Reagan's Mediterranean
STATE DEPARTMENT LIBERALS HAD FIRED the opening shots in the Carter Administration's Caribbean policy. Now it was the turn of hawks in the defense and intelligence communities to plot a...
...M ANY OF THE SMALLER ISLANDS HARbored their own doubts about the CBI, but kept their counsel out of fear of biting the hand that promised, at least symbolically, to feed them...
...it is not of our hemisphere, but it threatens our hemisphere...
...Cited in Maingot, "Playing the Cuban Card," p.30...
...These were precisely the items that formed the backbone of recent light industrial development in the Caribbean...
...Foreign Minister Henry Forde remarked that, We don't want to be a pivot for U.S...
...they must therefore be isolated or, where necessary, exterminated...
...Jamaica is making freedom work," Reagan declared, and indeed the influence of Jamaica's Edward Seaga was evident in the speech...
...y ET IT WAS FALSE TO THINK OF ADAMS as anybody's puppet...
...However, since that time the Soviet-sponsored build- up in Cuba has obliged us to re-evaluate our position in the Caribbean...
...Navy spokesmen announced they would spend $20 million on refurbishing the complex, to boost U.S...
...Washington's efforts to recast the Caribbean Basin in its own image also ran up against existing regional institutions...
...Such fears were prophetic...
...Yet the Carter Administration was wary of being sucked too deeply into the region, and urged Britain to maintain its own military aid programs...
...Seaga also argued that the key to economic recovery was unfettered priREPORT ON THE AMERICAS 28vate investment and access to the vast U.S...
...a proposal to apply domestic tax credits to new investments in the region...
...military operations in Central America, as well as of U.S...
...The problem was that B and C displayed a disconcerting tendency to have minds of their own...
...Antigua's Vere Bird gave an outspoken verdict on the new pact...
...Castro made the extraordinary admission that, "We did not even know that [Coard's] group existed...
...proposal...
...7. The New York Times, February 20, 1983...
...Barbadian opposition leader Errol Barrow led a bitter campaign against the ruinous cost of militarizing a small, poor island and Adams' high-handed ambitions of becoming a sub-regional power...
...The CBI Coalition linked U.S...
...The most serious criticisms were of the free trade proposals, which Reagan called the "centerpiece" of the CBI...
...military installations, including five naval, two air force and seven army bases...
...The talk of consultation appeared more of a rearguard action by Assistant Secretary of State Thomas O. Enders than a serious commitment by the Administration...
...There was also a clear interest in moving beyond limited coastguard schemes...
...Air Force Magazine, February 1982...
...2 Reagan confronted stubborn Caribbean independence first-hand when he arrived in Barbados in April 1982 for a beach vacation at the home of actress Claudette Colbert...
...A coup attempt against the Manley government by members of the Jamaica Defense Force in June REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 321980 was a further hint of the dangers of a politicized military...
...8. The New York Times, February 25, 1982...
...and Caribbean forces was a watershed in the history of the English-speaking Caribbean...
...The Reagan Administration pinned its hopes on an interlocking set of military, economic and political programs, in line with the seminal policy report of the Committee of Santa Fe, published in 1980...
...This time, the United States defrayed the costs of Barbadian assistance-$30,000...
...In December 1979 Adams made a show of regional leadership by sending members of his Defense Force to guard St...
...The redeployment of U.S...
...New industry but few jobsMare Nostrum N OWHERE DID THE CBI ADDRESS THE alarming decline in agriculture...
...The most visible new trend in U.S...
...The small Eastern Caribbean islands did not necessarily see the economic relevance of the Jamaican model...
...on the conditionality of the CBI, see Washington Letter on Latin America, October 13, 1982...
...Adams declared instead that he looked forward to the "spread of the democracy virus" and asked for a climate of detente in the Caribbean to allow the islands to "get on with policies of economic development and not have to worry about ideological defense...
...quotas, preferences which can be adjusted to induce greater exports from the Caribbean region...
...It was also a signal that Adams was ready to see the military intervene in purely domestic disputes: the short-lived Union Island revolt was a protest over the neglect of the tiny dependency by the central authorities...
...The CBI was bogged down in Congress until August, and much of the initial enthusiasm for it had evaporated...
...At least eight federal agencies or departments set up promotional programs for the Caribbean...
...British Prime Minister James Callaghan agreed to provide coastguard training and support for Barbados to "knit together" the smaller island forces...
...In 1980, 50 Barbadian soldiers arrived on the island for summer training camp...
...4.9 million to modernize Camp Santiago and another $3.5 million to improve facilities on the offshore island of Vieques...
