The 1983 Grenada Case: Remember the Invasion and Occupation of one independent state forty years ago

Grenada is an independent state, a member of the U.N., located in the southern portion of the Caribbean Sea very close to the mainland of South America (Venezuela). The state is composed of the southernmost of the Windward Islands combined with several small islands which belong to the Grenadines Archipelago, populated by almost 110,000 people of whom 82% are blacks (2012 estimations). The state of Grenada is a physically mostly forested mountains area (of volcanic origin) with some crater lakes and springs. In the valleys are bananas, spices, and sugar cane is grown. The country has little significant natural wealth but has relatively high geostrategic importance. The economy was and is primarily agricultural with some very limited small-scale industries of the food production nature with the developing tourist sector as a growing source of the national G.D.P. The state budget is constantly under a high level of foreign debt (a “debt slavery” phenomenon).

As the island, Grenada was discovered by the Europeans (Ch. Columbus) in 1498 and colonized by the French in 1650 becoming a possession of the French royal crown in 1674. During the Seven Years’ War (1756−1763) between all major European states,[i] Grenada was occupied by the British and according to the Peace Treaty of Paris in 1763 was given to the United Kingdom as being a British possession for almost two hundred years with the preserve of slavery. The process of democratization of the island started in 1950 when universal adult suffrage was granted by the United Labor Party. Being a member of the part of the  short lived West Indian Federation (1958−1962) and seeking internationally recognized independence, Grenada was granted such separate independence only in 1974 with Matthew Gairy (a leader of the United Labor Party) who  the first of Grenada’s prime ministers. However, only three years later in 1979, Gairy was deposed from the post in a coup d’état led by Maurice Bishop (1944−1983) as a leader of a Marxist political group under the official title of the New Jewel Movement. Maurice Bishop proclaimed a new Government under the name of the People’s Revolutionary Government that was un-welcomed by the U.S. administration like the Socialist (Marxist-democrat) Government in Chile after the 1970 elections formed by Salvador Allende (1908−1973).[ii]

The issue is in this case that Allende was the first Marxist in the world’s history who became elected by the popular vote as the President of one sovereign and independent state. A new President of Chile was a head of the Unidad Popular that was a coalition of the Marxists (Communists) and the Socialists and therefore faced the hostility of the U.S.A. whose administration supported Chile Congress against Allende. The Congress backed by the U.S.A. heavily opposed Allende’s radical program of nationalization and agrarian reform – a program voted by the electorate in 1970. Due to such obstruction, there were inflation, capital flight, and balance-payments deficit which heavily contributed to an economic crisis in Chile in 1973: exactly what the U.S. administrated wanted and needed. The crisis became the main excuse for the military coup organized and accomplished by the Chile army Commander-in-Chief General Augusto Pinochet (1915−2006) – a typical local exponent of U.S. global politics.[iii] As a consequence, there were around 15,000 people killed together with President Allende and about 10% of the Chilean population left the country during the military dictatorship (1973−1990) which replaced Chilian democracy elected by the people and brutally abolished all labor unions and any opposition organizations and groups.[iv] Capitalism was fully restored with the economy and social order became dependent on the U.S. financial support as a price for the transformation of the country into a classic (U.S.) colony. Nevertheless, the 1973 military suppression of democracy in Chile was a clear message to the whole of Latin America that the Monroe Doctrine of “America to the Americans” (read in fact as “Americas to the U.S.”) is still the leading framework of U.S. foreign policy in this part of the globe.[v] For the matter of illustration, for instance, there was the U.S. direct military invasion of Panama followed by the fall of General Noriega in December 1989: “Operation Just Cause”.[vi]

Similarly to the Allende Case in Chile, Grenada governed by President M. Bishop turned to the left in both the inner and external policy of the state. Therefore, he encouraged very closer relations with F. Castro’s Cuba and potentially with the U.S.S.R. As a result, on the island, there was a Cuban  presence composed of engineers who were repairing and expanding the local airport. This fact became the main reason that the political situation in Grenada became of interest to the U.S. administration. However, due to the internal quarrel within the People’s Revolutionary Government, Bishop was overthrown from the post and murdered by another Marxist, Bernard Coard, in 1983 who took control over the Government. There were clashes between protesters and the government troops and soon violence escalated. However, the army troops under the command of General Hudson Austin soon took power and established a new military regime. This new Grenada coup was immediately followed by direct U.S. military intervention on the island on October 23^rd, under the order of U.S. President Ronald Reagan (“Operation Urgent Fury”), for the very real reason to prevent a Marxist revolutionary council taking power. The U.S. military troops left Grenada in December 1983 after the re-establishment of the “democratic” (pre revolutionary) regime and of course pro-American one transforming Grenada into one more of Washington’s client state.[vii]

