The Soviet Union, the Caribbean, and Central America: Towards a New Correlation of Forces

Abstract

In terms of Soviet relations with Third World client states, the region of Central America and the Caribbean provides a particularly interesting and complex case study area. Cuba was the first of the Latin American countries to declare itself a Marxist-Leninist state; to fall, rather like an overripe plum, into Soviet hands; and to become a Soviet client. But then the client state took on a life of its own; and over the last ten years we have seen Cuba, with its limited resources and only ten million population, emerge as something of a global power, with interests, missions, and experienced fighting forces, trainers, and technical personnel operating in some two dozen Third World nations. This is not in any sense to minimise Cuba’s continuing economic and military dependence on the USSR or to suggest that Cuba operates entirely independently of the USSR and not at its behest.