Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

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May 1982:

The Belize War was over and everything was meant to return to normal again. There was none of that normality which came once the fighting stopped following the British victory over Guatemala. Castro got his wish, the one which he wanted when he gave the nod to Guatemala back in March, though it came in an unforeseen manner. Cuba would end up achieving its geo-political goals across Central America and parts of the Caribbean region too, just not following the sequence he had at first anticipated.

During the conflict, there had been protest marches across several countries in support of Guatemalan ‘liberation’ of Belize along with denunciations of both ‘British imperialism’ and ‘Yankee interference’. Those had taken place in nations ranging from Honduras across Nicaragua, down to Panama and over in Grenada too. Following the defeat suffered by Guatemala, there came violence with these. The effects and causes of them were different from country to country but there was the hand of Cuba in each of them. Honduras was supposedly a stable country where the right-wing military regime had control: they certainly didn’t when a big march in Tegucigalpa heading towards the British Embassy erupted into violence. The diplomatic compound was left untouched as the protesters instead rampaged through parts of the city burning, looting and killing. Honduras was led by General Paz García, a man whose regime was in trouble without American aid (Kennedy had cut that off last year) and beholden to Columbian drug cartels linked in ways which the Hondurans couldn’t put their finger on with the regime in Panama. The riot in the country’s capital kicked off a week of violence with hundreds of deaths. It was the start of the country’s civil war too. Managua saw a series of organised marches, ones controlled by Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime, take place where there were there was no violence but a government-sponsored effort to protest against the embassies of Britain and the United States. It was pretty much the same in Panama though with only the British targeted for protests organised by the regime and the waving of Guatemalan flags done plentiful. Over in Grenada, the New Jewel Movement regime brought out its youth wing. The High Commission was targeted with mass demonstrations throughout the war and afterwards. Grenada remained a Commonwealth nation with a Governor-General representing Britain but the country no longer resembled anything like it had once been. There was gunfire in the crowd the day the news came that Guatemala had been defeated with bullets hitting the High Commission (thankfully without any casualties). At the big airport on the island which Cuba had kindly built for Grenada, Cuban troops there exercised throughout the conflict with Grenadian forces as they prepared to defend the country from ‘imperialist aggression’.

The day after Guatemala requested a ceasefire using Mexican intermediaries, there was a tense military stand-off near to the Cayman Islands which was out of the public eye. A pair of Cuban warships were offshore and HMS Coventry, the Royal Navy destroyer which had been near to the Caymans throughout the conflict, moved to escort them outside of the twelve-mile limit which they crossed. When the Cubans engaged in clear hostile manoeuvres, Coventry’s captain – aware of his orders from the Admiralty not to escalate tensions yet with concern over what the Cubans were up to – called for air support. RAF Phantoms flew low passes in the sky. Cuban MiGs came south and then there was the arrival too of Sea Harriers from HMS Hermes. There were plenty of military assets, all armed, in a small area of sea and sky. In addition, a Soviet spy ship (a Balzam-class intelligence ship) festering with antenna was present too just to complicate matters. The Cubans eventually sailed out of the territorial waters of the Cayman Islands and their aircraft all went back to where they had come from. Cuban intentions were unknown here but they had shown their willingness to push out from their own country with warships and aircraft once again towards a British territory. The ‘Caymans Incident’ as became known came ahead of a major discussion back in London, beyond the disbanding War Cabinet, over what to do in the future with regards with Belize. The deaths and the destruction inside Belize were immense and that included the disappearances of many prominent political figures. The BDF had fought well but been outclassed and would need a rebuild. Military facilities had been fought over and taken immense damage. Belize City had no running water and no electricity while the small capital city which was Belmopan had been bombed during the conflict as well as having seen sporadic shelling done there. In the following weeks, while London was watching with alarm the situation in Grenada, hasty reports were filled from experts sent out to assess the immediate future for Belize. Independence was going to have to be delayed. A significant amount of aid was going to be needed to uplift Belize. There would remain a military threat from Guatemala too: the border had been crossed once and could be crossed again. The simultaneous Guatemalan attack during their invasion where they captured the coast – recognised as the work of Cuban planners – was something studied (and silently admired for its ingenuity) as it could be repeated again. Britain was going to be tied to the defence of Belize for some time now and probably to other territorial possessions in the Caribbean as well in the face of Cuban aggression. That was all going to cost money, lots of it. Those elements of the British Armed Forces which had fought in the Belize War would need to be rotated out and others brought in. This commitment was going to have to be made less the Guatemalans wait six months or so and come back again, this time making sure any attempt to dislodge them would be far more difficult than it had been the first time around. Groans came from HM Treasury: money, it was always about money.


