Caribbean Basin Policy

Report Outline
Growing U.S. Activism
Central American Focus
Responses to the Turmoil
Special Focus

Growing U.S. Activism

Regan's Boldness in ‘Sphere of Influence’

During the past year the United States moved with uncharacteristic boldness to reassert its influence in the Caribbean Basin, a region that it has often treated with indifference and, at times, disdain. In doing so, the Reagan administration has seemingly affirmed its commitment to a “special relationship” between this country and its Latin American and Caribbean neighbors.

It is subject to varying interpretations, however. For example, the Kissinger Commission, in its recommendations to President Reagan on framing policies toward Central America, sought to strike a balance between security concerns in a region engulfed in internecine warfare and the longer-term needs for economic development and redistribution of land. To many Latin Americans the phrase “special relationship” implies that the nations of this hemisphere have common economic and political interests that make cooperative action both possible and necessary. But the initiatives by the administration suggest it views the Caribbean Basin as properly within the U.S. sphere of influence, thus requiring a policy to resist encroachment into the region by other major powers.

This policy line has led the United States into a series of actions in the Caribbean and in Central America, which critics have charged are puzzling and sometimes contradictory. On the one hand, the United States intervened militarily in the region last year for the first time since it sent troops into the Dominican Republic in 1965. On Oct. 25, the United States invaded Grenada, a tiny island in the southeastern Caribbean with a force that eventually totaled 6,000 American troops and a contingent of 300 police and militia from neighboring islands. Combat units were withdrawn in less than two months, but 300 U.S. technicians and military police were left behind for an indefinite stay.