US adds Cuba to blacklist on counterterrorism

Source: Rawstory

May 13 2020

The United States said Wednesday it had added Cuba to a blacklist of countries that do not fully cooperate on counterterrorism, denouncing the presence of Colombian leftist guerrillas.

Cuba joined four US adversaries — Iran, Syria, North Korea and Venezuela — in failing to be certified for 2019 under a US counterterrorism law that affects defense exports.

It was the first time that Cuba was not certified since 2015. The State Department pointed to the presence of negotiators from Colombia’s ELN rebels, who traveled to Havana in 2017 to negotiate with the Bogota government but have not returned.

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“Cuba’s refusal to productively engage with the Colombian government demonstrates that it is not cooperating with US work to support Colombia’s efforts to secure a just and lasting peace, security and opportunity for its people,” the State Department said.

Colombian President Ivan Duque, a conservative ally of the United States, broke off talks with the ELN after a January car bomb attack on a Bogota police academy killed 21 recruits.

The militants have been demanding, unsuccessfully, that Colombia grant safe passage for its negotiators to return from Cuba.

The State Department move will have little practical effect on Cuba, which does not import weapons from the United States, its arch-rival.

But the step is the latest by President Donald Trump’s administration to increase pressure on Cuba and move away from the reconciliation efforts under his predecessor Barack Obama.

The ELN is said to operate in about 10 percent of Colombia but is a smaller player than the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which reached a landmark peace agreement with the government in 2016.

Cuban Missile Crisis Beliefs Endure After 50 Years

Πηγή: abc
By PETER ORS (AP)
Oct 13 2012

The world stood at the brink of Armageddon for 13 days in October 1962 when President John F. Kennedy drew a symbolic line in the Atlantic and warned of dire consequences if Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev dared to cross it.

An American U-2 spy plane flying high over Cuba had snapped aerial photographs of Soviet ballistic missile sites that could launch nuclear warheads with little warning at the United States, just 90 miles away. It was the height of the Cold War, and many people feared nuclear war would annihilate human civilization.

Soviet ships carrying nuclear equipment steamed toward Kennedy's "quarantine" zone around the island, but turned around before reaching the line. "We're eyeball-to-eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked," U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk famously said, a quote that largely came to be seen as defining the crisis.

In the five decades since the nuclear standoff between Washington and Moscow, much of the long-held conventional wisdom about the missile crisis has been knocked down, including the common belief that Kennedy's bold brinksmanship ruled the day.

On the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, historians now say it was behind-the-scenes compromise rather than a high-stakes game of chicken that resolved the faceoff, that both Washington and Moscow wound up winners and that the crisis lasted far longer than 13 days.

 In this June 3, 1961, file photo, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and President John F. Kennedy talk in the residence of the U.S. Ambassador in a suburb of Vienna. The meeting was part of a series of talks during their summit meetings in Vienna. Fifty years after the Cuban missile crisis, the National Archives in Washington has pulled together documents and secret White House recordings to show the public how President John F. Kennedy deliberated to avert nuclear war. The exhibit opens Friday, Oct. 12, 2012, to recount the showdown with the Soviet Union. It is called "To the Brink: JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis." 

Declassified documents, oral histories and accounts from decision-makers involved in the standoff have turned up new information that scholars say provides lessons for leaders embroiled in contemporary crises such as the one in Syria, where President Bashar Assad has ignored international pleas to stop attacks on civilians in an uprising that has killed more than 32,000 people.

Another modern standoff is over Iran, which the West accuses of pursuing a nuclear weapons program. In a recent U.N. speech, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew a red line on a cartoon bomb to illustrate that a nuclear Tehran would not be tolerated.

"Take Iran, which I have called a Cuban Missile Crisis in slow motion," said Graham Allison, author of the groundbreaking study of governmental decision-making "Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis."

"This same process is looming on the current trajectory, inexorably, toward a confrontation at which an American president is going to have to choose between attacking Iran to prevent it becoming a nuclear weapons state or acquiescing and then confronting a nuclear weapons state," Allison said.

"Kennedy's idea would be, 'Don't let this reach the point of confrontation,'" he added. "The risks of catastrophe are too great."

Among the common beliefs about the Cuban missile crisis that have been reevaluated:

———

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: The crisis was a triumph of U.S. brinkmanship.

