Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

That is a awful lot of uninteresting movement going on there.

They will see only what the Soviets wants them to see and the President wants to see. 

(140)

Early September 1984:

There wasn’t an official suspension to Operation Avid Castle. However, there were no more air strikes taking place over Mexico. The Monterrey Government had wholly collapsed across the north & northeast while over in the northwest there remained those diplomatic difficulties with the Tijuana Government meaning that there was no cooperation on the ground. Fighter patrols of American aircraft were no longer being run above Mexican territory ready to protect the now missing strike aircraft. There were also only a few reconnaissance flights now taken place when before there had been many. US Air Force jets were covering the border regions (from inside the United States itself) and going down above Baja California but no further on intelligence-gathering and certainly not on the same scale as before. There was no longer any major fighting taking place apart from that in Baja California. It was there though in the first days of September, when the skies were almost clear of the Americans, that the pressure was really exerted on the Tijuana Government by Tirado López’s communists. In the south of the peninsula, the fighting moved to La Paz with that port city attacked from behind, the landward side, and soldiers fighting there for Tijuana unable to stop the city from being taken. Northwards, there came a major communist push from out of Sonora and towards the Mexicali Valley. The delta of the Colorado River stood in the way of that latter move: an opportune moment came for American air strikes to occur. Yet they didn’t. Washington wasn’t recognizing Tijuana and the diplomatic spat meant that the defenders on the ground weren’t given help from the skies. Whether American bombs would have been effective enough to stop the offensive which came was debatable but there they weren’t and into the top of Baja California came communist troops. The communists were on the march again, pushing westwards and unable to be stopped. Tijuana remained some distance away with mountainous terrain good for defence in the way but it was clear to most that the last days were coming of organised anti-communists resistance in Mexico.

At the White House, there was deep concern when it came to Mexico though not on where the fighting was taking place but instead when it came to Americans who remained inside Mexico now that Tirado López was on the cusp of final victory. In Mexico City there were those detained when captured fighting as volunteers for the defeated Northern Alliance; in Monterrey, there remained that embassy compound with the diplomats and military personnel surrounded in that city. The prisoners who were paraded for the cameras and called mercenaries & war criminals consisted of an assortment of people which the president had turned up his nose at when it came to them personally but made it clear that they were American citizens regardless of the views which they espoused and what they had gone to Mexico to do. He wouldn’t allow for them to be executed as Tirado López was threatening to do. The compound in Monterrey remained unmolested but surrounded with those inside reported to have been physically blocked from getting out of there by communist troops. This was an outrage, a clear breach of international law. Mexico City was the capital of Mexico, Tirado López had said, and those in Monterrey had been there working with an illegal secessionist regime. That was false and a lie to muddle the situation where accredited diplomats were being kept prisoner with weapons pointed at them and threats to shoot should they attempt to depart. Those who wanted the United States to take action against the communist regime pointed to both situations, two sets of hostages held in different circumstances, as justification for air attacks against Tirado López’s regime to recommence along with a movement of American troops into Mexico. The proponents of the latter had been long in their calls for this; there were demands to put troops into Baja California and to do so now. Kennedy refused to do so. He wouldn’t be drawn into doing that and was having Mondale work on a diplomatic solution to get every American out of Mexico who was being held there. He said so in a televised statement made to the American people though avoided any form of press conference or public meeting. The sex scandal he was facing with those revelations about his personal misdemeanors continued unabated; he was unable to bring that to a stop yet was committed to heading that off by bringing about ‘success’ elsewhere. That, unsurprisingly, was not regarded by anyone else as a winning strategy for November’s election.


Despite the lack of overflights by aircraft on tactical missions above Mexico, from where so much previous intelligence had been gathered, there was still an intelligence effort underway by the United States when it came to Mexico. The armed forces, the CIA and other intelligence agencies from the alphabet soup of organisations were busy collecting, collating and analysing information from many sources. However, political interference was everywhere with objectives that suited the careers of those at the top being more important that the national interest. People below were generally trying to do their jobs properly though there had been years now of this type of thing where the intelligence gathered was discarded if it didn’t fit the pre-set political thinking. Those who rebelled against this were pushed aside, slowly but effectively. What was observed in Mexico was now all taking place from afar as well, only adding to the dubious quality of understanding what was being seen in work environments which were unfriendly to those not saying the ‘right’ things.

