$Unique_ID{COW00744} $Pretitle{233F} $Title{Caribbean Commonwealth Chapter 1A. Strategic and Regional Security Perspectives} $Subtitle{} $Author{Rex A. Hudson} $Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army} $Subject{caribbean states united grenada military security region british britain american} $Date{1987} $Log{St. Ann's Fort*0074401.scf Figure 21.*0074402.scf Point Salines Airfield*0074403.scf } Country: Caribbean Commonwealth Book: Caribbean Commonwealth, An Area Study: Security Perspectives Author: Rex A. Hudson Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army Date: 1987 Chapter 1A. Strategic and Regional Security Perspectives [See St. Ann's Fort: Barbados, built by the British in the early eighteenth century.] Strategic and Regional security issues pertaining to the Commonwealth Caribbean insular subregion need to be considered, to a certain extent, within the wider context of the Caribbean Basin region. This geopolitical concept encompasses all of the Caribbean island polities, as well as the rimland countries of the United States, Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, and Guyana. Of the Latin American rimland countries, only Venezuela, which exports petroleum to the United States through the Caribbean and has 2,816 kilometers of Caribbean coastline, has played an economic and diplomatic role of any significance to the Commonwealth Caribbean since the late 1970s. Venezuela's influence was most noticeable in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In general, however, aside from its longstanding territorial dispute with Guyana, Venezuela did not play an important security role in the Commonwealth Caribbean as of late 1987. For this reason, it is not discussed in this chapter. The only non-Commonwealth countries in the Caribbean Basin discussed here in a geopolitical context are the United States and Cuba, whose strategic or other interests have influenced the security of the English-speaking islands. The strategic interests of two extrahemispheric powers--Britain and the Soviet Union--also are examined for the same reason. The strategic aspects of the Commonwealth Caribbean islands largely account for United States, Soviet, and Cuban interest in this subregion, as well as in the Caribbean Basin area in general. The transition to independence of the Commonwealth Caribbean islands during the period from the early 1960s to the early 1980s was accompanied by a gradual withdrawal of Britain's security and defense responsibilities. This situation created a strategic vacuum in the subregion and made the islands more vulnerable to external subversion. Since the 1960s, Cuba and the Soviet Union, in growing competition with the United States, have attempted to fill this vacuum, albeit in an incremental way in order to avoid provoking a United States response. As German submarines demonstrated during World War II, the geography of the Caribbean Sea region is ideal for interdiction of the vital sea- lanes on which much American and world trade depend. Efforts by the United States to reinforce and resupply European allies in time of war also would be dependent on these Caribbean lifelines. Cuba and the Soviet Union have developed the military capabilities to interdict shipping on the Caribbean sea-lanes and control vital "choke points" among the numerous passages and straits in the region, as well as the Panama Canal. The Soviet Union and Cuba nearly gained a foothold in Grenada in the early 1980s, but the landing on the island of combined United States-Caribbean forces on October 25, 1983, dealt their strategic plans for the Eastern Caribbean a major setback. The swift military action by the United States, which contrasted markedly with Britain's hesitation, enhanced United States influence in the Commonwealth Caribbean and appeared to confirm regional perceptions that the United States was assuming responsibilities once held by the British. For the Commonwealth Caribbean islands, regional security issues are of much greater concern than strategic affairs. The English-speaking islands of the Eastern Caribbean became increasingly interested in a regional security arrangement following the 1979 coup in Grenada by Maurice Bishop's New Jewel Movement (NJM), a self-described pro-Cuban Marxist-Leninist party, and several incidents involving mercenary or other subversive activities in the region. In October 1982, five Eastern Caribbean states--Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines--signed a memorandum of understanding creating a Regional Security System (RSS). Nevertheless, in the late 1980s the English-speaking Caribbean remained a highly vulnerable area guarded mainly by police. This subregion continued to have one of the highest concentrations of pro-Western democratic governments in the world, and it looked primarily to the United States, not Britain, for economic, military, and other security assistance. The Strategic Setting [See Figure 21.: Caribbean Sea Lanes.] The proximity of the region to the United States and the many key passages (choke points) and vital sea-lanes running through