Nicaragua: Soviet Satrapy

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The Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional (FSLN) victory in Nicaragua on 19 July 1979, which followed closely the Marxist coup d’etat in Grenada, was the first successful social revolution in Latin America since the Cuban revolution of 1959. It is now apparent that there were actually two revolutions in Nica­ragua: a broadly based one to establish a Western-style democracy; and another, narrowly based one to establish a Marxist-Leninist state. The success of the latter demon­strated the application of V. I. Lenin’s classic “two- stage” revolutionary strategy: a nationalist bourgeois coup d’etat followed by a Marxist usurpation of power.

The Sandinistas originated as a small group of predomi­nantly middle class insurgents who began operations along the Honduran-Nicaraguan border in 1961. Carlos Fonseca Amador, founder of the FSLN, visited the Soviet Union in the late 1950s, and, together with Tomas Borge, Victor Tirado Lopez, Henry Ruiz, and the Ortega brothers, has received military training and protection in Cuba since I960.¹ However, Cuban support was meager during the 1960s and early 1970s.

Following the successful FSLN raid on the Castillo Quant residence in December 1974, Cuba took a renewed interest in the Sandinistas, apparently as a result of the Soviet Union’s innovative strategic doctrine of military assistance to peripheral theaters of the developing world, which emerged publicly at the same time as the raid.² Because of the international attention the Sandinistas re­ceived from the raid, they were perceived by the Kremlin as a viable insurgent force; and the Soviet Union was awakened to the invaluable strategic possibilities to be gained through securing a foothold on the Central Ameri­can isthmus.

In 1977 and early 1978, Armando Ulises Estrada Fer­nandez, the number two man in Cuba’s Americas Depart­ment (DA), worked to unify three FSLN factions. The Cubans told the Sandinistas that military assistance was contingent on the FSLN achieving effective unity. During the XI World Youth Festival held in Havana in July 1978, Cuban Premier Fidel Castro announced the unification of the three FSLN factions and urged other Latin American revolutionaries to demonstrate solidarity with the San­dinistas by staging operations in their own countries.³

By the end of 1978, Cuban advisers had been sent to northern Costa Rica to train and equip the FSLN with arms flown from Cuba. The Cubans were careful not to jeopard­ize international sympathy for the guerrillas by giving them Soviet-made weapons; instead they were supplied with U. S. M-16s captured in Vietnam, along with Ger­man G-3s and Israeli UZIs purchased from international arms dealers. This tactic worked so well that it became a model for supplying other Marxist insurgents, such as the guerrilla forces in El Salvador.

48

By the FSLN’s admission, some guerrillas were also trained in Cuba, although the exact number cannot be de­termined. At a press conference held at the Nicaraguan consulate in Paris on 25 July 1979, Angel Barrajon, the FSLN representative in Europe, told reporters that “nu­merous Nicaraguan combatants who trained in Cuba went through courses at a very qualified level over a long period of time.”⁴

When the FSLN’s final offensive was launched in mid- 1979, Cuban military advisers from the Department of Special Operations, an elite commando unit which had recently assisted in the 13 March 1979 coup d'etat in Gre­nada, accompanied Sandinista columns and maintained direct radio communications with Havana. The operations center run by the DA in San Jose, Costa Rica, was the focal point for coordinating Cuba’s support for the insur­gents. After the fall of President Anastasio Somoza Debayle, Julian Lopez Diaz, the chief of the San Jose center, became Cuban ambassador to Nicaragua; one of

The ultimate Soviet icons, images of Marx and Lenin, sanctified the anniversary celebration, previous page, of Nicaragua’s “second revolution.” Also present—seen salut­ing with Daniel Ortega—was this hemisphere’s resident firebrand Fidel Castro.

his assistants, Andres Barahona, was redocumented as a Nicaraguan citizen to become the de facto, although not titular, head of the country’s new intelligence service^ Sandinista General Directorate of State Security (DGSE)

Similar to the Grenada coup d’etat four months earlier, the Soviet-Cuban role in directing the Sandinista regime began within hours of the FSLN’s assumption of power with the deployment of a Bulgarian reconnaissance team under journalistic cover. Within a week of President Somoza’s departure, approximately 100 Cuban security and military advisers were in Managua; by October 1979, this figure had doubled.⁶

Feeling that the democratic ideals of the revolution had been betrayed by the Marxist-dominated junta, numerous Nicaraguans took up arms against the Sandinista regime- Among these was revolutionary war hero Eden Pastora Gomez, a former Sandinista deputy defense minister- Today, Pastora and nearly 12,000 other anti-communist Nicaraguan “Contras” are carrying out military opera' tions against the Sandinistas with some support from the United States.