...contributions to multilateral agencies serving the region were reduced by almost a quarter...
...allies found intrusive and insulting...
...foreign economic policy, which the Administration justified by asserting that free trade was a vital component in its strategy for holding back the communist threat to the region...
...How was an artificial construct called the "Caribbean Basin" to be welded into an enduring reality...
...6 OOPERS AND LYBRAND WERE PART OF a flamboyant push to sell the CBI, having been contracted by AID for a three-year, $5.8 million program to promote investment in the Eastern Caribbean...
...The provision would seem inappropriate to the CBI package...
...Caribbean/Central America Action (CCAA), a coaliREPORT ON THE AMERICAS 30I JULY/AUGUST 1985 31 tion of government, business and labor interests supported by more than 50 major corporations, worked hard to strengthen U.S...
...This placed the Reagan Administration sharply on one side of a thorny dilemma which had faced Caribbean leaders since the mid-1970s...
...In a speech to the Royal Commonwealth Society in London, Tom Adams declared that, "In hemispheric terms, 1983 is bound to be seen as the watershed year in which the influence of the United States, willy-nilly, came observably to replace that of Great Britain in the old British colonies...
...training of military personnel showed similar dramatic increases...
...6. Committee of Santa Fe, "A New Inter-American Policy for the Eighties" (Washington, D.C.: Council for Inter-American Security, 1980...
...The Grenada revolution of March 1979 stirred up the hornets' nest, and further blurred the line between defense against external threat and repression of homegrown dissent...
...He had badly underestimated the pragmatism of his allies, who had long since settled on normal working relations with the Bishop regime and were quite unconcerned at the prospect of contamination...
...A S 1983 WORE ON, THE ADMINISTRAtion's record of success in bending the Caribbean microstates to its will was still distinctly mixed...
...A little over $1 million was destined to enhance the communications center at Sabana Seca...
...For Great Britain, Grenada was the final act in a history of displacement from regional power that had started in 1898...
...Caribbean Policy," in Erisman, ed., The Caribbean Challenge, pp.48-71...
...Would it rotate among the islands...
...To the satisfaction of the Reagan Administration, the OECS formed a Defence and Security Committee, to coordinate "collective defense and the preservation of peace and security . . . including measures to combat the activities of mercenaries, operating with or without the support of internal or national elements...
...assistance to any "communist" country-which effectively excluded Nicaragua and Grenada-and to any nation that even minimally discriminated against U.S...
...Tom Adams promptly ordered his delegate to the CDB to vote against the U.S...
...Appropriately enough, the Administration's concept of the Caribbean Basin first became operational in the military sphere...
...The benefits of the CBI were further reduced when Washington decided in May 1982 to impose worldwide quotas on sugar, another key regional export...
...The next step in military coordination, again largely Tom Adams' brainchild, was a Memorandum of Understanding signed in Roseau, Dominica in October 1982 by the governments of Barbados, St...
...The Caribbean Community in the 1980s: Report by a Group of Caribbean Experts" (Georgetown, Guyana: CARICOM Secretariat, 1981...
...They understand that the small people have got to have a piece of the pie...
...In a symbolic sense at least-and symbolism is all important to Reagan's Washingtonthe Administration had proved its case that the Caribbean Basin could be treated as a single unit...
...This new command's area of responsibility covered "waters and islands of the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and parts of the Pacific bordering Central America...
...Carter Administration made its first request to Congress for U.S...
...24 The training programs covered four of the seven members of the newly formed Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), founded in June 1981...
...According to Peter Johnson, director of Caribbean/ Central America Action, Jamaica proved that the leopard of private enterprise had changed its spots: The business leadership in Jamaica today is very acutely aware of its own deficiencies of the late 60s and early 70s...
...But there was a parallel impulse among some small island leaders to resort to force at home...
...What would its role be against internal dissent...
...The military was not a major actor in the English-speaking Caribbean...
...Three-quarters of the money was laid aside to renovate the key Roosevelt Roads naval base...
...Smaller numbers were dotted around Trinidad and Tobago, the U.S...
...If Reagan thought this indicated slavish loyalty on the part of the Commonwealth Caribbean, he was soon disillusioned...
...The divisions in the NJM Central Committee came as "surprising and unpleasant news...
...Southern Command...
...In the words of one local economist, Bilateralism would create further competition among the weak economies, while undermining the institutions created and developed to aid in offsetting the bargaining weaknesses resulting from small size...
...other programs would enforce ideological conformity and guide the Caribbean nations toward a single model of free market economic development through tightly vetted bilateral aid programs and trade preferences...
...sites...
