Cuba USA
- The Us Plans To Make Our Large Homeland ( Patria Grande) Another War Zone
by Patricio Montesinostranslation Cuba-Network in Defense of Humanity CELAC, the Union of Nations of the South (UNASUR), the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America (ALBA) as well as all the progressive forces and social movements should be...
- The National Network On Cuba Statement On Charleston Terror Attack
The National Network on Cuba extends our solidarity to the survivors and condolences to the families of the victims of the racist terror attack on Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. TheMother Emanuel AME Church...
- The Cuban Role / Fidel Castro And Apartheid
by Matt Peppesource counterpunch Until the fall of the Portuguese dictatorship in 1974, apartheid in South Africa was secure. There was no substantial resistance anywhere in southern Africa. Pretoria’s neighbors comprised a buffer zone that protected...
- International Poll Found That The Us Is The Biggest Threat To World Peace.
By Noam ChomskySource telesur An international poll found that the United States is ranked far in the lead as “the biggest threat to world peace today,” far ahead of second-place Pakistan, with no one else even close. Imagine that the lead article...
- The World Does Not Care...
El Cafe Cubano is in a rare mood today and here it comes from the heart. I know I am not the sharpest tool in the shed, but it seems that for over 48 years nobody except Cubans want the crusty apartheid dictator in power? Why? Are they afraid of the potential...
Cuba USA
Why Was Kissinger Afraid of Cuba?
By La Alborada
Or was he afraid that he would be held responsible as "the man who lost Africa?"
Namibia used to be South-West Africa (SWA), a colony of Germany. During WWI, South Africa, a former colony of Great Britain and at the time a member of the British Commonwealth, occupied the country in a move later ratified as a mandate of the League of Nations. Thereafter, South Africa ruled SWA as a province, and eventually extended the rules of apartheid to SWA.
The US, which sided as long as possible with the colonial powers in Africa, supported South Africa and opposed the independence of SWA. The International Court of Justice issued in 1971 an advisory opinion that South Africa should withdraw from SWA, but South Africa delayed progress until the late 1980s, and due only to international opprobrium.
By then, Cuba had intervened in the military struggle of Namibia, Angola, and South Africa for independence and against apartheid. South Africa, defeated, had to negotiate, including with Angola. The US had created two different CIA fronts in Angola to oppose the leftist MPLA.
A new book based on documents made public by the National Security Archives concerning that war reveal the reaction to Cuba's actions on the part of then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. This is an extract from the Archives article dated Oct 1:
Concerned that Castro would eventually broaden his military incursion beyond Angola, Kissinger counseled Ford that they would have to "crack the Cubans." "If they move into Namibia or Rhodesia, I would be in favor of clobbering them," Kissinger told the president, according to a March 15, 1976, Oval Office memorandum of conversation.
In the March 24 meeting with an elite national security team known as the Washington Special Actions Group, Kissinger expanded on the domino scenario. "If the Cubans destroy Rhodesia then Namibia is next and then there is South Africa," Kissinger argued. To permit the "Cubans as the shock troops of the revolution" in Africa, he argued, was unacceptable and could cause racial tensions in the "Caribbean with the Cubans appealing to disaffected minorities and could then spillover into South America and even into our own country."
Moreover, the lack of a U.S. response to the global exercise of military power by a small Caribbean island nation, Kissinger feared, would be seen as American weakness. "If there is a perception overseas that we are so weakened by our internal debate [over Vietnam] so that it looks like we can't do anything about a country of eight million people, then in three or four years we are going to have a real crisis."
Drafted secretly by the Washington Special Actions Group in April 1976, the contingency plans outlined punitive options that ranged from economic and political sanctions to acts of war such as mining Cuba's harbors, a naval quarantine, and strategic airstrikes "to destroy selected Cuban military and military-related targets."
Kissinger was notorious already for his Domino Theory about Southeast Asia, which maintained that a Vietnamese victory over the US would lead to the "fall" to communism of all of the other nations of the region. In the case of Cuba, he expressed the fears cited above. He was ready to do whatever it took to keep the Infernal Little Republic from taking Africa –a huge territory of many and diverse countries, languages, and histories– and generating waves of dissension in the Caribbean, Latin America and even the US. That was a lot to fear from an island country of eight million people.
Kissinger was the Secretary of State at the time, but hardly the only official equally upset. They felt justified in defending colonial and racist regimes throughout Africa. They did not hold back from intervention anywhere. But, for them, a Caribbean island had no right to defend decolonization and equality among peoples.
Could some of them be still nursing a spirit of revenge? If so, that could be a factor in the continuation of the US blockade. The US will be isolated once more in this years' October vote of the US General Assembly against the blockade. It will carry once again the vote of Israel, a nation that also supported and worked with the apartheid government, but otherwise there is likely to be no other vote in the world in favor of the US. The African continent will be unanimous in its vote in favor of Cuba.
- The Us Plans To Make Our Large Homeland ( Patria Grande) Another War Zone
by Patricio Montesinostranslation Cuba-Network in Defense of Humanity CELAC, the Union of Nations of the South (UNASUR), the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America (ALBA) as well as all the progressive forces and social movements should be...
- The National Network On Cuba Statement On Charleston Terror Attack
The National Network on Cuba extends our solidarity to the survivors and condolences to the families of the victims of the racist terror attack on Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. TheMother Emanuel AME Church...
- The Cuban Role / Fidel Castro And Apartheid
by Matt Peppesource counterpunch Until the fall of the Portuguese dictatorship in 1974, apartheid in South Africa was secure. There was no substantial resistance anywhere in southern Africa. Pretoria’s neighbors comprised a buffer zone that protected...
- International Poll Found That The Us Is The Biggest Threat To World Peace.
By Noam ChomskySource telesur An international poll found that the United States is ranked far in the lead as “the biggest threat to world peace today,” far ahead of second-place Pakistan, with no one else even close. Imagine that the lead article...
- The World Does Not Care...
El Cafe Cubano is in a rare mood today and here it comes from the heart. I know I am not the sharpest tool in the shed, but it seems that for over 48 years nobody except Cubans want the crusty apartheid dictator in power? Why? Are they afraid of the potential...