By the end of August 1979, five Soviet generals were u¹ Nicaragua instructing the Sandinistas on operations against Honduras.⁷ Soviet, Cuban, East German, and Bui' garian advisers quickly began organizing the DGSE along textbook KGB lines using Cuban intelligence training manuals filled with Soviet technical words for intelligent

Soyi,

^ta Libyan Government provided Nicaragua with ap-

^atang _with a Spanish translation.⁸ Nearly all DGSE per- ^s°nnel were sent to training courses in Cuba; key officers ^are now scheduled to take part in advanced training purses in the Soviet Union. The approximately 3,000 icaraguans working under Lenin Cema, de jure chief of ^e DGSE, are assisted and directed by 400 Cubans, 70

viets, 40 to 50 East Germans, and 20 to 25 Bulgarians, tare is one experienced Soviet, Cuban, or Eastern-bloc ^Case officer for every six Nicaraguan security men.⁹

h a pattern established in Cuba and Grenada, the Soviet Presence in Nicaragua remained relatively low-key for the ^lrst two years following the revolution, apparently to both Jtanitor the progress of the Sandinistas toward a Marxist- ^eninist dictatorship and to lull the United States into sub- 'dizing the shattered Nicaraguan economy, saving the ^°viet Union tens of millions of dollars. On the other ■ ^and, the Cuban presence increased dramatically, reach­es 2,000 personnel by 1981. During 1979-82, the |. ^anaguan Government received an estimated $125 mil- j,°ⁿ worth of military equipment and supplies from the °^iet Union alone, usually shipped via Cuba and Libya.

l^ximately $100 million worth of economic assistance in ^ with more weapons valued at $200 million pledged ^ Col_one[ Mu’ammar Qaddafi for use in Central Amer­ica. ¹⁰ Seventy Nicaraguans were sent to Bulgaria for train­ing as pilots and mechanics; when the class completed its training in December 1982, the 40 mechanics returned to Nicaragua. The 30 pilots, trained to fly Soviet MiG air­craft, are currently in Cuba maintaining their flying profi­ciency while they wait for a suitable time to fly their fighter-bombers to Nicaragua. Reliable intelligence sources indicate that South Yemen has sold the Sandinistas ten MiG-17 fighters which, although antiquated, would still be capable of neutralizing the current air superiority of neighboring Honduras. This situation will further shift in Nicaragua’s favor when it begins operating with a squad­ron of more advanced MiG-21s, in which Nicaraguan pi­lots are training in Cuba.¹¹

Soviet advisers are now deeply involved in upgrading the Nicaraguan Air Force, assisted by about 20 Libyan and as many as 50 Palestinian Liberation Organization pilots and mechanics. The Palestinians are flying and servicing both the Sandinista Air Force and Aeronica, the Nicara­guan civilian airline. In November 1983, nine Bulgarian pilots arrived in Managua via Madrid and Havana.¹²

In November 1979, Henry Ruiz, an avowed Marxist member of the Sandinista National Directorate, visited the Soviet Union for a series of meetings with senior Soviet officials, including Boris Ponomarev, Secretary of the

TASS/SOVFOTO

Communist Party of the Soviet Union’s (CPSU) Central Committee, alternate Politburo member, and one of the leading architects of the Soviet Union’s Latin American policy.¹³ Ruiz had received training in both Cuba and the Soviet Union prior to the overthrow of Somoza and was considered one of the most trusted Soviet minions on the Executive Committee of the Sandinista National Director­ate. Coinciding with Ruiz’s visit, a major rally was held in Managua to commemorate the anniversary of the Russian Revolution.¹⁴