It is of concern to see what was de jure explanation by U.S. President Reagan for such military intervention and de facto the U.S. military occupation of one sovereign and independent state. The President, based on the C.I.A. reports of the threat posed to U.S. citizens in Grenada (the students) by the Communist regime, issued the order to the U.S. Marines to invade the island in order to secure their lives. Here we have to remember  how much the C.I.A. reports have been (and are) really accurate and reliable by only two fresh examples:

• In 1999 Serbia and Montenegro were bombed by the N.A.T.O.’s troops (“Operation Merciful Angel”) exactly based on the C.I.A. information about the organized (“Operation Horse Shoe”)  massive ethnic cleansing of the local Kosovo Albanians (100,000 killed) committed by the Serbian regular army and police forces.
• In 2003 the U.S. and the U.K. troops invaded Iraq based also on the C.I.A. reports about the possession of weapons for mass destruction by the regime of Saddam Hussein (1937−2006) ( “Operation Desert Storm 2”).

However, in both mentioned cases the reports are “proved to be unproved”, i.e. false.

The fact was that in the 1983 Grenada case, there were really about 1,000 U.S. citizens on the island, the majority of them studying at the local medical school. Citing the alleged danger to the U.S. citizens in Grenada, the President ordered around 2,000 U.S. troops, combined with some international forces from the Regional Security System based in Barbados. The White House claimed that it received a formal request for military intervention from the prime minsters of Barbados and Dominica. If it is true, and probably it is, then any state receiving such an invitation by the foreign Governments (second states) has the right to invade another state (third state) in order to restore the “democratic” order (in the sense of bringing justice) or at least to protect its own citizens.[viii] Nonetheless, the fact was that during the intervention in Grenada, the U.S. troops faced military opposition by the Grenadian army relying on minimal intelligence about the situation in the country. For example, the U.S. military used in this case old tourist maps of the island. Similar “mistake” N.A.T.O. did this in the 1999 Kosovo Case by bombing the Chinese embassy in the center of Belgrade using also outdated tourist map in which a new Chinese embassy did not exist.[ix] In order to break the Grenadian resistance “Hollywood” President R. Reagan sent additional 4,000 troops to the island. Finally, an “international coalition” led by the U.S. troops succeeded to replace the Government of Grenada with one acceptable to the U.S.A.

Regardless of the fact that a great part of the Americans did not support the 1983 Grenada invasion and that it took place only a few days after a disastrous terror attack on the U.S. military post in Lebanon with over 240 U.S. troops killed, calling into question the use of the U.S. military force in order to achieve political goals, Reagan’s administration officially proclaimed the invasion to be the first “rollback” of Communist influence since the beginning of the Cold War in 1949 (as the U.S. military interventions against the “Communist infection” in Korea and Vietnam had been unsuccessful). A justification of the military invasion was mainly framed within the idea that the U.S. citizens (students) in Grenada could be taken as hostages similar to the 1979 Tehran Hostage Crisis. However, several U.S. Congressmen, like Louis Stokes (Ohio), denied any real danger to any American in Grenada before the invasion (that was confirmed by the students themselves) followed by an unsuccessful attempt by seven Democrats in the Congress, led by Ted Weiss, to introduce a resolution to impeach R. Reagan. Finally, the U.N. General Assembly with majority votes, 108, with only 9 against and 27 abstentions, adopted Resolution 38/7 on October 28^th, 1983 which clearly accused the U.S.A. of violation of international law (“deeply deplores the armed intervention in Grenada, which constitutes a flagrant violation of international law and of the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of that State”).

The 1983 Grenada invasion is not for sure either the first or the last “Hollywood-style” violation of the international law and territorial sovereignty of some independent state by the U.S., or other administration.[x] But it is sure that it was done by the order of up to today the only “Hollywood” cowboy-actor star in the office of the White House in Washington.[xi]

Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirovic

Ex-University Professor

Research Fellow at Centre for Geostrategic Studies

Belgrade, Serbia

www.geostrategy.rs

vsotirovic@yahoo.com

© Vladislav B. Sotirovic 2023

NOTES:

[i] On the Seven Years’ War, see [F. Anderson, Crucible War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754−1766, New York: Vintage Books, 2000; D. Marston, The Seven Years’ War (Essential Histories), Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2001; F. A. J. Szabo, The Seven Years War in Europe, 1756−1763, New York: Routledge, 2008; D. Baugh, The Global Seven Years War, 1754−1763, New York: Routledge, 2014].

