for 1960.
On July 9, Nikita Khrushchev tossed his hat into the ring, warning the United States not to attack Cuba. “It should not be forgotten that the United States is not so inaccessibly distant from the Soviet Union as it used to be,” Khrushchev stated, referring to Soviet nuclear missiles. “Figuratively speaking, in case of need, Soviet artillery men can support the Cuban people with their rocket fire if aggressive forces in the Pentagon dare to launch an intervention against Cuba.”
Eisenhower denounced Khrushchev’s comments as an unacceptable intrusion into the affairs of Latin America. Eisenhower declared, “The statement of the Soviet Premier reflects the effort of an outside nation and of international communism to intervene in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.”
On July 10, Moscow announced it would buy 700,000 tons of Cuban sugar. Havana responded to Washington’s suspension of Cuban sugar imports by nationalizing cattle ranches, oil refineries, and sugar mills owned by U.S. investors worth $850 million. On September 17, Cuba nationalized U.S. banks on the island.297 On October 19, the Eisenhower Administration retaliated by imposing an economic embargo on Cuba. U.S. exports to the island were prohibited, with the exception of food products and medicine.
Ambassador Bonsal thought that the Eisenhower Administration’s reaction was excessive, forcing Cuba and the USSR into the diplomatic equivalent of a shotgun marriage. Bonsal later wrote, “The Soviet Union [was] driven into Castro’s arms.”298 Khrushchev highlighted the U.S. hostility toward Cuba as he defended the Cuban revolution at the United Nations.
In September 1960, Cuba was on Nikita Khrushchev’s mind as he sailed to New York to attend a special session of the General Assembly of the United Nations on decolonization and disarmament. Khrushchev planned to use the UN special session to showcase the USSR’s commitment to the Cuban revolution and anticolonial wars of liberation in the third world.299
Khrushchev’s attitude about the Cuban revolution was shaped, in part, by his discussions with Mikoyan. Khrushchev’s son Sergei recalls, “Mikoyan thought that Cuba must be helped but after taking every precaution.” Sergei writes, “If the people in Washington guessed where Castro was heading before the new regime had a chance to grow stronger, they would destroy it in a flash.”
Sergei continues, “Father continued to watch Castro closely for some time longer, but already as a potential friend and congenial thinker. He found more and more to confirm Anastas Ivanovich’s opinion and admired the heroism of the Cuban people. He no longer had doubts; we, as internationalists, must help Cuba. We will not allow the revolution to be choked.”300
The biting critique of Khrushchev’s foreign policy from Chinese Community Party Chairman Mao Zedong also played a role in the Soviet leader’s decision to embrace the Cuban revolution. As Mao mounted a challenge to Khrushchev’s leadership of the international communist movement, he criticized Khrushchev for not more aggressively waging the Cold War. Mao believed Khrushchev’s fear of war with the United States caused him to sacrifice the promotion of revolution around the world, and he pressed the Soviet Union to support liberation wars in the Third World without fear of nuclear war. Mao declared that socialism would triumph in a nuclear war with the “forces of imperialism” in a speech in Moscow in November 1957. On other occasions, he dismissed the United States and its nuclear arsenal as a “paper tiger.”301
In 1960, Khrushchev put increasing emphasis on Soviet support for wars of liberation to counter Mao’s challenge. Historian Vladislav Zubok points out Khrushchev took personal leadership of “feverish activity to promote decolonization.” Gregory Mirsky, a Soviet analyst of the Third World, recalls that Khrushchev hoped to harness “postcolonial momentum” in the developing world to attack the “soft underbelly of imperialism.”
Meanwhile, on his first full day in New York, Khrushchev made a point of meeting with Castro, who was also attending the UN special session. They met in the Theresa Hotel in Harlem, where Castro was staying. Afterwards, they walked through the Theresa’s lobby with their arms around each other. As they strolled out to the street, a crowd gathered outside the hotel broke into cheers. Khrushchev told waiting reporters, “I salute Fidel Castro and wish him well.” He called Castro a “heroic man,” who has “raised his people from the tyranny of Batista and who has provided a better life for his people.”
The New York Times commented, “It was the biggest event on 125th Street since the funeral of W. C. Handy, who wrote ‘St. Louis Blues.’” A photograph of Khrushchev hugging Castro appeared on the front page of the Times, above the fold. Khrushchev was pleased with the meeting. He told aides that Castro wanted good relations with the Soviet Union, including military assistance. But he also sounded a note of caution. “Castro is like a young horse that hasn’t been broken,” Khrushchev said. “He needs some training, but he’s very spirited—so we’ll have to be careful.”302
As Castro spoke at the United Nations, Khrushchev listened attentively, applauding frequently with enthusiasm. Clad in green army fatigues, Castro declared that Cuba had been a “colony” of the United States since 1898. He said the Cuban revolution had antagonized the U.S. “monopolies” that dominated the island’s economy. Cuba had been victimized by air attacks by Batistiano “war criminals,” and “economic aggression” and “subversion” sponsored by the United States. He praised the Soviet Union for its opposition to colonialism.303
In his speech, Khrushchev praised the Cuban revolution and other anticolonial movements in the developing world. Khrushchev declared, “We welcome the sacred struggle of the colonial peoples against the colonialists for their liberation.” He called on the West to grant independence to its colonies, noting that decolonization was “a great hallmark of our era.”304 Khrushchev would further underscore the Kremlin’s support for the Cuban revolution by inviting Che Guevara to the Soviet Union.