...For Gorman, "Exercises send signals-they are more than just readiness vehicles-they are instruments of national policy which we should continue to exploit to the fullest.'"" T HE NEW STRATEGY ALSO ENLISTED local client regimes as the first line of defense...
...Adams told parliament, "Barbados' military assistance to St...
...We are witnessing an historic shift of investment from the Far East to the Caribbean," said Robert E. Brown, a director of the international financial firm of Coopers and Lybrand...
...This was especially true because of the anti-communist fixation which set severe limits on the U.S...
...The exercise featured a full-scale dress rehearsal of the invasion of Grenada-codenamed "Amber and the Amberdines"-on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques...
...Embassy in Bridgetown...
...The aftershocks were soon evident in Suriname...
...In November 1981, the Defense Department reorganized and upgraded its regional defense network under a single umbrella-U.S...
...And they feared that the U.S...
...contributions from the Caribbean Development Bank unless Grenada was excluded from CDB-funded projects (even those serving basic human needs), it discovered that island leaders saw regionalism as a more important principle than ideological alignment with the United States...
...3 And for the Reagan Administration, the invasion confirmed that this was, indeed, America's Mediterranean...
...Washington Report on the Hemisphere, March 23, 1982...
...Caribbean Contact, April and July 1983...
...The Miami Herald, November 2, 1983...
...exports or investors...
...Nor did it appear to learn from the shortcomings of its predecessor, Operation Bootstrap, which had created fewer jobs in industry than Puerto Rico lost in farming...
...The Barbados government, too, seemed ambivalent about the role it was expected to play...
...Each CBI recipient was required to sign a Bilateral Investment Treaty with the United States, and open its files to AID on "aspects of macroeconomic policy that relate . . . to the objectives of the Caribbean Basin Initiative...
...Cited in Defense Monitor (Washington, D.C.: Center for Defense Information), Vol.XIII, no.7 (1984...
...Fidel Castro, "On Grenada," speech at the funeral of Cubans killed in Grenada, Havana, November 14, 1983, reprinted in Monthly Review, Vol.XXXV, no.8 (January 1984...
...On August 5, 1983, with all this promotional hoopla in full swing, the CBI emerged from congressional wrangling and became law...
...For Admiral Wesley McDonald, the importance of the CBI was to "ensure that the nations of the Caribbean Basin continue to compete favorably in comparison with Cuba, which will fall increasingly behind its Caribbean neighbors in productivity and standard of living in the 1980s...
...The mere fact of American airpower operating in the Caribbean might be a real signal . . . to the nations bordering the Caribbean that Uncle Sam was around keeping an eye on things...
...Vincent, Dominica and Antigua...
...A Senate Foreign Affairs Committee study noted that this "should not undermine the legislative intent to prevent U.S...
...As one analyst wrote in Air Force Magazine in 1982: We should be able to put in an austere base somewhere along that island chain...
...He told a CARICOM foreign ministers' meeting in Kingston in September 1981 that, A Caribbean policy should . . . move beyond the question of aid flows only, to examine how to induce greater private investment...
...It was Barbados again that offered help when Eugenia Charles faced a revolt by members of the Dominica Defense Force in December 1981-the island's second coup attempt in a year...
...In Jamaica, Seaga rose in parliament to denounce a list of 25 people-mainly members of the opposition PNP-as "security risks...
...The two issued a Memorandum of Understanding, noting the "growing complexity of the security problems of the Caribbean region," which they identified as "terrorism, piracy, the use of mercenaries . . . and the introduction into the region of techniques of subversion...
...Barbados lost the security council seat to Peru by a vote of 104-38 two days after the Grenada invasion...
...Tom Adams of Barbados complained that this "would require the disclosure of information which normally could not be made available for a foreign government under local law...
...Nothing fancy, you understand, with no grand numbers of people permanently on station...
...Barbados agreed to contribute 49% of the funds for a Regional Defense Force, provide operational headquarters and appoint its own chief of staff as Regional Security Coordinator...
...Jamaica alone had seen agricultural employment slump from 39% to 24% of the workforce between 1960 and 1977, while the percentage in industry rose only from 25% to 27%.2 The CBI offered only the tired philosophy of encouraging growth through private investment in urban industries which did little to absorb the drift of the unemployed to the Caribbean cities...
...The four-day trip offered the president a sunshine break from the crisis in the Falklands/ Malvinas, which Argentine troops had invaded six days earlier...
...Virgin Islands, the Bahamas, Antigua and Grenada...
...AID and the Peace Corps both devoted more resources to small business ventures and entrepreneurial training in the region, and after 1980 the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) stepped up its Caribbean activities sharply, mainly in the politically less volatile islands...