the Lesser Antilles and Bahamian archipelago and through the Greater Antilles make the Commonwealth Caribbean a strategically significant part of the world and thus an arena of international power competition. Until a revolution brought Fidel Castro to power in Cuba in 1959, the hegemony of the United States in the Caribbean had been unchallenged since the late nineteenth century. In October 1962, the Soviet Union challenged that hegemony and threatened the United States by attempting to install ballistic missiles in Cuba. Although the United States forced the Soviet Union to withdraw its missiles, during the 1970s and 1980s the Soviets developed the island into a Soviet base and the Cuban military into one of the most powerful in Latin America. Furthermore, Soviet naval deployments to the Caribbean, which had been nonexistent until 1969, became an annual or semiannual event. Bounded by the Bahamas in the north and Barbados in the east, the Caribbean is one vast natural chain commanding the trade routes running between the Atlantic and Pacific and from north to south (see fig. 21). Controlling both ends of this natural barrier would be a clear strategic advantage. There are thirteen key sea-lanes in the Caribbean, eleven of which lie between the smaller islands and are deep enough to be used by any ship afloat. The relatively narrow passages in the Caribbean constitute choke points through which merchant or naval shipping must pass in transiting to and from North America's Gulf ports and the Atlantic Ocean. Should these passages come under hostile control, sea traffic could be seriously impeded or blocked. In the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea, a navigable area of more than 2,156,500 square kilometers, the 13 major high-density sea-lanes pass through 4 major choke points--the Yucatan Channel, Windward Passage, Old Bahamas Channel, and Straits of Florida--all of which are vulnerable to Cuban interdiction. The Straits of Florida, Mona Passage, Windward Passage, and Yucatan Channel are the main gateways for vessels entering or leaving the Caribbean, and the Straits of Florida provide the only open-sea connection for the Gulf of Mexico. Tankers entering the Caribbean from the Persian Gulf and West Africa mainly use three passages: Galleons Passage, Old Bahamas Channel, and Providence Channel. There are a number of lesser passages as well. Once the United States became the dominant power in the Caribbean, it began taking the region for granted as its "backyard" or the "American Mediterranean." Consequently, the United States often underestimated the region and rarely accorded it priority in its foreign and security policies. After the Grenada intervention in late October 1983, the United States began significantly increasing assistance to RSS member states to improve regional security capabilities, as well as to improve their capabilities for narcotics interdiction and search and rescue operations. This aid consisted of training and the provision of coast guard vessels and light infantry equipment. Although capable of dealing with regional security threats such as a mercenary attack or a rebellion, the RSS in the late 1980s was no defense against possible future military aggression by Cuba. Britain's only significant military presence in the Western Hemisphere was its sizable force in the Falkland/Malvinas Islands and its 1,800- member force in Belize, including Royal Air Force units. As head of the Commonwealth of Nations, however, Britain was still one of the most important influences in the English-speaking Caribbean (see Appendix B). Although no longer responsible for the defense and security of most Commonwealth members in the region, Britain continued to maintain a Royal Navy ship in the area and to provide advisers and financing for RSS coast guard shore facilities, as well as police training for 200 Caribbean nationals a year at British military and security establishments. Britain showed its flag in the region on January 19, 1987, by dispatching 10 Royal Navy warships carrying 4,000 sailors for 3 months of Caribbean exercises. The forces were scheduled to engage mostly in antisubmarine warfare operations and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) war games. Britain's defense chief, Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse, paid a two- day visit to the Bahamas that February for "routine talks on matters of mutual interest." In contrast to Britain, France maintained a permanent and relatively powerful military presence in the region in its departments of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and French Guiana. Nevertheless, France traditionally had not interfered in the affairs of its English-speaking neighbors in the Eastern Caribbean. Historical Background Colonial Rivalry Until the end of the nineteenth century, the United States had to compete at various times with Spanish, British, French, and Dutch power in the Caribbean. The region assumed strategic significance as early as the seventeenth century when Spain's rivals began colonization attempts. During this period, France