Soviet Domination - STORY ONLY thread[{locked}]

July 1983:

Kennedy was in the Middle East where he made visits to Israel, Jordan and then Egypt. He came on a mission of peace with the first two visits made ahead of a summit long arranged in Egypt. This had been something which he had been long working on and not one of his often flights of fancy in foreign affairs. The president’s reputation as a friend of Israel was well-known but he had put the effort in to trying to get the Egyptians and the Jordanians to understand that he came as an honest deal-breaker regardless. It was peace which he was trying to bring to the region, a long-term one which while it would never settle all of the issues, would help settle some. Ambitious it was and something which had caused him problems back home with the Jewish Lobby in the United States, but Kennedy was able to use his credentials as an established friend of Israel to silence much of that. Prime Minister Begin, King Hussein and President Sadat met in Port Said with Kennedy at the beginning of the month. Security was tight with threats to the summit and the participants regarded as high. They talked among themselves and with the other secondary participants at the summit with the intention of thrashing out a deal. The main priorities were to have the Sinai returned to Egyptian control and an Israeli-Jordanian understanding on the West Bank. Other regional matters involving each of the countries were discussed as well though ranging from Lebanon, the role of Syria in a peaceful regional future, Iraq and across to Libya. One of those external participants was Gromyko with the Soviet foreign minister representing his country’s interests in the region away from matters directly at-hand when it came to Israeli-Egyptian and Israeli-Jordanian matters. Mondale had come with Kennedy to Egypt and he met with Gromyko where they made another one of their later-to-be-infamous informal deals. This one concerned Syria and how the Soviet Union would make sure that Syria stayed out of Lebanon; Mondale agreed that the United States would work towards having Israel keep out of the same small country. This was a private deal and one where, once again, the United States came away from an agreement with the Soviet Union feeling as if it had gotten more than it had given away. Vienna and East Berlin had shown this happen before and now Port Said would join that list. Kennedy and his secretary of state really seemed to have a good understanding of how to strike deals with the Soviets and get good ones too: there was no sigh in any previous agreement of Soviet duplicity and none was expected with the Lebanon issue. During that side talk, Mondale had diplomatically enquired after the health of the Soviet general secretary. Andropov was in good health, he was told, just busy with affairs of state; he sent his good wishes to President Kennedy. Well that was one big fat stinking lie, wasn’t it?

The main talks came away with success too. It took some time and Kennedy ended up staying an extra day in Egypt but he achieved something worthwhile. Begin and Sadat struck a deal on the eventual Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai. Israel’s long military occupation would end; the settlements would go too. The end result would be a demilitarization of the Sinai leaving the peninsula free of Egyptian and Israeli soldiers. The intention was to get a UN force in afterwards to monitor the ground too. Begin and King Hussein couldn’t get to an agreement on the West Bank but they had fruitful talks, talks which would recommence again in the coming months with Kennedy inviting them both to the United States to talk there. There was a press event with cautious handshakes and Kennedy in the middle of it all. From elsewhere in the region, neighbouring hostile countries, there came screams of outrage. Iraq and Libya condemned the Port Said Summit where King Hussein had ‘betrayed the Palestinian people’ and Sadat had ‘betrayed the Arab people’. Aggression from these two countries had been talked about at the summit, especially the still ongoing illegal occupation of Kuwait by Iraq, but nothing had come of that.

Kennedy went home afterwards, aiming to bask in the glory when he returned to Washington. He had been briefed before he went to the Middle East and when there about the continuing dire situation Mexico was in along with increases in the fighting with both the Salvadoran and Honduran civil wars. He was informed too about arms shipments recently tracked, now not just guns anymore but tanks and MiGs being transferred from Cuba to Guatemala and Nicaragua as the Cubans got newer weapons of their own from the Soviets. This was all serious and Kennedy took it all aboard. The Cubans were building armies for their puppets but all Kennedy and his advisers dismissed that as being a money sink for them. What would a motorised rifle division or a tank regiment do in Central America? At the same time, it was just more of the same as before. Latin America was a headache to Kennedy and one which he had sworn off getting involved throughout his presidency. This was breeding ground for his domestic opponents, who whined about the supposed threat those socialist nations posed and how he ignored it, but Kennedy knew best. What were the Cubans and their puppets going to do? Invade Mexico? He was focused on the bigger picture, sorting that problem at the cause anyway. The weapons, the money and the ultimate motivation for problems in Latin America came from the Soviet Union. It was with the Soviets who he focused his attention on with relations with them improving all of the time, hence the latest agreement on Lebanon being another small step. Mexico’s financial problems were explained to him but neither he nor anyone else could see what was coming next: this month, the following months and next year. If someone could see the future and tried to convince anyone of that, they would be locked up with the key taken away!



