Showcasing American Power after Vietnam
Operation Urgent Fury kicked off on October 25, 1983.
Despite no actual threat to national security posed by the small island nation, the Regan administration cited far-fetched dangers as reasons for the invasion. Protecting American citizens by quelling unrest and preventing outside influence in the Western Hemisphere allowed President Ronald Reagan and his administration to restore American credibility post-Vietnam and demonstrate that the United States was great again.
In his 1823 Monroe Doctrine, President James Monroe declared American hemispheric hegemony. The policy stated three basic tenets for the Western Hemisphere: separate spheres of influence for the Americas and Europe, non-colonization, and non-intervention.
Grenada, 1,500 miles southeast of Key West, achieved independence from Britain in 1974. Five years later, Marxist Maurice Bishop ousted Prime Minister Eric Gairy. Bishop, a friend of Cuba, was the leader of a leftist populist movement known as the New JEWEL Party. The coup was probably inevitable; Gairy had become corrupt, interfering with elections and intimidating his opposition.
Bishop and his chief Marxist theoretician, Bernard Coard (who also served as Deputy Prime Minister), visited the USSR and other communist bloc countries multiple times between May 1980 and October 1983 to elicit support for their government and the new runway project. Unhappy with an increased communist presence on this side of the Atlantic, tensions escalated further in late 1983 when Coard arrested and executed Bishop.
The assassination of Bishop and subsequent instability on the island prompted the nations of the eastern Caribbean, the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, to ask for American intervention. To the United States, their citizens studying at the medical school in St. Georges were now at risk. President Reagan used their presence to create public support for armed intervention on the island.
Already dissatisfied with a Marxist regime in Cuba, the Reagan administration viewed the happenings in Grenada as a threat to the status quo and their hegemonic influence in the Western Hemisphere. Cuba’s leader, Fidel Castro, and Maurice Bishop maintained a close friendship. In defiance of American requests, Bishop announced in November of 1979 that he planned to build a new airport at Point Salines with Cuban help. The new airfield could accommodate all types of Soviet aircraft, thus challenging the United States.
The danger lay not in Grenada but the prospect of the island serving as a launching pad for further communist influence in the region. For Grenada, the new airport represented an investment in tourism. Neighbor St. Lucia hosted twice as many visitors as Grenada each year. According to historian Reynold Burrowes, Grenadian officials wanted a 9,000-foot runway to accommodate larger aircraft. However, this looked like a military project with Cuban influence on the United States.
Quelling unrest and preserving Monroe’s vision of the Western hemisphere also provided convenient excuses to test a transformed U.S. military in battle. Grenada served as a proving ground for Reagan’s reinvigorated military and highlighted the United States’s ability to deploy combat power. The success of the intervention let the Reagan administration tout it as the first successful rollback of communist influence since the beginning of the Cold War. The positive political response to the invasion was crucial in President Reagan’s bid for a second term.
Ultimately, the Reagan administration exaggerated the Grenadian threat to oust a government they considered inconsistent with American values. The notion that Grenada would become a staging base for the exportation of Marxist revolutionaries and terrorism to other islands in the Caribbean and beyond was questionable. Using Grenada as a staging ground for Cuban or Soviet forces was wholly unnecessary in the first place. Nevertheless, Cuban involvement and civil unrest provoked a U.S. response from an administration keen on restoring American credibility.