and England took advantage of numerous opportunities in the Eastern Caribbean. Spain had established garrison outposts on many of the Caribbean islands in order to guard its trade route to Mexico and Panama. As Spain's military power declined beginning in the mid-seventeenth century, however, its Caribbean sea- lanes became more vulnerable. The Dutch seized Curacao to use as a base for harassing Spain's shipping, and England captured Jamaica from Spain. In addition, the eighteenth-century power struggle in Europe was projected into the Caribbean, where the Netherlands was the first to be forced out. With the onset of the American Revolution, the Americans began building a navy to secure the "back door" of the new nation, thereby dashing French dreams of Caribbean domination. The fierce colonial rivalry in the region required the permanent stationing of British naval and military forces on the commercially important Caribbean islands of Barbados, St. Lucia, and Jamaica, as well as Bermuda in the Atlantic. In 1798 the British established a volunteer defense force known as the West India Regiment. Although primarily responsible for defending and maintaining order in Britain's West Indian colonies, the British-trained and British-commanded regiment also fought for Britain in the American Revolution, the War of 1812, and various campaigns in West Africa. The Treaty of Vienna in 1815 ensured British command of the Caribbean for most of the nineteenth century. Britain never missed an opportunity to use its naval strength in the Caribbean until the signing in 1850 of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, in which Britain and the United States declared that they would not unilaterally seek to exercise dominion over any part of Central America, excluding British Honduras (present-day Belize). United States Preeminence President James Buchanan first enunciated the perceived need for the United States to play a police role in the Caribbean as a way of ensuring the safety of foreign nationals and of enforcing the Monroe Doctrine by keeping European powers from intervening in the area. Congress, however, denied him authority to use military forces for that purpose. Nevertheless, before the end of the century, Britain had permanently ended its traditional competition with the United States in the Caribbean in order to attend to priorities in Asia and Africa. By the 1890s, American expansionists had rejuvenated the Monroe Doctrine, and the American public regarded the Caribbean as America's "backyard." Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, one of the leading expansionists of the day, argued for a navy strong enough to completely control the region, which he described as a "cluster of island fortresses," and the approaches to the Panama Canal (then under construction). Victory in the Spanish-American War of 1898-99 gave the United States a commanding position not only in the Pacific but also in the Caribbean. Thereafter, the United States began to develop a sphere of influence in the Caribbean by establishing a preponderant naval and military presence. As a consequence of its annexation of Puerto Rico and creation of a Cuban protectorate, the United States not only gained sites for naval bases but also acquired control of the major sea approaches to the future Panama Canal. President Theodore Roosevelt and Secretary of War Elihu Root often expressed the view that their policy was directed not toward acquisition of territory but toward discouragement of European encroachments in the strategically vital Caribbean area. During the first half of the twentieth century, the military presence of the United States in the Caribbean was fortified diplomatically, financially, and commercially. American influence in the region prevailed by the 1920s. Furthermore, numerous interventions in the Caribbean and Central America by United States military forces during the first quarter of the century served to maintain the status quo, preempt European involvement, safeguard the Panama Canal and its approaches, and generally protect perceived American interests. These interventions earned the United States an unenviable reputation among the smaller Hispanic countries of the Caribbean Basin. The United States refrained, however, from intervening in the affairs of Britain's Caribbean colonies. World War II At the outbreak of World War II, the United States assumed Britain's defense responsibilities in the Caribbean. In September 1940, the two countries agreed to the Lend-Lease Agreement (also called the Bases-for- Destroyers Agreement). It involved the loan of forty out-of-date American destroyers in return for leasing, rent free for ninety-nine years, British naval and air bases on five British West Indian islands--the Bahamas, Jamaica, Antigua, St. Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago--as well as British Guiana, Bermuda, and Newfoundland. The Lend-Lease Agreement was signed formally in London on March 27, 1941. Under its terms, the United States established eleven military bases in the area (and in Bermuda) and quickly transformed five British colonies in the West Indies into outposts of Caribbean defense for use against German submarine warfare. After President Franklin D. Roosevelt designated the Caribbean as a coastal frontier, the Eastern Caribbean became the forward edge of American defense strategy during the war. American strategists at that time referred to the West Indies as "the bulwark that we watch." The strategic significance of the Caribbean became evident during the war. More than 50 percent of the supplies sent to Europe and Africa from the United States were shipped from ports in the Gulf of Mexico. One year after the Pearl Harbor attack, the United States Caribbean Defense Command reached a total of 119,000 personnel, half of them stationed in Panama to protect the canal from Japanese attack. Although the expected Japanese attack did not come, the Germans inflicted massive damage on shipping in the Caribbean in 1942. German submarines even slipped into the region's small harbors to shell shore targets and to sink cargo ships at anchor. By the end of the year, U-boats operating in the Caribbean had sunk 336 ships, at least half of which were oil tankers, with a total weight of 1.5 million tons. The Postwar Strategic Vacuum After the war, the Commonwealth Caribbean temporarily reverted to the British sphere of influence and looked to Britain for defense and security needs. Although the Caribbean colonies held no strategic importance for Britain after World War II, the British remained interested in the region, owing to moral, constitutional, and economic obligations. Continuing a course it had started during the war, Britain gave its Caribbean colonies increasingly more self-government but retained an unlimited obligation for their defense against external aggression. The United States demonstrated its reduced strategic interests in the English-speaking Caribbean by closing most of its bases on the islands by the mid-1950s. Nevertheless, Barbados and the Turks and Caicos Islands were added to the 1941 Lend-Lease Agreement in November 1956. As the Cold War intensified in the 1950s, the United States and Britain became increasingly concerned about the threat of communism in their respective spheres of interest in Latin America and the English- speaking Caribbean. For example, Britain, at American urging, sent troops to British Guiana (present-day Guyana) in 1953 to prevent a perceived communist takeover threat posed by Cheddi Jagan's People's Progressive Party. Except for British Guiana, however, the Commonwealth Caribbean remained on the periphery of America's Cold War concerns during the 1950s. America's preoccupations in the Western Hemisphere were centered mainly on events in Hispanic countries, such as the military coup in Guatemala in 1954, and the new situation created by the fall of long-time pro-American dictators in Colombia in 1957, Venezuela in 1958, Cuba in 1959, and the Dominican Republic in 1961. Fidel Castro's seizure of power in Cuba in 1959 and the increasingly evident pro-Soviet orientation of his regime prompted the United States to devote increased attention and resources to its interests in the English-speaking Caribbean. Thus, the United States signed military agreements with Jamaica and Antigua in 1961. The pact with Jamaica gave the United States basing rights, including the right to operate a loran station on the island. The accord with Antigua allowed the United States to open a naval base on the island for use in oceanographic research and submarine surveillance, as well as an air force base for electronic tracking. The United States also retained a small naval base in Barbados and an electronic tracking facility on St. Lucia. In Trinidad and Tobago, however, the late Prime Minister Eric Williams negotiated the withdrawal of the American military presence. The naval base in the Chaguaramas Bay area was closed in 1967, and the Omega navigational aid station was removed in 1980 (see the Road to Independence). By 1962, when Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago became independent, it had become increasingly evident that security and defense responsibilities for the Commonwealth Caribbean were beginning to shift from Britain to the United States. For example, Britain requested and received American assistance in 1962, when British military forces were again sent to British Guiana during a period of racial and labor union violence confronting the government of Prime Minister Jagan. From the 1950s to the 1970s, the United States closely monitored internal political developments in the Commonwealth Caribbean. American cultural and economic influences became increasingly important in the English-speaking Caribbean in the 1950s and 1960s. American economic influence in the region, deriving particularly from heavy investments in oil in Trinidad and Tobago and bauxite (see Glossary) in Jamaica, worked to the American advantage until the 1970s, when the West Indians became more sensitive about their economic dependence on the United States and Western Europe. Current Strategic Considerations Britain's Withdrawal At probably