Meanwhile, Where’s Detente With Cuba?

Excuse the French, but the Iceland summit is, if it is anything, detente. Yet that word, which infused the political vocabulary in the early 1970s, has become lost to American speakers--not over a breakdown in arms control but because the Cubans went into Angola in 1975.

The Cubans are still there, and logic would suggest that detente is still in suspension until they withdraw. But no, it is not even on the Reykjavik agenda. What has happened, subtly, almost unspoken, in the intervening years, is an appreciation that progress on arms control must not be linked to other subjects of discord, whether it be arrested spies or the shooting down of civilian airliners or, more important, the behavior of allies and acolytes in other parts of the world. Moreover, Ronald Reagan’s Washington now accepts what his predecessors found difficult--that Cuba is not just a Soviet puppet. Detente can be spoken of again without worrying about the Cubans. But the Cuban problem is a big one, and with southern Africa and Central America in turmoil, it could get bigger.

If Reagan wants to find ways out of the imbroglios in Nicaragua and Angola, he is going to have to follow up his meetings with Mikhail S. Gorbachev with one with Fidel Castro. Otherwise, he may get peace on one front and find it awry on the other. Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger thought they could get both with Leonid I. Brezhnev. At the same time as they negotiated the first accord on limiting the size of nuclear arsenals and the anti-ballistic missile treaty in 1972, they negotiated what was called a “statement of principles,” meant to bring stability in superpower relationships in the Third World--a code that was considered broken when Cuban troops arrived in Angola.

This time around, if the United States is wise it will realize that Moscow’s writ is limited, and peace in the Third World will never come about until Castro is dealt with as a leader in his own right.

Jorge Dominguez, a professor of government at Harvard University has observed: “No other country of Cuba’s size, and few with more resources, match the worldwide scope of Cuba’s foreign policy.” Cuban troops are in Angola, protecting the capital while government forces are off in the hinterlands battling the dissident guerrilla force, UNITA, and South Africa. Until recently Cuban troops were in Ethiopia and helped defeat the Somali invasion in 1977. Cuba also recognizes the Polisario Front, the guerrilla movement fighting Morocco for an independent state in the former Spanish Sahara. Cuban aid experts are helping there as they are in Benin, Sao Tome, Principe, Libya and Algeria. Most of them are road builders, teachers and doctors. Yet, as was the case in Grenada, many of these civilians are military reservists, trained in the use of weapons. They can put up a good fight if need be.

In Central America thousands of civilian and military advisers work in Nicaragua, reports of deep Cuban involvement in El Salvador and Guatemala are exaggerated, although earlier in the 1980s Cuba did make significant deliveries of weapons to guerrillas in El Salvador.

Castro began supporting Third World insurgencies back in 1959 before he allied Cuba with the Soviet Union. Cuba led Moscow into both Angola and Central America. According to Arkady N. Shevchenko, a senior Soviet foreign service officer who defected, “Deputy Foreign Minister Vasily V. Kuznetsov told me that the idea for the large scale military operation (in Angola) had originated in Havana. And in a television program last year, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, retired Army Gen. Vernon A. Walters, concurred, observing that “Castro was pursuing his own aims.” Indeed, Cuban security agents foiled a coup, which was supported by Moscow, against the late Agostinho Neto, the president.

All this is not to underestimate the influence that Moscow wields in Havana. When Castro has crossed the Soviet leadership, Moscow has not hesitated to impose economic discipline on Cuba, slowing oil supplies and postponing weapons deliveries. Nevertheless, Castro has carved himself a significant niche for his own initiatives. Rumors abound that he will beef up his forces in Angola and unleash them on the South Africans if they continue to penetrate into Angola. From there it would be only a short step to crossing the border and taking on the South African army in a major engagement. This could provide the catalyst for a full-scale uprising in South Africa.

If the United States is serious about realizing the goals of the 1972 summit between Nixon and Brezhnev, it will have to start talking to Fidel Castro. There’s not much joy if there’s detente between Moscow and Washington but important parts of rest of the world are coming apart at the seams.