United States invasion of Grenada
The United States and a coalition of Caribbean countries invaded the island nation of Grenada at dawn on 25 October 1983. Codenamed Operation Urgent Fury by the U.S. military, resulting in military occupation within a few days. It was triggered by strife within the People's Revolutionary Government, which led to the house arrest and execution of the previous leader and second Prime Minister of Grenada, Maurice Bishop, and to the establishment of the Revolutionary Military Council, with Hudson Austin as chairman. Following the invasion there was an interim government appointed, and then general elections held in December 1984.
The invasion drew criticism from many countries. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher privately disapproved of the mission, in part because she was not consulted in advance and was given very short notice of the military operation, despite Grenada being a member of the Commonwealth, with Queen Elizabeth II as its head of state. However she supported the invasion in public. On October 28, 1983, three days after the invasion, the U.N. Security Council by a vote of 11 to one failed to pass a resolution "deeply deploring" the invasion, calling it a "flagrant violation of international law". The United Nations General Assembly condemned it as "a flagrant violation of international law" on 2 November 1983, by a vote of 108 to 9.
The invading force consisted of the 1st and 2nd battalions of the U.S. Army's 75th Ranger Regiment, the 82nd Airborne Division, and elements of the former Rapid Deployment Force, U.S. Marines, U.S. Army Delta Force, Navy SEALs, and a small group Air Force TACPs from the 21st TASS Shaw AFB ancillary forces, totaling 7,600 troops, together with Jamaican forces and troops of the Regional Security System. The invaders quickly defeated Grenadian resistance after a low-altitude assault by the Rangers and 82nd Airborne at Point Salines Airport on the island's south end, and a Marine helicopter and amphibious landing at Pearls Airport on the north end. Austin's military government was deposed. An advisory council was designated by Sir Paul Scoon, Governor-General of Grenada, to administer the government until the 1984 elections.
The invasion date of 25 October is now a national holiday in Grenada, called Thanksgiving Day, commemorating the freeing of several political prisoners who were subsequently elected to office. A truth and reconciliation commission was launched in 2000 to re-examine some of the controversies of that tumultuous period in the 1980s; in particular, the commission made an unsuccessful attempt to locate the remains of Maurice Bishop's body, which had been disposed of at Austin's order and never found.
The invasion exposed communication and coordination problems between the different branches of the U.S. military when operating together as a joint force. This triggered post-action investigations resulting in sweeping operational changes in the form of the Goldwater–Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act.
Background
In 1974, Sir Eric Gairy led Grenada to independence from the United Kingdom, but his term in office was marred by civil unrest. Although his Grenada United Labour Party claimed victory in the general election of 1976, the opposition did not accept the result as legitimate. During his tenure, many Grenadians believed Gairy was personally responsible for the economic decline of the island and accused him of corruption. The civil unrest took the form of street violence between Gairy's private militia, the Mongoose Gang, and a militia organized by the communist New Jewel Movement party.On 13 March 1979, while Gairy was temporarily out of the country, Maurice Bishop and his NJM seized power in a nearly bloodless coup. He established the People's Revolutionary Government, suspended the constitution, and detained several political prisoners. Bishop was a forceful speaker who introduced Marxist ideology to Grenadians while also appealing to Black Americans during the 1970s heyday of the Black Panther movement. After seizing power, Bishop attempted to implement the first Marxist-Leninist nation in the British Commonwealth. To lend itself an appearance of constitutional legitimacy, the new administration continued to recognize Queen Elizabeth II as Queen of Grenada and Sir Paul Scoon as her viceregal representative.
Airport
The Bishop government began constructing the Point Salines International Airport with the help of the United Kingdom, Cuba, Libya, Algeria, and other nations. The British government proposed the airport in 1954 when Grenada was still a British colony. Canadians designed it, the British government underwrote it, and workers, including some Cubans, built it. The U.S. government accused Grenada of constructing facilities to aid a Soviet-Cuban military buildup in the Caribbean. The accusation was based on the fact that the new airport's runway would be able to accommodate the largest Soviet aircraft, such as the An-12, An-22, and An-124. Such a facility, according to the U.S., would enhance the Soviet and Cuban transportation of weapons to Central American insurgents and expand Soviet regional influence. Bishop's government claimed that the airport was built to handle commercial aircraft carrying tourists, pointing out that such jets could not land at Pearls Airport with its runway on the island's north end, and that Pearls could not be expanded because its runway abutted a mountain on one side and the ocean on the other.In 1983, Representative Ron Dellums traveled to Grenada on a fact-finding mission, having been invited by Prime Minister Bishop. Dellums described his findings before Congress:
Based on my personal observations, discussion, and analysis of the new international airport under construction in Grenada, it is my conclusion that this project is specifically now and has always been for the purpose of economic development and is not for military use.... It is my thought that it is absurd, patronizing, and totally unwarranted for the United States government to charge that this airport poses a military threat to the United States' national security.
