Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

(99)

November 1983:

A hand of friendship was offered to Mexico City. Kennedy had Mondale contact the new regime and make an offer to the government led by Tirado López. There would be continued recognition from the United States of the government in Mexico City and the full support for the unity of the Mexican nation. Food aid was offered direct from the United States and the Kennedy Government would also work to solicit more from abroad. What Washington hoped to see in exchange was for the violence in Mexico to end and responsible government to return. Mexico must remember it had its debts and being a responsible government meant that they needed to be addressed.

Such was the official position of the United States. It was one which when heard in Mexico City brought outrage. Tirado López was publicly enraged at what was declared to be the arrogance of the gringos but secretly he was pleased. It helped shore up support for him among the government which he was trying to build among the ashes left by the fall of the old regime. He could point to the usual behaviour of the United States when it came to treating not just Mexico but all Latin American nations. They were demanding that debts to their banks be repaid and that that money came from Mexico in its time of greatest need. The food offer was no more than a bribe to get Mexico to acquiesce to paying all of that money back, money which the Mexican people themselves hadn’t seen. American banks had broke Mexico, now they wanted to continue to keep the country down. No, instead, Mexico would rise. The country was in revolution and was no longer bound to those debts. Tirado López made a well-publicized speech were he rejected the hand of friendship offered: he told the Mexican people that there was a gun in the other hand but it was one which Mexico need not be frightened by. There was a new Mexico to be built and one which rejected the United States.

They were pretty much upset up in Monterrey at how Washington had ignored them and recognised Tirado López down in Mexico City. They were legitimate, not him the mobs which had brought him to power. Still, that anger against Kennedy – who had done nothing for them all along so nothing much had changed there really – was minor in compared to how the Monterrey Government felt about what was a communist from abroad coming into Mexico and taking the capital city from where he declared himself the rightful leader of all Mexicans. Tirado López might as well have been a Nicaraguan, a Cuban… anyone but a Mexican. Despite his place of birth, he was regarded a foreigner. His self-declared regime was nothing more than yet another illegal usurpation of power and one which Monterrey was thoroughly opposed towards, even more so than that of el coronel. The offer of food aid rejected by Mexico City was one which Monterrey asked for instead and there was also the willingness expressed to the United States to accept that Mexico was responsible for its debts. The Monterrey Government had chosen a foreign affairs spokesman among themselves and he was sent with a delegation to Washington. That spokesman was refused a meeting with anyone beyond an assistant secretary of state though, no one higher, and it was an unofficial meeting at that conducted not at the State Department but at an office building in Washington under the auspices of the CIA. The food aid was asked for in person this time but there came only stalling from the Americans. They were waiting on Mexico City to reconsider their rejection. When the news of that came back to Monterrey there was again fury at how the United States was treating them. But, as before, what Tirado López was up to had most of their attention. From what the Monterrey Government was able to gather, he was apparently forming militias for the declared reason of ‘public security’. His revolutionary promises declared that they would ‘reunite Mexicans’. That was coded talk for an army being formed. There was only one place where such an army would be sent: to Monterrey. The Monterrey Government set about forming their own. They saw that they had no choice. Tirado López would bring his revolution to them otherwise and enslave all Mexicans for purposes directed by Havana and Managua.


The hand of friendship offer, before and after its rejection, caused the Kennedy Administration no end of problems. It was actually something which Kennedy hadn’t wanted to do. He had been briefed on Tirado López and what he was all about. The CIA had been remolded in the last couple of years with a new management structure which the president found best served America’s interests – no more secret wars was the key to that; those who had voiced discontent had been shown the door – but while it no longer had the physical reach with as many operatives working aboard, there was still plenty of intelligence gained in other ways. The Operations side of the CIA had taken a politically-driven battering yet Intelligence had grown in responsibility if not capability. Director Vance had the president’s confidence and so Kennedy had listened when it was explained that while Tirado López was distasteful, it was he, not those arguing has-beens in Monterrey, who was the future of Mexico. If the United States wanted a stable Mexico, not one wrecked by civil wars, then it should be Mexico City which was dealt with. Vance had assured Kennedy that Tirado López would be hamstrung for years building his revolution and never get anything done in trying to achieve anything in Mexico. He was the best choice in a series of bad choices, none of which the United States wanted but the only one where there was a future in. Therefore, that offer had been made and Monterrey ignored. Others hadn’t been so sure. Mondale had come around after a period of doubt but others in the Kennedy Administration had questioned the judgement on this matter. From outside the government, there had been fury as the United States prepared to deal with the ‘communists who’d taken over Mexico’. That was nationwide and didn’t come exclusively from those whom might be expected: those well-known anti-communists. Afghanistan, Guatemala and Nicaragua were countries which so many Americans hadn’t heard of; if they did, they knew they were far away and unimportant. Mexico was neither. Mexico was next door, just over the Rio Grande.

