Justifying Grenada

On Tuesday, October 25, 1900 Marines and Army Rangers and 300 troops from seven nearby Caribbean nations invaded the island of Grenada. Since then the Pentagon has reported that the member of American troops in the invasion force has grown to 6000. Late last week, the United Nations Security Council voted, 11 to 1 to deplore the intervention. The United States cast the sole one vote. In light of the American.

The Crimson held a discussion last week on the merits of the Grenada intervention with Eliot Cohen assistant professor of Government who teaches a course on the Introduction to Military Politics and Orlando Patterson, professor of Sociology, who teaches a course in Culture. Social Structure, and Underdevelopment in the Caribbean. Crimson reporter Lavea Brachman moderated the discussion.

Crimson: Do you see the Grenada invasion as compromising our ability to criticize such Soviet moves as the invasion of Afghanistan

Cohen:No, there's absolutely no comparison whatsoever between the U.S. invasion of Grenada and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan First there's such a discrepancy in size that it is ludious. Secondly, when the Soviets entered Afghanistan hundreds of thousands of refugees field the country, civilians were gassed villages were destroyed and the whole population has been obliterated. There was an enormous amount of cruelty. By contrast with the U.S. invasion of Grenada. I don't think we're going to be there for very long. [The Soviets] are still in Afghanistan. We're going to be leaving behind a democratic government under the auspices of the governor general, who doesn't seem to be unhappy about American invasion. I think we'll be leaving a democratic government in place. One thing that's interesting about what the medical students have to say is that the Grenadians seem to be kind of happy that we are coming in. It seems an end to a very nasty military dictatorship.

Crimson: Who is currently in charge?

Cohen: It's not clear exactly who is in charge. I would suspect that there's a clique of officers in the Grenadian army. There are a number of things like that which will become clear.

Crimson: Do you think that the military buildup in Grenada was real?

Cohen: The fighting has lasted several days. It's taken 3000 of the best soldiers this country has to occupy the island and it's real. There were only 600 Cuban construction workers on the island, but they seemed to have orders to flight to the death, which is not how construction workers usually operate. So yes, I'd say it was quite a serious Cuban military buildup-serious in the context of the eastern Caribbean. We have to remember that to destabilize a microstate like Dominica or a larger one like Jamaica, you don't need fleets of ships or squadrons of aircraft. All you need is small arms, ammunition, machine guns. That's what they have a lot of. So I think it was a serious military buildup. Clearly not enough to stop us, but serious enough.

Crimson: Was it serious enough to justify the United States invasion?

Cohen: I think there are a number of justifications. I think that everybody scoffed at the idea that the medical students were in danger. But they did feel in considerable danger. Three students came back saying things like. "It wasn't an invasion. It was a rescue. "That's one justification. I think it's plain that most students felt themselves under serious threat. There was a 24-hour curfew, orders to shoot to kill, a government that just murdered a number of people in cold blood, they felt that that was enough of a justification. I think another justification is that it does seem as if some Cuban intervention was imminent. It's possible to conclude that Prime Minister Bishop was assassinated by the Cubans and the Soviets. They might not have envisioned Bishop being killed-Castro might not have a wanted that-but there was certainly an arms buildup. The fact that there were clearly hundreds of tough Cuban combat troops makes a clear threat to the small democratic states in the Caribbean. There's also a very strategic interest to us. Each individually would be reason enough to warrant what the Reagan Administration did Together they certainly do?

Crimson: Professor Patterson, do you see those reasons as justifying the invasion'

Patterson: No, I don't think that invading is ever justified but I do think that America has a right as a major power to secure islands that are vulnerable from an American point of view. I say this as an American resident but I also see this from the point of view from the Caribbean. The two points of views are somewhat different. From the American point of view, and seeing it from a realpolitik point of view, a world power with what it considers to be an insecure perimeter. The question is, what's the best strategy in a situation like this? Do you believe that an invasion was vitally necessary to achieve even its most cynical objectives? There are various alternatives which I could mention. One is that a diplomatic solution to the problem was literally placed in their laps several weeks ago by Bishop when he visited America. It's quite clear what that was all about. If the CIA could not verify what it was about, then they should close shop. What it was about was that Bishop-who really wasn't ever a communist, but was pressured from the left-was increasingly responding to pressure from the more moderate Caribbean leaders. You could see that from the things be said at heads-of-state meetings and so on. He was beginning to respond to the pressure not only because the pressure was coming from the conservatives in the area but they are also coming from members of the Western intellectual political community who are more a kind of British type, of a democratic-type socialist position, which really marks where Bishop is coming out of. Now, as a result of this, he came to the United States, that was a desperation mission. It was essentially." Let's talk, there are possibilities." With the minimum of effort-I wouldn't even call it concession-in terms of political support and economic gestures, you could have had a democratic solution to that problem. I am saying a diplomatic solution was possible.