...Richard E. Feinberg, Richard Newfarmer and Bernadette Orr, "The Battle over the CBI: The Debate in Washington," Caribbean Review, Vol.XII, no.2 (Spring 1983), pp.15-18 and 47-48...
...Barbados also stationed a coastguard vessel off the coast of St...
...Lucia and St...
...Lucia in case of unrest during the island's May 1982 elections...
...His own son Lester, deputy prime minister and heir presumptive to the old man's throne, while favoring the idea of a Regional Defense Force, was wary of reliance on Washington...
...see also Financial Times, November 27, 1984...
...Caribbean Contact May 1982...
...Lucia and St...
...A small security team was stationed at the U.S...
...Vincent...
...David J. Andre, "to right a balance knocked askew as much by its own past indifference, inattention and lack of imagination as by more recent communist initiatives...
...supplies and reinforcements to a European war theater...
...Lucia, St...
...There were also serious doubts about whether the CBI could generate significant new exports...
...Canada especially resented Reagan's efforts to compel the Caribbean to toe the line ideologically...
...C ARTER'S EXCESSIVE FEAR OF LEFTIST advances had driven him to lay the groundwork for the militarization of the Caribbean...
...But in February 1982, before the Caribbean Common Market (CARICOM) planning group could even submit its findings, Reagan had unveiled his Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI...
...And the tiny amounts of direct aid offered by the CBI-just $10 million for the whole Eastern Caribbean-promised no improvement...
...military aid to Barbados...
...The invasion of the island 13 days later by U.S...
...2. Admiral Wesley McDonald, "Atlantic Security: The Cuban Factor," Janes Defense Weekly, December 22, 1984...
...Evidence of coordinated action mounted in the succeeding months...
...Military containment of communism was the core...
...commercial ties in the region...
...Each part of the plan had serious built-in drawbacks...
...The proposal lay dormant until January 1979, when Barbadian leader Tom Adams responded to a coup threat in Dominica and a mercenary "invasion scare" in Barbados by calling for joint coastguard patrols with Antigua, St...
...Latin America Regional Report: Caribbean, February 21, 1983...
...clients, and for English-speaking former colonies, which had a long tradition of parliamentary democracy...
...Readex '83, Universal Trek and others followed at regular intervals, above all during the tenure of Gen...
...Jamaica's allocation alone rose from zero in the last year of the Manley government to $8.275 million in 1986...
...First of all, a full 87% of regional exports already entered the United States duty free under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP...
...Edward Seaga noted that the English-speaking Caribbean countries felt "a certain amount of bitterness" at British opposition to the Grenada invasion, and added caustically that London could no longer assume "some right of prior consultation in matters that affect us here...
...and Caribbean business interests under the co-chairmanship of David Rockefeller and Eastern Airlines boss Frank Borman...
...Economists in the region also pointed to the need to channel resources through the state, for sound historical reasons...
...by 1983, the regional figure was up to 145 soldiers-half of them from Jamaica, and the rest from Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Guyana, St...
...In December 1982, ABC News had reported a CIA plan to overthrow the Bouterse regime, which CIA Director William Casey told Congress was leading the country "into the Cuban orbit...
...But the idea was paralyzed by both practical and political obstacles...
...tolerance of reform...
...Where would the force be based...
...The United States will do whatever is prudent and necessary," said Reagan, "to ensure the peace and security of the Caribbean...
...I am persuaded that we must focus more clearly on both the strategy and the means to ensure a secure and stable Caribbean flank, particularly during an EastWest crisis in Europe...
...Even a Gairy...
...Even Adams, the keenest supporter of the regional buildup, was annoyed that U.S...
...But CBI backers blithely claimed their formula would work this time...
...The CBI seemed to them more like a symbolic good conduct medal than a tangible source of prosperity...
...complicity in internal suppression," but recommended that "islands should be encouraged to mainJULY/AUGUST 1985 33 tain a well-trained police, similar to SWAT (Special Weapons Assault Team) capable of handling terrorist or organized group violence...
...Leaders like Barbados' Tom Adams felt that regional stability had been restored by the string of six centrist and conservative election victories since 1980...
...The USDA, working closely with the Agribusiness Promotion Council, set up a Caribbean advisory center, while the Department of Commerce took potential investors on swings through the region and put on an ambitious series of promotional workshops in California's Silicon Valley and other U.S...
...Now, expanded coastguard facilities and an internal security buildup shared the goal of defending pro-American regimes against Cuban-inspired subversion...
