(RightWing.org) – In a chilling echo of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, it’s recently emerged that China’s communist regime is running a spy base on the Caribbean island. So far, it’s not clear what — if anything — the Biden administration plans to do about it. Now former president Donald Trump has said that, if he was in the White House, he’d order Beijing to remove its snoopers within 48 hours.
China Follows Soviet Example
Probably the closest the world has come to nuclear war was the October 1962 confrontation between the US and the USSR after the Soviets deployed nuclear-armed missiles to Cuba. The crisis was finally defused when Premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for the US secretly pulling its own missiles out of Turkey and Italy.
Now history is repeating itself. On June 8, the Wall Street Journal reported that China had negotiated permission to build an electronic intelligence base on Cuba in exchange for billions of dollars in funding for the island’s bankrupt regime. The Biden administration denied the report — just like the Kennedy administration had denied the existence of the Soviet missile base until a USAF spy plane came back with clear images of the launchers.
Also like the Kennedy administration, the White House was quickly caught out on June 10 when during a briefing, an anonymous official admitted that China has actually had a spy base on Cuba since at least 2019. Congress has now asked for a classified briefing on what this means for US national security.
There’s a real risk in China having a spy base just 90 miles from Florida. In the 1960s, the Soviets wanted a base there because their missiles couldn’t reach the US from bases in Russia. China’s modern ICBMs can reach us from their own territory — but in the information age, a spy base is just as dangerous. From Cuba, Chinese scanners can collect vital data on US radar and communication systems, as well as intercept useful information by reading our messages.
Trump Takes a Hard Line
On June 12, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the Biden administration had “made our concerns known” to Cuba, but beyond that, it doesn’t seem to have taken any action. Now Trump has said that, if it was up to him, he would “give them 48 hours to get out” — and, if China didn’t back down and remove its spies, he could charge 100% tariffs on all Chinese imports to the US.
On June 29, Trump told reporters his plan would force Beijing’s agents out of Cuba “within one hour.” Would China back down the way the Soviets did in 1962? That’s hard to say, but at least Trump is willing to find out.
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