Cuba’s premier made a last-ditch effort to avert the tide of Mexican-Venezuelan-sponsored political reforms. He travelled to Nicaragua at the same time as delegates started gathering in Mexico City to draw up a plan for democracy in El Salvador. But his effort to create a ‘rejection front’ proved unsuccessful, even in Nicaragua. The US discreetly let it be known to the more moderate of the Sandinistas that it would consider re-establishing diplomatic relations and the flow of aid if the Sandinistas freed political prisoners, sanctioned civil liberties and let opposition newspapers be printed again.
By the beginning of 1985, therefore, Cuba had to reconsider its position, and started to do so fairly fast.
When the Third World War started in the summer of 1985, El Salvador had just become insecurely democratic. Guatemala and Honduras were still (but now less securely) military dictatorships. The President of Mexico had, sadly, been assassinated in January but everybody assumed that Mexico and Venezuela would soon arrange a ‘political solution’ in these two countries too. In Nicaragua the moderates now had a more powerful voice in the civilian leadership (which was drawing aid from the US and Venezuela, and had also applied to the International Monetary Fund), but the military and security forces in Nicaragua were still very left wing, because they had been systematically penetrated by Cuba. The IMF’s investigators considered Nicaragua still too much run by soldiers who thought they were socialists, which in their view was economically not a good combination.
Cuba was rethinking its posture rather desperately when the Soviet tanks rolled into Western Europe. The orders from Moscow were explicit: ‘Proceed against the United States into full-scale war.’ The Cubans sensibly half-ratted, and the Americans foolishly overreacted to what little the Cubans did.
After a desperate high-level meeting in Havana through most of 4 August 1985, the Cubans sent a long coded telex back to Moscow. The first thirty pages consisted of obsequious expressions of support for the fundamental revolutionary justice of the Soviet cause. The decoder in Moscow working on the complicated Atropos decoding system could not conceal his impatience. Eventually he got to the sentences the Kremlin was waiting for, and they did not say what the Kremlin wanted. The vital parts of the Cuban message to Moscow on 5 August ran: ‘The risks before socialist Cuba are enormous, considering the possibility of US nuclear retaliation. Our options are in fact very few. Cuba does not have the military capacity to mount an invasion of a major Latin American country. To attack the US by air is too risky. Sea actions are out of the question; the Cuban navy has a capacity only for a limited degree of coastal vigilance and self-defence. American naval predominance in this region is total. Attacks against specific objectives in the Caribbean (for instance, Puerto Rico) have been most seriously considered. It is the unanimous view here that they would be ineffective, indeed actually harmful for the Soviet cause at this stage of the conflict.
‘We have nevertheless determined on the most courageous action in support of our socialist cause. This action will take three forms. First, we will accelerate our aircraft lifts of ammunition, supplies and some soldiers to selected spots on the mainland of Central America already under socialist or guerrilla control. Secondly, we will alert air squadrons and missiles on our airfields, and be ready to attack American shipping and US convoys bound for Europe. We are sure that you recognize, however, that this assault must be launched at the appropriate moment, when we can strike most violently and effectively. If we strike prematurely, before the really vital targets are at sea, we may be destroyed by American nuclear missiles; and our great usefulness to the common cause — as the independent socialist country nearest to the heartland of capitalism — could be wiped out in five minutes. Thirdly, as our most immediate contribution, all Cuba has been mobilized for war. Our armed forces are concentrating against the Americans’ Guantanamo naval base. An assault will be launched upon this at the moment when our attack on American shipping begins.’
This Atropos coded message was read, after decoding, by two very different generals, one in Moscow and one in Miami.
Army General I. P. Seriy of the Second Main Directorate (military intelligence) of the Army General Staff (the GRU) accurately minuted for the Soviet High Command: ‘Cuba is clearly deserting us as disgracefully as Mussolini deserted Hitler in 1939. The Cubans will join the war only when they think we have won it. After Soviet victory we should treat their renegade leader far less kindly than the sentimental Hitler would have treated Mussolini if he had won in 1945.’