PROTECTING AMERICANS ABROAD: PRETEXT FOR INTERVENTION
STEPHEN R. SHALOM

With the end of the Cold War, the most commonly used rationale for U.S. interventionism has evaporated. No longer will anyone believe that Washington has to land marines or subvert governments in order to combat Soviet expansionism. Accordingly, U.S. policymakers need to devise new justifications for their interventionary policies that were in any event always driven by less noble motives.

One rationale that we are likely to hear with increasing frequency in coming years is that of "humanitarian intervention." Its persuasiveness lies in the fact that even for those who hold the principle of non-intervention to be extremely important, there is a competing principle that is also important, namely, that when possible one ought to try to prevent massive human suffering. Sometimes, these two principles may be in conflict. For example, imagine if a government were to start massacring its population. Should foreign nations intervene to put a halt to the killing? To make the example specific, what if the government of South Africa were to methodically set up gas chambers and proceed to exterminate the black population of the country? Would foreign intervention be justified?

The risk in granting blanket endorsement to humanitarian intervention is that governments are not typically motivated by humanitarian concerns; if they intervene somewhere they will be doing it for their own reasons and in such a way that humanitarianism will probably be ill-served. Indeed, there is the danger that if the doctrine of humanitarian intervention became widely adopted there would be no end to wars and their attendant human misery.

Humanitarian intervention comes in two varieties: intervention to protect one's own citizens and intervention to protect the citizens of a foreign nation. When one looks at the actual occasions upon which claims of humanitarian intervention in either version have been put forward, the record is not very reassuring. Hitler justified his occupation of Bohemia and Moravia in 1939 as humanitarian intervention to protect minorities.<1> To this day some scholars cite the Spanish American War as another example of humanitarian intervention because the U.S. freed Cuba from the Spanish yoke. Not surprisingly, such accounts make no mention of the Platt Amendment (which forced Cuba to include in its constitution a provision allowing the U.S. to intervene) nor the U.S. domination of the island for the next half century.<2>

One leading authority asserts that there was at most a single genuine case of humanitarian intervention in the century and a half before World War II: the French occupation of Lebanon/Syria in 1860-61 to prevent the massacre of the Maronite Christians at the hands of the Druses.<3> But a British government report on these events leaves doubts even in this instance:

"...it is an admitted fact that the original provocation proceeded from the Christians, who had been for months beforehand preparing an onslaught on the Druses, which their leaders confidently expected would terminate, if not in the extermination, in all events in the expulsion, of that race." Moreover, the Christian clergy attempted "to animate the courage of their flocks, by telling them that their endeavor to attain undisputed possession of the Lebanon would be warmly countenanced by the Powers of Christendom."<4> The British, of course, were not themselves neutral observers, but there is certainly the possibility that Maronite hopes of foreign intervention on their behalf helped to precipitate the violence.

The record with respect to protecting one's nationals is scarcely better. As the president of the American Society of International Law noted some years ago: "the claimed right to intervene to protect one's own citizens was the most cited rationalization for the episodic acts of interventionary imperialism all the way to the Boxer Rebellion and on down the line." The concept was the "international legal rationalization for the most important intrusions of great powers into the lives and social structures of small and weak powers in recent history."<5> One can imagine imperial policymakers suggesting this rationale to their colleagues, as Richard Nixon did in urging Kennedy to overthrow Castro in 1961, "I would find a proper legal cover and go in. There are several legal justifications that could be used, like protecting American citizens living in Cuba...."<6>

One reason we must be extremely cautious before endorsing a right of humanitarian intervention is that this right is, as Richard Falk has noted, an _asymmetrical claim_ in international law.<7> That is, it is a claim advanced only by the strong against the weak. No one bothers debating whether Cuba has the right to land marines in Los Angeles to protect the population there from undoubted police brutality. Likewise, people haven't stayed up nights arguing about whether the Philippines had the right to deploy troops in Tienanmen Square to protect the democracy movement from cruel repression.

Because humanitarian intervention is this sort of privileged claim of the powerful, we would want to impose the strictest constraints upon its use to prevent abuse -- if we were going to endorse it at all. Surely one would want minimally to insist that any humanitarian intervention meet a number of standards: (1) That the intervenor be able to credibly prove genuine concern about the humanitarian issue. (For example, China was outraged at Vietnam's treatment of its Chinese minority in the late seventies. But given Beijing's utter silence while its Kampuchean ally butchered two hundred thousand ethnic Chinese in the same period,<8> a Chinese claim of humanitarian intervention against Vietnam would be highly suspect.) (2) That the intervention use force only as a last resort. (And one ought to be particularly wary of cases where the intervenor itself has blocked the possibility of more peaceful solutions.) (3) That the intervention employ only the least amount of force necessary to achieve the humanitarian end. And (4) that the intervention be reasonably expected to reduce the total level of suffering. 

Now it might seem that the issue of protecting foreign nationals abroad could not be a very significant matter in U.S. foreign policy. After all, as Thomas Franck once remarked, "The actual number of Americans killed abroad by events in foreign countries that are intentionally directed at Americans would come somewhere in the list between Category 17 of deaths, which would be a surfeit of claret, and Category 19, which would be a paucity of green vegetables."<9> In addition, in 1936 the United States signed a convention in Buenos Aires under which it gave up the right to intervene in Latin America "for whatever reason."<10> Nevertheless, the protecting Americans abroad justification for intervention has been used quite a number of times by Washington since World War II. Three of the major such instances are worth looking at here for they tell us a great deal about the how this rationale might be used in the future. Next month, this article will continue by looking at instances where the United States did _not_ intervene, but where major humanitarian crises took place.

THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

In 1963 the elected government of Juan Bosch was overthrown in a military coup. On April 24, 1965, Bosch supporters in the armed forces led an effort to restore the constitutionally elected president to office. Key Dominican military officers vacillated and it briefly seemed as if the victory of the constitutionalist rebels would be almost bloodless. Had it been so, of course, the danger to American citizens would have been precisely nil.

But it was not to be. According to Jerome Slater, whose account is not unsympathetic to the U.S. government, U.S. military attaches "urged the military to resist and told them they had U.S. 'support' if they did." Concludes Slater: "Undoubtedly, this U.S. intervention proved decisive with those commanders who were still wavering."<11> The ranking official in the U.S. Embassy endorsed an attack by the military on the rebels, "even though it could mean more bloodshed."<12>

The Dominican air force proceeded to strafe the palace and other sites held by the rebels. The latter urgently asked the U.S. Embassy to try to prevent these air strikes, but the Embassy rejected the plea.<13>

The military onslaught was stopped, however, by civilians who had been armed by the rebels, and starting on April 26, military leaders called on the United States to support them with troops.<14> Still confident that the military would prevail, Washington turned down the request for the time being. With their abiding commitment to non-intervention, U.S. policymakers took the position that "We don't want to intervene unless the outcome is in doubt."<15>

As civil war spread, the U.S. Embassy informed those American citizens who wanted to leave to gather at the Embajador Hotel in Santo Domingo. A right-wing radio announcer had tried to hide himself among the evacuees and armed rebels came to the hotel looking for him.<16> Some shots were fired in the air, frightening the assembled Americans. No one was hurt and there had been no attempt to terrorize the Americans; shortly thereafter rebel officers agreed to cooperate fully in the evacuation of the U.S. citizens.<17> Washington expected the military to soon be in firm control, and no U.S. official thought U.S. troops were needed to protect the Americans.<18>

The military offensive ran aground the next day, and at 3:00 p.m. the head of the military junta, Colonel Benoit, telephoned the U.S. Embassy to ask for U.S. troops. The request was passed on to the State Department, but neither the U.S. Ambassador nor officials in Washington believed troops should be sent unless the outcome was in doubt.<19> At 4:00 p.m., Benoit submitted a formal written request for U.S. troops. The request warned of the dangers of "another Cuba," claiming that the rebels were controlled by communists, and committing widespread atrocities. No mention was made of any danger to Americans.<20> Washington was still not persuaded that troops were needed.

An hour later, the U.S. Ambassador became convinced that the military could not prevail on its own and he cabled Washington urging the dispatch of U.S. marines. He asserted that U.S. citizens were now at risk, but emphasized the reverses suffered by the military (their officers were dejected, several of them were weeping). "If Washington wished," the Ambassador suggested, the marines could be landed for the mission of protecting the evacuation of Americans.<21>

Lyndon Johnson approved the landing of the marines, and the Ambassador was instructed to get a written request from Benoit asking for U.S. troops specifically to protect American lives. The marines landed several hours before the revised request arrived.<22> Johnson's speech announcing the intervention justified it exclusively in terms of protecting U.S. citizens.<23>

Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Lyndon Johnson later spoke of the Embajador Hotel episode as though it had been the incident precipitating the decision to land the marines. As noted, however, it had occurred the day before.<24> The actual danger to American citizens is indicated by the fact that (to quote Slater) "not a single American" was attacked. Moreover, there were "remarkably few" rebel "atrocities of any sort. What few attacks did occur were highly selective, aimed almost exclusively at a few extreme rightists, and then mainly at their property." To be sure, there were many civilian casualties in the civil war, but "many more innocent civilians died as a result of the Air Force bombing and strafing" than at the hands of the rebels.<25>

U.S. officials repeated stories of hundreds of people being lined up against the wall and shot, of hacked off heads being carried around as trophies, of embassies being torn up. In fact, there had been no mass killings, nor disembodied heads, nor torn up embassies, nor even widespread looting in rebel zones.<26> The real bloodbath was yet to come.

