McNair Paper Number 54, Chapter 2, October 1996
2.
THE 1980s IN RETROSPECT
Understanding the Caribbean's present complexity, changes, and challenges requires an appreciation of the recent past. A look back at the decade of the 1980s finds that geopolitics, militarization, intervention, and instability were the major security concerns. Given the interface between domestic and international politics, it is understandable that there were links among some of these themes and among their domestic, regional, and international aspects. Grenada's militarization in the 1980s, for example, was predicated on the need to defend the Grenada revolution against foreign intervention and local counterrevolution. Ironically, this very militarization created the climate that led to the self-destruction of the revolution, presenting the United States with the opportunity to intervene. In so doing, the United States was able to fulfill a preexisting geopolitical aim. Militarization and concerns about stability in Dominica, Barbados, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines also raised security concerns within the Eastern Caribbean, such that Eastern Caribbean states not only created the Regional Security System (RSS) in 1982 to bolster subregional security, but were willing accomplices of U.S. intervention in Grenada a year later.
The four themes-geopolitics, militarization, intervention, and instability-were often subsumed under a megatheme: vulnerability. This topic became an important reference point for analysis of small state security concerns everywhere during the 1980s.
(Note 1)
States were-and still are-considered vulnerable because of geographic, political, economic or other factors that cause their security to be compromised. Vulnerability is thus a multidimensional phenomenon. One study identified six factors that can lend to it:
- Possession of valuable resources
- Provision of refuge to refugees or freedom fighters
Experts from the Commonwealth of Nations who studied the vulnerability question noted the range of threats to which small states can be vulnerable:
The special position of small states is borne out in all three major categories of threats to security: threats to territorial security resulting from incursions to both military and non-military sources; threats to political security, which can involve a broad range of actions that are deliberately intended to influence and, in some cases, bring about a specific change in the threatened state's national policies; and threats to economic security, involving action that can have the effect of undermining a state's economic welfare and which, additionally, can also be used as an instrument for political interference.
(Note 3)
All the above factors have affected Caribbean countries in recent years, and some continue to do so as we approach the 21st century. The size and political, military, and economic limitations of Caribbean countries make them all subject to the dictates of the United States, the hemisphere's hegemon, and, to a lesser extent, to pressures by middle-sized powers such as Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela. In explaining the range of threats to which Caribbean states are vulnerable, former Barbadian Prime Minister Lloyd Erskine Sandiford, observed:
Our vulnerability is manifold. Physically, we are subject to hurricanes and earthquakes; economically, to market decisions taken elsewhere; socially, to cultural penetration; and [now] politically, to the machinations of terrorists, mercenaries and criminals.
(Note 4)
Sandiford neglected to mention the vulnerability related to U.S. foreign policy and security pursuits.
Caribbean states not only suffer from power deficiencies, but many of them also have weak state systems, a combination that exacerbates their vulnerability. As Barry Buzan noted, "where a state has the misfortune to be both a small power and a weak state . . . its vulnerability is almost unlimited."
(Note 5)
On the same issue, Robert Pastor once stated that vulnerability in the region has had a practical effect: it has made sustained development illusory, a situation that partly explains "the prevalence of utopian revolutionaries and millenary rhetoric."
(Note 6)
GEOPOLITICS
There was considerable attention paid to the expanded U.S. military presence in the Caribbean, as well as the geopolitics of the region that gave rise to this situation, and U.S. national security policy towards the area. The 1980s witnessed dramatic increases in U.S. military instruments in the Caribbean, including direct military presence, increased military sales, aid, and training, expanded intelligence operation, and regular high-profile military maneuvers. Some of this activity derived from concerns about Marxist or other leftist governments in Jamaica, Nicaragua, Grenada, and Suriname, among other countries. Fears were also expressed that these leftist governments would facilitate Soviet geopolitical designs. Specific concerns existed regarding Cuba, based on claims made in 1979 about an expanded Soviet military presence on the island.
(Note 7)
Partly because of these concerns and fears, by 1984 the Caribbean Basin had become home of 21 U.S. military installations, including five naval, two air force, and seven army bases. The largest forces were in Puerto Rico, Panama, and Guant(namo, Cuba; together they formed a strategic triangle spanning the entire Caribbean Basin. One very visible trend of U.S. military activity in the 1980s was the holding of high-profile military maneuvers. Solid Shield '80 and Readex '80 signaled a shift toward this strategy, continuing in 1981 with Ocean Venture '81, then the largest peace-time naval maneuver since World War II. It involved some 120,000 troops, 250 ships, and 1,000 aircraft.