In January 1980, Soviet embassy personnel began arriv­ing in Managua, accompanying various Soviet planning and trade missions. Simultaneously, an announcement was made of Nicaraguan coffee sales to the Soviet Union,¹⁵ and, in April, Soviet ambassador German Shlyapnikov was received with great fanfare by the San- dinistas, who heralded his arrival as the beginning of an important strengthening of the ties between Nicaragua and the Soviet Union.¹⁶

Throughout 1980, the Soviet presence increased subtly yet steadily. In the fall, Nicaraguan students were sent to Hungary and the Soviet Union, coinciding with an an­nouncement of Soviet assistance for an “Adult Education Program.”¹⁷ In August, a Soviet oceanographic vessel arrived off Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast to “appraise East Coast marine wealth,” spending several weeks surveying the sleepy port of El Bluff, which is being developed into a major harbor by Bulgarian engineers.¹⁸ A cooperation agreement was also signed with Soviet television and Tass, and several Barricada reporters were sent to Mos­cow on a journalism training course.¹⁹

The Soviet presence became more pronounced in 1981 as Soviet weaponry began appearing in Sandinista regular army and militia units. In June, the Sandinistas admitted the existence of Soviet Mi-8 helicopters but said that these had been “lent” to Nicaragua for a six-month period.²⁰ That same month, Shlyapnikov inaugurated a Society for Friendship with Socialist Countries (Asociacion de Ami- stad con los Paises Socialistas). A few days later, the Soviet ambassador donated several vehicles to the San- dinist Workers Federation (CST) in an impressive cere­mony, during which he said that “the triumph of the San- dinist people’s revolution opened the doors for broad cooperation between the workers of the USSR and Nicara­gua.” CST Secretary-General Lucio Jimenez, a self-p^r0' claimed Marxist, answered in kind, saying that “the exp^e' riences of the victorious Soviet people are the guiding light and the path taken by all the oppressed and exploit peoples of the world to achieve their liberation.”²¹ Also in June, it was announced that more than 2,000 tons of Nica­raguan coffee were to be shipped to the Soviet Union, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria in r^e' turn for trade credits.²²

By 1982, the Soviet presence in Nicaragua had become considerably more overt. Military assistance increased substantially, and materiel began arriving directly f^roI1j the Soviet bloc. In February 1982, a Soviet ship delivered about 270 military trucks to the port of Corinto, bringing the total Soviet-bloc truck inventory in Nicaragua to more than 800. In April, a communist-bloc ship delivered f°^ul Soviet heavy tank ferries, one small patrol boat, and 1- BM-21 mobile multiple rocket launchers. The tank ferri^eS provide the Sandinista Army with an offensive water crossing capability, while the mobile rocket launchers gN° them a mass firepower weapon unmatched regionally-

In mid-1982, Cuban Defense Minister Raul Castro vis­ited Managua with a high-level military delegation, sup" posedly to “offer aid for flood damage.” Afterward, ¹¹ was announced that 2,000 additional Cuban construed⁰¹¹ workers were being sent to Nicaragua, engendering ^an increase in military construction activity.²⁴

In November 1982, a Soviet-bloc ship delivered an ad­ditional group of 25 T-54/55 tanks, bringing the total ^t0 about 50. This delivery followed a visit by Sandinista D¹' rectorate member Daniel Ortega to Moscow earlier in ^tllC year. To enhance the mobility of Sandinista ground forc^eSj the Soviets also delivered more Mi-8 helicopters, Ai>" aircraft, and BTR-60 armored personnel carriers. Seve^ra weeks later, eight new 122-mm. howitzers were deb^v ered, supplementing the 12 152-mm. guns delivered ¹ 1981. In late December 1982, the first delivery was ma of sophisticated Soviet electronic equipment—a high-E^fe quency/direction-finder intercept facility of a type ^se.^e, previously in Cuba. This type of equipment is able to & tercept signals from throughout Central America ^a° would be especially useful in pinpointing Honduran m¹ ^ tary communications sites.²⁵ Altogether, 14 Soviet-P

I9f4

ships made arms deliveries to Nicaragua in 1982.

