THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
Barnet, Richard J.
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK A pitiful, helpless giant goes to war BY RICHARD J. BARNET The surge in Ronald Reagan's popularity after the U.S. invasion of Grenada raises some fascinating questions:...
...Here, finally, the Reagan Administration assumed, was the winnable war that would put to rest the "Vietnam syndrome...
...If it were large enough, an American expeditionary force could drive the Sandi-nista regime from Managua to the hills, but the prospect would be a generation or two of bloody guerrilla warfare...
...invasion were cancelled on orders from the United States and its Caribbean allies...
...What were those real reasons...
...If the United States is not the dominant influence in a "backyard" country, as it was in Nicaragua during the So-moza years, then the people of that country are branded enemies and consigned to "world communism...
...invasion of Grenada: "There are too many sickos and bastards running around the country [who] don't give a damn about America...
...Neither Iran nor Guatemala nor Lebanon is secure, free, or subject to much American influence...
...Fidel Castro is once more a hero to many in Latin America for having fought the American invaders under impossible odds and in behalf of an independent nation...
...BLURB from the front page of USA Today, November 7, 1983: "MONEY: Consumer confidence up second week in a row, apparently due to military showing in Grenada...
...That a tiny island without a functioning government could be conquered by a large flotilla tells us nothing about the effectiveness of American military power in areas of the world that have brought us the frustrations of the past fifteen years—Southeast Asia, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Central America...
...And so the adverse reaction of international opinion fails to impose any brake on the momentum of intervention...
...By showing the world that we now embrace what we condemn in the communists—the brutal reality that weak countries have no choice but to submit to the whims of the strong—we are creating more enemies than we or our children will be able to handle...
...Why were so few Americans suspicious of an operation from which the press was unaccountably excluded...
...The choice in Nicaragua is to try to repeat Grenada and court a catastrophe, or to accede to the overwhelming sentiment in the hemisphere and among COMMENT from New York State Republican Chairman George Clark on critics of the U.S...
...Our citizens do not think of themselves as bullies...
...That was the basis of legitimacy for our military power and our self-proclaimed police role...
...press reports from the island...
...The Nicaraguans and Cubans would think twice about defying the wishes of the reigning superpower of the hemisphere...
...w hy, then, the outpouring of public support here in the United States...
...But the ideology of tiny, poor countries poses no threat to the national security of the United States despite our Government's hyperbolic rhetoric and manipulation of facts...
...For hundreds of millions in Latin America, the United States has reverted to type: It is not a good neighbor but a bully...
...The lessons actually learned abroad could not have been more different...
...Why were they so ready to believe a Presidential rationale based on assertions—those, for example, relating to the size and character of the Cuban presence, the danger to the U.S...
...The nationalist nerve that turns peasants into guerrillas has been squeezed again...
...The lessons that the Reagan Administration may draw from its adventure in Grenada pose the greatest dangers...
...Within a few months, the Grenada invasion is likely to be read as a sign of American weakness, not strength...
...Great powers slip from the pinnacle when the threat of violence no longer suffices to keep others in line...
...invasion of Grenada raises some fascinating questions: Why did so many Americans approve an action that was condemned around the world as unnecessary and irresponsible bullying...
...citizens on the island, and the Soviet role in the Grenadian revolution—that did not square with U.S...
...Government supports this endeavor in the hope that the Sandinistas will collapse...
...Even the allies who feel compelled to condemn such a flagrant violation of international law would secretly cheer our resolve to defend our "vital interests...
...By cashing in a reputation for pursuing justice, democracy, and truth in exchange for an erratic anticommunist crusade, we are throwing away our unique advantages...
...His latest book is "The Alliance: America, Europe, Japan...
...Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick's word—of socialism...
...They did not believe the pretexts Reagan advanced for the invasion, and they did not support his real reasons either...
...In the postwar world, the greatest source of American power was the belief, widely held, that we represented the enlightened values of civilization...
...But there the situation is completely different: The people are armed, the revolution is popular...
...For those who support the regime, the choice is seen as resistance or death...
...EVACUATION flights arranged by the Canadian government to remove Canadians and other foreign nationals from Grenada before the U.S...
...they would fear for their lives if the Somoza forces were to regain power...
...Vietnam should have taught us that punishment is not a policy...
...It is worth pondering the long-term effects of our "successful" interventions...
...The swatting operation in Grenada has produced a momentary high because the U.S...
...President Reagan says being condemned in the United Nations by America's allies and a hundred or so other nations will not disturb his breakfast...
...This was a military operation that did not blow up in our face like the Mayaguez incident of 1975 or the abortive rescue operation mounted in the Iranian desert in 1980...
...The factors used to justify the Grenada invasion are present in many countries— barely functioning governments, human rights violations, anti-American rhetoric, and potentially endangered American citizens—but the military budget could be increased to two or three times what President Reagan wants and the global police task would still be beyond us...
...No doubt the Soviets received the message intended: that we are unpredictable and trigger-prone...
...America's allies see the incident as one more piece of evidence that the United States doesn't know what its own real interests are, that it cares little for their interests (the island was, after all, part of the British Commonwealth), and that it is lurching from war to war...
...The obvious answer, advanced by many commentators, is that the American people were relieved to discover that our country is not a pitiful, helpless giant...
...Richard J. Barnet is a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C...
...That theory does not do the American people justice...
...I believe it rests on fear, not pride...
...One way great nations lose power is to believe their own propaganda, which was originally designed to confuse others...
...The flights, Canadian Press reported, "may have been deliberately blocked because of fears that a successful evacuation would undermine Washington's justification for the invasion...
...Our people are so isolated from the real choices facing the nations in our "backyard" that many welcomed the Grenada operation as a military "rollback"—U.N...
...There is a big difference between carrying a big stick and using it...
...By swatting Grenada, the Administration put the eagle back on the mountain top...
...Government has taught the American people to be afraid of the feisty independence of nationalist revolutionaries set on bringing a new life to desperately poor countries...
...It is said that we "needed" a war we could win, as if there were some quantum of violence we simply had to get out of our system...
...It would prove that the world's most powerful nation was not afraid to use force-that it could achieve a military victory quickly and secure the support of the people at home...
...Just as the successful military interventions of the 1950s— Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), and Lebanon (1958)—created the climate for the Vietnam catastrophe, Grenada may embolden the Administration to try again in Nicaragua...
...For Mexico, Britain, France, West Germany, for all members of the United Nations Security Council except the United States, and for most other countries around the world, this show of military might was inexcusable...
...Surely the Soviets would be impressed by our will...
...our allies for a diplomatic accommodation...
...There are few countries we can overhaul as readily as we overhauled Grenada...
...But since they have several thousand missiles aimed at our cities, this is not a message we should want them to receive...
...The Grenada operation did not rank with the Battle of the Bulge or the capture of Iwo Jima as one of our finest hours...
...Great powers in decline tend to revel in the isolation which their conduct induces...
...But we can begin to address our own irrational fears...
...The U.S...
...Our tax dollars support 10,000 contras who are killing teachers and doctors and burning villages, crops, and oil supplies...
...If a nation can maintain its position of strength only by resorting to force, then it is already on the way down...
...In Nicaragua, we are pursuing a policy of punishment...
...Their revolution is condemned as a virus that will infect larger, more important countries...
Vol. 48 • January 1984 • No. 1