Across back in Central America, as Honduras started on its path to a devastating civil war where left-wing guerrillas suddenly started to get an influx of weapons from abroad, neighbouring El Salvador followed the same course with violence taking place. General Romero was long thought to have a handle on things in his little country. He had replaced the foreign backing removed from the Kennedy Administration with that of other Latin American powers such as Argentina, Chile and Venezuela. Those countries were partners down in South America with (among others) undertaking Operación Cóndor in one giant intelligence cooperation that transcended national borders and ignored the little matters of human rights and the rule of law. Chile was more committed to El Salvador than Argentina was, with Venezuela on the fringes, and it was General Pinochet down in Santiago who was keeping Romero in power (Chile hadn’t had its US aid cut though was pushing the envelope on what it was up to as far as Mondale was concerned). Pinochet foresaw the toppling of dominos after Nicaragua and then Guatemala had been lost to the hated communists. El Salvador was far away, yes, but it was a domino he helped to keep propped up fearing what would come afterwards and downwards towards Chile. Forced disappearances and the dropping of bodies over the ocean (Argentina helped with those) were the done thing in recent years. Come late-May and re-entering into the scene was the former US Ambassador to El Salvador, a man fired by the Kennedy Administration in its first days. John Negroponte made a visit to the capital San Salvador. It was unofficial and to do with cultural interests supposedly: he was a private citizen, no longer ambassador nor with the State Department. Cóndor’s involvement with El Salvador and the DINA & SIDE intelligence operatives in the country were linked to his year-long ambassadorship though, one of the primary reasons why Secretary of State Mondale had been fast to get rid of him. Negroponte arrived in San Salvador, met with Romero and other Salvadorans, supposedly innocent meetings though all held in secret as Negroponte wasn’t declared to be in-country, and then went to out to dinner with some friends from Argentina and Chile. He never made the dinner. Gunfire raked his car and killed him plus the DINA-supplied bodyguards for this private citizen. Someone had talked and someone had decided to act. Pinochet would have the Salvadorans crack down in response, not so much for Negroponte nor his own intelligence agents, but because the rebels in El Salvador had put their head above the parapet. And what would follow would be the Salvador Civil War, one to make the one starting in Honduras, and others preceding it elsewhere in Latin America, look innocent in comparison. Hondurans and Salvador rebels would be getting overt help from Cuba within months to follow the covert support.

Kennedy was briefed on the Negroponte assassination afterwards. As said, Negroponte was now a private citizen. He’d been cleared out of the State Department by Mondale just as others had been banished from Langley by his appointment as Director of Central Intelligence in the form of Cyrus Vance. Vance came to the White House and met with the president in addition to both Mondale and National Security Adviser Admiral Stansfield Turner. Negroponte’s targeted killing, made so openly, was important enough to have such a meeting of these men with the president. However, Kennedy was distracted at that time. He heard what they said about the possibility (it turned out to be the reality) of mass unrest in El Salvador, but didn’t follow the line of thinking as to how it all would go. How could the death of one, unimportant man change things like his top officials said it would? He didn’t see it. He didn’t think it all possible about those dominos. That distraction was foremost in his mind anyway: a front-page story in the supermarket tabloid the National Enquirer. That rag, a hive of muck-raking gutter journalism in his opinion, had been on his back throughout his presidential campaign and into his presidency. There had been Chappaquiddick lies dressed up as new revelations and dark hints that he and his wife were living separate lives. Now, the National Enquirer had a new splash. There was a picture on the cover of the young wife of the current Canadian Prime Minister and allegations that back in the Seventies, Kennedy and Margaret Trudeau (one news wire service had mistakenly said Margaret Thatcher when reporting on the story!) had had an extramarital affair. This was all kicking up quite the domestic storm for him.

The whole region is now going to go alight. There will be a lot of red on the map.
Lordbyron told me about that affair and I have already have had Kennedy doing the naughty in East Berlin when it is a clear honeytrap. At the right time, when things are going crazy with the Soviets, so much of this will come tumbling out. 

People in allied countries, everywhere and not only in western europe, will not feel very safe with the USA apparently doing nothing while the Soviets are doing more or less whatever they like in theatre that were considered vital for western interest.
Very soon even historical ally will begin to act independently and not follow US lead; ironically the most actively anti-URSS will be the eurocommunist in Europe.

Frankly i expect that more the situation become tense and more the USA are seen as a not reliable ally, this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_European_Act will be signed some years earlier than OTL and with the add on this organization en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_Union and this time i doubt that even the UK will protest too much or block this initiative

Can you show a link ore something about these rumors lordbyron

I had the Thatcher/Trudeau typo in my notes and thought that it would be amusing for someone to mix it up in a rush.
"I did not have sexual relations with THAT woman!"






I searched for certain proof though with such things the truth is elusive. For the National Enquirer to print it, the story doesn't have to be true. 

  Luke

  I think there's the resources there but it depends on how their used, or as OTL wasted.

  Yes Labour was unelectable by this time but I was at the hoping for an alliance breakthrough which could force a hung parliament and serious reform.  Something which prompts realistic reform of the labour market but without the excessive imbalance of power that resulted from Thatcher and resultant economic and social decline.  However as you say I fear that Belize has done the same job as the Falklands OTL, possibly even stronger since there hasn't been the major naval losses that caused such a storm OTL.