Structural and operational rearrangements were undertaken to facilitate this enhanced presence. In one major instance, the Department of Defense upgraded its regional defense network to command status by consolidating the 2-year-old Caribbean Contingency Joint Task Force at Key West, FL, with the Antilles Defense Command in Puerto Rico. The result was the creation, in December 1981, of the Caribbean Command, responsible for "waters and islands" of the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, and parts of the Pacific bordering Central and South America. This command was disbanded in 1989 because of reorganization within the defense establishment, partly due to budget cuts and partly because of new regional and international developments. The duties of that command were assumed by the U.S. Atlantic Command (USACOM) Headquarters in Norfolk, VA.
(Note 8)
The heightened military presence was due partly to larger geopolitical concerns. These included the resource capacity of the Caribbean (oil, bauxite, gold, nickel, among other natural resources) and U.S. resource needs and business interests. In the late 1980s, for instance, 79 percent of the U.S. bauxite imports came from the Caribbean. Moreover, the Caribbean was supplying the United States with a significant proportion of its oil refining and about 56 percent of all oil imports. Sea Lanes of Communication (SLOCs) in the Caribbean area also have featured in the strategic matrix
(figure 1). Foremost is the Panama Canal connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, used for both military and civilian purposes. Once ships exit the Canal on the Atlantic side, they must use one or more of some 16 passages in the Caribbean Sea to reach destinations in the United States, Europe, Africa, and elsewhere. Thus, the Caribbean has had multidimensional strategic value, and in the context of the East-West rivalry conducted during the 1980s, the United States did everything possible to thwart actual and potential threats in the area.
(Note 9)
In terms of the East-West conflict, the USSR was viewed as having several aims in the region, including creating dissension between the United States and other countries, promoting conflicts, and fostering political-military changes that could eventually facilitate Soviet-Cuban expansion.
(Note 10)
Many analysts considered the Soviet-Cuban nexus as the centerpiece of Soviet strategic pursuits, partly because the only significant Soviet military presence in the Caribbean was in Cuba. This presence included modern naval facilities and troops. In September 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev disclosed that Soviet troop strength stood at 11,000-much larger than the United States had estimated. The Soviets also boasted reconnaissance operations in Cuba, including the 28-square-mile facility at Loudres, reputed to have been the largest of its kind maintained outside the USSR. Yet strong Soviet-Cuban connections did not prevent differences over geopolitical issues,
(Note 11)
nor did they prevent the Soviets from maintaining other Caribbean contacts- with Grenada until 1983, and with Guyana throughout the 1980s.
Although the links with Grenada lasted a mere 4 years, they were more dramatic than those with Guyana, as is evident from the military agreements between Grenada and the USSR. Agreements were concluded in 1980, 1981, and 1983. Another drafted before the October 1983 intervention was never signed. The 1980 agreement provided for $58 million worth of military supplies, including mortars, machine guns, and anti-aircraft guns. That of 1981 provided for armored personnel carriers, submachine guns, grenades, radios, generators, and other equipment. The 1982 treaty provided for additional arms and equipment, including 50 armored personnel carriers, 30 76-mm. guns, 30 antitank guns, 50 portable missile launchers, 2,000 AK-47s, and mortars. What also worried U.S. policy makers caught in the East-West geopolitical prism was that Grenada also had extensive military and political contacts with Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, Czechoslovakia, and other Communist countries.
(Note 12)
Of course, the genesis of all of these geopolitical considerations predated the 1980s. Yet, that decade was marked by a U.S. Caribbean policy as dramatic as it was different from earlier ones. One significant reason for this was the election in 1980 of Ronald Reagan, which heralded a different foreign and security policy: harsh anticommunism, a willingness to use force without much compunction, and an unapologetic pursuit of American preeminence in global political, economic, and military affairs. The policy that the Reagan administration fashioned toward the Caribbean was designed to fit what former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General David Jones called "a comprehensive strategic vision that integrates regional issues within a larger global framework."
(Note 13)
Thus, unlike President Jimmy Carter who at first had been more accommodating to leftist regimes in the Caribbean, Reagan made it obvious from the outset that he favored regimes that supported U.S. foreign policy, opposed Cuba and the Soviet Union, and endorsed free enterprise. He therefore made no apologies for rewarding those who supported U.S. interests or complied with its dictates, or for punishing those who did otherwise. In addition, while the Carter administration had given initial priority to multilateral relations, apart from the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI), Reagan displayed from the beginning a preference for bilateral dealings that enabled the United States to exercise more leverage. Although Carter had been increasingly concerned about developments in Nicaragua, Grenada, and elsewhere in the region and had committed additional resources to deal with them, his administration generally respected the sovereignty of Caribbean states. In contrast, the Reagan administration was fully prepared to violate any country's sovereignty if such a course was considered politically expedient or militarily necessary.
