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Perhaps, as the cynics say, we were played for “Uncle Sucker” again as Castro emptied his jails and his asylums. Maybe. But the mass exodus from Cuba in 1980 showed the world— but especially the Caribbean nations—the advantages of having a Coast Guard. If we are the ones to help the Caribbean nations establish coast guards of their own, we can’t help but help ourselves.
It is imperative that the Reagan Administration form a sensible, long-range program for the Caribbean. The waters of that sea and the countries which make up its rim are vital to the United States. A successful Caribbean policy must consist of more than monetary aid and military equipment if the United States is to ensure freedom of its adjacent waters and maintain necessary influence with its international neighbors.
Along with independence, most Caribbean islands have acquired a sense of nationalism and a crush of economic pressure. These nations do not want either the United States or most of their neighboring island nations to interfere with their internal affairs, yet they cry out for aid in getting established and generating internal stability. If the Caribbean nations' needs are not supplied by the United States,
they will be supplied by another source.
Fidel Castro looks like a success to many Caribbean peoples. He has provided stability for his government for 20 years, despite the Bay of Pigs and Central Intelligence Agency assassination attempts. It is true that more than 100,000 Cubans opted to leave their native land in 1980, but as many as ten million stayed. Some of those who left risked the penalties of hijacking in order to return to Cuba.
Every year, we hear of shortfalls in production and of economic problems in Cuba. Simultaneously, we hear of the Soviet Union subsidizing the island to help keep Castro’s form of communism intact. Therein is an impressive display: Regardless of the drain on the Soviet Union, it continues to aid Cuba, even into Castro’s third decade of control. Such support is a marvel of dependability and resoluteness, particularly when held up against the sorry manner in which the United States first pumped millions of dollars into Southeast Asia and now turns its back on refugees from Cambodia and Vietnam.
Caribbean leaders can look upon Castro as someone who has done for his nation what they would like to do for their own: provide continuity, economic security, improved living conditions, and political stability for those in power. If carefully shipped, Castro’s communism could traverse the warm waters of the Caribbean.
So what? We have lived with Castro “on our doorstep’’ for 20 years and we have survived with no significant catastrophes, the short-term problems of the 1980 mass exodus from Cuba notwithstanding. Of what possible concern could the rest of the Caribbean be if we are passively receptive to the presence of a communist government within small- boat range of U. S. shores?
Of course, there is the avowed national concern for the well-being of all the world’s citizens. Our long history of concern with the Western Hemisphere and the Americas—most recently exemplified by El Salvador—if not just cause for continued interest in the Caribbean, is at least indicative of past belief that our hemispherical integrity is worth something.
Most of the Caribbean islands offer little of true worth to the United States from an economic standpoint. Admittedly, bauxite from Jamaica is important to aluminum manufacturers, and there may be those who believe that true Barbados rum is indispensable, but most U. S. economic influence in the Caribbean would seem to revolve around the tourist trade. American tourists, however, can find palm trees in Florida, volcanoes in Hawaii, and lush, green vegetation in Oregon.
It is these islands’ location and that of the Caribbean Sea that should be of concern to the United States. The reason, at least in the short-term, is today’s number one economic commodity: oil. The
Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) conjures up visions of robed sheiks with Rolls Royces. But Venezuela, the southern border of the Caribbean bowl, is a member of OPEC. Trinidad and Tobago, islands which lie next to Venezuela, export huge amounts of crude oil; much of this petroleum is shipped to the United States. Hess Oil has an extensive refining complex in St. Croix in the U. S. Virgin Islands, a refinery which accommodates the largest tankers calling at any U. S. port.
In addition, all shipping using the Panama Canal must traverse the Caribbean. Our receding control of waterborne traffic passing through the “ditch” is only amplified if we lose all of our influence in the Caribbean. Though not exactly overrun with shipping, the Caribbean is a transit area for much of the world’s commerce, including U. S. oil supplies. Any enemy of the United States who developed the ability to sever or even strangle this supply line would have a weapon of considerable importance.
The Carter Administration saw the potential threat of the Caribbean; not just the threat of communist advancement through the small island nations, but the threat of a cutoff of seaborne commerce. President Carter was beginning to build up U. S. presence and influence in the Caribbean until Afghanistan, Iran, and the Cuban mass exodus all sprang upon him. He ordered showy, if marginally valuable, maneuvers at Guantanamo and re-created a significant military command in Key West as part of his burgeoning Caribbean policy.