July 1983:

Among the core group of remaining Sandinistas, those who had fought the long fight and were still alive in post-revolutionary Nicaragua, there was a Mexican national named Victor Manuel Tirado López. Tirado López was a committed communist and someone to whom the Mexican government was unfriendly towards. Only last year, pushed by the DGI and against the objections of Borge, the Ortega brothers had sent him up to his native land using a different identity. His trip had been to assess the political situation there. Upon his return, Tirado López had told the Ortegas that there had been no real change in Mexico. The country was in no way ready for a revolution nor armed conflict to push Mexico towards one. He had only reinforced his own opinion in what he had seen, but that still didn’t mean that he didn’t return with the truth. Mexico wasn’t fertile ground for anything like what had happened in Nicaragua & Guatemala in previous years and what was occurring now in El Salvador & Honduras. Only a fool would think otherwise. The economic situation wasn’t desperate for the poor and the government wasn’t overtly oppressive. Mexico’s leaders showed no sign of turning the people against them. None of the factors which created the civil wars in Central America were apparent up in Mexico. He would like his native land to see justice, freedom and everything else that communism could bring, but that wasn’t to be. It was just impossible. The report from Tirado López which was sent onto the Cubans was read by the KGB too; the feeling in Moscow was that any sign of serious trouble in Mexico would rain down fire and fury from across the Rio Grande too. It would be a country too far, Andropov had said, and a serious geo-political error. The beliefs of Andropov and the observations from Tirado López would stand in stark contrast to what was about to happen. Andropov would be pushing up daisies before the end to that story came while Tirado López himself would be in Mexico City ruling over a nation up in arms. That was in the future though, the short-term future yes, but not what was going on right now.

The economic crisis started to bite home hard across Mexico. The problems moved from the (destroyed) financial centre down to the workers, especially those in the cities and big towns to where so many Mexicans in recent years had moved to find work. The lay-offs continued and the price of food skyrocketed. From the government, when criticism in the media started to get too strong, blaming not just President García Paniagua but the PRI party as a whole for decades of foolishness, there came a crackdown there with newspapers, radio and television muzzled. Big announcements were made that things were going to be fixed. None of that stopped the protests which took place from those made unemployed and with families to feed. It didn’t stop the strikes by government workers (directly or indirectly employed) about the coming lay-offs and the immediate wages cuts to them too. There was rioting in places which came with the protests and the strikes and things got out of hand in a few instances. The police, national and local forces, were ineffective in following orders coming straight from the top to put a stop to those. They were in the same position as those whose heads which they were supposed to bash: caught up in this economic crisis which was now affecting all Mexicans. Mexico City was gripped by a massive riot which spun out of control and spread from the slums to the very centre of the capital city. García Paniagua decided that the only thing to do was to call upon the military where the police had failed. The Mexican Army had well-trained and numerous military police detachments and they brought and end to that riot with García Paniagua pleased at the results… he pretended that he didn’t hear the casualty numbers because he was more focused on parts of the city burning. Where elsewhere there was trouble too with rioting, coming from protests which seemed to fast lose all sense of purpose – it was about jobs and food but became an orgy of destruction –, the president decided that only military force would be effective. He saw the resignation of several of his ministers in response to this fateful decision but firmly believed he was doing what was best for Mexico. How could foreign capital and investment be persuaded to return to Mexico if the country was alight?

The Mexican Army was small but in the absence of a serious foreign threat to the country nor any worldwide commitments, that size was long deemed suitable for Mexico. The majority of the professional and mobile units of the army, including most of the military police units, were based around Mexico City though able to deploy nationwide from there. The brigades of infantry were always designed to reinforce smaller, local units in times of trouble: such was the military deployment structure in the country. This had recently been done with the army’s brigade of paratroopers joining another two of infantry in going down to Chiapas and the Guatemalan border area and staying there to work with locally-based forces to enforce order in that southern region. Further units from around the capital, including almost all of the military police detachments, were now deployed in presidential orders nationwide as rioting continued throughout the country. Murders and deliberate arson had taken place across cities such as Chihuahua, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Juarez and Puebla. Reliable military units from the Mexico City area, joined by local forces, would move in to put an end to this. Orders from the government were just the same as those which had been issued in the capital: civilians were to be detained and the violence ended, there was to be no unnecessary shooting of the people. As had been the case in Mexico City, that was all fine in theory but not in practice. Soldiers carrying live weaponry sent into unfamiliar areas where there is chaos and enraged population never mix well.