Pursuing a policy of classic imperialism, the Soviet Union signed a bilateral trade agreement with Nicaragua in May 1982. Worth some $2 billion, the agreement al­lowed Nicaragua to exchange 14,000 tons of coffee, cot­ton, and sugar for Soviet manufactured goods and “aid” Projects—a deal which ensures that the Nicaraguans re­vive no hard currency to use in international trading or to erase their $400 million trade deficit.²⁶

Possibly the most significant Soviet-Nicaraguan action °f 1982 was Leonid Brezhnev’s speech before the Con­gress of Soviet Trade Unions on 16 March, when he Earned that NATO’s deployment of Pershing II missiles in Europe “would compel us to take retaliatory steps that ^ould put the other side, including the United States it­^Self, its own territory, in an analagous position.” When asked where such threatened Soviet missile deployments ^w°uld occur, a member of the Soviet Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force team in Geneva told a Spanish news agency E/e that the site could be either Cuba or Nicaragua.²⁷

Soviet involvement escalated in Nicaragua beginning in 1^83. As part of the “bilateral trade agreement” signed Uy Daniel Ortega in Moscow in May 1982, Nicaragua toased the Pacific port of San Juan del Sur to the Soviets as ^a port of call for Soviet fishing boats.” A Spanish-built ^’000-ton dry dock and 60-foot floating pier were recently towed to the port. Soviet engineers and technicians have jkscended on San Juan del Sur, taking over a hotel as their headquarters.²⁸

Strategically, acquisition of port facilities with major ^servicing capabilities on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua is [he most significant Soviet achievement in the Western hemisphere since the construction of the Cienfuegos sub- toarine base in Cuba. The port lies within easy striking distance of the major sea lines of communication (SLOCs) ^to and from the Panama Canal. The floating dry dock and Ptor are much larger than required for Soviet tuna fishing ^Vessels, for which the port is ostensibly planned.

The development of a major port facility at El Bluff, on ..^e Caribbean coast near Bluefields, is part of a $140 mil­ton “t_raci_e” agreement. Scheduled for completion in 986, the facility will feature a 1,000-foot pier and the ^a°ility to handle ships up to 25,000 tons; i.e., all Soviet ^t'^aval vessels up to and including the K/rov-class nuclear- P°Wered guided-missile cruiser, which displaces 23,000 °ⁿs. Nicaraguan officials have openly stated that “the Port will turn El Bluff into a citadel.”²⁹ In December ^83, the Sandinistas announced that 22 El Bluff port Ptoject workers left for Bulgaria for training, while an­ther 5,000 Nicaraguan construction workers would be [^ent to Bulgaria in 1984.³⁰ Cuban technicians have also ^e§un work on a new $200 million railway which will ^°ⁿnect El Bluff with the Pacific port of Corinto “with the p'Tose of linking the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans in ^6,1 years.”³¹

^ h spring 1983, both Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick and °^sto Rican Foreign Minister Fernando Volio Jimenez ftofted that the Sandinista Government had signed a se- ^{et a}greement with the Soviet Union for construction of a ^a~tovel, interoceanic canal with its terminus in the port

of San Juan del Sur.³²Although initially denied by Nicara­guan officials, Commandante Sergio Ramirez, at a 19 July 1983 speech to inaugurate the El Bluff-Corinto railway, said“. . . we are today starting no less than the construc­tion of the Nicaraguan canal. It is not a waterway, as the imperialists have always imagined it, but a dry canal, a railway canal that will allow us to transport cargo and passengers from the Atlantic [Coast] to the Pacific Coast of Nicaragua.”³³    -

Of further strategic importance was the contract signed on 13 June 1983 between Nicaragua and the Soviet Union for the construction of a ground station in Nicaragua as part of the Soviet Intersputnik satellite communications system.³⁴ The next day, an identical contract was signed in Grenada, lending further proof of coordinated planning for the Caribbean region at the highest levels of the Soviet Government.³⁵