REALITY: Historians say the resolution of the standoff was really a triumph of backdoor diplomacy.

Kennedy resisted pressure from aides advising that he cede nothing to Moscow and even consider a preemptive strike. He instead engaged in intense behind-the-scenes diplomacy with the Soviets, other countries and the U.N. secretary-general.

Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy met secretly with the Soviet ambassador on Oct. 27 and conveyed an olive branch from his brother: Washington would publicly reject any invasion of Cuba, and Khrushchev would withdraw the missiles from the island. The real sweetener was that Kennedy would withdraw Jupiter nuclear missiles from U.S. installations in Turkey, near the Soviet border. It was a secret pledge known only to a handful of presidential advisers that did not emerge until years later.

"As the historical record has expanded, the image of the resolute president has given way to the resolution president," Cuba analyst Peter Kornbluh wrote in an article in the November issue of Cigar Aficionado, an advance copy of which was made available to The Associated Press.

Nevertheless, the brinkmanship myth persists, with President George W. Bush in 2002 citing the missile crisis as a historical lesson in fortitude that justified a preemptive invasion of Iraq.

"The storyline is a lot easier that Kennedy stood steely-resolved, faced Khrushchev down and that's it," said Allison, a professor at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and former senior defense adviser to several Democratic and Republican administrations. "If you hang tough enough the other guy will eventually yield — that is actually the lesson that became part of the popular mythology."

————

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: Washington won, and Moscow lost.

REALITY: The United States came out a winner, but so did the Soviet Union.

The Jupiter missiles are sometimes described as nearly obsolete, but they had come online just months earlier and were fully capable of striking into the Soviet Union. Their withdrawal, along with Kennedy's assurance he would not invade Cuba, gave Khrushchev enough to feel he had saved face and the following day he announced the imminent dismantling of offensive weapons in Cuba.

Soon after, a U.S.-Soviet presidential hotline was established and the two nations initiated discussions that led to the Limited Test Ban treaty and ultimately the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

"The major lesson is the necessity of compromise even when faced with a crisis like that," said Robert Pastor, an international relations professor at American University and former national security adviser for Latin America under President Jimmy Carter.

Pastor said he had many discussions about the missile crisis over the years with his late father-in-law, Robert McNamara, who was Kennedy's defense secretary. Pastor said domestic politics made it tough for both Kennedy and successive presidents to heed that lesson, as evidenced by Kennedy's intense efforts to keep the deal secret.

President Barack Obama, for example, faces considerable pressure to maintain a tough line on Cuba. Among the issues are the U.S. embargo, demands for political change, an American government subcontractor imprisoned in Cuba as an alleged spy and five Cuban intelligence agents serving long sentences in the United States.

"Look at U.S.-Cuban relations right now," Pastor said. "I don't think Obama would consider a compromise, because the pressure on him that 'You gave in to the Cubans' is too great."

——

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: It was a high-seas showdown.

REALITY: It's true the missile crisis was full of tense moments. On Oct. 27, a U.S. warship dropped depth charges over a nuclear-armed Soviet sub and the Soviets shot down a U-2 spy plane over Cuba. It was "the darkest, most dangerous day of the crisis," Kornbluh said.

Yet after Kennedy on Oct. 22 announced a U.S. naval quarantine around the island to prevent more military equipment from arriving, Khrushchev recalled ships carrying nuclear equipment the following day, according to the 2008 book "One Minute to Midnight" by Michael Dobbs, which was based on newly examined Soviet documents.

That means that on Oct. 24, when Secretary of State Rusk made his famous "eyeball-to-eyeball" statement reacting to supposedly up-to-the-minute intelligence, the vessels were already hundreds of miles away, steaming home.

"This thing about eyeball-to-eyeball, it never was. That confrontation never took place," said Kornbluh, who is a Cuba analyst at the nongovernment National Security Archive, which has spent decades working to get missile crisis documents declassified.

———

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: It was an intelligence coup for the CIA.

REALITY: Along with being a day late on the turnaround by Soviet ships, the CIA missed several key developments that would have helped Kennedy and his advisers navigate the crisis.

The CIA learned late in the game about the ballistic missiles' presence in Cuba, and they were already operational by the time Kennedy was informed of their existence.