...Adams sent Foreign Minister Louis Tull toMare Nostrum Havana to discuss normalizing relations with Cuba, and was making a concerted effort to win a seat for Barbados on the United Nations Security Council...
...Leaders of CARICOM insisted in February 1983 that ideological pluralism-a dirty word in Washington since 1979was "an irreversible fact of international relations...
...Vincent...
...The Navy announced that most routine Atlantic Fleet training would be shifted to the Caribbean...
...Vincent ought to be regarded as a watershed in the region, because for the first time, one of these islands has looked to one of its own for help...
...To be the 'Iran of the Caribbean' is perhaps a very flattering designation for Barbados...
...foreign policy to recognize that Washington had only responded to the economic needs of the Caribbean when frightened by the threat of communism...
...To make sense, the "Caribbean Basin" meant devising uniform policies for Spanish-speaking states which had spent most of their existence as dictatorial U.S...
...This "Caribbean Basin" or "greater Caribbean," they concluded, faced imminent turmoil because of increased Soviet adventurism around the globe, intrusion into a U.S...
...Seaga was a shrewd enough observer of U.S...
...In February, the A shield for democracy...
...Its personnel succumbed to U.S...
...Financial Times, November 29, 1983...
...Talk of fisheries protection and anti-smuggling operations was submerged in the larger demands of the East-West struggle...
...7 WITHIN A MONTH OF THE REAGAN INAUguration, the State Department began to discuss a wide-ranging Caribbean Basin trade and aid program...
...The following year brought Ocean Venture '82 and Safe Pass '82, in which NATO warships in the Gulf of Mexico rehearsed the protection of merchant ships carrying U.S...
...It] must examine the means of accommodating increased trade, and particularly the structure of tariffs...
...Grenada's PRG obliged Washington's wildest fantasies by placing Prime Minister Maurice Bishop under house arrest, and then, within the course of a week, committing collective revolutionary suicide...
...The most commonly proposed solution was a modest coast guard force...
...Admiral Wesley McDonald, commander-in-chief of U.S...
...Serious talks also got underway on a 120-man regional police force "to deal with any internal armed threat to an elected government.'""' Some island leaders argued that the NJM's "unconstitutional" coup threatened the political identity of the region, and could not therefore be seen as an internal Grenadian matter...
...But the policy took hold dramatically with Ocean Venture '81, from August-October 1981, the largest peacetime naval maneuvers since World War II...
...Politically, they were less afraid of the Cuban threat than of being dragged into the East-West conflict...
...Cintron Tiryakian, "Military and Security Dimensions," p.49...
...REAGAN'S MEDITERRANEAN 1. Cited in Josefina Cintron Tiryakian, "The Military and Security Dimensions of U.S...
...The Administration, in other words, was ideologically wedded to a development model that was unlikely to deal with the economic crisis or defuse social unrest...
...Richard Sim and James Anderson, "The Caribbean Strategic Vacuum," Conflict Studies (London: Institute for the Study of Conflict), No...
...Vincent's capital of Kingstown while Milton Cato's government suppressed a rebellion on Union Island...
...When the Reagan Administration threatened to withhold $4 million worth of U.S...
...the Labour government refused...
...The criterion for inclusion as a CBI beneficiary was strict ideological conformity, which was to be monitored by a series of bilateral measures that even loyal U.S...
...The old Harry S. Truman Annex at Key West, decommissioned in 1973, was quickly spruced up for its new command role...
...military strategy in the Caribbean was a heavy reliance on naval exercises, and the largest jump in personnel was in the number of shipborne troops in Caribbean waters8,700 of them by 1984, with many more on temporary maneuvers...
...units increased troop strength in the region to 27,900 in 1983...
...power in the Caribbean Basin stood starkly exposed...
...and Caribbean Basin businesses...
...After 1981, Reagan accelerated the process for clear doctrinal reasons...
...Now, fearing that he was next on the invasion list, Bouterse expelled the Cuban ambassador and suspended all agreements with Havana...
...The Washington Post, December 17, 1983...
...In 1981, 13 Barbadians were the only U.S.trained Caribbean soldiers...
...A regional security system, he declared, was "insurance against the violent overthrow of democratically elected governments...
...The program will wed the most successful elements of the Truman Doctrine and the Alliance for Progress...
...During 1982, Barbados tried to distance itself diplomatically from Washington, and became a full member of the Non-Aligned Movement...
...A new kind of colonialism stalks the world today and threatens our independence...
...3. The comment is by Admiral Harry D. Train II, cited in The Miami Herald, April 30, 1982...
...anti-submarine warfare capabilities in the Caribbean and "permit frequent and regular visits by destroyers and other units of the Atlantic Fleet...