In Moscow’s Red Square, Che Guevara stood next to Chairman Nikita Khrushchev on Lenin’s tomb on November 7, 1960, as the Soviet Army marched by, celebrating the forty-third anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution. Guevara’s selection for the spot next to Khrushchev was a rare honor for someone who was neither a head of state nor a communist party chief.
Moscow was the most important stop in Guevara’s two-month tour of socialist bloc countries. He also visited Czechoslovakia, East Germany, the People’s Republic of China, and North Korea. The purpose of his mission was to replace the loss of the United States as a market for Cuban sugar exports, and to solidify international support for the Cuban revolution.
In Moscow, Guevara finalized an agreement for the sale of Cuban sugar to the USSR and its allies in Eastern Europe, in addition to the trade agreement Mikoyan signed in February 1960. Khrushchev also promised Cuba more military assistance.305
In the meantime, the United States monitored Cuba’s efforts to strengthen its military defenses. A White House analysis of the “Military Buildup in Cuba” stated, “The Soviet Bloc military equipment already shipped to Cuba, as well as prior military purchases from Western sources, have contributed substantially to a major buildup of ground forces there.” The analysis noted, “The Bloc has already extended considerable military assistance to Cuba in the form of some 10,000 to 12,000 tons of military equipment and some military and economic technicians and advisers.” The aid included six helicopters, machineguns, and small arms.306
A Department of State analysis concluded the Soviet military assistance was for defensive purposes. “It remains our judgment that Moscow would not actually intervene with its military forces if the Castro regime were attacked by anti-Castro forces,” the Department of State assessment stated. “However, the Soviets could be expected to step-up arms assistance and to launch a vigorous muscle-flexing campaign… in an effort to deter anti-Castro intervention.”307 At the same time, however, Washington was troubled by the destabilizing political impact of the Cuban revolution on the Western Hemisphere.
From the beginning, the Eisenhower Administration worried that the mere existence of the Cuban revolution would inspire revolution elsewhere in Latin America. Castro added to those anxieties when he held up Cuba as a model for revolution in a speech on July 26, 1960, the seventh anniversary of the July 26th Movement’s assault on the Moncada Barracks. Castro declared, “Cuba’s example would convert the Andean Cordillera [mountain range] into the hemisphere’s Sierra Maestra.” He warned the region’s military juntas and oligarchs that they faced the possibility of revolution unless they raised the standard of living of their people.308
The region was vulnerable to revolutionary appeals. An October 1959 Bureau of Interamerican Affairs analysis warned of “unstable internal conditions likely to continue in a number of Caribbean countries” and “a continuing danger that other regimes responsive to and/or modeled on the Castro regime may arise elsewhere in the region.”309
Secretary of State Christian Herter feared that the Cuban revolution would have an adverse impact on U.S. investments elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere, even if Havana did not attempt to promote revolution beyond its borders. In a November 1959 memorandum to Eisenhower, he wrote: “Not only have our business interests in Cuba been seriously affected, but the United States cannot hope to encourage and support sound economic policies in other Latin American countries and promote necessary private investment in Latin America if it is or appears to be simultaneously cooperating in the Castro program.”310
Nonetheless, the Eisenhower Administration faced an uphill diplomatic battle to win support for U.S. opposition to the Cuban revolution based on the injury the revolution did to U.S. economic interests in Cuba. Instead, the administration stressed the threat of communism posed by Cuba and its new ties to the Soviet Union and Latin America.
In January 1960, DCI Allen Dulles told the National Security Council (NSC):“From our point of view, it would be desirable for the USSR to show its hand in Cuba, if Soviet activity in Cuba becomes evident, then we will have a weapon against Castro.” Six months later, Assistant Secretary of State Rubottom also recommended that U.S. diplomacy stress the “communist threat”: “Mr. Rubottom said that action taken which might be based on the Communist danger and threat in Cuba and to the hemisphere is a much better basis on which to place our cause than U.S. economic interests in Cuba.”311
Gradually, the Eisenhower Administration fashioned a new Cold War diplomatic strategy for Cuba: Appearing committed to the principle of nonintervention in Latin America, while simultaneously orchestrating the overthrow of the Cuban revolution.312
In August 1960, Eisenhower told Capitol Hill lawmakers that U.S. diplomats were pressing for a formula to facilitate intervention by the OAS in Cuba in the name of resisting the “communist penetration” of the Western Hemisphere. NSC-5613/1 defined opposition to communism as the foundation of the Eisenhower Administration’s foreign policy in Latin America. “If a Latin American state should establish with the Soviet bloc close ties of such a nature as seriously to prejudice our vital interests, be prepared to diminish governmental economic and financial cooperation with that country and to take any other political, economic, or military actions deemed appropriate.” “Domination” of a state in the region by communism was considered sufficient cause to justify collective military action by the OAS.313
However, when the United States asserted that the threat of communist domination in Cuba met the requirements for collective military action under the OAS charter, Latin American diplomats pushed back. Secretary of State Herter informed Eisenhower that there was a lack of “hard evidence” with which to persuade Latin America diplomats Cuba was “under communist control.” “There was little sympathy for Castro’s activities,” Herter said. “[But] there was still reluctance… to criticize Castro as his ‘mystique’ continued to be very strong…. Latin American countries were watching Cuban developments with great anxiety as Castro occupied a unique position and they feared internal Castro-type revolutions.”314
In light of the complications involved in the overthrow of the Cuban revolution, the assassination of Fidel Castro continued to be an appealing option.