Key West may sound tropical to people in Montana and Ohio, but to those who live in the real Caribbean, Key West is the United States; it has become little more than a mecca for U. S. vagrants. Thus, Carter made his first mistake in his Caribbean policy: He knew that Key West was physically close to, though not adjacent to, the Caribbean. Therefore, he believed that Key West was a good place to show America’s Caribbean intentions. The real Caribbean, however, was uniformly unimpressed by military buildups in the state of Florida. Mistake number two: After the maneuvers in Guantanamo, the Carter Administration planned more extensive maneuvers throughout the Caribbean. Certain Central and South American countries balked, however, explaining to Carter that the Caribbean was no longer a U. S. playground, and he should take his Navy elsewhere to play its games. Carter cancelled the maneuvers.
Finally, there was the crisis that is indicative of the Caribbean’s future: the Cuban exodus. Mounted on top of Carter’s other foreign relations crises and the declining state of affairs at home, this problem forced the President to shelve his long-range Caribbean plans. The “boatlift,” however, was more significant than most realize. The Cubans and Haitians entering Florida and the citizens of the Dominican Republic who continue to enter the United States, either through Florida or Puerto Rico, are indicators of the poverty, disease, determination, and desire for betterment which pervades so much of the Caribbean. But the long-range, comprehensive policy which the United States needs in this sea-dependent area is still nonexistent.
So far, apart from vague promises of aid and incentives, the best the Reagan Administration has been able to come up with for a Caribbean policy are now-forgotten campaign pledges to give Puerto Rico statehood “if the people of Puerto Rico want it.” The fact that a Caribbean policy needs to be formed is undeniable. Not having a policy leaves both short- and long-range gaps in our sea-defense perimeter. But statehood for Puerto Rico as an initial effort toward a comprehensive Caribbean pol- of Puerto Rico do not want statehood. Although the present governor was reelected as part of the prostatehood party and ran on a pro-statehood platform, he won less than 50% of the popular vote and was forced to retract his own pledge that if reelected he would hold a statehood plebiscite within a year. He admitted that the election clearly showed that sufficient support for statehood was lacking.
Finally, statehood would appear to be less than ideal for Puerto Rico. The island already receives billions of dollars in federal aid, grants, food stamps, and other programs annually while the people pay no federal income taxes. Admittedly, Puerto Ricans do not have the right to vote in national elections, but they have all the other advantages of U. S. citizenship, including open travel to the states and access to the federal judicial system. And they do have
icy would be only a gesture. Such a gesture would be wasted on most of the people of the United States, who do not have the foggiest notion of exactly what Puerto Rico’s status is vis-a-vis the United States, and scorned by the rest of the Caribbean nations, which, depending on their political viewpoint, see Puerto Rico as either a welfare-state extension of the great monolith to the north or a colony subjected to the imperialism of the United States.
More important, however, most of the people
their own truly free and open elections. The present commonwealth status is probably the one which provides Puerto Rico with the best of both worlds: tropical living on a naturally beautiful island, a modern (nonagrarian) economy, tremendous subsidies from the federal government, full rights of citizenship, yet freedom from the burdens imposed on states of the union. Proposing statehood as part of a Caribbean policy is shortsighted and shows ignorance not only of Puerto Rico, but of the whole Caribbean.
It is important to have high-level discussions between, for example, Barbados Prime Minister Tom Adams, dark suit, his Defense Force Commander Lieutenant Colonel Rudyard Lewis, and the chiefs of the U. S. Navy and Coast Guard. But, perhaps more important, small cadres of U. S. Coast Guard personnel can provide both immediate and lasting help to our Caribbean neighbors in their fight against poverty, disease, and political instability.
The Caribbean can provide the United States with a buffer zone, an area of stability, certainty, and loyalty between North America and the historically unstable nations of Central and South America.
Beyond that, effective U. S. support in the Caribbean would be a demonstration of U. S. willingness to provide legitimate aid to other nations in the hemisphere, which could only help to create stability in the rest of the Americas, improving the prospects for peace within the Western Hemisphere.
The United States has something many of the nations of the Caribbean want: a Coast Guard. Although various countries call it a navy or a coastal
defense force, the fact is that the small developing nations of the Caribbean want a quasi-military seagoing service capable of providing limited defense, search and rescue, environmental protection, and aids to navigation services to their people.