...military credits were offered on standard commercial terms...
...Milton (USAF Ret...
...The Carter Administration had been reluctant to involve itself, fearing that to create a military establishment in the tiny island states might undermine, rather than protect, their parliamentary system...
...The arrival at Key West of a squadron of six missile-carrying hydrofoil patrol boats was scheduled for late 1982...
...In any event, it would certainly have attracted the kind of capital-intensive investments the region needed least...
...I think all of us are concerned," said Reagan, "at the overturn of Westminster parliamentary democracy in Grenada...
...The Reagan Administration also announced its intention to override legislation barring U.S...
...Senior military officials bought the argument...
...VER THE COURSE OF THE NEXT THREE years, Admiral McDonald remarked with satisfaction, "Through adjustments in deployment schedules, [we] have generated enough flexibility to allow increased presence in the Caribbean area...
...Col...
...and the removal of tariff barriers from Caribbean exports to the United States, creating a one-way free trade area for 12 years...
...4 One writer after another recited the reasons for the special strategic value of the Caribbean-its role as a link between the U.S...
...The direct aid component provided less than 10% of what the region needed to cover its balance-of-payments shortfall...
...5. David C. Jordan, "The Turbulent Caribbean: Three Views of U.S...
...Far more striking than any demonic Cuban conspiracy depicted by the State Department in its highly selective volumes of captured documents was Cuba's failure to foresee the crisis...
...The United States must act quickly," wrote Defense Department analyst Lt...
...Even Western allies with interests in the region were to be discouraged from any action that was out of step with U.S...
...Vincent...
...Latin America Regional Report: Caribbean, October 31, 1980...
...And what the aid gave with one hand, it took away with the other...
...He wrote, Until about 1980, the major thrust of U.S...
...Washington Report on the Hemisphere, February 8, 1983...
...Their problem was not whether to develop a military capability, but how, and of what kind...
...Kitts, St...
...For the Caribbean Left, the invasion brought not only a serious internal crisis, but also a wave of McCarthy-style vigilantism...
...I don't believe that when a country chooses a socialist or even a Marxist path it necessarily buys a package which automatically injects it into the Soviet orbit...
...That country now bears the Soviet and Cuban trademark, which means that it will attempt to spread the virus among its neighbors...
...4. Lt.Col...
...on the St.Lucia elections, see Caribbean Contact (November 1983...
...For Cuba, it was the most severe in a four-year series of setbacks...
...officials and private sector leaders also saw this remapping of the Caribbean economy as part of a global shift of capital away from Asian nations like Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea, where rapid industrialization had driven up wages and spurred a move away from assembly operations toward capital-intensive, high-technology industry...
...troop presence were key concepts...
...Emerging from a successful anti-communist election campaign at home, he now prodded his friend Reagan in the same direction...
...In May 1983, Bird went further, asking for a "bigger and more active" US presence to safeguard democracy...
...the limits on its ability to confront U.S...
...Of the rest, the CBI excluded imports of textiles, apparel and footware after fierce lobbying from the AFL-CIO, which feared the loss of up to 18,000 jobs...
...The whole idea behind the defense force is that if you get through today on your own island, don't forget there will be forces in all the other islands and you will have to answer to them...
...The Seaga government received heavy equipment including jeeps, trucks and patrol boats...
...26 But Bird may not have spoken for all his colleagues...
...Governments of the Caribbean did not deliberately seek to substitute public capital for private capital," noted CARICOM's Frank Rampersad, "The entry of government into the production system has been largely because there was no development being undertaken by the private sector...
...None of this was to concern anybody but Washington...
...If, on the other hand, the United States saw the security threat as undiminished, how soon would it revert to its basic military instincts...
...policy in the English-speaking Caribbean...
...The stabilization of the region was to rest on the familiar but unsuccessful methods of Operation Bootstrap and the Alliance for Progress...
...These were a major break with traditional U.S...
...IN CONTRAST TO CENTRAL AMERICA, THE United States could not rely on local security forces as a ready ally in building a "shield" against "alien" ideologies and models...
...Data in this paragraph is drawn from Tom Barry, Beth Wood and Deb Preusch, The Other Side of Paradise: Foreign Control in the Caribbean (New York: Grove Press, 1984), pp.200-209, updated from Langhorne A. Motley, "Aid and U.S...
...French troops and weapons from Martinique and Guadeloupe were also sent to Dominica...
...The Caribbean phase centered on Cuba ("Red" in war-game parlance...
...But the most striking feature of Ocean Venture was its explicit linkage between global conflict and domestic upheaval in even the tiniest of local states-in this case Grenada...