(Note 14)
MILITARIZATION
The militarization concern pertained to the dramatic growth of military budgets and the expansion of military and police forces in some parts of the Caribbean. Moreover, military officials in some cases were also increasingly visible and influential in making and executing policy. This kind of militarization was particularly true of Suriname, Guyana, Grenada, Nicaragua, and Haiti. In Suriname and Haiti the militarization fit the Finer model: "The armed forces substitution of their own policies and/or their persons for those of recognized civilian authorities."
(Note 15)
In other cases, the situation involved civilian rulers garnering loyalty and obedience from the armed forces by penetrating them with political ideas and political personnel, an approach described by Eric Nordlinger.
(Note 16)
Armies became practically arms of ruling parties and were compensated with accretions of money, equipment, and personnel-precisely the case in Guyana and the Dominican Republic.
(Note 17)
In Guyana especially, the security establishment performed not only military functions, but also duties in the realms of political, economic, and, (later) diplomatic security.
(Note 18)
Security consciousness became heightened in the Eastern Caribbean in the aftermath of several internal and external developments: invasion scares in 1976, 1978, and 1979 in Barbados; a rebellion in St. Vincent and the Grenadines in 1979; the ouster of Eric Gairy in Grenada that same year; and two coup attempts in Dominica in 1981. These events led to several security initiatives. One was enunciation of the "Adams Doctrine," a proposition made by Tom Adams, Prime Minister of Barbados at the time, for establishing a rapid deployment force in the Caribbean to respond to intraregional threats. Adams and Brigadier Rudyard Lewis of the Barbados Defense Force (and later also of the RSS) also proposed creating a standing army in the Eastern Caribbean.
(Note 19)
Cost considerations, U.S. policy, and skepticism by some Caribbean leaders combined to kill those proposals. What emerged, instead, was the RSS, which is examined later.
Some scholars identified links between geopolitics and militarization. Some argued that a certain symbiosis existed between these two areas in that Caribbean militarization was partly a function of the geopolitical environment, especially U.S. security policy. Indeed, there was a ground-breaking volume on militarization that substantiated connections between the two themes.
(Note 20)
Other scholars, however, disputed the militarization argument. Anthony Maingot, for example, called the claims of militarization a myth.
(Note 21)
He argued that "the most important security-related activities in the Caribbean do not directly involve the governments of the area. . . . There has not been, in fact, a major military build-up in the English-speaking Caribbean."
(Note 22)
This dispute was essentially definitional. Maingot did not accept the expanded U.S. military presence as a manifestation of militarization. For him, militarization is a state-level phenomenon that "denotes and connotes the perversion of civilian structures by a comprehensive emphasis on power by the military."
(Note 23)
Other scholars have shown, though, that there is just as much credibility and intellectual value in examining militarization as an international-level phenomenon as there is in examining it as a state-level one.
(Note 24)
INTERVENTION
Intervention became a major security theme of the 1980s not because of a large number of interventions in the Caribbean Basin, but because of the power asymmetries of the states involved, ideological overtones, and the justification proffered by the intervener in one case. Most of the interventions were undertaken by the United States, although other countries took action on several occasions, as in the Honduran incursions into Nicaragua. Those incursions led Nicaragua to take legal action against Honduras in the International Court of Justice (ICJ). But after discontinuation of the action by Nicaragua, the case (Nicaragua v. Honduras on Border and Transborder Armed Actions) was removed from the ICJ docket on 27 May 1992. The two countries agreed to improve bilateral relations.
(Note 25)
The most dramatic interventions were the U.S. invasions in Grenada in October 1983 and Panama in December 1989. Both events dramatized the power asymmetries of the states involved, but the Grenada action was a clear demonstration that the United States was prepared to act with impunity when it perceived the threat as a communist-centered one in its cherished strategic space. The Grenada intervention also involved controversy about the role of Barbados, Jamaica, and other Caribbean countries in the action. Mark Adkin, a retired British army officer involved in the intervention on the RSS side, is among those who have provided incontrovertible evidence that the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) invitation to the United States was a Washington construct designed to justify its action.
(Note 26)
Some Caribbean argued nonetheless that their support for U.S. action and participation in the affair was based on their own conscious decisions, not on compulsion by the United States.
