US threat to Cuba grows
Amendment would put US on war footing
By Dara MacNeil
These are good times to be an armchair warlord in Washington.
While US forces in the Gulf flex their muscles, the men who
foment conflict are busy acclimatising US public opinion to the
notion of direct military action against Cuba.
Earlier this month, as US legislators discussed the 1998 Defence
Budget, Senator Robert Graham of Florida succeeded in inserting
an amendment which effectively begins the process of legitimising
a US invasion of Cuba.
Specifically, the Graham amendment charges the US Secretary of
Defence with the responsibility for: carrying out an assessment
of Cuba's military power, and providing an evaluation of ``threats
to the National Security of the United States posed by Fidel
Castro and the Government of Cuba.''
The Graham amendment demands that the report be completed no
later than 30 March 1998. It is to be submitted to the Senate
Armed Services Committee and House Committee for National
Security.
The amendment has been passed by both houses of Congress. It now
awaits the signature of President Clinton before it becomes law.
If Clinton accedes, the anti-Cuban hawks in the US establishment
will at last have at their disposal the means whereby Cuba can,
officially, be declared a threat to the National Security of the
United States.
However, Senator Robert Graham's incendiary legislation does not
stop there. Indeed, as it develops, it careers off into a
stratospheric fantasyland that even spooks like Ollie North might
just find unsettling. Might.
Thus, it demands that the Secretary of Defence report to the US
Congress on ``what contingency plans have been drawn up, and the
resources available to defend US territory from potential
hostilities from Cuba.''
Read that again: ``to defend US territory from potential
hostilities from Cuba.'' It is straight out of Alice in
Wonderland.
It's the oldest trick in the book. Before you knock something
down, you must first build it up.
For decades, as US military planners dedicated themselves to the
cause of the Cold War, their colleagues in disinformation poured
forth a stream of propaganda. Soviet invasions were supposedly
imminent, their agents at work everywhere to undermine freedom.
Concomitantly, the US was perpetually playing a game of catch-up
with the militarised Soviet state. John F Kennedy largely owed
his electoral success in 1960 to his successful exploitation of
the ``missile gap'', the supposed fact that the Soviet Union held
far more warheads than the US, and generally enjoyed a military
advantage over the forces of the Free World.
As we know now, Kennedy's myth proved as fallacious as any ad
campaign dreamed up by Madison Avenue executives. Yes, there was
a missile gap: but it was the Soviet Union that perpetually
lagged well behind the US in the Cold War arms race.
Without the propaganda and the misinformation, without the dread
sense of threat they successfully engendered, the general public
might have been a little less eager to see their tax money
donated to the military-industrial complex, throughout the
western world. Indeed, they may even have become a little Bolshie
and demanded that their governments stop spending on arms, and
divert the money towards the broader well-being of society.
As it was, the Soviet Union finally imploded for a variety of
reasons, one of those being that they could no longer afford to
participate in the apparently limitless arms spree fuelled by the
Cold War.
With the Graham amendment, the United States is poised to replace
the Soviet enemy of old with Cuba, albeit on a more limited
scale.
Should Clinton sign this measure into law, the anti-Cuban hawks
will at last have the pretext for war that they have always
desired.
If it seems slightly ludicrous that a relatively poor, small
island with a population of just 11 million could somehow
constitute a serious military threat to the US, then cast your
mind back to the even more ludicrous invasion of Grenada, in
1983. Having deemed Grenada to constitute just such a risk, the
US dispatched a force of some 6000 men. Their task? To conquer an
island of barely 90,000 people, whose only understanding of the
word strategic derived from their country's important role in the
global spice trade.
But the invading forces obviously covered themselves in glory.
Why else would the 6000-strong force have shared some 9000 medals
and battle honours between them?
Crucially, the Graham amendment provides the pro-invasion hawks
with the means to begin softening up and acclimatising US public
opinion to just such an adventure in Cuba. Thus, if it is signed
into law, we will be informed ad nauseam between here and 30
March 1998, that the US Secretary of State himself is both
evaluating the military threat from Cuba, and examining US
preparedness for the arrival of Cuban armoured divisions on the
streets of New York.
Those scare tactics have worked in the past and, if left
unchecked, will work again. And once the `scare' is implanted in
the public psyche it becomes easier, more acceptable to suggest
that, well, wouldn't it just be better if the US struck at Cuba
first?
The Graham amendment, again if passed, would also effectively
force Cuba onto a war footing. After all, Cuba has experience of
an attempted US invasion, in 1961. Indeed, when the Grenada
invasion fleet was spotted steaming south in 1983, many in Cuba
believed that the US had finally come to take revenge for the Bay
of Pigs fiasco. The country prepared for war and plans were even
drawn up to pass out spare weaponry to willing visitors and
tourists then on the island.
On a war footing, Cuba would be forced to divert its scarce
resources towards defence. And that's the pernicious beauty of
the Graham amendment.
As documented repeatedly over the years - most recently by the
eminent American Association for World Health - Cuba has for some
years been diverting its resources away from defence spending, in
order to maintain a health and education system under attack from
the US blockade.
Once forced to reverse this order of priorities - by way of a
very explicit threat of violence - the gains of the Revolution
would disappear and Cuba would collapse internally. That at least
appears to be the hope of Senator Robert Graham and his Miami
accomplices.
Lastly, the importance of the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, in
the south of Cuba, cannot be underestimated. Ceded to the US in
perpetuity in 1903, the 117 square mile naval base is the largest
in the region. Technically, it is US ``territory.'' Thus, any
threat to the base would be deemed to constitute a threat to the
``national security'' of the US. This vague terminology is
precisely what fills the Graham amendment.
Knowing full well that Cuba has no intention of invading the US,
the framers of this odious measure have been careful to keep
their options open. What chance then of a manufactured `incident'
on the `border' between Cuba and Guantanamo Bay, being held to
constitute a threat to US ``territory'', or its ``national
security.''?
d that of course would provide the necessary pretext for
invasion.
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