Joe Biden is no Jack Kennedy.
Not even close.
There is no way the Communists would be pushing him around the way the Chinese Communists push Biden around. JFK would have pushed back.
President John F. Kennedy proved that during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. That was when, after quarantining Cuba, Kennedy demanded that the Soviet Union and its Communist leader Nikita Khrushchev remove all the nuclear capable missiles the Russians had secretly deployed in Cuba.
The Soviets had quietly worked out a deal with Cuban Communist dictator Fidel Castro to install the missiles on the island in exchange for economic considerations. The missiles represented a clear and unprecedented threat to the U.S.
After some tense Cold War negotiations, Kennedy got the Soviets to back down and remove the missiles as well as the nuclear threat against the U.S that went along with them.
In return the U. S. later removed intermediate-range missiles it had deployed in Turkey.
Kennedy was a vigorous 45 years old back then. Biden now is a stumbling 80.
Now comes news that China is operating a spy base facility in Cuba and — despite initial Biden White House denials—and have been doing so since 2019.
The eavesdropping facility, according to the Wall Street Journal, allows the Chinese intelligence services to gather electronic communications throughout the southeastern U.S. where many military bases and rocket launch sites are located, as well as to monitor U.S. shipping traffic.
China has apparently paid the economically starved Cuban Communist leaders billions of dollars to install the eavesdropping apparatus as well as the Chinese spies to manage it.
The development is seen as an unprecedented new threat from the territorial aggressive Chinese Communists, coming as it is in the backyard of the U.S. Cuba is less than 100 miles from Florida.
The two top lawmakers of the Senate Intelligence Committee — Democrat Chairman Mark Warner of Virginia and Republican Vice Chairman Mark Rubio of Florida — called the development a “serious threat to our national security and sovereignty.”
“We are deeply disturbed by reports that Havana and Beijing are working together to target the United States and our people,” they said.
And while they urged Biden to act, nothing much is expected to happen. Biden is as soft on Cuba as he is on China.
If Biden allowed the Chinese spy balloon to fly from one end of the country to the other without shooting it down until it had completed its intelligence gathering mission, he is not about to disturb the Chinese in Cuba.
Biden is so subservient to Chinese leader Xi Jinping that he dares not even condemn China’s repeated provocative actions against U.S. Navy ships or U.S. aircraft, not to mention its increased military activity over Taiwanese airspace.
All the while the Biden administration, hat in hand, has repeatedly sought meetings with Xi Jinping. China has given him the cold shoulder.
Granted that the establishment of a Chinese espionage operation off the shores of the U.S. in Cuba is not as openly bellicose a threat as the Cuban Missile Crisis was.
What should concern people, though, is that the establishment of a Chinese espionage operation in Cuba may be just the beginning of a growing Chinese military presence in Cuba while Biden looks the other way.
Worse, in his embarrassing attempts to appease the Chinese, he may be waving them in.
Joe, Jack Kennedy, in his famous inaugural speech, asked what you can do for your country, not what you can do to it.
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.