The Subs of Cienfuegos

Last September the White House announced that the Soviet Union was building a base to service missile-carrying submarines at the south Cuban port of Cienfuegos. The news set off shock waves of fear that an East-West confrontation comparable to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis was imminent. But then the Soviets removed their submarine tender from Cienfuegos, and the moment of alarm seemed to pass.

Despite President Nixon's press-conference statement that he was unworried by Soviet naval presence in the western Atlantic, there is some evidence that the crisis has merely been postponed. U-2 reconnaissance photographs show that the base is almost complete (see map). In addition to bunkers for storing submarine-borne nuclear weapons, the Russians have built a steel antisubmarine barrier net between the shore and the island of Cayo Carenas and have installed antiaircraft emplacements. They have also built a pier for docking submarines and elaborate rest and recreation facilities. The bay now contains two storage barges designed to receive the discharges of nuclear-contaminated effluent from submarines. The tender that touched off the September announcement is still cruising the Caribbean, and could return to Cienfuegos at any time.

Double Capacity. One U.S. naval official describes the Cienfuegos base as "smaller than Holy Loch and larger than Rota," referring to U.S. nuclear submarine bases in Scotland and Spain. It could service any of the Soviet navy's 76 nuclear submarines, including those of the Polaris-type Yankee class, of which the Soviets presently have 13. The practical strategic effect of the base will be to double the Soviets' nuclear submarine capability in American waters; one Yankee submarine will be able to perform a surveillance mission that required two such ships before.

The Nixon Administration faces a dilemma over how to react to the base at Cienfuegos. An outright confrontation with the Soviet Union, in an area deep within the traditional "U.S. sphere of influence," would almost certainly rule out the advancement of top-priority Administration objectives concerning the SALT talks, the war in Viet Nam, and the stalemate in the Middle East. The U.S. seems to be resigned to the presence of Soviet naval vessels in the Caribbean, with the submarines serviced in international waters from a tender based in Cuba. But it hopes that the Soviets will not force the issue by putting the Cienfuegos base into operation.

Ever since 1962, State Department officials have alluded to a vaguely defined "understanding" between John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev that the U.S. would not invade Cuba if the Soviets did not build strategic bases or install nuclear weapons there. Last month the White House let it be known that this understanding had been "renewed." In the meantime, however, the Cienfuegos base is all but ready to service Soviet nuclear missile submarines.

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