Soviet Seapower in the Caribbean: Political and Strategic Implications

James D. Theberge, director of Latin American Studies for the Center of Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, has edited a very intriguing volume of studies prepared for the Center’s research project on Russians in the Caribbean. Ten chapters by ten experts, most with academic and government connections, soberly and without much rhetoric explore the USSR’s increasing naval presence off our shores since a seven-ship Soviet flotilla arrived in Havana harbor on July 20, 1969. There are maps of Soviet naval deployment and of Cienfuegos, Cuba, where a nuclear submarine base was begun in 1970. Theberge believes that “the various elements of Soviet seapower—the navy, the merchant marine, the fishing fleet, oceanographic research vessels, and intelligence collectors—are being deployed with increasing skill and sophistication as an instrument of cold war diplomacy . . .” (xiii). His contributors generally concur. While Curt Gasteyger, deputy director of the Atlantic Institute in Paris, concludes “the Soviet presence is small and highly vulnerable” (p. 69), he also accepts that “a more or less permanent presence has been established” (p. 59), with political as well as strategic implications for the economically shaky and racially tense area. Admiral Mahan, it would seem, may not yet be obsolete.