The Wasp Network: A Peripheral Reading of Intelligence
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18041/0121-3474/verbaiuris.2.8541Keywords:
The Wasp Network, Intelligence, Peripheral Realism, Cold WarAbstract
The Wasp Network is a peripheral reading on the Cuban intelligence system. We start from the
question that guides this article, how was an antithesis of Cuban intelligence configured over that of the United States, capable of maintaining the establishment of Havana in the early 1990s? Thus, our hypothesis is configured from the film La Red Avispa, in which the Cuban intelligence strategy can be read as a guarantor of survival on the pressures of Washington in the Cold War, for that it used direct operations in the United States. to infiltrate anti-Castro groups and neutralize attacks on the island. From peripheral realism, we find that Cuba’s intelligence strategy was due to the consequences of an extreme relevant asymmetry. Thanks to pressure from the United States, the island had to design alternative strategic models in order not to subsume itself in asymmetric geopolitics. The Wasp Network materializes a peripheral tool to guarantee the survival of the Castro regime in the 1990s.
Thus, from the framework of peripheral realism, we find that global dimensions are represented
in actors who assume a role in the following way: 1. Norm-makers, 2. Norm-takers, and 3. Rebels. So, Cuba assumes the last of these points.
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