Cuba’s armed forces once fielded tens of thousands of well-trained soldiers during the height of the Cold War, deploying to conflicts from Angola to Syria.
Today, as the U.S. sends an aircraft carrier to the Caribbean in a pressure campaign to change the island’s communist government, Cuba’s military is a ghost of its former self.
Until the decline and fall of its benefactor, the Soviet Union, Cuba had an army of more than 200,000 soldiers. Now that force is down to some 40,000 to 45,000 active-duty soldiers divided in three parts to defend the country’s east, west and center.
Its air force was once considered to be among the best in Latin America, with modern Soviet MiG jet fighters. Its navy had boasted three Soviet-built frigates.
Write to José de Córdoba at jose.decordoba@wsj.com and Ian Lovett at ian.lovett@wsj.com