Initially, 500 U.S. marines were landed, but the number was quickly increased to more than twenty thousand. Within forty- eight hours, the U.S. troops were deployed so as to block a rebel victory.<27> "Your announced mission," the commander of U.S. forces was told on April 30, "is to save American lives. Your unstated mission is to prevent the Dominican Republic from going Communist."<28> (The claim that the rebels were controlled by communists was nonsensical.<29> Administration officials explained that although they could only identify a few communists amidst the rebel forces, Castro had begun with just twelve men and Hitler at one time had only had seven supporters.<30>)

U.S. troops interposed themselves between rebel and military units. After the military had regrouped and been resupplied with U.S. assistance, they were then allowed, if not encouraged, to move through the U.S. lines to attack rebel forces who had been cut off from their rural base by U.S. troops. Hundreds of rebel fighters and innocent civilians were butchered.<31> To quote Jerome Slater again: "Although the Johnson Administration had proclaimed as one of the main purposes of the intervention the need to save Dominican lives in a bloody civil war, in fact most of the estimated three thousand Dominican deaths occurred after the intervention, some of them in clashes between the constitutionalists and U.S. troops, and the rest at the hands of a Dominican military that the United States had rescued from probable annihilation in April and thereafter had helped protect and rebuild."<32>

In closed hearings, Secretary of State Rusk had declared that the decision to send troops was "ninety-nine percent the problem of protecting American and other foreign nationals."<33> The U.S. troops remained in the Dominican Republic for seventeen months. Before they left, they organized elections in which an associate of former dictator Rafael Trujillo defeated Bosch for the presidency. The elections were stage-managed in a variety of ways by the U.S. and its local allies, though this did not stop commentators like Slater from praising the workings of Dominican democracy.<34> Slater does acknowledge, however, the United States probably would not have let Bosch undertake such radical measures as placing supporters of the constitution in military command positions.<35> In subsequent years, death squads appeared in the Dominican Republic, corruption grew rampant, living standards for the majority of the population declined, and the labor movement was repressed to ensure high profits for foreign companies.<36> As a reporter for the _Wall Street Journal_ put it in 1971, "The terrorism, corruption and misery that marked Rafael Trujillo's 31-year dictatorship...are even more widespread today...."<37> 

Such are the fruits of "humanitarian" intervention.

THE MAYAGUEZ

Ten years after the marines landed in Santo Domingo, innocent American lives were once again said to be in danger, requiring military action. A U.S. merchant ship, the _Mayaguez_, and its crew of 40<38> had been seized by the new revolutionary government of Cambodia.

Cambodia had been the victim of years of U.S. subversion, bombardment, and direct invasion. This U.S. intervention and the parallel interventions in Vietnam and Laos resulted in a devastating defeat for the aspirations of the people of Indochina: millions of people lay dead, economic life was shattered, and the massive devastation would take decades to overcome. But the wars on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were also viewed in Washington as defeats for the United States; despite the application of unprecedented violence, the U.S. had been unable to subdue the peasant armies that ultimately took power in April 1975.

On May 10, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger urged his boss, President Gerald Ford, to respond to the defeat in Vietnam with "a tough, even abrasive foreign policy."<39> _Time_ magazine reported that Ford "had been searching" for a means to show that the U.S. was now conducting this "abrasive" foreign policy when the _Mayaguez_ was seized. Even before the seizure, one U.S. official had told _Time_, "There's quite a bit of agreement around here that it wouldn't be a bad thing if the other side goes a step or two too far in trying to kick us while we're down. It would give us a chance to kick them back -- hard."<40>

And perhaps the Ford administration decided to help things along. That the Cambodians claimed a 12-mile limit to their territorial waters was known<41>; that they were battling with Vietnam over claims to islands off the coast was also known.<42> And that they had in the previous few days fired on at least one ship and detained another for sailing within 12 miles of islands they claimed was known as well.<43> Nevertheless, the State Department issued no warning to vessels in the area. Kissinger later asserted that though no advisory to ships was issued, maritime insurance companies were informed of the danger. The president of the American Institute of Marine Underwriters, however, denied that any such warning had been received.<44>

In his memoirs, presidential press secretary Ron Nessen wrote: "News accounts told of a Panamanian freighter and a South Korean vessel being harassed by Cambodian patrol boats a few days before the _Mayaguez_ was seized. Actually there were a number of similar incidents, beginning much earlier, which were never revealed. In addition, the United States had picked up intelligence that Cambodia intended to extend its territorial claims around the offshore islands, including Poulo Wai, and to enforce its claim by seizing ships that strayed too close." 

Nessen goes on to ask the obvious question: If the United States knew this, why wasn't a warning to merchant shipping issued? "It could have been simply a bureaucratic screw-up, one agency not knowing what another agency knew." And he then adds: "I never saw a shred of evidence that the _Mayaguez_ was deliberately allowed to sail into a Cambodian trap in order to provoke an international incident."<45>

On May 12, the _Mayaguez_ sailed, according to its captain, within seven miles of Poulo Wai.<46> Given Cambodia's response to other ships in its waters and given the well-documented xenophobia and paranoia of Khmer Rouge officials -- traits not discouraged by two decades of U.S. interventionism -- it is not surprising that the Cambodians reacted by seizing the ship. The captain of the _Mayaguez_ later guessed that the Cambodians "thought I was making a survey of the island to find out just how much military force they had there."<47>

In Washington, a National Security Council meeting was promptly convened and Kissinger argued that what was at stake was far more than the capture of an American cargo ship.<48> As Nessen recalls, Kissinger "said the capture of the _Mayaguez_ gave Ford the chance to assert strongly that there was a point beyond which the United States would not be pushed."<49> The immediate use of force was impossible: as Kissinger's assistant Brent Scowcroft put it, U.S. naval vessels were "heartbreakingly" far away, at least two days steaming time.<50> Ford ordered military forces to be moved into place. He knew that the Thai government wouldn't be happy about the U.S. using its bases in Thailand for this purpose, "but until _Mayaguez_ and her crew were safe, I didn't give a damn about offending their sensibilities."<51> Bangkok in fact sent Washington a note explicitly telling the United States not to use bases in Thailand for any military operations relating to the _Mayaguez_, but Ford simply ignored the note.<52>

White House press secretary Ron Nessen announced that the President "considers the seizure an act of piracy."<53> But even by the U.S. account the ship was within Cambodia's territorial waters. The co-chair designate of the American Bar Association's committee on international law thought that Cambodia at least had a viable claim that it was arresting violators of traditional international law.<54> Ship seizures were not at all unusual in international practice (for example, the U.S. seized and detained a Polish fishing vessel off the San Francisco coast that same week).<55> And though there are legal differences between fishing vessels and other ships, and though one can argue the legal merits of the case, there was no justification for characterizing the Cambodian action as an "act of piracy" -- and State Department lawyers admitted as much.<56>

Nessen further announced that the President had "instructed the State Department to demand the immediate release of the ship. Failure to do so would have the most serious consequences."<57> Kissinger later asserted that the U.S. rejected the idea of sending an ultimatum to Cambodia because it was feared that this might harden Cambodia's attitude even more.<58> A number of sources have claimed that in fact in a private message sent to Phnom Penh the U.S. gave the Cambodians 24 hours to surrender the ship and crew<59>; when the General Accounting Office (GAO) of the Congress later tried to confirm or deny this story, they were blocked by the State Department's refusal to declassify the message.<60> Even if there were no deadline set, however, the threat of force was evident in Nessen's statement and subsequent U.S. statements. As Kissinger put it, "we felt we had, in effect given an ultimatum without giving a specific time."<61>

The Cambodians docked the _Mayaguez_ at Koh Tang island and transferred the crew to a fishing boat, which along with some gunboats set out for Kompong Som (formerly Sihanoukville) on the mainland. The U.S. air force tried to get the boats to turn back by dropping bombs in front of them and when this failed U.S. aircraft sank three of the gunboats and immobilized four others.<62> The Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense testified that he "can't be sure" that there were no Americans aboard the vessels that were sunk.<63> The fishing boat was bombed and strafed 100 times, the captain of the _Mayaguez_ later recalled,<64> and three of the _Mayaguez_ crew were wounded by shrapnel.<65> When U.S. pilots confirmed that Caucasians were aboard the boat, the bombing gave way to gas attacks. In the _Mayaguez_ captain's words, "Everybody on the ship vomited. Their skin was burning."<66> The fishing boat finally made it to Kompong Som.

