World: Troubled Waters

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Challenges for the U.S. and targets for Cuba

"If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the U.S. Chronic wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the U.S. to the Monroe Doctrine may force the U.S., however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power."

Since Teddy Roosevelt issued that paternalistic "corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904, the U.S. has patrolled the Caribbean like a cop on a beat, using its "big stick" to enforce the "primary laws of civilized society." It has aborted revolutions, overthrown unacceptable governments, and sent in troops to restore order in several Caribbean nations, including Haiti, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. Today, however, the Caribbean can no longer be considered an "American Lake." Travel ads entice U.S. tourists with the promise of swaying palms and unspoiled vistas of sandy beach. But the nationalistic winds sweeping through the Third World have created a new mood of anti-imperialism in the Caribbean, directed against the big Brother to the north. Says Deputy Prime Minister George Odium of newly independent St. Lucia: "The Caribbean is going through a period of searching for its own structures and systems. Traditionally we have had the Western systems and structures. Now we are looking at them to see how they are related to our own circumstances."

Washington is troubled by the new atmosphere in the area. In recent months there have been fears that the Caribbean has become an arena for superpower rivalry, with Havana, as usual, acting as Moscow's surrogate. Says a U.S. official: "There is a great concern that America and its ideological values are in retreat. If the Cubans were to lure the little island countries of the eastern Caribbean into their sphere of influence, it would send shock waves throughout Central America all the way to Cape Horn."

Indeed, some of those tremors have already been felt: 1) the five-week-long diplomatic wrangle with Moscow over the presence of a 2,600-man Soviet combat brigade in Cuba; 2) the Cuban-supported Sandinista revolution that overthrew Nicaragua's Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle last summer; 3) the left-wing coup in Grenada last March, which replaced Prime Minister Sir Eric Gairy with a socialist regime that established relations with Havana. There is worry in Washington that the Sandinista revolt could spill over into El Salvador and Guatemala, where repressive military regimes are struggling against leftist dissidents. Grenada's warm embrace of Havana could set an example for other former British island possessions in the eastern Caribbean.