Cohen: In many respects, I agree with what Professor Patterson says, but the issue here is what happened after Bishop was depend and killed. I don't think it's clear that if the United States had given him a couple of million dollars that that would have saved him. In fact, that might have precipitated his death. You're going to have this kind of problem in a number of countries which have leaders who are basically from authentic active socialists, maybe earlier inclined towards the Soviet Union now wanting to break that the but find in its military people who are much harder.

Patterson: What do we do with Haiti, which has been ruled by a gang of thugs which murders its people regularly? What do you do in Chile, where people are being murdered? What do you do in Argentina? Do you invade on every occasion? So why invade on this one?

Cohen: No, I think one reason is safety of American citizens. Secondly, there's a very substantial element of direct intervention by an external power, Cuba, and to some extent the Soviets. I think there's something illogical about the argument that you only intervene in those cases where it's extremely difficult to do so.

Crimson: What do you see as the short-term and long-term implications of the invasion both in the immediate area and worldwide?

Patterson: In the local area, it's going to be counterproductive, it's going to destabilize. It's going to polarize forces much more. The left is going to, with justification, scream louder and mobilize more, militaristically. You also have an unfortunate fallout from the heads of state who supported this invasion and who coordinated it. Also from America's point of view, the stupidest aspect of this invasion is the way America squanders its moral capital. I'm not so naive that I don't recognize that there are certain circumstances in which you just have to throw principles to the wind and say. "This is a matter of life and death." Let's say Mexico has been taken over by the Russians. But normally America projects itself as a government that works by the law that recognizes some kind of international morality. We all heard of this in the case of the Russian barbarians shooting down of the plane. We heard it even more in the case of Afghanistan, right? America was on strong moral grounds there. It squandered it all for what? For a little pipsqueak of a country that was no more than a little tick in its side. It's like paying a massive moral price for a reward that is worthless. Purely from a pragmatic, realistic point of view-seeing the moral strength the United States has vis-a-vis its would enemy Russia-it can't get up in the U.N. anywhere and talk about Afghanistan or any other act of futurism by the Russians because they can get up and point at Grenada.

Cohen: I think that if you take the Caribbean, I think that the best judges you have there are the leaders of the state who are better off with is happening than with it not happening. I'm sure there's something to what you said. If the Cubans dominated Grenada, it would have caused them more problems and that's why they wanted military intervention. I think one beneficial, long-term effect is that it will have a chilling effect on the Cubans and on the Nicaraguans. The Nicaraguans were kind of scared by the cutback. It will give the Cubans something to think about, and give their potential allies in the Caribbean and in Central America something to think about. And that's good. It's interesting to see where the criticism of this comes from. It comes from Latin America. Most Latin American states are not happy with the United States for many reasons. I don't think that's going to change. There's some European discomfort with it for various reasons, but I don't think it amounts to much. I think that this is quite reassuring to people like the Egyptians who are internally vulnerable. Also, I don't think we squandered moral capital. I think that that was the fundamental moral thing to do to save American lives, to restore democracy to a very small country that was falling under a brutal dictatorship. I'm not defending our policy towards Haiti. The questions is our policy towards Grenada. I don't think that we lost a substantial moral position that we have.

Patterson: For every Marxist revolutionary that we have intimidated, this action has created at least a dozen Marxist revolutionaries from the younger generation who might have chosen a different course of action. It's just a wonderful rallying call, not only for people who are already anti-American but for whole generations of people who will become anti-American. I can just see all the schoolchildren all over Central America seeing Grenada, and saying you're right all along. Millions of anti-American Communists are being formed by this one act, especially since-to repeat- it could have been avoided. There was no threat whatsoever to those students. An offer was made to take them out before they invaded. Grenada could have been handled in a dozen different ways.