The End of the “Vietnam Syndrome”
[From left to right: Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua), Maurice Bishop (Grenada), Fidel Castro (Cuba).]
While it is a fact that the U.S. has
been at war almost continuously since it gained independence from
Britain, there have been brief periods of a few years every now and
again in the past 200 plus years where U.S. troops were not mobilized on
some international adventure. The period between the end of the Vietnam
war and the invasion of Grenada was one such period, and Ronald Reagan
was elected on a sweeping tide of bruised and thus ultra-jingoistic
nationalism and fanatical anti-communism, with the promise of reversing
what rightly appeared to be the start of a global tide rising against
U.S. dominance. Not just literally fighting communists where it was
feasible–as in very small and almost defenseless locales such as
Grenada–Reagan also spearheaded the neoliberal era that continues to the
present, with its rollback of trade unions and collective bargaining,
the deregulation of the economy, the financialization and
de-industrialization of the U.S., and the upward flow of capital toward
the already wealthy.
In addition to the lasting political and
economic damage inflicted by the invasion and occupation of Vietnam,
ending in 1975, the U.S. was soon faced with a quick succession of
events that its leadership read as either lethal threats or tactical
defeats that required a response:
- The January-April 1979 revolution in Iran, that overthrew a U.S.-supported dictator in a region of the world that was/is critical to U.S. geopolitical and economic strategy. This was soon followed by the famous “hostage crisis” that lasted 444 days, and the superbly botched covert military operation ordered by President Jimmy Carter that failed to even come remotely close to rescuing the 52 U.S. Embassy hostages in Tehran.
- The March 13, 1979, revolution in Grenada, that swept out the de facto dictator (and UFO enthusiast) Sir Eric Gairy, and brought in a socialist government led by the New Jewel Movement (Jewel was an acronym meaning: Joint Endeavour for Welfare, Education, and Liberation) and the popular and charismatic Maurice Bishop. Grenada soon turned to Cuba for advice and assistance, and later also joined Nicaragua, in forming a regional bloc of revolutionary states that was a precursor of what Hugo Chávez would foster roughly twenty years later, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA).
- The July 19, 1979, victory of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) in Nicaragua, which also allied itself with Cuba and Grenada, and tossed out a dictatorial dynasty long supported by successive U.S. administrations.
- The Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan beginning in December of 1979.
Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980, promised
to end the alleged “Vietnam Syndrome” that conveniently imagined the
U.S. as suffering such debilitating moral and psychological trauma after
Vietnam, that only vastly increased military spending and redeployment
of U.S. military forces overseas could cure it. Reagan began a massive
increase of defence spending which included the development of new
weapons which are still in use by the military, from Tomahawk cruise missilesto B-2 stealth bombers, down to the Humvee and the Military Internet (MILNET),
not to mention equipping U.S. troops with new helmets modeled on the
Nazi German style. His paradigm of dominance through military power also
became the template for successive administrations, with the attendant
drain on the public budget, the minimization of social spending, and
increased foreign indebtedness. Reagan was really quite the innovator.
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