no time during the last three centuries were Britain's strategic interests in the Caribbean less significant than in the late 1980s. Once its former Caribbean colonies began to achieve independence in 1962, Britain's policy had been to withdraw from individual security, but not economic, commitments to the Commonwealth Caribbean. In early 1987, only five British island dependencies remained: Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and Turks and Caicos Islands. These are the smallest Commonwealth Caribbean islands, and none plays a significant role in regional politics. British interests in the Caribbean had been reduced mainly to trade, investment, and limited economic and security assistance. According to one analyst of the British Caribbean, in the early 1980s the conservative government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher fully supported the geopolitical view of the Caribbean held by the United States administration of President Ronald Reagan. As early as 1980, the Thatcher government described Cuba as "a destabilizing force in the area" and accused the Castro regime of exporting subversion. Britain joined the United States in pressuring then-Prime Minister Bishop's government to hold free and fair elections and to release political prisoners. Despite Britain's cooperation, the Thatcher government, according to an American official, complained about lack of prior consultation in the decision to intervene on Grenada, which became essentially a United States-Commonwealth Caribbean operation. Partly as a result, the Thatcher government declined to endorse the joint United States- Caribbean military action in Grenada in late October 1983. Jamaican prime minister Edward Seaga noted that the English-speaking Caribbean felt "a certain amount of bitterness" at British opposition to the Grenada intervention, and that London could no longer assume "some right of prior consultation in matters that affect us here." Nevertheless, the visit to Grenada by Prime Minister Thatcher and Queen Elizabeth II on October 31, 1985, helped to ameliorate regional resentment against perceived British indifference and to revive British prestige in the region. Its greatly reduced presence notwithstanding, Britain remained a significant political and economic power in the region in the late 1980s by virtue of its continued status as head of the Commonwealth of Nations. In this capacity, the British still had certain political and security ties to their independent former colonies. For example, the English-speaking islands continued to rely exclusively on the Westminster model of parliamentary democracy, and Britain continued its tradition of providing police training. Apart from the United States, Britain also was still the principal trading partner of the Commonwealth Caribbean. The Increased Role of the United States Traditional Interests Traditionally, the United States has attempted to establish and maintain a peaceful, secure, stable, and friendly southern flank. It has sought to prevent hostile foreign powers from establishing military bases and facilities, engaging in destabilizing balance of power struggles, or supporting subversive activities in the Caribbean region; guarantee the United States access to strategic raw materials, trade, investment opportunities, and transportation routes; protect American territories (Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands) and military installations; and promote economic development in the region. Referring in 1984 to American interests specific to the Commonwealth Caribbean, Vaughan A. Lewis, director of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS--see Glossary), noted five separate but related concerns: security, communications (e.g., sea-lanes and shipping), natural resources, immigration, and narcotics trafficking. The latter two were relatively new concerns. By the early 1980s, the Caribbean Basin area had become a major transit route for narcotics smuggled into the United States from South America, and was also the largest source of legal and illegal immigrants in the United States, according to the Department of State. Despite its important strategic interests in the Caribbean, the United States was reluctant to fill the security vacuum created when Britain began pulling out of the region at the end of the 1970s. There were diplomatic, political, and economic reasons for the United States not to move too quickly. It did not want to appear to be pushing Britain out of its traditional sphere of influence. Moreover, the United States recognized that the people in the English-speaking Caribbean, although seeking a measure of independence from Britain, remained identified politically and culturally with the British. Heightened Security Concerns, 1979-83 Several developments in 1979 generated a more active American interest in the Caribbean Basin region and contributed to a reassessment of the strategic equation by the administration of President Jimmy Carter. These included Bishop's seizure of power in Grenada, the Nicaraguan revolution, the presence of a Soviet combat