One example is the island of Barbados. The people of Barbados have a strong British heritage; the island still belongs to the commonwealth of Great Britain. The Barbados Government has established a defense force and is in the process of reorganizing its coast guard into an effective unit. The United States has offered to help Barbados in its buildup of a coast guard. The offer: millions of dollars in loans to cover contracts with U. S. firms. The catch: The interest rate, which is the current treasury bill rate, hovers in the double-digit region. Other than this cash/contract offer, the United States has not agreed to provide the people of Barbados with equipment or, more importantly, with people who have the training, knowledge, and expertise to run a coast guard.
The British have also made an offer to Barbados. They will send a group of their personnel to be the Barbados Coast Guard, to build up the organization, establish the bases, and run the boats. The British will be teaching the Barbados Coast Guard personnel how such a force works until the British finally “work themselves out of a job." The British are offering contracts and loans at 1\% interest. To whom is the Barbados Government going to turn for help for its coast guard?
The British cannot, of course, be everywhere, and frankly they are a lot less concerned about others of the islands to which their ties are more tenuous or even nonexistent.
Barbados, though, is not atypical. The people and the government of the island want genuine assistance, not just badly inflated dollars, and they will take that help from whomever provides the best offer. For Barbados the best offer is Britain’s. For Grenada, which presently receives substantial technical help and equipment from Castro, it appears more and more as if the best offer is Cuba’s. If the United States wants to keep its southern sea-lanes open, and if Americans are genuinely concerned with freedom for the peoples of the Caribbean, then the next move must be from the United States, and it must be substantial.
The very things Barbados and the other Caribbean nations want their “navies” to do are the exact functions of the U. S. Coast Guard. Our cutters maintain a (limited) military capability; search and rescue has been bread and butter for the service for years (the National Search and Rescue School is located at the Coast Guard training center in New York and is run jointly by the Coast Guard and Air Force); the service’s strike teams have acquired worldwide respect for their efforts at limiting and cleaning up oil spills;
the Coast Guard initiated loran. and no other nation has a more extensive system of fixed and floating aids to navigation.
Small cadres of three to four Coast Guard personnel with a minimum of equipment and a maximum of experience could be sent to a few of the island nations at a time. With a year of concentrated effort, these individuals could teach a nucleus of personnel on each island the basics required to deal effectively with Coast Guard-like problems. Language would be a minor barrier as English is spoken almost universally throughout the Caribbean, and the resources of the host nation (boats, communications equipment) could be employed rather than shipping in megadollars worth of U. S. equipment. Although the Coast Guard does have its own current manpower shortages, the benefits of undertaking such a program would more than outweigh the small losses to the stateside Coast Guard. The service would likely have little trouble locating volunteers to serve for a year or so in Trinidad, St. Lucia, or any of a dozen other exotic-sounding places.
Finally, such a direct, working-level, firsthand approach would be more effective than having Coast Guard admirals and captains giving briefings and slide-show presentations to high-level dignitaries from these small nations. The assistance must be real and show almost immediate results to be effective. High- level meetings make good appearances and satisfy the dictates of diplomacy, but true loyalty and aid can only be given by people “in the field.”
Instead of shipping complex, expensive war machinery to the Caribbean nations, the United States should export some of its knowledge and expertise in the form of Coast Guard personnel, training, and knowledge. We have what these people need and can supply it to them at very limited cost.
We cannot afford to keep another fleet in the Caribbean; we cannot “buy” the loyalty of the small island nations with weaponry that is too complex for their use; and we cannot count on their support simply because they will fear communism. Instead, we must win their support, encourage their loyalty, and stand by them through their growing pangs and times of trouble so they will stand by us if and when we need their help.
A 1970 graduate of the Coast Guard Academy. Lieutenant Commander Adams served for two years in the USCGC Absecon (WHEC-374), then had a three-year assignment at the Coast Guard Rescue Coordination Center in Norfolk. Following a 1975-77 tour in the USCGC Steadfast (WMEC-623). he served at the San Francisco Vessel Traffic Center until July 1979. He then became operations officer at the Coast Guard Greater Antilles Section in San Juan. Puerto Rico. He is now the executive officer of the USCGC Dependable (WMEC-626). Lieutenant Commander Adams is a frequent contributor to the Proceedings, and an essay of his was published in To Gel the Job Done, a 1976 Naval Institute Press book on leadership and management. He received the Naval Institute’s author’s award of merit in 1981.