The agency was also unaware of other, tactical nuclear missiles in Cuba that could have been deployed against a U.S. attack. The Soviets had even positioned nuclear-tipped missiles on a ridge above the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in preparation for an invasion.

"They were going to obliterate the base," Kornbluh said.

———

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM: The crisis lasted just 13 days.

REALITY: This myth has been perpetuated in part by the title of Robert F. Kennedy's posthumous memoir, "Thirteen Days," as well as the 2000 movie of the same name starring Kevin Costner.

Indeed it was 13 days from Oct. 16, when Kennedy was first told about the missiles, to Oct. 28, when the Soviets announced their withdrawal.

But the "October Crisis," as it is known in Cuba, dragged on for another tense month or so in what Kornbluh dubs the "November Extension," as Washington and Moscow haggled over details of exactly what weapons would be removed.

The Soviet Union also had problems dealing with Fidel Castro, according to a Soviet document made public this month by Svetlana Savranskaya, a Russia analyst for the National Security Archive.

Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan traveled to Cuba that Nov. 2 and spent 20 days in tense talks with the Cuban leader, who was angry the Soviets had reached a deal without consulting him. Castro lobbied hard but unsuccessfully to keep the tactical nuclear weapons that the Americans had not learned about.

Russia Seeks Naval Bases in Cold War Allies Cuba, Vietnam

Πηγή: Bloomberg

By Henry Meyer and Anatoly Temkin
July 27 2012

Russia is in talks to set up naval bases in former Cold War allies Cuba and Vietnam as President Vladimir Putin undertakes the country’s biggest military overhaul since the Soviet era.

“We are working on establishing navy bases outside Russia,” Vice-Admiral Viktor Chirkov, the navy’s commander-in- chief since May, said in an interview with the state-run RIA Novosti news service and confirmed by the navy. “We aim to set up resupply bases in Cuba, the Seychelles and Vietnam.”

Russia’s intentions for overseas military expansion threaten to further strain relations with the U.S. when the former superpower rivals are at loggerheads over American missile-shield plans and how to respond to the fighting in Syria. Putin’s government plans to spend 23 trillion rubles ($712 billion) this decade on defense spending, including 4.4 trillion rubles next year, an increase of 19 percent.

“There’s a lot of tension between Washington and Moscow right now as Syria is creating a lot of bad feeling between them,” said Pavel Felgenhauer, an independent defense analyst in Moscow. “This will be seen by some in the U.S. as the Russian bear growling in its lair.”

Pentagon spokesman George Little said Russia has “a right to enter into military agreements and relationships” with other nations, just as the U.S. does. He didn’t raise concern about Russia seeking military access to Cuba, which lies near the mouth of the Gulf of Mexico and is 145 kilometers (90 miles) south of the Florida Keys.

“I’m aware of the reports, but I don’t know that an agreement has been reached between the Russians and Cubans on a base,” Little told reporters at the Pentagon today.

‘Red Line’

U.S. Air Force General Norton Schwartz in 2008 warned Russia not to cross a “red line” by stationing bombers in Cuba, where the deployment of Soviet missiles brought Moscow and Washington close to nuclear conflict in 1962. Schwartz commented after the newspaper Izvestia said Russia planned to build a refueling base for strategic aircraft in the Communist island state in response to U.S. plans to deploy elements of a missile- defense system in Europe. The Russian Defense Ministry later denied the report.

Under the deal that ended the 1962 Cuban crisis, the Soviet Union withdrew its missiles and pledged not to station offensive weapons on the island. Russian military cooperation with Cuba ended in 2002 after Russia closed its radar base at Lourdes, Russia’s only intelligence-gathering center in the Western hemisphere, which had been operating since the 1960s.

Vietnam Agreeable

Vietnam’s President Truong Tan Sang said in an interview broadcast by Voice of Russia radio that his country is ready to let Russia set up a servicing facility in Cam Ranh Bay, a former Soviet naval base, though Vietnam will not lease its territory to any country.

In June, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta visited the one-time hub of American military activity seeking greater naval access to the port as the U.S. rebalances its forces toward the Asia-Pacific region.

Sang held talks with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow yesterday and met Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi today. Cuban leader Raul Castro held talks with Putin in Moscow earlier this month. Calls to the Cuban Embassy in Moscow weren’t answered.