Today, Nicaragua “hosts” some 8,000 Cubans, includ­ing approximately 2,000 military and security advisers. The remaining 6,000 personnel are technical advisers, teachers, doctors, and construction workers (the largest group). Cuban construction workers in Nicaragua are also a potential military force as, by their own admission, all construction “brigade members belong to the Territorial Troops Militia in Cuba or to the reserve, and that if neces­sary, all of them are willing ‘to fight on the side of the militiamen here who are as daring as we are.’”³⁶ About 1,200-1,500 so-called teachers in Nicaragua are also re­portedly Cuban military personnel.³⁷

Official Soviet support for the Sandinista regime be­came public in late July 1983, during Sandinista leader Jaime Wheelock’s visit to Moscow. Following Wheelock’s meeting with Boris Ponomarev and the Dep­uty Head of the CPSU’s International Department, the Soviets announced their consistent solidarity, “with the Nicaraguan people in the defense of the country’s sover­eignty and national independence, in defense of its revolu­tionary gains and its sacred right to shape its own des­tiny.”³⁸ Two days later, in Managua, Yuriy Fokin, Secretary General of the Soviet Foreign Ministry, asserted that his government would support Nicaragua, politically or otherwise, should there be U. S. aggression.³⁹

On 26 July 1983, Ambassador Kirkpatrick told report­ers that “there had been a substantial increase in the last few weeks” in the number of Cuban troops in Nicaragua and that their numbers were “continuing to grow.” The U.N. ambassador also referred to the presence of a num­ber of Soviet and Soviet-bloc personnel in Nicaragua.⁴⁰ Evidence for this latter assertion was provided in May 1983 when Eden Pastora, leader of the anti-Sandinista Military Revolutionary Democratic Alliance (ARDE) forces, announced that two East German military advisers had been captured in combat and were to be turned over to the International Red Cross.⁴¹ In February, Miskito Indi­ans of the Misurata guerrilla forces shot down two heli­copters whose pilots carried Cuban military identification papers. The same group reported that three Cuban infantry battalions were operating in the gold-mining region of Bonanza, along with People’s Revolutionary Army sol­diers from Grenada.⁴²

Soviet'! Antiaircraft fete Guns

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™ Soviet ■ Antiaircraft ^ Guns

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have been completed, and work has begun on a paf^a . runway-taxiway. The location of Punta Huete ^strot!^ suggests that the new airfield, when completed, will ^ Nicaragua’s main military airbase as well as the larg^e military airfield in Central America.⁵⁰      _ul

For those who may have any lingering doubts ab° both the ideological bias of the Nicaraguan regime and

800 meters of the estimated 3,600-meter main run

By 1982, the Soviet presence in Nicaragua had become considerably more overt, as shown by these improvements to the Sandino Airfield.

In June, four deserters from the Sandinista People’s Army (EPS)—three of whom were officers—reported the presence of 600 Cuban soldiers in Puerto Cabezas, on the Caribbean coast.⁴³ Puerto Cabezas is reported to be under the command of a Cuban officer named Caballon and is being defended by batteries of Soviet 122-mm. howitzers and Zu-23 23-mm. antiaircraft artillery.⁴⁴

In May 1983, General Amaldo Ochoa Sanchez, Cuban Vice-Minister of Defense, arrived in Nicaragua on a secret fact-finding mission. Ochoa’s presence was considered to be of extreme importance by both the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, for he, along with Soviet generals Petrov and Borisov, had been responsible for the successful Ogaden counteroffensive in Ethiopia from Jan­uary to March 1978. Considered a brilliant tactical innova­tor and a seasoned combat veteran from his earlier service in Angola, Ochoa had also made a secret fact-finding mis­sion to Ethiopia in February 1977, one year before the Ogaden counteroffensive. Defense Department officials believe that Ochoa’s presence in Nicaragua is to assess the military situation in light of the U. S.-backed, anti-San- dinista insurgency, and to determine whether it may re­quire increased Cuban military involvement.⁴⁵

