One method of imposing régime change upon a dissident country is by direct military invasion. Consider what happened to revolutionary Grenada. In 1983, US forces invaded the tiny sovereign nation of Grenada (population 102,000) in violation of all international law. The invasion could not be denied, but what of the motive? The Reagan administration justified the assault by claiming that it was a rescue operation on behalf of American students whose safety was being threatened at a Grenadian medical school; and worse still, the island was being turned into a Soviet-Cuban launching base “to export terror and undermine democracy.”9
When it became evident that these charges were without foundation, some critics determined that the White House had been unduly alarmist and misguided. But, again, the fact that officials offer misleading rationales is no reason to conclude that they are themselves misled. It may be that they have other motives that they prefer not to enunciate.
In fact, the policy toward Grenada was quite rational and successful, given the Reagan administration’s devotion to counterrevolutionary free market goals. Under the New Jewel revolutionary government in Grenada, free milk and other foodstuffs were being distributed to the needy, as were materials for home improvement. Grade school and secondary education were free for everyone for the first time. Free health clinics were opened in the countryside, thanks mostly to assistance rendered by Cuban doctors. Measures were taken in support of equal pay and legal status for women. The government leased unused land to establish farm cooperatives and turned agriculture away from cash-crop exports and toward self-sufficient food production.10
The US counterrevolutionary occupation put an immediate end to almost all these government-sponsored programs. In the years that followed the US invasion, unemployment in Grenada reached new heights and poverty new depths. Domestic cooperatives were shut down or starved out. Farm families were displaced to make way for golf courses. The corporate-controlled tourist industry boomed. Grenada was once more firmly locked into a privatized Third World poverty.
The same process occurred after the US invaded Panama in December 1989, supposedly to apprehend Manuel Noriega, described by the White House and the US press as a drug-dealing dictator. With Noriega and his leftist military deposed and the US military firmly in control, conditions in that country deteriorated sharply. Unemployment, already high because of the US embargo, climbed to 35 percent as drastic layoffs were imposed on the public sector. Pension rights and other work benefits were abolished. Government subsidies were eliminated and services were privatized. The US invaders shut down publicly owned media and jailed a number of Panamanian editors and reporters who were critical of the invasion. The US military arrested labor union leaders and removed some 150 progressive labor leaders from their elected positions within their unions. Crime, poverty, drug trafficking, and homelessness increased dramatically.11 Free market Third Worldization was firmly reinstated in Panama, all in the name of restoring “democracy.”