Biden Repeats Carter’s Mistakes amid China’s Cuba Presence

A presidential election looming, a U.S. president determined to cool tensions with the country’s chief great-power rival, and a surprising revelation of that rival’s growing military presence in Cuba. This may read like a summary of the Biden administration’s recent tussles with China, but it could just as easily describe an often-overlooked episode from the Cold War.

In the fall of 1979, President Jimmy Carter was trying to put the final touches on the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II), his signature diplomatic effort to relax tensions with the Soviet Union ahead of the 1980 presidential election. Then, an unwelcome report hit the news that the Soviets had deployed a Red Army brigade complete with offensive weaponry to Cuba. Not since the Cuban Missile Crisis had the Soviets made such a bold move in the Western Hemisphere.

When the dust settled and intelligence and analysis validated the news story, it appeared the Soviet military presence had been in the works for years. Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee held hearings and called it an intelligence failure. Commentators, including soon-to-be-presidential-candidate Ronald Reagan, argued this was the tip of the iceberg: A Soviet listening station was being built and a naval base was under construction in Cienfuegos.

Upon learning of the Soviet military presence in Cuba, Carter’s national-security team moved swiftly to assess the gravity of the threat and consider its response. The administration demanded a total withdrawal of Soviet forces from the island. Despite clear evidence to the contrary, the Soviets denied they’d deployed a combat unit to Cuba. Soviet general secretary Leonid Brezhnev called the story “contrived,” writing to Carter that the Soviets had maintained a military-training center in Cuba for more than 17 years. Brezhnev advised Carter to pursue SALT II and exhibit restraint.

That a military-training center could quickly become a military base was not lost on Carter’s national-security team. Carter even convened a group of “wise men,” including former secretary of defense Clark Clifford and former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, to assist in building a consensus response. Kissinger advised Carter not to link his response to the Soviet military presence in Cuba with SALT II ratification on the grounds that it would be too difficult to make the case he was responding firmly to the Soviets while also making the case for bilateral cooperation on arms control.

Brazen Soviet military expansionism off the Florida coast was reason enough to have the president calm national anxiety with an Oval Office address. That SALT II, already facing tepid support, was pending before the Senate for ratification made it a critical moment requiring immediate presidential attention.

Carter assured Americans that the Soviet brigade did not present an immediate military threat to the country. Yet, in the same speech, he went to great lengths to outline a series of security measures the administration was taking in response. This threading of the needle hardly convinced his detractors, let alone his supporters, that there was nothing to worry about.

For those already skeptical that the Soviets would abide by arms controls, the brigade news removed any doubt. For those hoping SALT II would reduce the specter of conflict, Cuba was discouraging. And those who believed the Cold War was a relic of a bygone era were mugged by reality.

Responding to critics who, like Reagan, argued for a dramatic shift in U.S.–Soviet relations, Carter reasoned that “confrontation might be emotionally satisfying for a few days or weeks for some people, but it would be destructive to the national interest and to the security of the United States.”

Here, Carter chose not to follow Kissinger’s advice, opting instead to make a full-throated case for SALT II ratification. “My fellow Americans,” Carter declared, “the greatest danger to American security tonight is certainly not the two or three thousand Soviet troops in Cuba. The greatest danger to all the nations of the world — including the United States and the Soviet Union — is the breakdown of a common effort to preserve the peace, and the ultimate threat of a nuclear war. I renew my call to the Senate of the United States to ratify the SALT II Treaty.”

“I have concluded that the brigade issue is certainly no reason for a return to the Cold War,” Carter announced, perhaps blurring the line between persuasion and pleading.

Carter’s message was that we must engage with the Soviets no matter the cost. Reagan, along with like-minded Republicans and Democrats, held a different view. During the Carter years, they’d observed Soviet aggression in Angola, South Yemen, and Cuba. They had also witnessed a massive Soviet military buildup unconstrained by arms-control treaties. The policy of détente, in their view, was a fiction entirely removed from reality — a reality now within spitting distance of Miami.

Fast-forward to today: Reports of a Chinese military and intelligence presence in Cuba have been a distraction, not a focus of the Biden administration. Wise men haven’t gathered to advise the president on a response, nor has the president addressed the American people on the subject. After initially dismissing reports of a Chinese eavesdropping facility in Cuba as “not accurate,” the Biden team called it an “ongoing issue” dating back to the Trump administration. When another report revealed a Chinese military-training facility on the island, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said “this is something we’re going to be monitoring very, very closely, and we’ve been very clear about that. And we will protect our homeland, we will protect our interests.”

Exactly what steps the administration has taken in response are not known. It had hoped Blinken’s recent meeting with Xi Jinping in Beijing would open pathways to cooperation on trade and climate change, and efforts to find common ground on those issues don’t appear to be on hold. Yet, the administration’s attempts to establish lines of communication on security matters between U.S. and Chinese defense officials — perhaps the most critical and basic tool to prevent miscalculation and escalation — have been rejected by China.

It seems President Biden views the U.S.–China relationship as a competition that can accommodate cooperation. “This competition is not going to resolve in a decisive, transformative state,” one senior adviser said before the Blinken trip. “What we seek instead is a positive steady state, one where our interests and those of our allies and partners are protected.”

“Steady state” may be the 21st century version of “détente.” The reality is that this “steady state” has become increasingly dangerous, with the PRC destabilizing the Indo-Pacific and, more recently, the Western Hemisphere. As a result, cooperation should take a backseat. The U.S. should prioritize defense investments to strengthen our posture in both our own backyard and the Indo-Pacific. And we should screen investments headed for China that could put our own security and technological advantages at risk.

Reagan wrote in a syndicated column days after news broke of the Soviet brigade that “SALT II should be set aside, not only till the Russian troops clear out of Cuba, but also until we know where we are going.” Of course, Reagan knew where he wanted to go on SALT II, détente, and the U.S.–Soviet relationship: in the opposite direction from Carter.

Two months later, the Soviet Union would invade Afghanistan, and even the most ardent arms-control advocates could no longer make the case to ratify SALT II. The Carter administration withdrew the arms-control treaty knowing ratification in the Senate would fail. The U.S. was clearly in a Cold War, and it was time for Washington to figure out how to win. It’s time we do the same today.