The Third World War: The Untold Story

The struggle which began with Cuba-leaning Guyana at this time was welcomed by some extreme right-wing nationalist groups in Venezuela, plus some of the Venezuelan military, but it was really initiated by Cuba-leaning politicians in Guyana itself. A quarrel between these countries is always easy to ignite, because Venezuelans think that two-thirds of the land area of Guyana should actually belong to Venezuela. Some Guyanan politicians wanted to integrate their country more closely with Cuba because this would advance their own careers. They could feel fairly certain that the movement of armed bands across the disputed areas, spilling occasionally over the frontier, would trigger a reaction from Venezuelan generals. The trigger was pulled, and the reaction came. The spectre had now been raised of a war on the South American mainland.

Guyana asked for Cuban military help, and new teams of Cuban ‘advisers’ quickly turned up. All the other Caribbean countries tried to persuade Venezuela and Guyana to come to terms peacefully, and their general mood was against Venezuela. A left-wing inspired campaign against ‘Venezuelan imperialism’ spread throughout Trinidad, Tobago, Curacao, anti-colonialist Grenada, Dominica and even Jamaica. It was embarrassing to the US that its key ally in containing subversion in Central America and the Caribbean should start to lose sympathy in both regions as a result of a ninety-year-old territorial dispute with a black-dominated, English-speaking Caribbean country. Cuba did not miss the opportunity to show its anti-colonialism. It prepared to station military units on the mainland ‘at the request of a friendly government, threatened by foreign aggression’.

In November of 1983 America’s fortunes in Central America therefore seemed at their lowest ebb. The US Administration, committed to a policy of containment of subversion, but not opposed in principle to moderate change, had almost given up hopes that any middle-of-the-road alternative was feasible in countries torn apart by extremists from left and right. Mexico persisted in its anti-US stand, willing to take risks with the centre-left and more extreme left-wing movements. The Venezuelan Government had lost most of its capacity for action as the election approached, and it was unpopular internationally because of its border disputes with Colombia as well as Guyana. The Soviet Union was delighted to see the United States caught in the elephant trap and wallowing ineffectively, while the Soviet Union’s Cuban ally was recovering political prestige and gaining opportunities to intervene militarily at the request of ‘friendly governments’, as it had done in Africa.

As only one example, Cuban technicians now accelerated work on the new airport in Grenada, begun in 1980, which was clearly going to be able to service sophisticated combat aircraft. The United States had to decide whether it was going to take military action to-stop ‘new Cubas’ from arising right across Central America and the Caribbean.

The US Administration adopted, as the only possible way out of the trap, Teddy Roosevelt’s old policy in the area: ‘speak softly, but carry a big stick’. The big stick hit the headlines. The United States gave warning to Cuba that the despatch of any more Cuban troops to countries outside its borders would be regarded as a casus belli. Units of the United States’ Atlantic Fleet took up stations around the island. If any attacks were launched on these ships, Washington announced, selected targets in Cuba would be attacked from the air in return. The soft speaking at this time was the US President’s statement that in view of the ‘crisis towards which the Soviet Union is now clearly moving, there can be no sense in any Caribbean or Central American country so far from its borders remaining under its vassalage. We will hold out a genuine hand of friendship, and aid, to governments which wish to break away from that vassalage. We hold no animosity against leaders now in power.’