brigade in Cuba, the Cuban deployment of troops to Ethiopia to counter a Somali invasion of that Marxist country, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a move that heightened American concerns over Soviet expansionist intentions. The Soviet combat brigade issue in particular prompted the Carter administration to establish the Caribbean Contingency Joint Task Force (CCJTF) at Key West, Florida, on October 1, 1979. The CCJTF was equipped with a squadron of A-4 attack bombers and a radar-jamming navy electronics warfare squadron. The sending of a 1,500-member United States Marines task force to stage a beach landing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that year also dramatized the new emphasis by the United States on regional security and defense. In addition, United States naval vessels began showing the flag throughout the Caribbean. The increased visibility of the United States in the region, however, was not uniformly welcomed by the island nations. The left-of-center governments of Jamaica, Guyana, Grenada, and St. Lucia criticized President Carter's decision to increase the United States military presence in the Caribbean on the grounds that it could "escalate tension and threaten the peace and stability of the region." They also rejected "any perception of the Caribbean region as a sphere of influence for any great power." The Carter administration's security concerns deepened in the spring of 1980 when Bishop said that Cuban and Soviet aircraft would be allowed landing rights in Grenada. During the first nine months of 1980, United States Navy ships paid more than two dozen port calls in the Eastern Caribbean. Although the United States had granted recognition to the Bishop regime after it came to power, the Carter administration suspended all official contact with the government as a result of Grenada's reliance on Cuban forces, military advisers, and other aid. The Reagan administration continued the policy of shunning Grenada, citing a security threat to the United States from the 3,048-meter-long airstrip being built by Cubans at Point Salines. The United States claimed that the airfield could be used for military purposes. United States concerns heightened in the early 1980s as the result of a renewal of Cuban subversion in the Caribbean Basin region; the growing insurgency in El Salvador; the Soviet-assisted military buildups in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Grenada; and the flight of refugees from Cuba, Haiti, and other Caribbean islands, as well as from Central America. As Grenada's ties with Cuba and the Soviet Union expanded in the early 1980s, the United States gave more priority to security contingency planning in the Eastern Caribbean. In one of the largest naval exercises by the United States since World War II, United States forces engaged in Operation "Ocean Venture" on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques between August and October 1981. That November the United States Department of Defense upgraded its regional defense network to command status by consolidating the two-year-old CCJTF at Key West, Florida, with the Antilles Defense Command in Puerto Rico. The resulting command, called the United States Forces Caribbean Command, was created on December 1, 1981, as one of three NATO Atlantic commands. Its area of responsibility covered "waters and islands of the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, and parts of the Pacific bordering Central and South America." The new command included naval and air forces, as well as army and marine units. Until then the United States Southern Command headquarters in the Panama Canal area had the United States Army's only major forward-based forces in the region. The primary United States naval facility at Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico, had neither ships nor aircraft permanently assigned. Five English-speaking island nations in the Eastern Caribbean (see Glossary)--Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines--established their own basis for regional security cooperation by signing on October 29, 1982, in Bridgetown, Barbados, the Memorandum of Understanding (see A Regional Security System, this ch.). In March 1983, shortly after the RSS was adopted formally, veteran prime minister Vere Cornwall Bird, Sr., of Antigua and Barbuda described the nascent regional defense and security system as "insurance against the violent overthrow of democratically elected governments," such as took place on Grenada in 1979. "We cannot afford to have another Cuba or another Grenada," he declared. That month President Reagan, displaying aerial reconnaissance photographs, underscored the threat of "another Cuba" in Grenada by announcing that the island was building, with Cuban assistance, an airfield, a naval base, a munitions storage area, barracks, and Soviet-style training areas. In October 1983, the political situation in Grenada deteriorated suddenly, and the Commonwealth Caribbean perceived itself as facing an ominous threat to its security and constitutional system of government. On