In the past few days, the Biden administration admitted that the People’s Republic of China had reactivated the Soviet Union’s old Cold War intelligence post at Lourdes, in Cuba. This revelation was soon followed by an even bigger concern:
China is in talks with Cuba to stand up a military training facility within 100 miles of Florida.
So, what is China doing in Cuba? Are these actions routine, or might China be planning something larger? Something that might pose a significant national security threat to America?
President Joe Biden And President Xi Jinping (Getty Images)
The spy base at Lourdes on the north coast of Cuba, 93 miles south of Key West, has a long history. It operated for 40 years, from 1962 until 2002 when the nearly bankrupt Russian Federation could no longer afford to pay Cuba the $200 million a year in rent, nor keep the more than 1,500 intelligence specialists on the island.
These facilities likely have the capability to monitor cellphone and internet traffic, including financial transactions throughout much of the U.S. Southeast. Modern AI is probably being employed to sift through hundreds of millions of daily communications, looking for information of interest to convert into intelligence. Depending on the availability of electric power, there may even be electronic jamming systems as well.
Of China’s new training base, Southern Florida Republican Congressman Carlos Giménez said, “…the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) is building training grounds in Cuba – posing a direct threat to our national security. The Biden administration is asleep at the wheel while Communist China, Russia and Iran continue to infiltrate our hemisphere.”
With Cuba’s military and intelligence services already among the better trained in the Western Hemisphere, a Chinese training base in Cuba appears to make little sense – unless considered in the context of Giménez’s concerns about Chinese communist infiltration in Latin America.
Thus, China’s training base in Cuba could have two purposes, both deleterious to peace, freedom and prosperity in the Western Hemisphere.
First, the base will likely serve to train security forces for Latin America’s socialist leaders who know they may be one fair election away from losing power. Second, the Chinese may start to train insurgents to overthrow some of the remaining seven U.S.-aligned governments in the region.
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As an alternative strategy, China might seek to turn Cuba into a deadly dagger pointed at America – a dagger that might be withdrawn in exchange for the U.S. abandoning Taiwan.
A future U.S. president needs to resist the option of betrayal and instead turn the tables by leveraging the Cuban regime’s deep unpopularity to support a Cuba Libre insurgency with the objective of restoring freedom to the long-suffering island.