By Dealing With North Korea
{{Updated: Friday, July 19, 2013}}
{{Updated: Friday, July 19, 2013}}
This Reuters photo taken by Desmond Boylan shows a deactivated Soviet-era medium range nuclear-capable ballistic missile on display at the La Cabana fortress in Havana. As a tourist attraction and as a Cold War relic, no one complained about this exhibit because it served an historic purpose.
This Reuters photo taken by Carlos Jasso today shows soldiers guarding containers holding arms seized from the North Korean ship Chong Chon Gang at the Manzanillo Container Terminal in Colon City, Panama. That ship was known to have smuggled drugs and other contraband and thus was on suspicious watch-lists of many nations. Not surprisingly, the ship was seized before it entered the Panama Canal on a trip from Cuba back to North Korea. Obsolete weapons were discovered under bags of Cuban sugar. REUTERS and other respected news agencies are sending this news around the world: "Cuba said the weapons were being sent back to North Korea for repairs and included two anti-aircraft missile batteries, nine disassembled rockets, two MIG-21 fighter jets, and 15 MIG-21 engines, all Soviet-era military weaponry built in the middle of the last century." This incident makes Cuba look like a rogue nation and the UN investigation of the containers will be extensive and time-consuming, creating multiple anti-Cuban headlines day after day. It also very correctly portrays the Cuban government as acting ignorantly for these reasons:
#1 Involvement with North Korea, especially a closely monitored North Korean ship, is stupid.
#2 Cuba's excuse that it needed the obsolete weapons up-graded to defend its sovereignty is equally stupid because Cuba's only perceived enemy, the United States, has the military wherewithal to totally destroy Cuba if it desired to do so and no amount of Cuban weaponry, modern or obsolete, could prevent that.
#3 The success of the Cuban Revolution and the longevity of Revolutionary Cuba both depended on two vital things: The support of the majority of Cubans back in the 1950s and the support of most of the world's sovereignty-loving people since then, as expressed yearly at the UN and by many admirers worldwide.
This North Korean incident will usurp much of that support.
The revelations that this North Korean ship -- the Chong Chon Gang -- left Cuba with out-dated Soviet-era weapons hidden under containers of brown sugar is startling. It is the clearest example of Cuba stupidly and needlessly shooting itself in the foot, apparently a result of the ill, almost 87-year-old Fidel Castro no longer pragmatically making and prioritizing the day-to-day decisions on the island.
Ricardo Martinelli, the President of Panama, said that the North Korean ship was nearing the Panama Canal on its way from Cuba back to North Korea. Panama seized the ship because it had a reputation for smuggling drugs but parts of an apparent surface-to-air missile system was discovered hidden under the sugar containers. Martinelli surmised and later Cuba confirmed that the weapons were being shipped to North Korea for repairs and the sugar was to pay for it. It is also well known that a top North Korean general was recently in Havana and met with President Raul Castro. Also, several countries have noted that a Cuban airplane recently flew to North Korea. President Martinelli, who tweeted images of the missile parts, said the Panama Canal was for "peaceful transit" and he adamantly stated that it would not be a "passageway" for weapons of any type. Martinelli thus garners international acclaim at Cuba's expense.
In addition to letting down and disappointing its regional friends, Cuba's involvement with the North Korean ship is apparently in violation of at least three United Nations resolutions relating to weapons restrictions against North Korea. The additional and compounding stupidity involves the fact that the North Korean ship was well known to international anti-smuggling operations and thus any nation associated with that ship or anything else connected to North Korea will be closely monitored. So Panama is rightly praised and Cuba is correctly damned for this incident, a fact that most members of the United Nations, including Cuba's friends, will support. The UN has been Cuba's friend. Cuba just slapped it in the face.
The New York Times used the above illustration Wednesday to reveal that back in 2012 another North Korean ship -- the Oun Chong Nyon Ho -- made a trip from Cuba to North Korea through the Panama Canal "without attracting suspicion." The last thing Cuba needs is North Korea-related headlines in the NY Times!
For almost fifty years Fidel Castro amazed the world by protecting Cuba against vastly superior forces, including a brave defense at the Bay of Pigs in April of 1961 followed shortly by an alignment with the Soviet Union to off-set or counter-balance the threat from the world's other superpower, the United States. Exceedingly smart but sometimes reckless, Fidel often stood on the precipice but he never jumped off the cliff or allowed anyone or anything to push him off. He was too pragmatic for that. Anyone who has seriously studied him knows that this week's disturbing connection to the North Korean ship does not bear Fidel's imprint. He has always been too intelligent and too pragmatic to put Revolutionary Cuba in such a position. Paying 10,000 tons of Cuban sugar to a UN-maligned and tightly monitored pariah nation so it would repair and return an out-dated Soviet-era missile system? Fidel's methodologies would not have permitted that. He has long realized that Cuba could expend 98% of its resources on a modern weapons system and, to quote him, "It would be like a girl using a sling-shot to defend herself against nuclear weapons fired from land, from the air, from on the sea and from beneath the sea. Physical weapons in the girl's hand won't help against super-powered enemies. But a strong collection of friends, neighbors especially, could protect such a girl." It was a re-reading of that quotation that makes it clear that Fidel had nothing to do with Cuba stupidly shooting itself in the foot via that strange, unnecessary involvement with North Korea.
Fidel Castro turns 87 on August 13th; and he is very ill. Many felt that, after his passing, only his legacy could sustain the Cuban Revolution. Now it appears his legacy will not be able to do that, not when such ignorant decisions as revealed by that North Korean ship are capable of being made apart from either his wishes or his legacy. The amazing longevity of Revolutionary Cuba equates only to Fidel's own amazing time on this earth. And that time is drawing short, perilously short for Cuba. After all, no one will ever replace him.
And by the way........
This right-handed fire-baller, 26-year-old Miguel Alfredo Gonzalez, recently defected from Cuba and by this time next week he will be about $60 million richer than he was on the island. He is in Tijuana right now where about fifteen wealthy Major League teams are vociferously bidding for him. Currently young Cuban superstar multi-millionaires -- Yoenis Cespedes, Yasiel Puig, Aroldis Chapman, etc. -- are leading the Oakland A's, Los Angeles Dodgers, Cincinnati Reds, etc. toward cherished post-season playoff berths. One scout in Tijuana expressed this consensus opinion: "After signing, Miguel will get a couple of starts in the minors and then become an immediate ace for a contender!" The American thirst for Cuban baseball stars has become one of the prime issues in U.S.-Cuban relations because of vast financial consequences.
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