October 13, 1983, a harder line and more militant pro-Soviet NJM faction led by then-Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard ousted Prime Minister Bishop in an armed coup and placed him under house arrest. Coard proclaimed himself prime minister and installed the ruling sixteen-officer Revolutionary Military Council (RMC). Some observers attributed the coup in part to Bishop's attempts during the final months of his rule to distance his government from Cuba and the Soviet Union. On October 19, People's Revolutionary Army (PRA) troops executed Bishop and three of his closest deputies and killed scores of civilians. The next day, General Hudson Austin, the PRA commander, proclaimed himself head of the new RMC. The coup, the assassinations, and the other carnage outraged Commonwealth Caribbean leaders. Intervention in Grenada [See Point Salines Airfield: New Jewel Movement photograph of the Point Salines airfield under construction in Grenada. Courtesy United States Department of Defense.] Alarmed at the radical turn that Grenada appeared to be taking, the RSS member islands and Jamaica asked the United States to intervene. Before acting on the informal OECS request, Reagan sent a special ambassadorial emissary to consult with the OECS and other regional leaders. The emissary met in Barbados on October 23 with the prime ministers of Dominica, Barbados, and Jamaica--Mary Eugenia Charles, J.M.G.M. "Tom" Adams, and Edward Seaga, respectively--who all strongly reiterated their appeal for American assistance. Subsequently, Grenada's governor general, Paul Scoon, despite being under house arrest, made a confidential appeal for action by OECS members and other regional states to restore order on the island. Scoon, a native Grenadian, represented Queen Elizabeth II, Grenada's titular head of state (see Grenada, Government and Politics). On October 24, the OECS requested United States participation--together with Jamaica, Barbados, and four OECS members (Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines)--in a military action against the Coard- Austin regime. Seaga, who played the leading role among Caribbean leaders, later revealed that the formal request was made after the United States had promised "immediate action." OECS director Lewis later stated, however, that the decision to seek United States troops was made only after OECS nations realized they lacked the forces to take control of Grenada. Final preparations for Operation "Urgent Fury" began on October 24, when United States forces landed at staging sites on Barbados. Early the next morning, combined United States-Caribbean forces consisting of 1,900 United States Marines personnel and United States Army rangers and 300 soldiers and policemen from 6 Commonwealth Caribbean islands landed on Grenada at several locations, including the Point Salines airstrip, then under construction by Cubans. The United States military later announced that more than 6,000 United States troops had participated in the invasion. None of the members of the Caribbean force took part in any fighting. They guarded Grenadian prisoners and Cuban internees and later accompanied United States troops on security patrols of St. George's and other areas. The combined forces established authority within a few days after overcoming limited initial resistance by PRA troops and fiercer resistance by 784 Cubans, of whom 24 were killed in action and 59 wounded. Within two weeks, the Cubans, seventeen Libyans, fifteen North Koreans, forty-nine Soviets, ten East Germans, and three Bulgarians had returned to their countries. By December 15, all United States combat forces had withdrawn, leaving only training, police, medical, and support elements. In explaining its participation in the Grenada operation, the United States government cited, in addition to the aforementioned OECS appeals, the need to ensure the safety of the roughly 1,000 United States students on the island, whose lives it claimed were endangered by the breakdown of law and order and a "shoot-on-sight" curfew. The Reagan administration also expressed concern that the students might be used as hostages. A total of 599 United States citizens were evacuated safely, at their request; those who were interviewed expressed great relief at being out of Grenada. The Department of State also set forth the legal aspects of the Reagan administration's position by stressing the right of the United States under international law to protect the safety of its citizens, the right of the OECS nations to take collective action against a threat of external aggression, and the right of the United States to take action in response to requests from the OECS and the governor general of Grenada. Critics accused the Reagan administration of violating United Nations (UN) and Organization of American States (OAS) prohibitions on intervention and the use of force. United States military intervention constituted, in their view, a gross violation of Grenada's territorial integrity and political sovereignty. Supporters of the administration's position pointed out, however, that