Word: sovietism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Almost everyone acknowledges that the Soviet brigade does not violate the 1962 Soviet-American agreement that ended the Cuban missile crisis. Nor does it come anywhere near as close to straining the spirit of that agreement as did the berthing of Russian atomic submarines in Cuba in 1970 (see Kissinger: White House Years) or the stationing of MiG-23s on the island in 1978.* Nor is the brigade plausibly a strike force for an assault on Guatemala or Key West. Nor did it arrive recently enough to be a deliberate, mischievous test of Jimmy Carter's will. Nor does...
Henry Kissinger and some Senators have urged linking ratification of the treaty with a significant boost in the U.S. military budget to offset increased Soviet arms spending of the past five years. That is a creditable argument, since SALT must enhance U.S. defenses as well as help control arms. But there are no grounds for linking SALT to the Soviet brigade in Cuba. The Soviets say the unit has been there for 17 years, and U.S. intelligence sources concede it has been there for at least ten, so the brigade is not even symbolically part of the global Soviet buildup...
...course Cuba is a fortress, and of course it is reinforced by the Soviets. It has been so for decades. There is legitimate, longstanding concern over the island's use as a training ground for Soviet-Cuban adventures in the Third World, including the Caribbean. But Castro's reprehensible conduct as a global mischief-maker bedeviled American foreign policy long before the ratification of SALT II or the re-election of Frank Church was an issue. Cuba's predatory military probably will continue to be a problem for a long time to come - until the U.S. recovers...
Even Cyrus Vance, in his attempt to pre-empt his critics, has called the presence of the brigade "a very serious matter" and said that the Administration "will not be satisfied with the status quo." Thus Vance contributed to the misimpression that the Soviet military presence in Cuba has been steadily and ominously growing...
...Frank Church can climb out of an even deeper one. If Vance succeeds, and the Russians agree to tinker with the command structure, deployment and definition of the brigade, then Americans will have to live with the uncomfortable knowledge that in the overblown Cuban crisis of September 1979, Soviet flexibility rescued the U.S. Government from its own clumsiness. If Vance fails, there is a good chance that a sensible debate on the merits of the SALT treaty, will be impossible. The treaty might well have to be shelved until the silly season of the 1980 elections is over...