Soviet-Cuban Enterprises in Africa

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Angola in 1976 was the stage on which the Soviet LJnion finally attained full parity as a superpower, a status which it had claimed prematurely, then had to forfeit during the Cuban confrontation tn 1962. With the United States numbed by its Vietnamese defeat, the Soviets sent their Cuban surrogates into Africa, thereby confirming that they had both the power and the will to influence events far beyond their own borders.

SECOND HONORABLE MENTION

In Angola, Cuban troops and some Soviet-backed Popular Movement soldiers pause momentarily in the seaside town of Ambrizete beneath a sign that translates to “Amhrizete Supports the FIS LA.” Amhrizete's support of the FNLA—the V. S.-backed National Union—was as ineffective as the American arms aid which disintegrated beneath the treads of Cuban-driven Soviet T-34 tanks such as those which overran Huambo, right, in February 1976.

_atij Soviet-Cuban military enterprises in Angola i ^c“^e Horn of Africa constitute one of the most t_ej ^r.^tarit Political-military developments in in- p, ^atl°nal affairs since the end of the Vietnam War. f_r ^e,r Importance, in fact, derives in large measure the          ^re*^ationship to the Vietnam experience in

the ^t*¹°^u£^^t processes of political leaderships around ^vv°rld. The Soviet-Cuban enterprises appear, at

east

the

^UP to now, to have been a remarkable success in

Th' ^Plication of great-power military force in the ^rd World, in contrast to the failure of the Ameri- effort in Southeast Asia, the

ornmunist powers has been slow and uncertain.

tan

the r- ^^mer‘^can response to these new enterprises by p reasons for the delay are not hard to discern.

The

^'rst

h,

the Vietnam trauma and the greatly

Shtened aversion to foreign interventions of any

kind which it so powerfully reinforced still affect the American national mood, though to a diminishing degree. Second, there do not appear to be any reli­able and effective allies with whom we could openly cooperate in opposing the Communist initiatives—or we do not much like the ones that might be avail­able. And third, the Communist initiatives are dif­ficult for us to see steadily and whole, because they are themselves highly episodic and apparently dis­jointed. They are intermixed with events whose rela­tionship to the main line of the Soviet-Cuban initia­tives is not easy to make out.

But the longer we delay in formulating the American response, the more expensive its eventual development will be. We cannot realistically suppose that the Communist powers will allow a system of cooperation which has had such striking initial suc-

cess and which promises such large future benefits to its inventors to fall out of use. We must assume that Soviet and Cuban planners are hard at work devising adaptations of the method which will allow its exten­sion to other areas and conditions.

When the U. S. Government is able to address the Soviet-Cuban collaboration as a political-military challenge of far-reaching importance, and is ready to acknowledge that the United States should prepare a political-military response as one of its options, it is likely to assign the central responsibility for the de­velopment of the option to the two naval services. Those services possess very important natural advan­tages over the other services for the purposes toward which we would be working, advantages which in fact have probably been increased by the Vietnam experience and its political-psychological aftermath. There are also some impediments to a central role for the naval services, and they would have to be carefully assessed. But before considering the advantages and the obstacles in further detail, it is necessary to con­sider at some length the fundamental character of the problem which the Soviet-Cuban enterprises pose.

During the 1978 debates in the government and in the press about how to react to the Soviet-Cuban activities in Africa, both the hawks and the doves tended to argue the issues in classic strategic and political terms, and in a specific geographic context. Key arguments ran something like this: The Com­munist powers were in the process of forging an iron ring around the immense oil riches of the Middle East. Or they were only taking opportunistic advan­tage of local accidents of history, in some cases perhaps actually at cross purposes with their own perceived long-range interests. A strong American reaction to the Soviet-Cuban efforts would hearten moderate African leaders to develop a pan-African re­sponse to these extra-continental interventions. Or perhaps such an American reaction would only undo the hard-won gains made by the Carter administra­tion in our relations with Nigeria, Tanzania, Zam­bia, and people of like-minded countries.

The issues do, of course, have to be debated in the classic political and strategic terms if we are to un­derstand the problems which the Soviets and Cubans have posed for us. But in the present situation, the

classic categories may not be the most instruct

ones in

which to frame the inquiry. Another set

terms, political-military-psychological, but no

less

closely related to basic considerations of nationa curity than the classic strategic terms, needs to employed as well.   . c

At its most fundamental level, the protection the national security consists essentially of the ar ous and incessant effort of responsible authorities^ discern the contours of the future, using the best guries available at a given moment, and, by ^e action possible, to reach into the future and ^sta^_uSt it before the nation whose interests they serve traverse it. The largest powers will make longest-range forecasts, will set the most far-rea^c crnflls anH in ireneral. will onerate with the

confidence in their ability to control their ^^eStl^_ofe For smaller powers, the future generally seems highly contingent and problematic. In their ^vie" ^ best and most reliable auguries of the future w ^ derived from constant analysis and comparison ⁰      __

most recent behavior of the two superpowers, m

»ral-

tion to each other and to world events in ge°^e ^ If the superpowers have massive natural advantaf^ over smaller powers in the actual shaping of th^e ture, the smaller nations appear to be more co ^ tent at reading the omens. They are better at ^lC’ cause they are at least marginally less likely than superpowers to get in their own way and oo their own vision of their shifting position in a c * ¹ ing world.             . ₍

The very recent course of international finand fairs offers an arresting example of relatively P performance on the part of the American supe^rP° in the prediction of events. Early in 1977, the •

In a photograph reminiscent of those which showed American servicemen giving a “Helping Hand” to Vietnamese civilians, a Cuban soldier, surrounded by three Popular Movement soldiers, idles a British-built tractor on a nationalized farm in central Angola.