[ii] On biography of Salvador Allende, see [S. Allende, J. C. Canning, Salvador Allende Reader: Chile’s Voice of Democracy, Ocean Press, 2000; V. F. Clark, Salvador Allende: Revolutionary Democrat, New York: Palgrave, 2013].

[iii] About the military coup against Salvador Allende, see [O. Guardiola-Rivera, Story of Death Foretold: The Coup Against Salvador Allende, September 11, 1973, New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013; R. Santiago, The Overthrow of Salvador Allende, Free People’s Movement Archive, 2013]. On the U.S. backed Chili coup in 1973, see [L. Z. Qureshi, Nixon, Kissinger, and Allende: U.S. Involvement in the 1973 Coup in Chile, Lexington Books, 2009].

[iv] On Pinochet’s dictatorship, see [P. Kornbluh, The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, New Press, 2003; H. Munoz, The Dictator’s Shadow: Life Under Augusto Pinochet, Basic Books, 2008].

[v] Originally and officially, “the Monroe Doctrine was articulated in President James Monroe’s seventh annual message to Congress on December 2, 1823. The European powers, according to Monroe, were obligated to respect the Western Hemisphere as the United States’ sphere of interest” [http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=23].

[vi] On the 1989 Panama Case, see [Th. Donnelly, M. Roth, C. Baker, Operation Just Cause: The Storming of Panama, Lexington Books, 1991].

[vii] On the U.S. military intervention in Grenada in 1983, see [G. W. Sanford, Grenada: The Untold Story, Madison Books, 1984; M. Adkin, Urgent Fury: The Battle for Grenada, Lexington Books, 1989; E. Ph. G. Seaga, The Grenada Intervention: The Inside Story, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2009; R. W. Stewart, E. F. Raines, Operation Urgent Fury: The Invasion of Grenada, October 1983, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2013; R. H. Spector, U.S. Marines in Grenada 1983, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014; E. F. Raines, The Rucksack War: U.S. Army Operational Logistics in Grenada, 1983, 2015].

[viii] For instance, following the White House’s logic from 1983, overthrown legal President of Ukraine V. Yanukovich by the street-mob in 2014 could call the Russian President V. Putin to restore a legal order in whole Ukraine by the Russian army. In regard to the 2014 Kyiv Coup, according to Paul Craig Roberts, Washington used its funded NGOs ($5 billion according to Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland at the National Press Club in December 2013) to begin street protests when the elected Ukrainian Government turned down the offer to join the European Union (see more in [S. Lendman, Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks World War III, Clarity Press, 2014]. Similarly to the Ukrainian coup in 2014, the Guatemala coup in 1954, when democratically elected Government of Jacobo Arbenz became overthrown, was also carried out by the C.I.A. [S. Schlesinger, S. Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Story of the American Coup in Guatemala, David Rockfeller Center for Latin American Studies, 2006]). Following also Reagan’s logic for the military invasion of Grenada in 1983, the Russian President could send a regular army of the Russian Federation to occupy Ukraine for the security reasons of the Russia’s citizens students at the universities in Kyiv, Odessa or Lvov. Nevertheless, similar Reagan’s argument used (among others) and Adolf Hitler in April 1941 to invade and occupy the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as, according to the German intelligence service, the German minority in Yugoslavia (the Volksdeutschers) were oppressed and terrorized by the new (pro-British) Government of General Dušan Simović after the coup in Belgrade on March 27^th, 1941 (see more in [Николић К., Историја Равногорског покрета 1941−1945., Књига прва, Београд: Српска реч, 1999, 25−42]).

[ix] Here we will not comment or argue on credentials of such army and its headquarters to intervene outside of its own home courtyard.

[x] Dr. Gideon Polya, “The US Has Invaded 71 Nations Since 1776: Make 4 July Independence From American Day” [https://www.scribd.com/doc/217905054/Polya-USA-Independence-Day-1776].

[xi] According to the U.S. Constitution, Arnold Schwarzenegger does not have right to run for the post of the U.S. President as he was not born on the U.S. territory. On Ronald Reagan, see [R. Reagan, An American Life: The Autobiography, New York: Pocket Books, 1990; D. D’Souza, Ronald Reagan: How An Ordinary Man Became An Extraordinary Leader, New York: Rockfeller Center, 19997; P. Noonah, When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan, New York−London: Penguin Books, 2002; M. Black, Ronald Reagan: A Very Brief History, 2013; H. W. Brands, Reagan: The Life, Doubleday, 2015].