Cooling the Cuba Crisis

Can quiet diplomacy end the furor in the Senate?

Three times last week, the long black Cadillac limousine glided into the underground garage beneath the State Department; three times Soviet Ambassador Anatoli Dobrynin slipped into a private elevator and rode up to the seventh-floor office of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. After each meeting, both diplomats avoided reporters' questions. There had already been far too much threatening and ill-considered rhetoric about the problem that confronted them: the controversial role of Soviet combat troops in Cuba.

Just a week earlier, Vance had publicly declared that the newly reported existence of a Soviet brigade in Cuba was "a very serious matter," and that he would "not be satisfied with maintenance of the status quo." After several days of silence, the Soviets produced an unyielding answer. Pravda, the Soviet Communist Party's official newspaper, declared that the Russian forces in Cuba were there solely for training purposes, had been training the Cuban army for 17 years, and had changed in neither size nor function during that entire period. Furthermore, said Pravda, the Soviet troops had "an inalienable right" to be where they were. Added Pravda: "All contentions about the arrival in Cuba of 'organized Soviet combat units' are totally groundless." The paper blamed the whole crisis on elements within the U.S. Government that were trying both to undermine Cuba and prevent Senate ratification of SALT II.

Though Vance would disclose no details of his talks with Dobrynin, it was apparent that the Secretary of State was trying to be conciliatory. Even while the Senate continued to reverberate with demands for a Soviet withdrawal, State Department officials began suggesting that some face-saving accommodation could be found. Perhaps the Soviets could disperse their brigade, or simply pledge that it had no offensive purpose.

What was most perplexing about the whole affair was the number of questions that remained unanswered. Was there really a buildup of Soviet forces in Cuba? If so, since when, and by how much? What exactly was the Soviet brigade doing in Cuba? Was it merely training Cubans, or did it have a combat role? Did its presence represent a Soviet gesture to support Castro's maintenance of 40,000 Cuban soldiers in Africa? Was it guarding Soviet information-gathering installations that eavesdropped on the U.S.? And if U.S. intelligence did not know the answers to any or all of these questions, why could it not find out?

One of the few facts known for certain was that the Russian force, 2,600 to 2,800 strong, was on duty in Cuba. Years ago U.S. intelligence began to pick up references to the Soviet force as a brigade, but officials who received that information attached little importance to it. Last spring, worried about Cuban influence in Nicaragua and the Caribbean, Zbigniew Brzezinski's National Security Council asked U.S. intelligence agencies to re-evaluate the Soviet role in Cuba. As late as mid-July, Defense Secretary Harold Brown assured Senator Frank Church of the Foreign Relations Committee that this Soviet role had not changed. In August, however, after a U.S. camera satellite photographed a Russian brigade on maneuvers with armored equipment near Havana, the U.S. concluded that a Soviet brigade was in Cuba as a combat unit. When informed of this conclusion, Church made it public, and coupled that with a warning that the Senate would not ratify SALT II until the Soviet brigade was removed. Many of Church's colleagues joined in the hue and cry, but last week some of them seemed to realize that the Senate was escalating the "crisis" out of proportion. They knew that Church, a longtime liberal and self-declared "friend" of Cuba's Fidel Castro, faces a difficult re-election campaign in conservative Idaho. They also recalled that Church felt he had lost face by endorsing Brown's earlier statement that there appeared to be no significant Soviet troops in Cuba. Whatever his political problems, Church insisted last week that the Soviets were challenging the U.S. Said Church: "I have not suggested that this constitutes the same threat as the missiles did in 1962. But it is contrary to U.S. interests to permit Cuba to be a Soviet base. And if we acquiesce on this, what kind of signal does that send to Castro and the rest of the world?"

Church's position undeniably emboldened the opposition to SALT. Senator Scoop Jackson, who opposes SALT anyway, charged that the Soviets were building a "fortress Cuba." He noted that Cuba in the past two years has acquired sophisticated MiG-23s theoretically capable of penetrating the southeastern U.S. The military buildup, said Jackson, represents "a major change in what the Soviets and Cubans believe they can get away with in this part of the world." He demanded that the Soviets withdraw not only their combat troops but their planes, and that they promise to provide Cuba with no more submarines. It was in this atmosphere that Louisiana's influential Senator Russell Long joined the opponents of SALT and announced that he would vote against the treaty.

Amid the rhetoric and confusion, one of the coolest voices in Congress was that of Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd. When he saw President Carter at the start of the crisis, Byrd counseled calm and restraint. Last week he predicted, somewhat optimistically that the whole matter would be resolved within a few days. "There never should have been a crisis atmosphere to start with." Byrd declared. "I've been here during a few crises, including the missile crisis in 1962. I saw nothing in this one to justify panic or a hasty judgment on SALT."

Byrd said he expected Church's committee to continue hearings on SALT, and he intended to bring the treaty before the Senate in early November. Said Byrd: "There is plenty of time for the dust to settle. I hope by then we can reach agreement on the treaty in an environment less charged with emotion than we had a week ago.: He then firmly repeated what he had told Jimmy Carter a week earlier: "The SALT treaty must not be held hostage to the situation in Cuba."

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