Q

_n °^Vernrr>ent signalled its intention to let classic eco- _to ^ considerations govern its policy with respect k ^{e Va}lue of the dollar in foreign exchange mar- _a^j^S' country emphasized a basic and indisput- _Sess ^act' that the U. S. economy continued to pos- _Wijl ^enorrn°^us strength and vitality—and declared its

Hght B

^what ^exch; ^war_n

fgness to let the dollar find its own level in °f the great strength of that economy. ^ut the U. S. Government did not understand ^{11 w}as that was being measured in the foreign ^ange markets. It thus gave short shrift to the

!^er*ces to a fresh new American idiom in foreign °ne which would draw its vocabulary as much rig^°^Ss'td^e from the generous and powerful human- ^on ^{S lrn}P^u^^se which animated the new administra-

hackn

•tig ^ne^^e<^ ^sl°gans of great-power rivalry. By pioneer- ^a ^tndamentally new policy in fresh new terms, _Sj_Q '^v°^uld all the more quickly throw off the depres- t_at- °l^r the Vietnam experience and restore the repu- ^n of the United States in international affairs, at was one way of reading the omens. But there Had !^{n0ther Way>} as follows: The failure in Vietnam tiy ^ternP^orarily deprived the Americans of an effec- U,u ^ancl credible political-military response to Com- _C0(i^nist political-military initiatives at the lower, Actional end of the scale of military force. The j_{t e}pr'^cans problem was political, not military, but Som ^ecdve,y blocked them from counteraction for g_a^ '^definite time into the future. Therefore, a ^tabl^tXlsted’ ^a vacuum. The Soviets had not been no- tjj ^y tt>ore successful than the Americans in finding ^cans to adapt superpower military strength to

'ngs of foreign leaders whose view of the future ^a out to be more accurate than our own. Those gre ^{etS were not} concerned with the undoubted ab i ^StrenS^rh of the American economy, which in tin ^{Ute terms so} heavily outweighed every other na- ^economy. Instead, they were measuring our _eco^^{IOn to} the equally indisputable fact that basic _Suk ^0rnic and financial ratios were in the process of f!_n ^Stant*^al change, and that American economic and to   ^streng^th was steadily declining in relation

^ at of most other advanced national economies. m_en^{t adout} the same time that the U. S. Govern- cb ■ ^Was Proclaiming its faith in the workings of ^11. ^c ’nternational economics and its consequent

'^v°tld^^{neSS t0 C}^^e ^°^^ar *^{ts own wa}^ *^{n r}^^e 'tself ' ^{1C WaS a}^^S° ^announc'ⁿg that it had liberated

tyL. ^^r°m a slavish and outmoded anti-Communism

Pro • ¹¹ Relieved had lately served only to repress

vj_s >ⁱⁿg ^new foreign policy initiatives, particularly

^^ead ^V*^{S t}^*^e ^hird World. Africa, the new American

a_u^.^ersh*P thought, would offer especially receptive

affairs as

and which would be entirely free of the

Third World situations, but they were doing some­thing very interesting in Africa in collaboration with the Cubans. Moreover, if the Soviets had not scored any important successes in their many political- military ventures in the Third World, neither had they suffered a reverse remotely approaching the scale of the American failure in Vietnam. Superpower is as superpower does—and the test of the ability to do was taking place in Africa at the low end of the scale of force. Very large judgments would have to be drawn from very narrow premises, because those in governments all over the world with the responsibil­ity for reading the omens would have no choice but to work with the material at hand.

In the circumstances, arguments as to whether Af­rica is or is not a very important place strategically in the classic terms of geopolitics are in large measure beside the point. It is also profitless to hurl accusa­tions at those who insist on drawing far-reaching conclusions about the relative strength of the super­powers from narrow and ambiguous data about events in Africa, just as it was profitless to condemn speculators for their actions in the dollar crisis of 1978. Such complaints and accusations are, in fact, worse than profitless, for they serve only to confirm third-party observers in their doubts about the abil­ity of the country concerned to understand its true situation. And persistent evidence that a superpower may be losing its ability to understand its own situa­tion is among the most disquieting and destabilizing of political omens.

The task before the national security institutions of the country is to restore as a credible political- military option the possible use of armed force by the United States at the low end of the scale of force. It was the United States in past years which insisted that the possession of that option was a sine qua non for full status as a superpower. The Soviets, we ac­knowledged, had enough nuclear power to obliterate the world, but we emphasized that their power was not sufficiently articulate or “long-legged” to be em­ployed effectively in less than doomsday situations or at long distances from their own territory. The world accepted our definition of full superpower status, and over the years we have enjoyed many large political benefits from our success at having differentiated ourselves from the Soviets in this respect. Now, with the very effective assistance of the Cubans, Soviet military power seems to have become articulate and long-legged enough. Political leaders throughout the world see that the Soviets have worked long and pa­tiently to develop their military capabilities to fulfill the definition of superpower which we formulated. Those leaders will now be much interested to see