...Caribbean leftists-Jamaican social democrats as well as Grenadian revolutionaries-were seen as so contaminated by Cuban influence that they could not be coopted...
...It vindicated the use of force and gave carte blanche to do the same again if necessary: in July 1984 the battleship Iowa anchored off the French island of Martinique "in case of emergency" during elections in nearby St...
...2 Military sales, assistance and training programs to the English-speaking Caribbean soared from $217,000 in 1981 to a request for $18.825 million for Fiscal Year 1986...
...But the solution was not hard to find: the United States would enhance its own military presence in Caribbean waters as the best "shield for democracy" and build a military capacity in the islands where none had previously existed...
...Reagan's speech to the OAS announcing the CBI, like the plan itself, was shot through with the conviction that "imported terrorism" was the core of the Caribbean crisis...
...T. The area is now one of nmy major concerns...
...Would any leader requesting help automatically get it...
...121 (August 1980...
...Antiguan leader Vere Bird captured the dilemma nicely: "Developing countries must pull themselves up by their own bootstraps . . . but first we must have the straps by which to pull up the boots...
...And Pierre Trudeau's Minister of External Affairs Mark MacGuigan commented in March 1982 that, "The states in the region have the right to choose to follow whatever ideological path their peoples decide...
...market, nor the modern infrastructure demanded by foreign businesses...
...It agreed instead to supply weapons and finance for an Eastern Caribbean Regional Defense Force (RDF...
...But I don't think Barbados wants to play the role of cat's paw for any nation...
...Foreign Commercial Service offices set to work matching up the needs of U.S...
...T HIS GEOPOLITICAL VISION FORCED A wide variety of nations into an arbitrary straitjacket...
...In this region," he announced, "we cannot afford to have another Cuba or another Grenada...
...The Canadians continued to expand their trade with Cuba, to the point where it was larger than Canadian trade with the Commonwealth Caribbean...
...The paradox of the CBI was that the conservative Eastern Caribbean figures most ideologically predisposed to the program's free-market principles had no way of taking advantage of them...
...They argued, in the words of former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff David C. Jones, that U.S./Caribbean policy should be part of a "comprehensive strategic vision that integrates regional issues within a larger global framework...
...From 1979-1981, defense journals were filled with a rash of articles advocating a new vision of the region, which they saw both as an area of mounting social unrest and a "chink in our strategic armor...
...plans in the Atlantic arena focused on the North Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...
...After the Falklands/Malvinas war, he travelled to London to ask Britain to repeat its stand against "Argentina's madness" by helping the Eastern Caribbean defend itself against "military adventurism" by neighboring states...
...Facing independence unarmed, they agreed on the need to respond to a host of security-related issues: disputes over fishing rights, offshore oil exploration, drug trafficking and the threat of mercenary attack...
...The New York Times, February 20, 1984...
...Forty eight U.S...
...Are We Being Outflanked in the Caribbean...
...Paul Gorman as head of U.S...
...Forces Caribbean Command-and granted it new status as one of three full-scale NATO Atlantic Commands...
...economic commitment to the Caribbean would last only until Washington felt the security problem was under control...
...The State Department requested $5 million in Foreign Military Sales (FMS) credits for Barbados in Fiscal Year 1981-a large amount for a small island-to pay for communications and navigational gear for the Coast Guard, and transport and other equipment for the 300-strong Barbados Defense Force...
...The Puerto Rican National Guard subsequently signed training agreements with both Barbados and Jamaica, and also instructed members of the Dominica Defense Force...
...THEY ALSO RECOGNIZED THAT THE CBI crudely proposed to divide and rule...
...It included the Caribbean Contingency Joint Task Force, which Carter had opened at Key West in late 1979, the Antilles Defense Command in Puerto Rico, naval forces, Army, Air Force and Marine units...
...troops in a symbolic piece of Cold War theater...
...Many U.S...
...aid for police training...
...They also agreed with the 1971 CSIS report that the region should be redefined to embrace Central America and the "rim" states, as well as the islands...
...Caribbean leaders had understood they were to be directly involved in drawing up the plan...
...market...
...They were expected, however, to help out as junior partners on the military front...
...Interests in Latin America and the Caribbean," Current Policy (Washington, D.C.: Department of State), No.666 (March 5, 1985...
...But on October 12, 1983, three years of sustained pressure against the Caribbean Left abruptly paid off...
...Puerto Rican facilities, too, received a $49 million facelift, designed to speed up troop deployment in the Caribbean...
...More than 120,000 troops, 250 ships and 1,000 aircraft from 14 Latin American and NATO countries played out aMare o he ANostrum Mare Nostrum four-phase global war scenario in the South Atlantic, Caribbean, North Atlantic and Baltic...