BLOWING THE HELL OUT OF 'EM

The National Security Council met again that afternoon. Kissinger and Ford "felt that we had to do more" than rescue the ship and crew; as Ford acknowledges, they were "eager to use _Mayaguez_ as an example for Asia and the world."<67> Diplomacy was never seriously considered: early that morning a report had been received indicating that a foreign government was using its influence to seek the ship's early release and expected the release to come soon; according to the GAO, the report was basically ignored.<68> The U.S. made its first approach to the United Nations at about 1 p.m. that day,<69> more than 48 hours since the beginning of the crisis. The Secretary General appealed to the United States and Cambodia to refrain from further acts of force to facilitate a peaceful settlement of the dispute,<70> whereupon President Ford gave the order for a military operation.

Ford's battle plan called for the marines to attack Koh Tang island and recover the _Mayaguez_, while bombing raids were conducted on an airport, a naval base, and a oil refinery on the mainland. Kissinger, Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller, and Scowcroft favored using B-52s for the air strikes; Ford, however, opposed using these incredibly inaccurate planes when he was advised that a U.S. aircraft carrier with tactical bombers was then in the area. "Even so," noted _Time_ magazine's correspondent, "the B-52s were kept gassed-up, their bomb bays loaded, and their crews on the line ready for take-off."<71> Reporters were excluded from the air base on Guam so they wouldn't be able to see the planes being loaded with 1000-pound bombs.<72>

Once the military operation was set in motion, Ford called in Congressional leaders for a briefing which characteristically began with a standing ovation for the President. Ford explained: "We gave the Cambodians clear orders. They disregarded them. They were not to try to take the ships from the island to the mainland."<73> For this act of disobedience to the ruler of the universe, Cambodian ships had been blown out of the water. Ford then described the military action that had been ordered and the Congressional leaders asked a few bland questions. The president pro tempore of the Senate, James Eastland, sat slumped down in his chair throughout the session, mumbling several times, "Blow the hell out of 'em."<74>

Just minutes before the marines arrived at Koh Tang<75> and several hours before the first bombs were dropped on the mainland, Radio Phnom Penh began a 19 minute broadcast by Hu Nim, Cambodia's Minister for Information and Propaganda. After criticizing U.S. interference in Cambodia, Hu Nim declared: "Regarding the _Mayaguez_ we have no intention of detaining it permanently and we have no desire to stage provocations. We only wanted to know why it came and to warn it against violating our waters again." This was the same warning, said Hu Nim, as given to "the ship flying the Panamanian flag which we released on 9 May 1975." The broadcast continued: "Wishing to provoke no one or to make trouble, adhering to the stand of peace and neutrality, we will release this ship but we will not allow the U.S. imperialists to violate out territorial waters, conduct espionage in our territorial waters, provoke accidents in our territorial waters, or force us to release their ships whenever they want by applying threats."<76>

It took just under an hour for the U.S. government monitoring agency in Bangkok to translate the broadcast and transmit it to Washington. Kissinger and Ford were determined to go ahead with their military plans, ignoring the conciliatory nature of the broadcast. Ford told one journalist, "I said to the secretary, 'They don't mention the crew,' and apparently the information Henry had, he had not been told or the announcement didn't include the crew. So I said to him, 'Proceed as we had agreed, with the air strikes and the full operation." It is true that the announcement did not specifically mention the crew; but Ford did not know this for sure ("_apparently_ the information Henry had") and even Henry had received only a preliminary translation of the broadcast.<77> Any reasonable reading of the Cambodian message would assume that the release of the crew was intended. Would someone who says he doesn't want to be provocative or make trouble think the U.S. wouldn't feel provoked if it were given back the ship but not the crew? Hadn't the message spoken of the release of the Panamanian "ship" as a way to refer to the release of that vessel and its crew? And in fact wasn't this very same shorthand of using the word "ship" to refer to vessel and crew employed by the United States in its initial public statement on the crisis (the President "instructed the State Department to demand the immediate release of the ship.")<78>

No pause was ordered in the marine assault. The air strikes on the mainland<79> were put on hold, but then ordered resumed just twenty minutes later when no further word was received from Cambodia.<80> It is not surprising that no further word was received in these twenty minutes given that the United States did not issue its message saying it wanted to hear specific word on the crew until an hour later.<81> The operative principle for U.S. policymakers seems clear here: when in doubt, use force.

In fact, at the very same time as the Phnom Penh radio broadcast, the Cambodians had put the _Mayaguez_ crew on a fishing boat and sent them, unaccompanied, back towards the _Mayaguez_ and Koh Tang island. About three hours later they were spotted by a U.S. plane. Nevertheless, air strikes were then carried out against the mainland air and naval base; aircraft, hangars, fuel storage facilities, runways, and anti- aircraft sites were hit at the airfield and barracks and fuel storage facilities at the naval base.<82> Within half an hour, the entire _Mayaguez_ crew was reported picked up, all hands safe, by a U.S. destroyer. Ford announced that offensive operations would now cease, but thirty minutes later air strikes were ordered and carried out against an oil refinery, warehouses, and a railroad marshalling yard building at Kompong Som.<83> The U.S. defended these last raids as necessary to protect the marines trying to extricate themselves from Koh Tang<84> -- a rather preposterous claim, given that these targets were hardly going to enable the Cambodians to project military power thirty- five miles across waters controlled by the U.S. navy and air force -- particularly not an oil refinery that the U.S. knew to have been inoperative.<85> According to the GAO, the Defense Department was unable to cite any indications that Cambodia -- which had few boats or planes remaining after the previous air strikes -- was preparing to attack the U.S. forces still on Koh Tang.<86>

Kissinger is said to have put the matter a little differently in private: asked by Scowcroft whether there was any reason for the Pentagon not to disengage, Kissinger told him: "No, but tell them to bomb the mainland. Let's look ferocious! Otherwise they will attack us as the ship leaves."<87> Ford makes no mention in his memoirs of the post-release air strike, though he does complain that still another wave of air attacks that he authorized somehow never got carried out.<88>

There was more ferocity. The U.S. dropped the BLU-82 bomb, the largest non-nuclear weapon in its arsenal, on Cambodian positions on Koh Tang. Again the claim was made that this measure was necessary to extract the marines from the island, but there are reasons for doubt. The head of the Marine Task Group had originally asked that the bomb be used only when requested by the officer in charge of the Koh Tang assault. But, according to the GAO, the "assault commander had not requested the use of the BLU-82 and stated that he was not informed that a decision had been made to drop the weapon." The GAO was "told that the decision to use the weapon was probably made in Washington."<89>

To "save" 40 crew members who were being released anyway, the _Mayaguez_ "rescue" mission led to the deaths of 41 Americans and the wounding of 50 more: 15 marines died in the assault on Koh Tang and 23 air force personnel were lost in a helicopter crash as troops were being moved into position in Thailand. (The Pentagon tried to exclude the latter 23 from the death toll on the grounds that these air force units ultimately were not assigned to combat, but clearly the 23 died as a result of the _Mayaguez_ operation.)<90> Despite these losses, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger was correct when he remarked that "the outcome was fortunate."<91> It was only good fortune that prevented crew members from being killed either by U.S. bombs or by Cambodians enraged at U.S. duplicity. Had the Cambodians had the evil intent that, according to U.S. policymakers, justified the whole operation, it is hard to see how any of the crew would have survived the rescue mission.

The captain later asserted that he and the entire crew were grateful for the rescue operation. But one wonders. Some of the crew suffered permanent damage from the gas attacks.<92> The Cambodians were rather more solicitous of the crew's well-being; one member commented later that the Cambodians "were so nice, really kind. They fed us first and everything. I hope everybody gets hijacked by them."<93> More typical was the reaction of chief engineer Cliff Harrington who commented as he boarded the U.S. destroyer: "That's a damn shame they're bombing Kompong Som. Those people didn't do us any harm."<94>

The costs of the "rescue" mission to the Cambodians were far heavier, though the final toll will probably never be known.<95> And, as William Shawcross has noted, one can do no more than "speculate on the effects the attacks must have had on Khmer Rouge paranoia about their enemies."<96>

The reaction in the United States to the _Mayaguez_ affair was general enthusiasm. Said Sen. Barry Goldwater: "It shows we still got some balls in this country."<97> "Let no one mistake the unity and strength of an America under attack," declared Democratic Sen. Adlai Stevenson III.<98> "The President's firm and successful action," effused Senator Ted Kennedy, "gave an undeniable and needed lift to the nation's spirit, and he deserves our genuine support."<99> There were a few voices of dissent, among them Rep. Pat Schroeder: "We have won no 'victory.' We have proved nothing to the world, except that this President is willing -- as were his predecessors -- to make hasty and ill-considered use of American military force against tiny countries regardless of the law."<100>

GRENADA

Cambodia was actually huge, compared to the _really_ tiny country of Grenada. In October 1983, U.S. troops invaded this Caribbean island, claiming that they were protecting more than a thousand American citizens, the majority of them students at St. George's University Medical School.