Vietnam backs Russia’s criticism of U.S. plans to expand missile-defense sites, which improves security in some nations at the expense of others, the countries said in a joint communique today after the talks.
‘Good News’

Russia risks losing its only military base outside the former Soviet Union, a naval resupply facility in the Syrian port of Tartus, as President Bashar al-Assad fights for survival in the face of a 17-month uprising.

Russia doesn’t have the naval resources at the moment for a permanent presence outside its territorial waters, with only about 30 major warships split between five fleets, so the possibility of opening resupply bases doesn’t mean an expansion of Russian maritime power, Felgenhauer said.

“But this is good news for the U.S. navy” as it seeks to protect its funding in a time of budget cuts, Felgenhauer said. “They can go to Congress to warn that Russia is trying to get a presence around the world.”

Chirkov said yesterday that Russia may take delivery of 10 to 15 naval ships this year, including frigates and nuclear- powered submarines, according to RIA Novosti.

Rebuilding Mode

The Russian Navy has been rebuilding since 2008, after falling to about one-quarter its Soviet-era peak, according to Thomas Fedyszyn, a retired Navy captain who is a national security professor at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.

Russia sees its navy as a tool to “project the Russian image abroad and ensure the security of all Russian economic expansion,” he wrote in the March issue of Proceedings, a publication of the U.S. Naval Institute. “Russian task groups in the Caribbean will be increasing Russia’s international stature as well as selling arms to Latin American nations, rather than threatening American military exercises,” he wrote.

Final volume in CIA’s official history of Bay of Pigs invasion still in dispute

Cuban leader Fidel Castro, lower right, sits inside a tank during the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.

Πηγή: The Miami Herald
By MIMI WHITEFIELD
April 16 2012


More than 50 years after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA is fighting a lawsuit filed by The National Security Archive seeking release of the final volume of its official history.

Fifty-one years after a CIA-backed exile force hit the beaches of Cuba for what became known as the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Central Intelligence Agency is still fighting the release of the final volume of its official history of the ill-fated mission.

The final volume is a rebuttal by Jack Pfeiffer, the CIA’s chief historian, of a report by the agency’s inspector general that found the CIA itself bore primary responsibility for the failure of the April 14-19, 1961, invasion. The IG blamed “bad planning,’’ faulty intelligence, inadequate staffing and failure to inform President John F. Kennedy that the success of the operation was “dubious.’’

The invasion, whose centerpiece was a 1,500-man exile force called the 2506 Brigade that landed at Playa Girón on April 17, was designed to topple the Castro regime. Instead, it failed less than 72 hours later, resulting in the deaths of 114 exiles and the capture of 1,100 men by the Cuban army and militia.

Who is to blame for the failure has been debated for the past five decades.

Lyman Kirkpatrick, who wrote the inspector general’s report, cited “a tendency in the agency to gloss over CIA inadequacies and to attempt to fix all of the blame for the failure of the invasion upon other elements of the government’’ in a cover letter to the 1961 report.

In contrast, Pfeiffer’s account “tried to fully pin the blame for the historic calamity on the Kennedy White House,’’ said Peter Kornbluh, senior analyst at The National Security Archive. “Pfeiffer pushed the line that Kennedy was responsible and his brother Bobby helped transfer blame to the CIA.’’

The Washington-based nonprofit research institute and library filed a lawsuit last year on the 50th anniversary of the invasion, asking for declassification of all five volumes in the official history. Previous requests for the documents under the Freedom of Information Act had been unsuccessful.

Volume III was actually released in 1998 but the world was unaware of it until David Barrett, a Villanova University professor, found it in 2005 at the National Archives Kennedy Assassination Records Collection in a box marked “CIA miscellaneous.’’

Last summer, in response to The National Security Archive lawsuit, the CIA released more than 1,200 pages of “The Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation,’’ but it held onto the fifth volume.

“More than 50 years after the failed invasion, the CIA continues to try and hide this dramatic history from public scrutiny,’’ Kornbluh said.

The National Security Archive has continued to fight for release of the fifth volume in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. in a case before Judge Gladys Kessler.

The CIA has argued that the final volume can’t be released because it is “an internal draft of a CIA history that was never approved for release or publication.’’