In the first six months of 1983, 11 shiploads of heavy Soviet weapons were unloaded in Nicaragua, compared with 14 in all of 1982.⁴⁶ Ten other Soviet-bloc ships carry­ing military supplies arrived in Nicaragua during the sum­mer. For example, during the week of 30 July, more than 200 Soviet-built military vehicles, including two tank transporters, 80 jeeps, and five field ambulances, were unloaded from Soviet freighters at Corinto.⁴⁷ On 3 June, ^a Bulgarian ship unloaded Soviet T-54/55 tanks at El Blum followed by a shipment of 20 BTR-152 armored personnel carriers, five BRDM reconnaissance vehicles, four BM"' multiple rocket launchers, and other vehicles of lower ton­nage. On 5 June, an East German ship unloaded 100 mil¹ tary trucks and several tons of weapons and other mil im­material at Corinto, and, on 8 June, authorities at Puerto Limon, Costa Rica, searched the hold of the Soviet ship Nadezhda Krupskaya and found several Mi-8 helicop^terS intended for Nicaragua.⁴⁸

Taken in context with developments in Cuba and G^re' nada, the Soviets appear to be stockpiling military equip' ment in the Caribbean region in preparation for a p^r° traded regional conflict. The Sandinistas have increase their military forces to some 25,000 regular troops on ^aC' five duty, with another 50,000 in active reserve. In O^ct0„ ber 1983, military registration for an additional 200,0° men was decreed.⁴⁹

In addition to a massive increase in military forces, l[1]¹ Sandinistas have added 36 new military bases built Cuban specifications. Airfields are being constructedI ⁰ improved which could service military jet aircraft- r example, construction of a new dual-runway airfield ^a Punta Huete, near Managua, is proceeding rapidly- Ab°

^v>et i

■nternational allegiances, the following remarks by Daniel Ortega, coordinator of the Junta of the Government of National Reconstruction of Nicaragua, in a speech at Chinandega, Nicaragua, on 20 June 1983, speak clearly for themselves:

“The USSR is giving our country brotherly and valua­ble help. . . . Nicaragua is honored by the brotherly friendship of the USSR.”

Another key Sandinista leader, Victor Tirado, made the following remarks at a conference in Berlin, East Ger­many, on 25 April 1983, marking the 100th anniversary of Karl Marx’s death:     •

“We, the founders and organizers of the FSLN, pre­pared our strategy, our tactics and our program on the basis of Marx’s teachings. . . . We are sure that in following the banners of Marx, Lenin and Sandino we will overcome all difficulties. Marx is still the light of humanity.”

The increasing Sovietization of Nicaragua poses a vari­^ety of present and future threats to U. S. security. Clearly, °^Ur nation’s ability to maintain a reasonable global bai­lee of power can only be achieved by ensuring the secu- [“y of our borders, including our littoral zones. If the United States is to keep its security commitments to areas ^ strategic importance in the Middle East, Europe, and ^^s'a, it must be able to protect the vital SLOCs which ^SuPply U. S. forces abroad.

The consolidation of Soviet power in Nicaragua, the ^lrst Soviet foothold on the mainland, could lead to a detri­mental upset in the balance of power. Should Marxist- eninist influence spread with the fall of El Salvador and ®foer Central American republics, the United States would ^e forced to either reduce its crucial security commitments j-lsewhere in the world or assume a far greater defense nrden. The deployment of U. S. carrier battle groups off . ^oth the Pacific and the Caribbean coasts of Central Amer- '^Ca during last year’s exercises could become a permanent ^aecessity if the security situation deteriorates further.

The Soviet Union would achieve a major strategic ad- ^^antage by forcing the United States to take active mea- "^Ures to defend our southern borders. In 1971, in the So- journal Kommunist, Boris Ponomarev wrote:

'Seemingly quite reliable rear lines of American impe­^rialism are becoming a tremendous hotbed of anti-im­Perialist revolution. . . . These changes are having and, ^unquestioningly, will continue to have a strong impact °n further changes in the correlation of world forces in favor of . . . socialism.”⁵¹

The proliferation of Soviet-controlled bases along the strategic rear” of the United States would imperil our l sJCs. Logistics planning currently estimates that almost C °f the shipping tonnage that would be needed to rein- [;^>rcc NATO, and about 40% of that required by a major j^^ast Asian conflict, would have to pass from the Gulf of . ^exic₀ through the Caribbean-Central American zone, f ^ese same sea routes also carry roughly 50% of all other ^re,gn cargo, including crude oil, imported to the United