Mexico couldn’t be ignored just for that reason too. There were two further factors to consider. It was to banks in the United States which Mexico still owed all of that money in direct and indirect debts. Bayh had had an influence in the details of Kennedy’s offer made to Mexico where the treasury secretary stressed that Mexico had to act responsibly. There had been some worrying speculation in the US Treasury Building about the knock-on effects should Mexico refuse to restart paying interest or at least make noises that it was going to soon enough. In addition, there was the border. Defence Secretary Muskie had just been replaced by Senator Bentsen. The latter, a Texan, was taking flak back in his home state for ‘abandoning’ Texas at this time when coming across the border every day were Mexican nationals who were leaving their country. Some fled from violence which they had seen, most left ahead of the expectation of it. All four border states – Texas plus California, Arizona and New Mexico – had seen Mexican nationals arrive within them. Those who had chosen to make themselves refugees in a foreign land were in the main those who could and were able to leave: they had the financial and physical means to leave. There were family reunions in some places; elsewhere, those refugees were without family but they had savings which they had brought with them and money to live on not in worthless Pesos. What was feared was that they would be followed by many more Mexicans. Bentsen’s critics were unfair as Texas wasn’t struggling. It might do though. Just as they had forecasts at Bayh’s Treasury Department about the economy taking a hit if the markets reacted badly to Mexico’s latest crisis, where Bentsen now was at the Pentagon, worse-case scenarios for Mexico were being drawn-up even ahead of his appointment when Muskie was there. The whole US-Mexico border could be destabilized with continuing conflict in Mexico. The numbers of refugees could increase multiple times. There could be violence north of the Rio Grande among them or from those who might prey upon them; there was the chance that American citizens would sent guns south or go down to Mexico to fight themselves.

None of that was wanted: any economic fall-out or an increase in fighting which could directly affect the United States itself. That was why so much hope was put in the offer of friendship. Initial rejection was seen as a kneejerk reaction and there was a surety in the White House that it would be soon accepted. Others in Washington weren’t so sure. The things they had warned of were coming true. No one had listened to them then and no one was now either.

His reality will get shattered before Christmas.

I can understand Kennedy offering this, he suddenly is faced with the serious prospect of a civil war on the border, which would be a disaster. So, he has to make an offer to whoever is most likely to avoid it, although he could also have offered to mediate of course (and that would be refused). Not supporting the banks also isn't much of an option. Not only because of the direct impact on the economy, but perhaps even more importantly because of the political effects. He would be framed as betraying Americans for some commies. At the same time, it would hurt his (and his supporters') financial backing.

Well he hope but we the readers already now what he is.

(100)

November 1983:

Anti-communists in the West had this idea of Andropov where he sat on his throne with fingers on all of the buttons controlling everything that was going on with worldwide Soviet Domination. All communists, socialist or left-leaning countries were under his control. Every guerrilla group in each obscure country was answerable directly to him. He was making chess moves as he sought to control the world. The reality was rather different. Machines were keeping the bedridden general secretary alive. He was weak and dying. His mind was as sharp as ever but his power was waning even without him knowing it. He wasn’t aware of all that was going on. He would have objected to much of that attributed to him. But he was kept out of the loop as he lay in his private clinic where despite being given the very best medical attention, his time was coming to an end. In his penultimate month of life, Andropov was still gravely concerned about the future for his country. He had spent a year seriously ill and plotting who his successor would be. The work which he had started must be continued, he had decided, and he would choose who would carry on where he left off. Many names had entered his mind for due consideration as to whom the next general secretary would be: he had determined that his decision would carry weight even after his death among his colleagues. Those names were those from the younger generation, men whom he had brought to Moscow and raised high in the Politburo, men who owed everything to him. Others who had previously been loyal were no longer but he thought that that wouldn’t be the case with others. Wishful thinking this all might have been, but he had held onto that idea. The failures, betrayals even, of those whom he had put his faith in before irked him during his last months too. It was the actions of one of them, someone so loyal in the past and whose disloyalty shocked him, that caused Andropov to reconsider everything come November when it came to a successor and have him change course.

Kryuchkov, head of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate – its foreign intelligence department –, informed Andropov of the KGB’s hand in what had happened in Mexico. Chebrikov had helped assist, not created, the banking crisis which had struck Mexico and then afterwards given the blessing for the Cubans to send Tirado López to Mexico City. Kryuchkov had acted like Andropov knew all of this. Oh, the general secretary didn’t know what the KGB chairman had done? Well… that was strange. Andropov had long considered Kryuchkov untrustworthy and wasn’t fooled by the innocence. He believed that Chebrikov’s subordinate had been waiting for such an opportunity. The meeting actually came when Andropov dragged the career spy to see him so he could give Kryuchkov a dressing-down for long being unawares that the rezident (senior KGB officer) in London was a double agent for the British. Gordievsky had been unmasked by a double agent of the KGB’s own and snatched from London so his brain could be picked apart… and he’d meet a traitor’s end too. There had been self-congratulations from Kryuchkov of his department’s own working in catching the traitor among them but Andropov had done the opposite. How could such a man have been undetected betraying the Rodina for so long? It had then been revealed to Andropov about the KGB’s role with recent events in Mexico.

Mexico was too far. Chebrikov had been told this before. Andropov had made it clear than any move into Mexico would bring ruin among them all. He had in fact told Chebrikov that if any of the Soviet Union’s fraternal allies in the region, Cuba or the new communist nations in Central America, tried to export revolution there, they were to be stopped by the KGB. What had been done had been the opposite of what Andropov had decreed. His reasoning was simple: creating such a situation in Mexico would eventually bring war with the United States. All of his work to weaken the American’s position worldwide hadn’t been done to gain advantage ready for a war but instead to make sure that no war would come. Senior members on the Politburo such as Chebrikov had all agreed to this. The KGB head had then defied that decision. He would bring them war. Andropov was certain that he would be dead before it came but come it would unless he acted now. Chebrikov must be stopped. He was making a play for power with what he had done with Mexico and there were other suspicions which Andropov had when it came to Chebrikov in other matters. The pieces all now fitted into the puzzle. Even in his condition where he couldn’t leave his sick bed and he was physically helpless, Andropov determined that in his last months his full energy would be set to stopping Chebrikov from succeeding him. He could no longer see a younger, less-experienced man replace him and work towards having that long-term goal come to fruition though. It would have to be someone else with enough allies and influence already. Anyone But Chebrikov, a man who would bring an end to the Soviet state, which Andropov had long served and desired to see last long after he was gone.

100s more to come.