...The tax credit idea quickly fell foul of Congress...
...David J. Andre, "Gathering Storm in the Eastern Caribbean," Military Review (July 1981...
...Lucia, and delivered a lecture on the communist menace...
...The program totally bypassed CARICOM and its sister bank, the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), and instead proposed to operate through a moribund private sector grouping, the Caribbean Association of Industry and Commerce...
...It also barred U.S...
...Now it was the turn of hawks in the defense and intelligence communities to plot a change of course...
...South and North Atlantic fleets, its importance in the event of a European war, access to the Panama canal and to Jamaican and Guyanese bauxite reserves and the use of Caribbean sealanes to transport more than 50% of imported U.S...
...administrations...
...In 1976, Vere Bird's government in Antigua asked the British to send in troops to silence domestic protests...
...It is brutal and totalitarian...
...The Santa Fe report argued for "An evolutionary process in which the United States, Britain and Canada, the old ABC alliance, would work together in protecting the English-speaking political heritage in the Caribbean...
...The war was already casting grave doubts on the viability of the "Caribbean Basin," since almost all the English-speaking islands backed Britain (and subsequently the United States) at the U.N., while the Central American nations and Cuba stood en bloc with Argentina...
...Many of them now, and I'm talking of the bigger guys, are bound and determined that a repeat will not occur...
...But they reserved their harshest words for the complacency of JULY/AUGUST 1985 27Rep04 04N 4te A*e'me.4 Mare Nostrum prior U.S...
...Once in Barbados, he called five Caribbean leaders in for a "working lunch," pointedly excluding the premiers of left-wing Grenada and St...
...For the first time, an English-speaking country had been incorporated into the time-honored Central American tradition: when a government steps out of line, the Marines hit the beaches...
...If it failed, the temptation to resort to military force against continuing dissent would not be far behind...
...Of these, the largest land-based forces were the 3,800 stationed in Puerto Rico, and 2,400 at Guantanamo on Cuba...
...Policy," Strategic Review (Fall 1980...
...Whose finger would be on the trigger...
...The later Carter period had seen the beginning of this shift, with Puerto Rico and Guantanamobased exercises such as Solid Shield '80 and Readex '80...
...0 T HE CBI HAD THREE COMPONENTS: $350 million in supplemental direct aid...
...One influential article in the British journal Conflict Studies spoke of the need for "ships and planes that can perform a variety of low-intensity functions such as speedy reconnaissance, patrolling, policing and limited paramilitary interventions...
...Financial Times, November 29, 1983...
...On Barbadian intervention, see The New York Times, February 19, 1984...
...sphere by "middle powers" such as Venezuela and Mexico, the transition of island societies to independence and renewed Cuban interest in fomenting unrest...
...One critique of the CBI estimated that even relatively large consumer shifts toward Caribbean products would not yield more than $100 million in additional exports-or 1% of the region's 1980 export total...
...Latin America Regional Report: Caribbean, March 31, 1983...
...Rosina Wiltshire-Brodber, "Instability and Crisis in the Caribbean: The Demystification of the Caribbean Basin Initiative," CARICOM Bulletin (Georgetown), No.4 (1983...
...Atlantic Forces, spelled out the importance of the region in global terms, recalling that, during World War II, "only a few German submarines, operating far from support bases, wrought havoc on the congested shipping lanes of the Caribbean...
...The "marginal differences" in wages and tariffs, argued Brown, "are the key to what is happening...
...The Miami Herald, February 21 and June 10, 1982...
...Puerto Rico became an important hub of U.S...
...Flexibility and the psychological impact of a U.S...
...They had neither the productive capacity and business know-how to make their exports competitive on the U.S...
...By 1984 the Caribbean Basin was home to 21 U.S...
...One analyst asserted that for the "professional intelligence community," the "resource conflict interpretation" was the key to Soviet behavior: the Soviets were bent on depriving the West of access to the Caribbean's vital raw materials through the use of "clandestine professional revolutionaries...
...On April 30, Adams met with Trinidadian Prime Minister Eric Williams...
...In Barbados, Adams revoked the work permit of Guyanese editor Rickey Singh, the lone journalistic voice raised against the invasion...
...9. Latin America Regional Report: Caribbean, September 25, 1981...
...It also concentrated on Central America at the expense of the Caribbean, with $243 million destined for El Salvador, Costa Rica and Honduras...
...This called for "a new positive policy for the greater Caribbean, including Central America...
...oil supplies...
Vol. 19 • July 1985 • No. 4