File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1982-0610-101, Berlin, Besuch Regierungsdelegation Grenada, Bootsfahrt.jpg|thumb|Maurice Bishop and Foreign Minister Unison Whiteman in East Germany, 1982
In March 1983, President Reagan began issuing warnings about the danger to the United States and Caribbean nations if the Soviet-Cuban militarization of that region was allowed to proceed. He pointed to the excessively long airport runway being built and referenced intelligence reports showing increased Soviet interest in the island. He said the runway, along with the airport's numerous fuel storage tanks, were unnecessary for commercial flights and that the evidence suggested the airport would become a Cuban-Soviet forward military airbase.
Meanwhile, an internal power struggle was brewing in Grenada over Bishop's leadership performance. In September 1983 at a Central Committee party meeting, he was pressured into sharing power with Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard. Bishop initially agreed to the joint leadership proposal, but later balked at the idea, which brought matters to a crisis.
Connection to Beirut barracks bombing
Two days prior to the United States' invasion of Grenada, U.S. marines in Beirut suffered heavy casualties in the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings. The terrorist bombing in Beirut killed 241 American servicemen, the deadliest single attack on Americans overseas since World War II. American Experience suggested the invasion of Grenada was meant to distract the public from the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing: "By the time of the 1984 election, the Grenada success replaced the bitter memory of the massacre at Lebanon.”October 1983
On the evening of 13 October 1983, the Coard faction of the Central Committee, in conjunction with the People's Revolutionary Army, placed Prime Minister Bishop and several of his allies under house arrest. On 19 October, after Bishop's secret detention became widely known, he was freed by a large crowd of supporters, estimated between 15,000 and 30,000. He led the crowd to a relatively unguarded Fort Rupert which they soon occupied. At nearby Fort Frederick, Coard had gathered nine Central Committee members and sizable factions of the military. As one journalist writes, "What happened next, and on whose orders, is still a controversy." But a mass of troops in armored personnel carriers, under the supervision of Lt. Colonel Ewart Layne, departed Fort Frederick for Fort Rupert to, as Layne described it, "recapture the fort and restore order." After surrendering to the superior force, Bishop and seven leaders loyal to him were lined up against a wall in Fort Rupert's courtyard and executed by a firing squad.The army under Hudson Austin then stepped in and formed a military council to rule the country, and placed Sir Paul Scoon under house arrest in Government House. The army instituted a strict four-day curfew during which anyone seen on the streets would be shot on sight.
Within only a few days of these events in Grenada, the Reagan administration mounted a U.S.-led military intervention following a formal appeal for help from the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, which had received a covert request for help from Paul Scoon. Among the key invasion planners were Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and his senior military assistant Colin Powell. Regarding the speed with which the invasion commenced, it was said the U.S. had been conducting mock invasions of Grenada since 1981: "These exercises, part of Ocean Venture '81 and known as Operation Amber and the Amberdines, involved air and amphibious assaults on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. According to the plans for these maneuvers, 'Amber' was considered a hypothetical island in the Eastern Caribbean which had engaged in anti-democratic revolutionary activities."
Reagan stated that he felt compelled to act due to "concerns over the 600 U.S. medical students on the island" and fears of a repeat of the Iran hostage crisis, which ended less than three years earlier. Future U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, who was then serving as Reagan's Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, later admitted that the prime motivation for the intervention was to "get rid" of the coup leader Hudson Austin, and that the students were a pretext. Although the invasion occurred after the execution of Prime Minister Bishop, the remaining Grenadian ruling party members were still committed to Bishop's Marxist ideology. Reagan said he viewed these factors, alongside the party's growing connection to Fidel Castro, as a threat to democracy.
The Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, Barbados, and Jamaica all appealed to the United States for assistance. For safety reasons, Paul Scoon had requested the invasion through secret diplomatic channels, using the reserve powers vested in the Crown. On 22 October 1983, the Deputy High Commissioner in Bridgetown, Barbados, visited Grenada and reported that Scoon was well and "did not request military intervention, either directly or indirectly". However, on the day after the invasion, Prime Minister of Dominica Eugenia Charles stated the request had come from Scoon, through the OECS, and, in his 2003 autobiography, Survival for Service, Scoon maintains he asked the visiting British diplomat to pass along "an oral request" for outside military intervention at this meeting.
On 25 October, the combined forces of the United States and the Regional Security System based in Barbados invaded Grenada in an operation codenamed Operation Urgent Fury. The United States insisted this was being done at the request of Barbados' Prime Minister Tom Adams and Dominica's Prime Minister Eugenia Charles. The invasion was sharply criticized by the governments in Canada, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United Kingdom. By a vote of 108 to 9, with 27 abstentions, the United Nations General Assembly condemned it as "a flagrant violation of international law."