A country of just 100,000 people, Grenada had been ruled since 1979 by a left-wing government headed by Maurice Bishop. In early October 1983, the ruling New Jewel Movement was torn by internal discord, and on the 15th Bishop was ordered arrested by the party's central committee. On the 19th, a huge crowd of Bishop's supporters freed him; a clash with army units ensued and in the aftermath Bishop and some of his key associates were executed.

There was widespread international condemnation of the killings. Cuba declared that "No doctrine, no principle or proclaimed revolutionary position and no internal division can justify atrocious acts such as the physical elimination of Bishop and the prominent group of honest and worthy leaders who died yesterday."<101> Michael Manley, the leftish former Jamaican prime minister, called the killings a "squalid betrayal of the hopes of the ordinary people of our region."<102> Neighboring Caribbean states imposed harsh economic sanctions. The U.S., too, expressed its concern over developments in Grenada, but it obviously wasn't very concerned about Bishop. From the time he first came to power in 1979 -- overthrowing Eric Gairy, a corrupt and repressive leader with a rather bizarre belief in UFOs<103> -- the U.S. had been hostile to Bishop. Bishop was no democrat, but he was genuinely popular and committed to improving the social welfare of the population.<104> According to the _Washington Post_, the National Security Council considered a proposal to blockade Grenada just after Bishop took over.<105>

Relations worsened when Ronald Reagan became president in 1981. Under the new administration, any government in Central America or the Caribbean not wholly subservient to Washington was a target for destabilization. The CIA developed a plan to undermine Bishop by causing economic difficulty in the country; the plan was said to be aborted because of Senate opposition.<106> But the U.S. did offer the Caribbean Development Bank a loan on condition that Grenada be excluded,<107> and in general Grenada was barred from receiving U.S. aid.<108>

In October 1981, the United States conducted a military exercise in the Caribbean called "Amber and the Amberines" (a none too subtle reference to Grenada and the Grenadines) which involved the hypothetical freeing of Americans held hostage on "Amber" and installing a government "favorable to the way of life we espouse."<109> Reagan refused to accept the credentials of Grenada's ambassador to Washington and he ordered the U.S. ambassador in Barbados not to present his letters of credence in Grenada, as was the usual practice.<110>

In early 1983, a U.S. official warned that Grenada might provide missile bases for the Soviet Union.<111> Other officials claimed Grenada was preparing a submarine base for Moscow, until a _Washington Post_ reporter bothered to look at the alleged site and found that it was too shallow for any such facility.<112> The biggest U.S. government propaganda campaign, however, was to suggest that the new airport that was being built at Point Salinas was to be a Cuban or Soviet military base.

It is "difficult, if not impossible to identify any economic justification" for building an airport, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State testified in June 1982.<113> But, as the World Bank had noted in 1980, the lack of a decent-sized airport was a major obstacle to developing Grenada's tourism industry.<114> The length of the runway was said by U.S. officials to prove its military character, but eight other Caribbean countries had even longer runways.<115> "Grenada does not even have an air force," blustered Ronald Reagan. "Who is it intended for?" he asked,<116> neglecting to point out that commercial airlines use airports too. A base at Point Salinas, Deputy Secretary Kenneth Dam charged, would allow Cuban aircraft to strike Puerto Rico, among other targets.<117> But Puerto Rico is closer to Cuba than to Grenada.

The Cubans, of course, were playing a prominent role in the construction of the airport, but so was the British firm Plessey, and even an American dredging company was taking part.<118> Presumably there would have been greater Western participation in the project if the U.S. had not gone to such great lengths to dissuade other nations from becoming involved.<119>

So, unlike most Grenadians, the U.S. shed few tears over Bishop's death. In fact, the crisis within the New Jewel Movement provided the Reagan administration with a great opportunity.

Right after Bishop was killed, General Hudson Austin, head of the armed forces, announced the formation of a Revolutionary Military Command (RMC) and declared a round-the-clock, shoot-on- sight 96 hour curfew. U.S. officials subsequently claimed that the draconian curfew endangered U.S. citizens, and that Americans could not leave the island. Neither of these claims was true.

In later Congressional testimony, Deputy Secretary Dam acknowledged that he was unaware of anyone -- American or Grenadian -- shot pursuant to the curfew.<120> There is no evidence of any action taken or threatened against any foreign citizen during this period.<121> Reagan administration officials announced on October 27 that they had found evidence that the Grenadian government, together with Cuban advisers, was planning to take American hostages,<122> but this claim was retracted a short while later.<123> (Of course, this didn't stop noted legal scholars like John Norton Moore -- writing after the retraction -- from citing the false claim.<124>) Not only was there no such plan, but both Grenadian authorities and Cuban officials in Havana gave explicit assurances that U.S. citizens were safe. U.S. officials did not bother to disclose these assurances publicly. When they later came to light, the White House explained that the pledges were not trusted.<125>

The Grenadian government was particularly solicitous of the welfare of the medical students, whose presence on the island was crucial to the country's economy.<126> Austin himself visited the vice-chancellor of the medical school to assure him that there was no danger to the students and to offer any assistance to help the school cope with the curfew; water was specially provided and school officials were given passes to go out despite the curfew.<127> Students who went outside during the curfew reported that they were not stopped or threatened.<128>

For the country as a whole, the curfew was temporarily lifted on the third day to give people chance to buy food.<129> The government provided the medical students with vehicles and escorts to get from one campus to the other.<130>

The medical school took a poll of its students and only ten percent wanted to leave Grenada.<131> On the evening of Sunday, October 23, 500 parents of the medical students met in New York City to discuss the situation. Many had been in touch with their children. They sent a telegram to President Reagan urging him not to "take any precipitous actions at this time."<132>

In the meantime, the Reagan administration was hard at work to make the situation of students look precarious. Just before the Sunday night meeting, the chancellor of the medical school was called by various U.S. officials trying to get him to say that the students were in danger. He did not believe this to be the case and refused to make such a statement.<133> Medical school trustees were also contacted in an effort to elicit similar statements.<134> Over that weekend, U.S. diplomats flew into Grenada (with the permission of the Austin government) to talk with U.S. citizens. Instead of trying to ascertain the students' views, however, the diplomats tried to convince them of their danger.<135>

Late Sunday night a radio broadcast from outside Grenada announced that an invasion of the island was imminent. This caused many of the students to get worried -- as well it might, for, more than anything else, it was an invasion that would put them at risk -- and now perhaps half of them wanted to leave.<136> Fear of invasion, however, is hardly a rationale for an invasion, particularly because there was no obstacle to orderly evacuation if it were desired.

British and Canadian diplomats present on the island did not believe an invasion was necessary to protect their nationals.<137> Administrators of the medical school supported this assessment,<138> though one of them, vice-chancellor Geoffrey Bourne, later changed his view on the basis of some rather peculiar reasoning, and who knows what pressure. According to Bourne, Austin had mistakenly thought that all the U.S. students were being taken out of the country and came to him very upset; Bourne explained to him that this was not the intention, but concluded from this that there were grave doubts whether they could have gotten out.<139> The Grenadian government sent a diplomatic note to the United States that Sunday night and broadcast the text over Radio Free Grenada. It condemned any planned invasion and offered to hold talks to ensure good relations. "We reiterate that the lives, well-being and property of every American and other foreign citizens residing in Grenada are fully protected and guaranteed by our government." However, the note went on, "any American or foreign citizen in our country who desires to leave Grenada for whatever reasons can fully do so using the normal procedures through our airports on commercial aircraft. As far as we are concerned, these aircraft can be regular flights or chartered flights and we will facilitate them in every way we can."<140>

Of course, these were just promises, and Deputy Secretary of State Dam asserted that, "Although the RMC gave assurances that the airport would be opened on October 24 and foreigners allowed to depart, they then failed to fulfill that assurance."<141> This assertion is simply false. The curfew was lifted at 6:00 am Monday morning and the airport was opened. Four small planes flew in, picked up passengers -- among them, the former director of Reagan's national commission on social security -- and flew out.<142> Caught in their lie, U.S. officials later argued that, though a few planes got in and out, "the airport was not open for normal traffic."<143> This too was a lie. There was no normal traffic, but that was not because the airport was closed but rather because neighboring Caribbean states had prohibited the regional airline from traveling to Grenada as part of the sanctions they had imposed against the Austin government.<144>

The attention that U.S. officials devoted to the question of an orderly evacuation was revealed when Rep. Stephen Solarz asked Deputy Secretary Dam whether, after the four small planes had landed, the U.S. tried to arrange for other, larger planes to land to pick up Americans. Dam replied: "I cannot answer that question. First of all, I am not clear as to what extent we were aware. We were certainly aware planes were not getting in. To what extent we were aware the small planes had been able to get out, I do not know."<145> Even without the regular regional carrier, alternative evacuation plans could be made: on the evening of October 24, the Foreign Minister of Trinidad and Tobago announced that arrangements had been made to evacuate Trinidadian and Canadian nationals by air the next day.<146> But the next day the U.S. invaded.

