What If: US-Cuban War in the late 1970s

That's an excellent POD!
Kissinger was really serious on the matter and this would be right after Ford's second term starts.
The US will defend democracy (cough) in the Dominican Republic!

Leave them separate, I think.

Maybe. It depends on a lot of things.
JFK and Khrushchev supposedly struck a deal on no invasion of Cuba but this would only be bomb runs and naval attacks.
Is WW3 worth it just for that? 

That is the issue. The Cuban response would HAVE to be an assault into Guantanamo Bay. War expansion comes from that: tit for tat.

The Cubans have to act, they can't let tgeir infrastructure be destroyed just like that. They would also be a fairly hard nut to crack compared to what the USA usually attacked,so they would certainly end up with a bloody nose, even if they destroy the Cubans. It would also be hard to sell to the public again, especially in the light of Vietnam and if there isn't a very strong reason to attack.

I wonder if in the aftermath of Vietnam and the anti-military feeling that left in the US that Ford would let Kissinger have his way. If it came actually dropping bombs on Cuba itself I could see it escalating as the Soviets would be as unhappy as the Cubans about the attacks and tension is likely to build up considerably. After all its only a couple of years before they go into Afghanistan, actually overthrowing a 'friendly' if unstable regime and a couple of years later was thinking about armed intervention in Poland - although admittedly that came more from the weakness of the Polish communists in the face of serious internal opposition.

True Cuba was directly aiding communist forces in Africa but this was against S African intervention and given how widely reviled the latter were that's not really a viable case politically for the US.

Things could get very nasty very quickly here. I could see Cuba acting against Guantanamo, possibly bombardment by artillery rather than a full scale attack and Ford getting a very angry hot phone call from Moscow. The Soviets may not do anything in Europe other than possibly some 'exercises' as I suspect most if not all Europeans, including very likely Britain, would be less than supportive of the US actions so it would be in the Soviet's interest to keep things reasonably quiet there.

As such I think this is a fairly low probability event but it could get nasty pretty quickly.


In terms' of Lordroel's mention of Operation Pico this looks more likely as it would only need a slight delay in the news of the release of the Cuba ship or the Dominican's possibly standing firm, especially if say they had asked the US for support and been promised it. If Castro actually launched a bombing attack, especially given the probable civilian casualties I can see a lot of anger in the region against Cuba and a strong American reaction. On the other hand, since the Cubans have taken a pretty rash action and also sought to exclude the Soviets from the operation I could see them getting little support, at least initially from the Soviets. I can see them opposing serious attempts at regime change but if the US launches some pretty tough retaliatory bomb attacks on military targets I could also see Moscow telling Castro to not escalate it further.

In part this depends on what's actually happened with the Cuban boat. If it has encroached into Dominican waters the latter has a case for stopping it. Also they can actually investigate what it was up to, like does it have a suspicious amount of intelligence equipment on board? Provided their not ill-treating the crew Cuba doesn't really have a leg to stand on in complaining, let along the initial dangerous overflights and actual bombing attacks.