At the time of the shootdown, the Brothers' planes did not pose an imminent danger to Cuba's national security. The Cuban air force could have exercised other options. Instead, the decision was made to carry out an exemplary punishment, showing the Cuban leadership's consistent tendency to value state security and the regime's survival higher than human life itself.

As in most tragedies, other players in the drama bear significant blame. In the months prior to the attack, Brothers to the Rescue leader Jose Basulto had carried out a series of incursions into Cuban air space clearly intended to taunt, humiliate, embarrass and demoralize the regime, especially the military.

Turning what had been an organization engaged in an essentially humanitarian mission into a political weapon aimed at the Cuban regime was playing with fire -- and with people's lives. Not heeding American officials' advice or Cuban authorities' warnings, Basulto apparently believed he could carry out provocations with impunity because Castro would be too concerned with U.S. reaction to make a drastic move. A deadly miscalculation.

The U. S. government bears some responsibility because, by allowing its Cuba policy to be held hostage by exile politics, it was precluded from acting in a forceful and timely manner. Fear over reaction of hard-line Cuban exiles precluded the Clinton administration's point man on Cuba, Richard Nuccio, from meeting officially with Cuba's top diplomat in the United States even to issue a warning. The same concern surely prevented the administration from moving decisively to halt Basulto's incursions.

Three years later none of the parties seems to have learned much. A recent column in which I suggested that U. S. policy toward Cuba has backfired elicited a rebuttal from Vendulka Kubalkova, a UM professor of international studies.

Specifically, she challenges my contention that the Soviet Union introduced nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962 in reaction to U. S. anti-Castro activities as ``a historical travesty'' and ``politically motivated.'' She states that the introduction of the missiles was intended ``to change the balance of power in the world'' and that if the Soviets were interested in defending Cuba, they could have done a number of other things, including sending troops to Cuba.

In 1962 there were Soviet troops in Cuba armed with tactical nuclear weapons for use on the battlefield in case of an American attack. I wrote that the placement of missiles was motivated in part by ``Soviet desires to change the strategic balance of power and Castro's eagerness to assist the Soviets in that goal.'' Thus, our only disagreement is on whether prior U. S. actions and defense of Cuba also played a role.

Yuri Pavlov, author of Soviet Cuban-Alliance: 1959-1991, has written that ``as seen from Moscow and later acknowledged by Castro, the goal of improving the Soviet Union's strategic position by turning Cuba into a Soviet military base could hardly have been separated from the task of defending Castro's regime.''

In his 1997 book, Missiles in Cuba, Mark J. White wrote: ``The Kennedy administration's policies toward Cuba to the spring of 1962 were thus marked by unremitting hostility. In authorizing an invasion by Cuban emigres, initiating Operation Mongoose, developing military contingency plans, attempting to assassinate the Cuban leader, applying diplomatic and economic pressure, and staging large-scale military maneuvers, the Kennedy administration tried everything short of a direct attack by American forces to displace Castro. These policies could scarcely help but influence the decision made by Khruschev and accepted by Castro to put nuclear missiles in Cuba.''
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