"I think," commented Robert Pastor, a member of Jimmy Carter's National Security Council, "there is reason to believe that the marines may have got there just in time before the new Grenadian Government could prove publicly the private assurances that it had given to the medical school and the U.S. Government...that they were going to assure the safety of U.S. citizens...."<147> Perhaps it was this sense of urgency that led the Pentagon to name the invasion Operation Urgent Fury.

OPERATION URGENT FURY

If there was any scheme to hold Americans hostage, the invasion provided the ideal opportunity. The Grenadians knew of the impending invasion many hours before it began. Then it took U.S. troops more than a day and a half from their first landing to reach the Grand Anse campus of the medical school<148> -- more than enough time for the Grenadians to carry out any nefarious deeds were they so inclined. (The time lag was attributable to the fact that the students' "liberators" had never been told there was a second campus.<149>) According to Bourne, the Grenadian army did not use school property for offensive or defensive purposes though it would have been a perfect site from which to shoot down U.S. helicopters.<150> (One might compare this Grenadian concern to avoid "collatoral damage" to civilian sites with the U.S.'s accidental bombing of a mental hospital, killing dozens.<151>)

There is no doubt that the students were finally in danger -- they told "of bullets crashing through their dormitory rooms during the invasion, and of wading through surf to board rescue helicopters amid raging gunfire and booming explosions"<152> -- but it was the invasion that endangered them.

Even if one believed that U.S. citizens had been in danger, this was a rather weak justification for the invasion, given that U.S. troops did far more than evacuate Americans; they overthrew the Austin government.<153> So the Reagan administration needed some other rationalizations.

One claim advanced was that the intervention had been requested and authorized by the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States as a measure of collective security. This claim, however, was a transparent fig-leaf. While most OECS members did support the invasion, they in fact had no legal authority to authorize force. The OECS treaty clearly requires unanimity for its decisions, but, even aside from the abstentions, the Grenadian government -- a member nation -- obviously did not concur. The treaty further specifies that collective security measures are permitted only in cases of outside aggression, which was not relevant to the Grenada situation.<154> U.S. officials were privately discussing intervention with OECS nations prior to the latter organization's meeting at which the secret decision to support an invasion was reached.<155> The formal request for U.S. intervention from the OECS was drafted in Washington.<156> The 300 Caribbean "troops" that participated in the invasion were in fact police forces who saw no combat.<157> The largest of these contingents came from Barbados and Jamaica, neither of which is a member of OECS. They are both part of another, larger regional grouping, CARICOM, which did not endorse the use of force.<158> In any event, one might consider for example whether the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 would have been justified even if the other Warsaw Pact members had begged Moscow to intervene?

Another U.S. claim was that the invasion had in fact been invited by the government of Grenada in the person of Paul Scoon, the Governor-General. Scoon, according to the U.S., secretly transmitted a request for intervention that the U.S. could not reveal until after the invasion out of concern for his well- being. But Scoon's position was entirely a ceremonial one: according to People's Law Number 3 of March 1979, the Governor- General "shall perform such functions as the People's Revolutionary Government may from time to time advise."<159> A report from the British House of Commons (recall that the Governor-General is supposed to be the representative of the British Queen) stated that "the timing and nature" of Scoon's request "remain shrouded in some mystery, and it is evidently the intention of the parties directly involved that the mystery should not be dispelled."<160> The British magazine _The_ _Economist_ (which supported the invasion) was more direct: the "Scoon request was almost certainly a fabrication concocted between the OECS and Washington to calm the post-invasion diplomatic storm."<161> Later, Scoon told the BBC that what he had asked for "was not an invasion but help from outside."<162> And he also informed reporters that he had not been aware of the possible involvement of U.S. forces until they landed in his front garden.<163>

With the pre-invasion danger to the students not credible and the legal arguments unconvincing, the White House resorted to its old standby: U.S. troops got to Grenada "just in time," Reagan declared, to prevent a Cuban take-over.<164> This claim was preposterous on its face -- Cuba had been outraged at the killing of Bishop.<165> But when U.S. forces captured some 25,000 documents in Grenada detailing such things as weapons deals with the Soviet Union and North Korea, the administration proclaimed that its case had been proven. But the documents<166> -- in the words of one right-wing study -- "provide no conclusive evidence that Grenada had become a depot of Soviet arms for future use in the region, nor were there any Soviet or Cuban military bases or facilities at the time of the U.S./OECS intervention aside from the controversial airport, which also had clear-cut civilian purposes."<167> Moreover, the documents "do not provide evidence" that the New Jewel Movement "intended to allow Grenada to be used as a military or political base for the Cubans or Soviets to expand their influence in the region."<168>

The arms deals revealed in the documents do not suggest plans for aggression in the Caribbean. The militia that was to receive these weapons seems to have been intended as a means of building political cadre and for internal security and self- defense." U.S. officials charged that the Grenadian armed forces were larger than any legitimate defense need, but, given the successful U.S. invasion, they evidently weren't large enough. Of course, nothing the Grenadians could have done could have prevented a U.S. military victory, but a large militia might have faced the White House with the prospect of a messy conquest, something that doesn't play as well with the U.S. public as a quick and costless intervention. As it was, the Austin government had disarmed many in the militia before the invasion for being pro-Bishop."

World opinion regarding the U.S. invasion was almost uniformly hostile. In the United Nations, only El Salvador, Israel, and a few of the east Caribbean states voted with Washington against a resolution of condemnation. (The UN, said Jeane Kirkpatrick afterwards, was "an outdated institution."<171>) In Britain, Reagan's close ally Margaret Thatcher was politely critical of the invasion; a Labour MP was somewhat less restrained, noting that U.S. policy was "conducted by a bunch of ignorant businessmen led by a president who is a dangerous cretin."<172>

Several analysts (though not the U.S. government<173>) have argued that despite the worldwide censure, the Grenadian invasion should be viewed as a humanitarian intervention, not because it saved the medical students, but because it saved all Grenadians from a repressive dictatorship; in this view the intervention promoted self-determination.<174> Given the widespread support among the Grenadian population for the U.S. intervention, this argument has to be seriously addressed. One can dispute particular poll results documenting this support (asking, for example, whether responses weren't colored by the hope of U.S. dollars flowing into the country), but every observer came back from Grenada reporting strong popular support for the invasion.

Grenadian opinion alone, however, is not sufficient to justify one country's invading another. You might be glad that the local tough beat up a malicious neighbor, but vigilantism ultimately makes us all worse off, since once vigilantes are unleashed they are hard to control and the likelihood that their "interventions" will only be for just cause is small. When the vigilante has a record of supporting all sorts of atrocities, and committing many of them him- or herself, then the dangers of vigilantism are even more pronounced.

The argument that foreign intervention is justified when it is the only way to promote democracy doesn't apply, however, in the Grenada case. The evidence is clear that the Austin government almost immediately realized it had gone too far. As Michael Manley put it, "The military group that had taken over knew very well they were isolated from the Grenadian population, isolated from the Caribbean, isolated from Cuba.... From the very start, they sent out feelers. They called in the private sector, they issued a statement saying they wanted good relations with the United States, they sent out word into the Eastern caribbean, they sent word down to a Caricom meeting in Trinidad to say, 'We're willing to talk, we're in a hopeless situation.'"<175> On October 22, Austin had asked Scoon to help set up a broad-based civilian government.<176> The economic sanctions imposed by the Caribbean nations had been in effect only four days when the U.S. invaded. There was, noted the leader of Trinidad's House of Assembly (no radical), "a great deal of room for diplomacy."<177> But it was never tried. The use of outside force was embarked upon, as the government of Trinidad and Tobago put it, "as a first resort."<178>

Was Austin bluffing? Was a peaceful solution possible? Did the marines arrive, as Robert Pastor has suggested, "just in time before negotiations between CARICOM and the Austin regime might have produced a peaceful, negotiated outcome?"<179> One doesn't know. But, the matter was never tested.<180> And, as British correspondent Hugh O'Shaughnessy has commented, had Austin and his supporters "not given up their narrowly dictatorial aspirations it is difficult to see what force they could have relied on to maintain them against the popular anger at the massacre they were responsible for." Specifically, "the militia was demoralized and virtually disarmed," the army's morale "was unreliable and any blockade of supplies to the island would...have caused chaos in Grenada." O'Shaughnessy concluded that "It would have been only a matter of time before the Leninist aspirations" of the Austin group "were swept away by Grenadians themselves. By mounting the invasion the U.S. robbed them of that opportunity."<181>

Why was this opportunity important for Grenadians themselves? The first reason follows from a basic notion of not only radical, but even liberal thought. As John Stuart Mill argued more than a century ago, the internal freedom of a political community can be achieved only by members of that community, for only in the "arduous struggle for freedom" do people develop the capacities and qualities they need to live in freedom.<182> Polls in Grenada after the U.S. invasion revealed that the prospects for self-determination were not auspicious. Many did not want elections held for years, most could not think of any local leader they supported, and 75% wanted Grenada to officially become part of the United States.<183> In place of popular enthusiasm for improving their country and their collective lives, there was a growing dependency on U.S. aid.