States. As the recent ‘‘Report of the President’s National Bipartisan Commission on Central Ameria” pointed out:

“The Soviets have already achieved a greater capabil­ity to interdict shipping than the Nazis had during World War II. . . . German U-boats then sank 260 merchant ships in just six months, despite the fact that Allied forces enjoyed many advantages, including a two-to-one edge in submarines and the use of Cuba for resupply and basing operations. Today this is reversed. The Soviets now have a two-to-one edge overall in submarines and can operate and receive air cover from Cuba, a point from which all 13 Carib­bean sea lanes passing through four chokepoints are vulnerable. . . . ”⁵²

Nicaragua is the strategic key to the security of the U.S. southern borders as well as to the global balance of power: the Soviet “correlation of world forces.” Decisive ac­tions—military, diplomatic, and economic—must be taken to remove what is already a grave threat right on our doorstep. More Americans should be aware of Public Law 87-733, passed by a Joint Resolution of Congress on 3 October 1962, which empowers our nation to implement the foreign policy requisite for the region. This law allows the United States “to prevent by whatever means may be necessary, including the use of arms, the Marxist-Leninist regime in Cuba from extending by force or the threat of force, its aggressive or subversive activities to any part of the hemisphere.” ^*

²⁸San Francisco Chronicle, 8 June 1983, p. C2. See also remarks by Dr. Fred C. Ikle, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, at American Security Council White House briefing, 26 August 1983.

²⁹Barricada (Managua), 20 February 1983, p. 5.

³⁰El Nuevo Diario (Managua), 3 December 1983, p. 2.

³¹FBIS-Latin America, 12 July 1983, p. P25.

³²La Prensa Libre (San Jose, Costa Rica), 25 March 1983, and The Washington Times, 29 April 1983.

³³FBIS-Latin America, 15 July 1983, p. P17.

^MBarricada, 14 June 1983, p. 6.

³⁵Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya (Moscow), 19 June 1983, FBIS-Soviet Union, 23 June 1983, p. Kl.

“Bohemia (Havana), 7 February 1983, pp. 72-75.

³⁷Remarks of Nestor D. Sanchez, ASC Seminar, Washington, D.C., 26 August 1983, p. 7.

³⁸Tass, 29 July 1983, FBIS-Soviet Union, 1 August 1983, p. Kl.

³⁹Havana Domestic Service, 3 August 1983, FBIS-Latin America, 4 August 1983, p. P10.

“The New York Times, 27 July 1983.

⁴¹FBIS-Latin America, 27 May 1983, p. P10.

⁴²FBIS-Latin America, 14 February 1983, p. P8.

⁴³FBIS-Latin America, 28 June 1983, p. P25.

^FBIS-Latin America, 17 June 1981, p. P24.

⁴⁵Miami Herald, 21 June 1983, and The New York Times, 19 June 1983.

“The New York Times, 27 July 1983.

⁴⁷Daily Telegraph (London), 30 July 1983, pp. 1, 24.

⁴⁸FBIS-Latin America, 20 July 1983, pp. A4, A5.

⁴⁹Barricada, 25 September 1983, p. 1.

⁵⁰Background Paper: Central America, p. 15.

^5,Boris Ponomarev, “Topical Problems of the Theory of the Revolutionary ess,” Kommunist, October 1971, p. 75.

⁵²Report of the President’s National Bipartisan Commission on Central America’ January 1984, p. 92.

Mr. Ashby is conducting research for his doctoral dissertation, “Soviej Strategy in the Caribbean.” He will receive his PhD in international relations in December from the University of Southern California. H^e lived in Grenada, off and on, from 1967 to 1980 and was residing there after the Marxist coup d'etat, from September 1979 to May 1980, durin? which time he witnessed the Cuban militarization of Grenada. His highjy acclaimed article, ‘‘Grenada: Soviet Stepping Stone,” was published iⁿ the December 1983 Proceedings.

“Restoring Order” South of the Border

By Richard K. Kolb