A US Navy submarine has arrived in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in a show of force as a fleet of Russian warships gathers for planned military exercises in the Caribbean Sea. Photo: Ismael Batista RamĂrez.
The following is an interview of the director of the Center for Investigations of International Politics (CIPI) of Cuba, José Ramón Cabañas, published by the Spanish media El Periódico. The newspaper asked him about the Russian navy ships that recently docked in Cuba on an official visit.
Is “October Crisis” a valid description for what is currently occurring?
Relating this news [of the Russian ships in Cuba] with what occurred in October 1962 [“Cuban missile crisis”] is as inadequate as supposing that each time a US naval detachment moves through southeast Asia, alarms should be sounded in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Today, the USSR does not exist, nor the socialist bloc, and NATO has failed to keep all the promises it had made after the fall of the socialist bloc, promises not to expand eastward, thus creating enormous strategic risks.
The installation of defensive missile systems in Cuba in October 1962 occurred immediately after a military invasion of Cuba organized by the US. The Cuban government was always in favor of making this action public, the Soviet authorities opposed this, and the rest is well-known history.
Today Cuba and the US have formal diplomatic relations and therefore various channels to deal with this as well as with other even more sensitive affairs. We are speaking of three naval vessels: a submarine, a tanker, and a tugboat that have come to a Cuban port in a region where the US has 80 military bases and many other means of domination. Cuba has made the information public in a sovereign manner, with adequate advance notice.
In recent years we have received naval detachments from Canada, France, Spain, the UK, Japan, Holland, Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, Jamaica, China, and Russia on friendly and cooperative visits. The majority of these did not receive international press attention. In fact, the arrival of a ship of the Royal Canadian Navy, the HMCS Margaret Brooke, to Cuba on June 14 has already been announced. Until now, the Canadians have not been in the headlines.
On June 5 2023, Cuba complained of the presence of a US nuclear submarine in the outlying areas of the naval base in the illegally occupied territory of Guantánamo, Cuba. Few media outlets in countries allied with the United States considered our concerns worthy of being a news item.
Therefore, we need to place each fact in its context and evaluate it in an objective way.
Should we be worried about the current situation?
If this question is in reference to the particular fact of the naval visit, we repeat what we have already said, that this has no repercussions beyond the plane of bilateral Cuban-Russian relations.
Now, if this refers to the current situation in a more general context, there is a lot we should worry about. The genocide against Palestine has not stopped and the international community is not capable of articulating a coherent response that can halt this massacre.
NATO insists on pursuing a military solution in Ukraine, with the only goal of satisfying the arms manufacturers. The countries that have the greatest reserves of strategic minerals are those that are least developed and they are victims of constant destabilization plans.
Cuba’s President DĂaz-Canel Visits Russian Frigate Docked in Havana
Humanity as a whole has not learned the basic lessons from the experiences of the struggle against COVID-19 and has not prepared for the next similar events, as at the same time biological weapons labs financed by military institutions proliferate in the world.
A fourth industrial revolution is taking place that will create even more disparity between the more developed countries and those that have been spurred on repeatedly to guarantee the well being of the colonizers.
There are a lot of reasons to worry, to see daily the concept of peace as a goal to be reached and not as an already shared achievement.
What are the potential consequences, what are the current real impacts and the threats that we should keep in mind, though they have not yet materialized?
The theme of the Russian ships has no other repercussion beyond the end of their visit to Cuba. If perhaps it remains in history, it will be as another opportunity to attract attention to Cuban issues with a negative slant, and in trying to stir up anti-Russia feelings.
Curiously enough, the press is very active in dealing with certain issues, but they seldom look back at what they have already said and fail to reflect on whether they have stuck to the truth or not. Just in the last few years, there has been unlimited speculation about supposed attacks on the health of foreign diplomats in Havana, or about a supposed Cuban military presence in Venezuela. Time and again, the press have spoken of alleged Chinese spy stations in Cuba and now there is a “worry” about the visit of three naval vessels.
But they do not give information about the inexplicable retaining of Cuba on the list of countries that supposedly patronize terrorism, a list made up by the US State Department, and the impacts that this has on our economy.
They do not say that Cuba is one of the countries that has made the greatest contributions to peace, not just in Colombia, but in the whole continent. It is not reported that Cuba is the only country that has organized two summits of the Non-Aligned Movement (1979 and 2023) and two summits of the Global South or G77 plus China (2000 and 2023), all of which imply enormous support for Cuba by the international community.
