COMMUNISM CRUMBLES: LETS TAKE A HINT, CASTRO

Cuba lies just 90 miles south of Florida. Despite this geographical coziness with the United States, the president of Cuba must feel like a lonely man these days. With communism collapsing worldwide and economic hardships gripping his island nation, Fidel Castro must know that the days of his way of life are numbered. Few Americans are shedding tears; it couldn't happen to a more despotic man.

From a United States perspective, Wednesday's announcement in Moscow that Soviet troops will be removed from Cuba is excellent news. It is a major step forward for the Soviet Union in establishing credibility for its reform efforts; the Kremlin could not abandon Marxism and its expansionist track record in one stroke while continuing to dispatch armed forces into the Caribbean with another. While the Soviets have done this for their own well-being, the action also serves to isolate Castro in what amounts to an ideological Siberia; the ship of communism is taking on water and the Cuban leader seem to be the only one not searching for a lifeboat.

What does this mean for the United States? Since Castro took over the Cuban government in 1959, that nation has been the hemisphere's leading mischief maker. By varying accounts, Cuba has sanctioned, served as a staging area and been directly involved in terrorism, perhaps even the assassination of an American president. Its conspiracy in locating Soviet missiles on Cuban soil brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in the early 1960s. Castro has dumped his prison population into ocean-going vessels and pointed them north. Were it not for the support of communist Cuba, Daniel Ortega would not have held the Nicaraguan people in an totalitarian stranglehold for so many years. And, if Cuba proved itself a haven for these ideological pirates, think of what the struggling nation's role must be in fostering Caribbean drug trafficking.

The Soviet Union, Cuba's prime benefactor since Castro came to power, is breaking into pieces. It has gone the way of Eastern Europe, whose nations took up the call of liberty one by one. The teachings of Marx have proven themselves empty and freedom is flourishing. Fidel Castro should know when to take a hint. The international backing for his communist intentions has vanished. The philosophical foundation of his nation is in ruins. He should allow Cuba to catch up with the times. He should bring Cuba back into the world community.