Foreign troops were inside Mexico. That had been something denied at first but then a fact which had to be accepted as such in the end. The narrative became that there had always been foreign troops there in fact. Early September saw a revision of the intelligence picture on that put to the highest-levels of the United States Government. Cuban troops were inside Mexico alongside those of Guatemala and Nicaragua. None of these from elsewhere in Latin America were involved in the last of the fighting and were being held back in what were seen as defensive positions ready to respond to any American invasion of that country. From Havana, Guatemala City and Managua, there came the promises of defending the Mexican Revolution and that was apparent in how those countries had arrayed defensive military forces inside Mexico. No full consensus within the Intelligence Community had emerged but there was general agreement on most of this. Cuba had a corps of two divisions in Sonora, near to Hermosillo: those troops were positioned to blunt an invasion coming south out of Arizona. Around the city of Chihuahua – within the Mexican state named the same – there were between two and three divisions of Guatemalan & Nicaraguan troops there: ready to get in the way of an American advance coming southwards from New Mexico. Furthermore, another Cuban corps of three divisions was detected in the Saltillo-Monterrey area where they would be positioned ready to intercept an invasion out of Texas. This all made sense. This was what would be the best way to defend Mexico against an invasion. Mexican communist troops would be on the frontlines with those of their allies behind and ready to block a deeper penetration. Congratulations were passed around among those who made such judgements where they all agreed that they had correctly predicted what was planned by those over there in Mexico to bring to a stop an American invasion. They had figured it all out. The intelligence revision was passed upwards to the politicians: the professionals and the amateurs.

The maskirovka continued. The United States was being duped in what they were seeing but more so in how they perceived the intentions which they put on those foreign troops. The numbers were twice what was seen. Three field armies, not corps-level groupings, were present. There were Soviet forces in Mexico as well, in among the Cubans, Guatemalans and Nicaraguans. Only four brigades were there – two motorised rifle formations (from Cuba) and a pair of airmobile brigades too (from the western parts of the Soviet Union) – yet those Soviet troops weren’t seen in places and elsewhere mis-identified as being from Latin America. The Americans didn’t see other Soviet forces too, those of a far more worrying nature. Small teams of Soviet Air Force personnel were in Mexico at multiple air-strips which would see the temporary use of Soviet combat aircraft when they arrived for a short period and then moved on elsewhere. Reconnaissance satellites and what was left of the field intelligence network of spies on the ground didn’t know about the fleet of huge trucks which had come in from ships into Veracruz and then disappeared deep into the Mexican interior into hidden positions in the mountains. There had been work done on the vehicle bodies to disguise them and make them not look like the weapons of war which they were. At Guaymas and at Tampico, the preparations around those ports weren’t recognised for what they were in the form of the readiness to make much more use of them soon enough.

There was a defensive mission in Mexico by those there to defend the revolution which had taken place but it wasn’t the defensive mission envisaged by the fools and political toadies to their north: the best defence was always offence instead and that was what those being gathered were in Mexico to do. Nonetheless, that couldn’t be fully done by those deployed into Mexico alone. They would need the assistance for their forward defence, their pre-emptive offensive mission, that would come from the further two field armies which were nearly complete over in Cuba and being readied to ship-out soon enough. Many more Soviet troops were waiting there, ready for the door to be kicked in ahead of them.

Yes, that makes sense to them. Half a dozen divisions spread out far back from the border along what look like invasion corridors running south. The talk from Latin America has long been of defending the Mexican Revolution. With a force like that, even in defence that is nothing to be concerned about.
That message of defence is sensible; the idea that they could attack is just plain silly.
It is actually double the strength and to be joined later on by Soviet forces.

That was excellent. I read through it thinking 'done this, done this' with what I have in the story and seeing it was done in RL.
The army which Cuba has built for Nicaragua is far bigger than it was in RL but still the same basic idea of assistance from many countries to create a powerful force after a slow start.
Thanks for that.

So the war in the Korean peninsula that is not yet a full blow war is getting to be a full blown war while the United States is unwittingly opening the door for Soviet/Cuban invasion out of Mexico.