Soviet-Cuban Involvement in Central America: A Critique of Recent Writings

Abstract

This essay discusses conceptual and methodological problems in recent writing about Soviet-Cuban involvement in Central America, including the Kissinger Commission Report,' recent Reagan Administration white papers,2 and a number of other works by authors whose views have done much to shape both public discourse and Administration thinking.3 With virtually unlimited access to the major news media, Administration spokespeople have bombarded the Congress and public with a barrage of half-truths and outright distortions which, however well debunked by administration critics,4 has successfully narrowed the spectrum of acceptable discourse about Central America. A coterie of analysts writing in prestigious foreign policy journals has contributed significantly to the Reagan Administration's efforts to shape a consensus around its Central America policies by lending what otherwise would be transparently tendentious arguments an appearance of scholarly legitimacy. Errors of fact, once having found their way into print in this literature, become elevated to the status of unquestioned reality. More fundamental misconceptions about historical processes, shaped by an almost exclusively globalist and geopolitical outlook, lead to more basic problems. The deficiencies of this literature on Soviet-Cuban involvement in Central America include an unusually large number of inadvertent errors-howlers, as E. Bradford Burns appropriately termed them-that are indicative perhaps of some authors' unfamiliarity with the region;5 distortions and omissions which in some cases are unintended, but which in others may be deliberate efforts to justify viewpoints or policies decided upon for other reasons; frequent considerations of facts isolated from their contexts; a remarkably uncritical use of sources; and, in some cases, the use of highly ideological, value-laden language. Underlying much of the literature is a conception of history that gives inadequate attention to the real processes which have shaped nations, movements and events in Central America and that is only rarely accompanied by any serious consideration of the full weight of past and present US activities in the region. In studies of SovietCuban activities in Central America, to ignore or downplay the history of US involvement is to employ a conceptual framework fraught with faulty assumptions