Article 22 of the OAS Charter specifically allows members with regional security treaties to take collective action in response to threats to peace and security and that Article 52 of the UN Charter similarly recognizes the right of regional security organizations to take collective action. The applicability of the right to intervene to protect United States citizens may have been weakened somewhat by an obscure provision of international law stipulating that such interventions must be limited strictly to protecting the foreign national from injury. Whether or not the ouster of the unrecognized RMC regime exceeded that restriction was unclear. Furthermore, some commentators argued that the Soviet and Cuban presence in Grenada did not constitute "external aggression" because it was requested by the (unelected) regime. Geopolitical and strategic concerns, although not specifically cited, also clearly weighed in the decision of the United States government to act. Without making a public issue of the Bishop regime's Marxist-Leninist system of government, the Reagan administration became increasingly concerned over the deepening of Grenada's political ties to the Soviet Union and Cuba. Of particular concern to United States policymakers was the potential use of the island as a Soviet-Cuban base for intervention in nearby governments, interdiction of vital sea-lanes, reconnaissance by long-range aircraft, and transport of troops and supplies from Cuba to Africa and from Eastern Europe and Libya to Central America. United States strategic affairs analysts have noted that, had Grenada become a Soviet-Cuban base, maritime and air traffic along the coast of Venezuela and westward toward the Panama Canal could have been controlled from the island. The Galleons Passage, one of the main deep- water oil tanker passages into the region, passes Grenada's southern coast. The Caribbean's southeastern approaches offer a naval force the opportunity to dominate the sea-lanes running from the Strait of Hormuz to the North Atlantic oil-shipping routes. Moreover, much of the Caribbean production and refining capability is within tactical air range of Grenada, which lies fewer than 483 kilometers from the oil fields of Trinidad and Tobago and eastern Venezuela. Within a 925-kilometer radius of Grenada--the range of Cuba's MiG-23 fighter-bombers--are the oil fields, refineries, tanker ports, and sea-lanes that have supplied a large share of the petroleum imported by the United States. In support of its claim that Grenada might have served as a Soviet- Cuban base of operations in the region, the Reagan administration noted the presence in Grenada in October 1983 of the well-armed and militarily trained Cubans, mostly construction workers but also some Cuban troops from the Revolutionary Armed Forces and the Ministry of Interior; fortifications, including the battalion-sized military camp built by the Cubans at Calivigny; warehouses filled with weapons and munitions; the nearly finished 3,048-meter Point Salines runway; personnel from Eastern Europe, Africa, and East Asia; and captured documents, which included five secret military agreements: three with the Soviet Union, one with the People's Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea), and one with Cuba. Some leading specialists on Soviet and Cuban policies in Latin America believe that the voluminous secret files discovered in Grenada after the invasion amply document the NJM's attempts at Marxism- Leninism and its extensive political, ideological, and military ties with the Soviet Union and Cuba. Another uncited reason for the involvement of the United States clearly was concern over the potential use of the island as a staging area for regional subversion. Reagan had stated earlier in 1983 that Grenada was "a Soviet-Cuban colony being readied for use as a major military bastion to export terror." Although Grenada had not yet begun exporting revolution to the region, captured Grenada documents provided ample evidence of these subversive intentions, as discussed in meetings between Grenadian leaders and their high-level Soviet counterparts. For example, one document read as follows: "Our revolution has to be viewed as a worldwide process with its original roots in the Great October Revolution. For Grenada to assume a position of increasingly greater importance, we have to be seen as influencing at least regional events. We have to establish ourselves as the authority on events in at least the English-speaking Caribbean, and be a sponsor of revolutionary activity." As the first military intervention by the United States in the English- speaking Caribbean, the Grenada action marked what may be seen as the final act in the displacement of Britain by the United States as the region's principal power. In a speech to the Royal Commonwealth Society in London in November 1983, then-Barbadian prime minister Adams declared, "In hemispheric terms, 1983 is bound to be seen as the watershed year in which the influence of the United States . . . came observably to replace that of Great Britain in the old British colonies."