In a court filing, David S. Robarge, currently the CIA’s chief historian, said that “the mere possibility that an initial draft could be released to the public would undoubtedly chill open and frank deliberations” that go into creating CIA histories.

“The release of an unfinished draft of CIA history risks placing inaccurate or incomplete information into the public domain,’’ Robarge said in a statement to the court.

The CIA’s concern is the draft “will confuse the public,’’ Kornbluh said. “Certainly the public is astute enough to judge for itself.’’

Ironically, Pfeiffer, who died in 1997, tried to have both Volume IV and V declassified in the mid-1980s because he wanted to write about them after he left the CIA. Pfeiffer wrote the bulk of the official Bay of Pigs history from 1973 until 1979 but continued to work on it until his retirement from the CIA in 1984.

Volume IV is Pfeiffer’s rebuttal of the findings of a Presidential Commission headed by the late Army Gen. Maxwell Taylor on the failed invasion. Pfeiffer took issue with the Taylor critique, saying it gave a “bum rap” to the CIA for “a political decision that insured the military defeat of the anti-Castro forces.’’

That was a reference to President Kennedy’s decision not to provide overt air cover to the invading Brigade 2506. Previously released documents show that Kennedy clung to the idea that the Bay of Pigs invasion must remain covert even though planners had doubt months before that it could succeed as a secret mission.

The CIA released the Taylor critique but successfully fought declassification of Volume V.

The National Security Archive noted in a memorandum filed with the court that the circumstances were different then because Volume V was only five years old at the time and it appeared a final “official’’ version of the document was forthcoming.

Now the document is nearly three decades old but is still in draft form. There is no indication that it will be finished.

In the 1980s, Kenneth McDonald, Pfeiffer’s successor as CIA historian, made an argument similar to the CIA’s current objections: release of the document “could seriously impair the ongoing historical manuscript review process.’’

McDonald also said that in his judgment the draft “had serious deficiencies as a historical study.’’

But in court papers, The National Security Archive said the U.S. government has released draft material under FOIA and labeled it accordingly in the past and could release Volume V “with an appropriate disclaimer if it deems such a condition necessary to clarify the status of the document.’’

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/16/2752680_p2/final-volume-in-cias-official.html#storylink=cpy

Russia to help Cuba with production of rifle ammunition

Πηγή: Rianovosti
Nov 30 2011

Russia and Cuba are planning to sign a contract on building an assembly line for production of ammunition for Kalashnikov assault rifles, Kommersant business daily reported on Wednesday.

According to a source in the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade, cited by Kommersant, an assembly line for 7.62-mm rounds used in Kalashnikov assault rifles and other Russian-made rifles will be built at Cuba’s Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara military plant.

The source said that Russia’s arms exporter Rosoboronexport had already prepared a contract, which includes the license and technology transfer.

The official did not specify the value of the contract but said Russia was hoping to receive a contract in the future on a complete overhaul of rifle ammunition production facilities in Cuba, which were built in 1970s-1980s with the help of Soviet specialists.

A Rosoboronexport source has confirmed the planned contract with Cuba but refused to provide more details on the subject, Kommersant said.

Although the Cuban leadership has repeatedly said it has no intention of resuming military cooperation with Russia after the surprise closure of the Russian electronic listening post in Lourdes in 2001, bilateral military ties seem to have been improving since 2008.

Chief of the Russian General Staff Gen. Nikolai Makarov said during his visit to Cuba in 2009 that modernization of the Soviet-made military equipment and training of Cuban military personnel will be the focus of Russian-Cuban military cooperation in the future.

Cuba withdraws ambassador from Libya, denounces NATO

Πηγή: Washington Post 
September 3, 2011


HAVANA — Cuba has announced the withdrawal of its ambassador and diplomatic mission in Libya and reiterated that it does not recognize the rebels’ transitional government.

It also has denounced the NATO military intervention that helped drive Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi into hiding, saying the bombing killed “thousands” of civilians. It warned that NATO’s conduct could create similar conditions for an outside military intervention in Syria, which has been roiled by popular protests as well.

Cuba is a longtime ally of Libya, and former leader Fidel Castro was outspoken in his criticism of the uprising against Gadhafi in the early days of the conflict. He has not commented publicly on Gadhafi’s fall.

The announcement came in a Foreign Ministry communique on Saturday.