(Note 27)
The Panama intervention was the first post-World War II U.S. intervention in Latin American that was not rationalized in terms of communism. President Bush justified Operation Just Cause on four points: needing to protect the lives of Americans; helping restore democracy in Panama; preserving the integrity of the Panama Canal Treaty; and bringing Manuel Noriega to justice for drug trafficking and racketeering.
(Note 28)
The drugs rationale in particular demonstrates the changing nature of the U.S. national security agenda. Bush claimed vindication after Noriega was convicted on eight counts of drug trafficking, money laundering, and racketeering, and was sentenced on July 10, 1992, to 40 years in prison.
(Note 29)
Part of the intervention theme of the 1980s revolved around U.S. action in Nicaragua, which was different from that in Grenada and Panama because it was characterized by covert action, a form of clandestine intervention. That covert action is traceable to November 1981, when President Ronald Reagan signed National Security Directive No. 17 authorizing $19.5 million in funding for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to create a paramilitary commando squad to conduct raids in Nicaragua. Covert warfare was unofficially declared in March 1982, when CIA-trained and CIA-equipped operatives destroyed two major bridges in Chinadega and Nueva Segovia provinces. The CIA later provided the Contras with Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare, a manual on low-intensity warfare strategy. The CIA itself undertook missions considered too sophisticated for the Contras. Between September 1983 and April 1984, these included some 22 air, land, and sea raids. Mining of Nicaraguan harbors was also a central part of the anti-Sandinista operation. By the first week of April 1984, 10 commercial vessels had collided with mines.
(Note 30)
The United States was castigated by many countries for these actions and was also repudiated by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). In the now famous case, Nicaragua v United States, the court ruled:
The United States of America, by training, arming, equipping, financing and supplying the contra forces or otherwise encouraging, supporting and aiding military and paramilitary activities in and against Nicaragua, has acted, against the Republic of Nicaragua, in breach of its obligation under customary international law not to intervene in the affairs of another state.
(Note 31)
But, as is well known, the United States denied the jurisdiction of the ICJ shortly before the Court announced its decision, ignoring the ICJ ruling that required the United States to pay reparations and refrain from any other interventionist activity. Later, following the political changes after the defeat of the Sandinistas in the 1990 elections, the consequent ideological adaptations, and rapprochement between the U.S. and Nicaragua, the matter was dropped. In a letter to the ICJ dated September 12, 1991, Nicaragua asked for the matter to be discontinued. The Court then issued an order of discontinuance on September 21, 1991.
(Note 32)
INSTABILITY
The Caribbean scene in the 1980s also featured a significant amount of internal instability precipitated by various factors, including coups and coup attempts, insurgencies, ideological disputes, political factionalism, and disputed political legitimacy. Several countries were affected, some more than others, some with multiple factors, others with one. The noteworthy cases were Haiti, Suriname, Jamaica, Guyana, Grenada, Nicaragua, and the Dominican Republic.
(Note 33)
But by the end of the decade, the manifestations, if not the root causes, of political instability had been addressed in several places, among them Grenada and Nicaragua. These changes contributed to an appreciable improvement of the region's political landscape such that Aaron Segal could assert that in the Caribbean opposition political parties win elections and take office, the courts retain their independence, the press is privately owned and relatively free, civil liberties are recognized and respected, and dissent is tolerated. Segal continued: "Although there are exceptions, there is an active civil society that protests, dissents, takes its cases to the courts, contests free elections, and provides an effective opposition."
(Note 34)
As might be expected, the themes and issues mentioned above were not the only ones presented in the 1980s; there were other concerns. For example, there was increased drug production and trafficking and the attendant corruption and other problems. Cuba, the Bahamas, Belize, Jamaica, Antigua-Barbuda, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago were the countries that faced the greatest drug-related challenges. Territorial disputes between Guyana and Venezuela, Belize and Guatemala, and Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago also generated several crises. In the Belize-Guatemala case, the crisis was such that Britain established a military garrison to guarantee Belizean territorial and political sovereignty. Yet, by the end of the decade, all contending parties had taken steps either to lessen tensions through confidence-building measures, or to resolve their disputes altogether. In the dispute between Venezuela and Trinidad and Tobago, for instance, a maritime treaty signed in April 1990 effectively settled the matter. In the Belize-Guatemala case, although Guatemala did not relinquish its claim, it recognized the sovereignty of Belize in August 1991, and the two countries established diplomatic relations the following month.
(Note 35)
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