The second reason U.S. intervention was so injurious to the Grenadian people is that if they had achieved democracy on their own it would have been a model of democracy drawing heavily on the populist and egalitarian aspects of the Bishop legacy. As it was, the U.S. determined who should be part of the Grenadian political community (violating the civil rights of many in the process), U.S.-government funded agencies took over the job of "educating" the population,<184> and Washington bankrolled its favored candidate in the subsequent elections.<185> The result was a government that proceeded to gut all the social welfare programs introduced by the New Jewel Movement, resulting in increased misery and unemployment.<186> Ironically, what prosperity there is in the country (in the words of a study sponsored by the U.S. government) can be largely "attributed to the completion of the international airport at Point Salinas."<187>

That the interests of the Grenadian people was not foremost in the minds of U.S. policymakers was obvious. Anonymously, they acknowledged as much. The "overriding" reason for the invasion, they admitted to the _New York Times_, was so that the United States wouldn't be seen as a paper tiger. "What good are maneuvers and shows of force, if you never use it?"<188>

The Dominican Republic, the _Mayaguez_, and Grenada: in each case Americans were said to be in danger; but the dangers were concocted. In each case, American soldiers and a larger number of Dominicans, Cambodians, Grenadians, and Cubans died, not to save U.S. nationals who would have been far safer without U.S. intervention, but so that Washington might make clear that it ruled the Caribbean and that it was prepared to engage in a paroxysm of violence to enforce its will.

There have been some cases were American citizens were truly in danger: for example, the four churchwomen who were killed by government-sponsored death squads in El Salvador in 1980. But there was no U.S. intervention here, no marines landings, no protective bombing raids. Instead the U.S. backed the death squad regime with military and economic aid, military training, intelligence sharing, and diplomatic support.

Is it possible that there would be a situation in the future where unilateral U.S. military intervention would be justified to protect the lives of Americans? Anything is possible. But the record of how this justification has been used in the past, and the utter cynicism shown by the U.S. government when friendly regimes such as the one in San Salvador brutalize Americans, ought to make us extremely skeptical.

NOTES

I would like to thank Stan Karp and Bob Rosen for their assistance.

1. Ian Brownlie, "Thoughts on Kind-Hearted Gunmen," in _Humanitarian Intervention and the United Nations_, ed. Richard B. Lillich, Charlottesville: University Press of Virgina, 1973, p. 143.

2. Michael Reisman with Myres S. McDougal, "Humanitarian Intervention to Protect the Ibos," in Lillich, ed., _Humanitarian Intervention..._, pp. 182-83. On the Platt Amendment, see Robert F. Smith, _The United States and Cuba_, New Haven: College and University Press, 1960, pp. 187-88.

3. Ian Brownlie, _International Law and the Use of Force By States_, London: Oxford University Press, 1963, p. 340.

4. Quoted in Thomas M. Franck and Nigel S. Rodley, "After Bangladesh: The Law of Humanitarian Intervention by Military Force," _American Journal of International Law_, vol. 67, 1973, p. 282.

5. William D. Rogers in Lillich, ed., _Humanitarian Intervention..._, pp. 10-11.

6. Richard Nixon, _RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon_, New York: Grosset & Dunlop, 1978, p. 234.

7. Falk in Lillich, ed., _Humanitarian Intervention..._, p. 11.

8. Nayan Chanda, _Brother Enemy_, New York: Collier, 1986, pp. 80, 439n25.

9. Franck in Lillich, ed., _Humanitarian Intervention..._, p. 63.

10. Brownlie, _Use of Force by States_, p. 99; Rogers in Lillich, ed., _Humanitarian Intervention..._, p. 24.

11. Jerome Slater, _Intervention and Negotiation: The United States and the Dominican Republic_, New York: Harper & Row, 1970, pp. 24n, 24.

12. Theodore Draper, _The Dominican Revolt_, New York: Commentary, 1968, p. 61.

13. Abraham F. Lowenthal, _The Dominican Intervention_, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972, p. 83.

14. Lowenthal, _Dominican Intervention_, p. 84.

15. Slater, _Intervention and Negotiation_, pp. 33-34.

16. Lyndon Baines Johnson, _The Vantage Point_, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971, p. 191.

17. Slater, _Intervention and Negotiation_, p. 33.

18. Lowenthal, _Dominican Intervention_, pp. 95-96.

19. Lowenthal, _Dominican Intervention_, p. 101.

20. Lowenthal, _Dominican Intervention_, p. 102.

21. Lowenthal, _Dominican Intervention_, pp. 102-03; Draper, _Dominican Revolt_, p. 115.

22. Lowenthal, _Dominican Intervention_, p. 104.

23. McGeorge Bundy, Bill Moyers, and Adlai Stevenson convinced LBJ to delete the anti-Communist rationale from his speech. Lowenthal, _Dominican Intervention_, p. 105.

24. Lowenthal, _Dominican Intervention_, p. 204n27.

25. Slater, _Intervention and Negotiation_, p. 33.

26. Draper, _Dominican Revolt_, pp. 91-93; Lowenthal, _Dominican intervention_, p. 207n50.

27. Slater, _Intervention and Negotiation_, pp. 33-34.

28. Lowenthal, _Dominican Intervention_, p. 116.

29. Slater, _Intervention and Negotiation_, p. 38; Draper, _Dominican Revolt_, pp. 66-71.

30. Draper, _Dominican Revolt_, pp. 159-68.

31. Slater, _Intervention and Negotiation_, p. 204.

32. Slater, _Intervention and Negotiation_, p. 203.

33. Lowenthal, _Dominican Intervention_, p. 212n10.

34. For a critique of the elections, see Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead, _Demonstration Elections: U.S.-Staged Elections in the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and El Salvador_, Boston: South End Press, 1984, pp. 17-54. Slater notes that U.S. officials privately admit that their decision to seek elections was strongly influenced by polls prior to April 1965 showing that Balaguer would beat Bosch. Slater, _Intervention and Negotiation_, p. 49.

35. Slater, _Intervention and Negotiation_, p. 171.

36. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, _The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism_, Boston: South End Press, 1979, pp. 243-51.

37. Quoted in Gabriel Kolko, _Confronting the Third World_, New York: Pantheon, 1988, p. 164.

38. The crew is often erroneously numbered 39, a confusion attributable to maritime jargon which sometimes uses the word "crew" to refer to sailors other than the captain. As the skipper of the _Mayaguez_ explained: "I am not a crew member. I am the man that signs the agreement with the crew that I will live up to certain regulations of the maritime law with the crew....I am on the official crew list of the ship, but I am not a member" (U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on International Relations and its subcommittee on International Political and Military Affairs, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, Hearings, 94th Cong., 1st sess. [part 1, May 14-15, 1975; part 2, June 19, 25, and July 25, 1975; part 3, July 31 and Sept. 12, 1975; part 4, Committee Print, Oct. 4, 1976], pp. II:200-01). Remarkably for a mission whose sole alleged purpose was the recovery of the sailors, U.S. policymakers didn't know how many there were, even on May 16 after their recovery (HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. I:101; see also pp. II:238, 241). And writing a few years later both Gerald Ford and his press secretary get the number wrong (Gerald R. Ford, _A Time to Heal_, New York: Harper & Row, 1979, p. 276; Ron Nessen, _It Sure Looks Different from the Inside_, New York: Simon & Schuster distributor for Playboy Press, 1978, p. 130).

39. Thomas B. Ross, "Kissinger pushing for tough foreign policy to combat post-Viet weakness," _Boston Globe_, 11 May 1975, p. 15.

40. _Time_, 26 May 1975, p. 9.

41. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. I:44.

42. William Shawcross, _Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the Destruction of Cambodia_, New York: Pocket Books, 1979, p. 432.

43. U.S. House of Representatives, Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, _Department of Defense Appropriations for 1976_, Hearings, 94th Cong., 1st sess., part 3, 1975, p. 614; HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. IV:17; _Time_, 26 May 1975, p. 10; Roy Rowan, _The Four Days of Mayaguez_, New York: Norton, 1975, p. 67.

44. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. I:91; _Boston Globe_, 17 May 1975, p. 4.

45. Nessen, _Sure Looks Different..._, p. 120.

46. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. II:191. Cambodia claimed the ship was two to three miles from the island (HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. II:233). Shawcross states the ship was within two miles (_Sideshow_, p. 432).

47. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. II:213.

48. Rowan, _Four Days of Mayaguez_, p. 68.

49. Nessen, _Sure Looks Different..._, p. 118.

50. Nessen, _Sure Looks Different..._, p. 118.

51. Ford, _Time to Heal_, p. 276.

52. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. II:237. For testimony that air strikes were conducted from Thailand, see HR, _DOD Appropriations 1976_, pp. 608, 613.

53. Text in HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. I:61.

54. _Boston Globe_, 18 May 1975, p. 66.

55. Jordan J. Paust, "The Seizure and Recovery of the _Mayaguez_," _Yale Law Journal_, vol. 85, 1976, pp. 783n47, 797n102.

56. Paust, "Seizure and Recovery of the _Mayaguez_," p. 778. Paust cites Department of State lawyers acknowledging that the legality of the seizure was open to controversy (p. 778) and himself concludes that Cambodia acted "lawfully" in its seizure and search of the _Mayaguez_ (p. 795).

57. Text in HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. I:61.

58. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. I:95. See also Rowan, _Four Days of Mayaguez_, p. 92.

59. _Time_, 26 May 1975, p. 12; Shawcross, _Sideshow_, p. 432; Paust, "Seizure and Recovery of the Mayaguez," p. 914.

60. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. IV:67.

61. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. I:95.

62. Rowan, _Four Days of Mayaguez_, p. 141.

63. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, pp. I:8. Later another Defense Dept. official claimed he was certain no Americans were aboard, but when pressed he acknowledged, "There is always a risk." (p. I:55).

64. _Time_, 26 May 1975, p. 11; HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. II:189, 250.

65. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. II:189; Rowan, _Four Days of Mayaguez_, pp. 134-36.

66. _Time_, 26 May 1975, p. 11.

67. Ford, _Time to Heal_, p. 279; see also Rowan, _Four Days of Mayaguez_, pp. 141-42.

68. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, pp. IV:60, 69, 122.

69. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. II:230, III:275; IV:66.

70. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. II:246, III:274.

71. Rowan, _Four Days of Mayaguez_, p. 176; see also Shawcross, _Sideshow_, p. 433.

72. Nessen, _Sure Looks Different..._, pp. 121-22.

73. Rowan, _Four Days of Mayaguez_, p. 178.

74. Rowan, _Four Days of Mayaguez_, pp. 179-80.

75. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, pp. II:230-31.

76. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. II:240.

77. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. I:92.

78. This point is made by the GAO. See HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. IV:67.

79. Actually the first wave of U.S. planes did not drop any bombs, a fact that Ford had not realized and was later annoyed about. See Ford, _Time to Heal_, p. 284; HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. IV:125.

80. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. IV:96; Ford, _Time to Heal_, p. 282.

81. The U.S. message was communicated only in a White House press release issued at Nessen's 9:15 press conference (Rowan, _Four Days of Mayaguez_, pp. 204-05; Nessen, _Sure Looks Different..._, pp. 121-22). Other methods aside from the press release were considered for delivering the U.S. message, but "for some reason" never used (Nessen, _Sure Looks Different..._, p. 126n; HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. IV:68.

82. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. IV:97.

83. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. IV:97.

84. Shawcross, _Sideshow_, p. 433; Fred S. Hoffman, AP, _Boston Globe_, 18 May 1975, p. 66; Rowan, _Four Days of Mayaguez_, p. 219.

85. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. IV:97.

86. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, pp. IV:95, 97.

87. Nessen, _Sure Looks Different..._, pp. 128-29.

88. Ford, _Time to Heal_, pp. 283-84.

89. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. IV:94.

90. See Rowan, _Four Days of Mayaguez_, p. 90; HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, pp. I:127, II:153n1; Thomas D. Des Brisay, _Fourteen Hours at Koh Tang_, monograph 5, 29 Dec. 1975, in USAF Southeast Asia Monograph Series, volume 3, ed. A.J.C.Lavalle, Washington, DC: USGPO, [1975?], p. 149. Ford acknowledged 41 deaths: Ford, _Time to Heal_, p. 284.

91. _Time_, 26 May 1975, p. 9.

92. Shawcross, _Sideshow_, p. 433.

93. _Time_, 26 May 1975, p. 17. For corroboration that the Cambodian captors ate only what was left after the Americans had eaten, see Captain Miller's testimony: HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. II:251.

94. Rowan, _Four Days of Mayaguez_, p. 218.

95. The GAO reports that the Defense Department put Cambodian casualties at 47 killed, 55 wounded, and an unknown number missing (HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. IV:65), but this latter category means that essentially any number could have died.

96. Shawcross, _Sideshow_, p. 434.

97. HR, _Seizure of the Mayaguez_, p. III:282.

98. _Time_, 26 May 1975, p. 18.

99. Quoted in Noam Chomsky, _Towards A New Cold War_, New York: Pantheon, 1982, p. 149.

100. Congressional Quarterly, _Congressional Quarterly Almanac, 1975_, Washington, DC: 1976, p. 311.

101. Hugh O'Shaughnessy, _Grenada_, New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1984, p. 151.

102. O'Shaughnessy, _Grenada_, p. 148.

103. William C. Gilmore, _The Grenada Intervention: Analysis and Documentation_, New York: Facts on File, 1984, p. 19.

104. For a careful review, see Tony Thorndike, _Grenada: Politics, Economics, and Society_, Boulder, CO: L. Rienner, 1985.

105. O'Shaughnessy, _Grenada_, p. 81; Kai P. Schoenhals and Richard A. Melanson, _Revolution and Intervention in Grenada: The New Jewel Movement, the United States, and the Caribbean_, Boulder: Westview, 1985, p. 115.

106. Patrick Tyler, "U.S. tracks Cuban aid to Grenada," _Washington Post_, 27 Feb. 1983, p. A1, cited in Gregory Sandford and Richard Vigilante, _Grenada: The Untold Story_, Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1984, pp. 120-21n69.

107. Gordon K. Lewis, _Grenada: The Jewel Despoiled_, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987, p. 87.

108. Sandford and Vigilante, _Grenada: The Untold Story_, pp. 102-03.

109. Gilmore, _Grenada Intervention_, p. 29; EPICA, _The Caribbean: Survival, Struggle and Sovereignty_, 2nd ed., Boston: South End Press, 1988, p. 124.

110. Gilmore, _Grenada Intervention_, p. 29.

111. Schoenhals and Melanson, _Revolution and Intervention in Grenada_, p. 135.

112. O'Shaughnessy, _Grenada_, pp. 194-95.

113. Schoenhals and Melanson, _Revolution and Intervention in Grenada_, p. 132.

114. O'Shaughnessy, _Grenada_, p. 88.

115. Schoenhals and Melanson, _Revolution and Intervention in Grenada_, p. 188n69.

116. Schoenhals and Melanson, _Revolution and Intervention in Grenada_, p. 57.

117. O'Shaughnessy, _Grenada_, p. 252.

118. House of Representatives, Subcommittees on International Security and Scientific Affairs and Western Hemisphere Affairs of the Foreign Affairs Committee, _U.S. Military Actions in Grenada: Implications for U.S. Policy in the Eastern Caribbean_, Hearings, Nov. 2, 3, 16, 1983, p. 34; U.S. Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, _Situation in Grenada_, Hearings, 27 Oct. 1983, p. 46.

119. Sandford and Vigilante, _Grenada: The Untold Story_, p. 103.

120. Hearings, _U.S. Military Actions in Grenada..._, p. 44; see also pp. 73, 81.

121. Gilmore, _Grenada Intervention_, p. 61; O'Shaughnessy, _Grenada_, p. 167.

122. Philip Taubman, "U.S. Reports Evidence of Island Hostage Plan," _New York Times_, 28 Oct. 1983, p. A14.

123. Stuart Taylor Jr., "In Wake of Invasion, Much Official Misinformation By U.S. Comes to Light," _New York Times_, 6 Nov. 1983, p. 20.

124. John Norton Moore, "Grenada and the International Double Standard," _American Journal of International Law_, vol. 78, 1984, p. 150.

125. Taylor, "In Wake of Invasion...," p. 20.

126. Hearings, _U.S. Military Actions in Grenada..._, p. 176.

127. Hearings, _U.S. Military Actions in Grenada..._, p. 188.

128. Maurice Waters, "The Invasion of Grenada, 1983, and the Collapse of Legal Norms," _Journal of Peace Research_, vol. 23, no. 3, 1986, p. 238.

