Polack Post: Caribbean Settling Scores
By Peter Polack
Peter Polack
There has been much punditry about the deeper reasons for the American incursion into Venezuela and the arrest of their president. As one oil company executive put it, they would be uninterested in a venture with Venezuela, given that their assets had been seized twice before by that country.
That posture is understandable.
Only communists and socialists are interested in seizing or nationalizing private property for their particular political dialectic. The excesses of Caribbean leftists, including Cuba and Grenada, are coming home to roost. The Cuban family of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, likely bore the brunt of state excesses. Many US corporations and citizens lost their property in Cuba without compensation.
They are not alone.
Therein lies one reason for American activity in the Caribbean, the settling of scores for the seizure of American property or anti-American activities. Former members of the Cuban aligned Peoples Revolutionary Government of Grenada must be nervous as President Trump is dealing death and destruction to his foes in the region by a thousand cuts.
A low point of the American government Monroe like power was their disastrous loss to Cuba at the Bay of Pigs by a novice government and rebel army. Today, Cuba is substantially cut off from resources and ignored by former friends, making false the saying, no man is an island.
The reverse of that defeat was the US invasion of Grenada which led to the death of nineteen of their soldiers and the liberation of Grenada. Ronald Reagan the liberator, even when there was no great benefit, ultimately, to the American people.
That invasion marked the end of the Grenada Gulag, where hundreds of regime opponents, including American citizens, were incarcerated without trial for years. The overseers of that fratricide have never been brought to justice by the American government and at least one is in hiding in the Cayman Islands.
Not to worry, Uncle Sam has a long memory and perfect record for rendition.
There are nineteen reasons for that strike.
Caribbean islands will have to take especial care of American assets and citizens, past and present.
It is now Western Hemisphere 2.0.
Notes
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c205dx61x76o
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Grenada
Peter Polack is a former criminal lawyer from the Cayman Islands for several decades. His books are The Last Hot Battle of the Cold War: South Africa vs. Cuba in the Angolan Civil War (2013), Jamaica, The Land of Film (2017) and Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution (2019). He was a contributor to Encyclopedia of Warfare (2013). His latest book is a compendium of Russian espionage activities with almost five hundred Soviet spies expelled from nearly 100 countries worldwide 1940-88.
His views are his own.
