• In what context did the U.S.
invasion of Grenada take place
30 years ago? What similarities exist with the current U.S. position?
30 years ago? What similarities exist with the current U.S. position?
By Dalia González Delgado
WHAT could lead the most powerful country in the world to invade a nation of only 110,000 inhabitants? Three decades ago, some 7,000 U.S. marines and parachutists occupied Grenada, in an operation labeled Urgent Fury. The capital of this Caribbean island was bombarded by aircraft, helicopters and warships.
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| Maurice Bishop in 1980 (FOTO:ARCHIVO) |
The United Nations condemned the aggression. Ronald Reagan, who
occupied the White House at the time, responded, "100 nations in the United
Nations have not agreed with us on just about everything that's come before them
where we are involved, and it didn't upset my breakfast at all."
This was the same President who when asked about the possibility
of invading Nicaragua in 1986 said, " You're looking at an individual that is
the last one in the world that would ever want to put American troops into Latin
America, because the memory of the Great Colossus of the North is so widespread
in Latin America, we'd lose all our friends if we did anything of that
kind."
The events of October 1983 took place within the framework of an
effort by Reagan, elected in 1981, to reestablish what in the view of
neoconservatives was "the needed recovery of the U.S. military's ability to
coerce," according to Cuban political scientist and researcher Dr. Carlos
Alzugaray.
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| Some 7,000 U.S. marines and parachutists invaded Grenada October 25, 1983 |
"They believed that all of this was due to the weak image
projected by the United States after the defeat in Vietnam and the policy they
described as pacifist which President Carter had implemented: a canal agreement
with Panama, tolerance of the Soviet-Cuban-Nicaraguan support for revolutions in
Central America, the Camp David Accords between Israel and Palestine, a pacifist
policy in Europe, to give just a few examples."
The U.S. needed a show of force to make clear that the country
still had the resources, and the will, to protect its strategic interests
wherever they might be challenged, Alzugaray said.
"The Caribbean Basin was, for many, the perfect site, a location
in which the relationship of forces favored the U.S. given the closeness and
overwhelming military advantage.
"Both Nicaragua and Grenada were considered vulnerable," Alzugaray
continued, "but different strategies were followed in the two countries: a
covert war against the first, with support to reactionary regimes in the area,
and an open invasion of the latter, once propitious conditions existed."
Grenada's revolutionary process fell victim to internal
contradictions. The new government had disarmed the police, created a Popular
Assembly with representation and participation by all social layers; began the
redistribution of land; supported access to health care and education. More than
2,500 people had learned to read and write by 1981. Nevertheless, one segment of
the leadership questioned Bishop's politics and demanded more radical positions.
This led to his destitution, arrest and assassination on October 19, 1983. These
were the conditions under which the U.S. mounted the invasion.
The most powerful country in the world is today experiencing the
erosion of its hegemony. When faced with a similar situation in the past, the
U.S reacted by attacking a small country. How might it respond today?
There were and are two possible reactions, then and now, said
Ernesto Domínguez, from the University of Havana's Center for Hemispheric and
U.S. Studies (CEHSEU), speaking with Granma: "Assume the decline and
attempt to manage it in such a way to preserve a privileged position, or try to
detain the process by resorting to the use of force, with several concrete
objectives, such as giving a show of power, reaffirming geo-strategic positions,
controlling key resources or stimulating the economy with military
spending."
However, Dr. Domínguez commented that there are important
differences between that historical moment and the present. "In the first place,
at that time we were still in the middle of the bi-polarism of the Cold War
between the United States and the Soviet Union. This added a factor which does
not currently exist, one of an identified rival with which to compete, and a
relationship of understandable confrontation-equilibrium," the professor
asserted.
"At that time the decline was more apparent than real, given that
the rival in question was in the process of internal disintegration which was
not evident until a few years later, but which was already having serious
effects, while the United States was far from this. The movements in Latin
America and the Third World in general were strongly connected to the USSR in
many ways.
"Currently, the relative decline appears more real, since
multi-polarity is an emerging process, albeit with still a long way to go. Latin
American movements do not depend on a socialist camp or on a power counterpoised
to the United States. The current leftist and revolutionary movements have their
roots more openly and solidly established in national and regional realities and
contradictions, and they themselves are attempting to construct alternatives of
integration," Alzugaray said.
October 31, 2013