129. Hedrick Smith, "Ex-U.S. Official Cites Ease in Leaving Grenada Day Before Invasion," _New York Times_, 29 Oct. 1983, p. I:7; Gilmore, _Grenada Intervention_, p. 34.

130. O'Shaughnessy, _Grenada_, p. 161.

131. Lewis, _Grenada: Jewel Despoiled_, p. 111.

132. Hearings, _U.S. Military Actions in Grenada..._, pp. 73, 80.

133. Hearings, _U.S. Military Actions in Grenada..._, p. 81.

134. Lewis, _Grenada: Jewel Despoiled_, p. 104.

135. Waters, "Invasion of Grenada...," p. 243; Jonathan Kwitny, _Endless Enemies_, New York: Penguin, 1984, pp. 413-14.

136. Hearings, _U.S. Military Actions in Grenada..._, p. 193.

137. House of Commons, Second Report from the Foreign Affairs Committee, _Grenada_, Session 1983-84, London: HMSO, 1984, p. xiv, _ 33; Gilmore, _Grenada Intervention_, pp. 35, 38; Waters, "Invasion of Grenada...," p. 243.

138. Bourne and Solin quoted in Hearings, _U.S. Military Actions in Grenada..._, p.83; Modica quoted in Anthony Payne, Paul Sutton, and Tony Thorndike, _Grenada: Revolution and Invasion_, New York: St. Martin's, 1984, p. 155.

139. Hearings, _U.S. Military Actions in Grenada..._, pp. 177, 193-94.

140. Text in Gilmore, _Grenada Intervention_, pp. 93-94.

141. Gilmore, _Grenada Intervention_, p. 62.

142. Bernard Gwertzman, "Steps to the Invasion: No More 'Paper Tiger'," _New York Times_, 30 Oct. 1983, p. 20; O'Shaughnessy, _Grenada_, p. 170; Hearings, _U.S. Military Actions in Grenada..._, pp. 73, 81; Smith, "Ex-U.S. Official Cites Ease...," p. I:7.

143. Gilmore, _Grenada Intervention_, p. 63n136.

144. Gilmore, _Grenada Intervention_, pp. 62-63, 63n135.

145. Hearings, _U.S. Military Actions in Grenada..._, p. 47.

146. Gilmore, _Grenada Intervention_, p. 63n136.

147. Hearings, _U.S. Military Actions in Grenada..._, p. 73. Barbara Crossette transmitted a remarkable piece of disinformation: "An Administration official familiar with American planning regarding Grenada...reiterated the Administration's contention that the decision to invade was not made definitively until the night of Oct. 24, after the imposition of a shoot-on-sight curfew and the closing of the island's commercial airport undercut General Austin's assurances of the safety of American citizens in Grenada." (Barbara Crossette, "The Caribbean After Grenada," _New York Times Magazine_, 18 March 1984, p. 66). The curfew was _lifted_, not imposed, on Oct. 24, and the airport was opened.

148. O'Shaughnessy, _Grenada_, p. 26.

149. B. Drummond Ayres Jr., "Grenada Invasion: A Series of Surprises," _New York Times_, 14 Nov. 1983, p. A6.

150. Hearings, _U.S. Military Actions in Grenada..._, pp. 178, 195.

151. An eyewitness report counted at least 30 corpses, despite U.S. claims that there were only 18 dead (O'Shaughnessy, _Grenada_, p. 208).

152. Robert D. McFadden "From Rescued Students, Gratitude and Praise," _New York Times_, 28 Oct. 1983, p. A1.

153. A _New York Times_/CBS News Poll conducted on October 26 and 27 showed 51% approved of the invasion, but less than a third believed sending troops was the best response to the crisis. 58% of respondents said they believed that Americans were in danger. David Shribman, "Poll Shows Support for Presence of U.S. Troops in Lebanon and Grenada," _New York Times_, 29 Oct. 1983, p. I:9.

154. Text is in Gilmore, _Grenada Intervention_, pp. 79, 81, 83.

155. House of Commons, _Grenada_, p. xiii, _ 30.

156. Gwertzman, "Steps to the Invasion...," p. 20.

157. O'Shaughnessy, _Grenada_, p. 9.

158. Gilmore, _Grenada Intervention_, p. 34.

159. Gilmore, _Grenada Intervention_, p. 20.

160. House of Commons, _Grenada_, p. xvi, _ 37.

161. Quoted in Michael J. Levitin, "The Law of Force and the Force of Law: Grenada, the Falklands, and Humanitarian Intervention," _Harvard International Law Journal_, vol. 27, no. 2, Spring 1986, p. 646, who disagrees; until records are made available, he writes, "the United States is entitled to the benefit of the doubt here" since "our government shades and interprets, but it does not fabricate out of thin air."

162. Moore, "Grenada and the International Double Standard," p. 148. The text of his alleged letter of 24 Oct. requests that "a peace-keeping force should be established."

163. Lewis, _Grenada: Jewel Despoiled_, pp 96-97.

164. "Transcript of Address by President on Lebanon and Grenada," _New York Times_, 28 Oct. 1983, p. A10.

165. Nor was there any evidence that Cuba was going to intervene to restore Bishop supporters to power; Castro explicitly ruled out such interference (see his speech of November 14 in O'Shaughnessy, _Grenada_, p, 236). But if Cuba _had_ done so, and if, as is entirely possible, there was popular support among Grenadians, one wonders whether Washington and its apologists would have declared this a case of justified humanitarian intervention?

166. Large extracts from the documents have been published. See U.S. Depts. of State and Defense, _Grenada Documents: An Overview and Selection_, Washington, DC: Sept. 1984; Paul Seabury and Walter A. McDougall, eds., _The Grenada Papers_, San Francisco: Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1984; U.S. Depts. of State and Defense, _Grenada: A Preliminary report_, Washington, DC: Dec. 16, 1983; _Grenada and Soviet/Cuban Policy: Internal Crisis and U.S./OECS Intervention_, ed. Jiri Valenta and Herbert J. Ellison, Boulder: Westview, 1986.

167. Jiri Valenta, "Findings and Recommendations," in Jiri Valenta and Herbert J. Ellison, eds., _Grenada and Soviet/Cuban Policy_, p. 243.

168. Colin Legum, "Grenada: Linkage and Impact on the Third World," in Jiri Valenta and Herbert J. Ellison, eds., _Grenada and Soviet/Cuban Policy_, p. 158.

169. Sandford and Vigilante, _Grenada: The Untold Story_, p. 177; Hearings, _U.S. Military Actions in Grenada..._, p. 92; Michael T. Kaufman, "Head of Caribbean Troops Discounts Grenada Threat," _New York Times_, 7 Nov. 1983, p. A14.

170. Lewis, _Grenada: Jewel Despoiled_, p. 101.

171. O'Shaughnessy, _Grenada_, p. 187.

172. O'Shaughnessy, _Grenada_, p. 177.

173. Michael J. Bazyler, "Reexamining the Doctrine of Humanitarian Intervention in Light of the Atrocities in Kampuchea and Ethiopia," _Stanford Journal of International Law_, vol. 23, Summer 1987, p. 587n174.

174. See Teson, Fernando. _Humanitarian Intervention; an inquiry into law and morality_, Transnational Pub., 1988, pp. 188-200; Levitin, "Law of Force...."

175. Crossette, "Caribbean After Grenada," p. 66.

176. Lewis, _Grenada: Jewel Despoiled_, p. 111.

177. Lewis, _Grenada: Jewel Despoiled_, p. 98.

178. House of Commons, _Grenada_, p. lxv.

179. Hearings, _U.S. Military Actions in Grenada..._, p. 88.

180. Hearings, _U.S. Military Actions in Grenada..._, pp. 73-74; Lewis, _Grenada: Jewel Despoiled_, p. 97.

181. O'Shaughnessy, _Grenada_, pp. 222-23.

182. I am using Walzer's paraphrase of Mill's argument. Michael Walzer, _Just and Unjust Wars_, New York: Basic Books, 1977, pp. 87-89.

183. William C. Adams, "Grenada Update: The Public's Attitudes," _Public Opinion_, Feb.-March 1984, p. 54.

184. EPICA, _The Caribbean: Survival, Struggle and Sovereignty_, p. 131.

185. EPICA, _The Caribbean: Survival, Struggle and Sovereignty_, pp. 132-33.

186. See Alexander Cockburn, "After the Press Bus Left: Grenada Four Years After," _In These Times_, Oct. 14-20, 1987, p. 17; Martin Burcharth, "Grenada Today," _Nation_, 1 March 1986, p. 228.

187. Richard A. Haggerty and John F. Hornbeck, "Grenada," in _Islands of the Commonwealth Caribbean: A Regional Study_, ed. Sandra W. Meditz and Dennis M. Hanratty, Washington: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, for the Dept. of the Army, 1989, p. 357.

188. Gwertzman, "Steps to the Invasion...," p. A1.