This mix saw massacres take place. None of it was intentional. It was preventable though. The soldiers should never have been sent on such missions. Many of them lost their lives too, killed by the mob when they were dragged away from their comrades during urban conflict. The worse of the violence came in Guadalajara and Puebla where things really got out of hand. In addition, when the soldiers came under attack and responded with reasonable force to maintain law and order (the official line), there was some interference from the local police in several instances where shots might or might not have been fired at the soldiers from those who also had weapons but refused to use them against their fellow civilians. Details on that were fuzzy, a lot had been going on. Overall though, the Mexican Army had fought against the people. The anger in response, by those who knew their history of oppressive governments in the past especially, was widespread throughout the country. García Paniagua refused to listen to the pleas from others in his broken and demoralised government to pull the soldiers back. He alone commanded the Mexican Army. He declared a state of emergency and vowed to put down what he deemed ‘insurrection’. He would save Mexico, from itself if necessary. A senior Mexican Army officer, a man known as el coronel (the colonel) despite now being a general officer – he’d long been legendary in that former rank –, put a stop to that madness. He put a bullet in the head of García Paniagua.


El coronel took power in Mexico for what was supposed to be a short period. He would restore order and punish those responsible for what had recently gone on. When he addressed the Mexican people on television, dressed in his full military regalia and surrounded by his fellow generals, the country’s supposed interim leader promised justice. There would be food, there would be jobs and there would be no more violence. Elections would be coming soon as well, fair ones at that. Cynics at home and abroad asked themselves whether any military cabal which had taken power forcefully from a civilian government had ever willingly and fast handed power back to civilians before. There was a promise from el coronel that such a thing was to happen though… once the mess created in the past few months had been sorted out.

The image of a general taking powering in a violent coup d’état, where the country’s civilian president had been killed, didn’t go over very well up in Washington. Latin America was full of military governments and none of them were personally liked by Kennedy. The president was informed by Mondale – who spoke with el coronel when Kennedy refused to on a point of principle – that Mexico’s new leader was appealing to the United States for help. What help did he want? Financial help, lots of it. Like García Paniagua before him, el coronel was begging for money from the American taxpayer. Hell, no. Kennedy was opposed to such an idea on more than just principle: he knew that the American people wouldn’t stand for that. Images on the evening news and reports in the big newspapers had come of the violence in Mexico where soldiers had reported killed hundreds, maybe thousands. The fact that a general had now seized power by killing a civilian president to put a stop to his soldiers killing civilians didn’t play well at all. Kennedy wasn’t going to do it. Next November and his re-election was still some time away, but he was no dummy on an issue like this. He saw it coming back to haunt him next year. Mexico could sort this issue out for themselves. It was an internal Mexican affair. He had been briefed that there was no foreign interference in what had gone on in Mexico and it was all a problem of the Mexican’s own making. The country could and would have to deal with its own mess. There would be no bailout from Washington and no help in other areas until civilian rule, legitimate civilian rule at that, was restored in Mexico City. Kennedy also had other more important matters on his mind following is return from the peace deal he had been behind in the Middle East. Now was the time to deal with a real United States reaction to the ongoing and verified Soviet troop withdrawals from Eastern Europe. The time was coming to respond to that good faith shown by Moscow with good faith coming in return from the Kennedy Administration. He knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but Kennedy believed he was ready for the backlash from those who didn’t see the big picture like he did.



August 1983:

Kennedy had been intending to wait until September before he made his big announcement. His aim was to spend the summer having official contacts made with fellow governments and shoring up domestic support at home for his decision on withdrawing selected American forces from Western Europe. Previous decisions had been unilateral and ended up distracting the prestige he hoped to get. He planned to go ahead regardless of what was said, that was true, but at least give the pretense of listening to the opinions of others and taking that advice aboard etc. However, there had been leaks made and the Washington Post was planning to make revelations. This was a newspaper, like others, which were still sitting on personal stories about him, but the NATO issue was something which they were going to print: the drinking and sex allegations were kept under wraps. Kennedy preempted that release of his NATO plan, scooping them. He did the opposite of what he set out to do in being seen to listen and engage all so that he wouldn’t have to see the media get their story out first. It was almost like he was daring those newspapers to go and print their other revelations, laying down the gauntlet because he liked to live dangerously… What became known as the Kennedy Plan was something in fact drawn up by others at the Pentagon and among independent, outside advisors whom the president called in for their specialist knowledge. Up until the very end, the plan was kept secret. There were hints and rumours but nothing concrete. Official and unofficial statements were made said that there was no plan underway. Well, those were lies. The Kennedy Plan was revealed at the beginning of August and hadn’t come out of the blue.

Troops, combat aircraft and tactical missiles (complete with nuclear warheads) would be removed from Western Europe starting next year. The earlier and ongoing Soviet withdrawals would be matched by American redeployments. Only a portion of United States’ military strength would be leaving and not all of it going back across the North Atlantic too but instead going elsewhere in Western Europe rather than remaining in West Germany. Just as the Soviets had done – pulling six divisions out of East Germany by now, elsewhere into Eastern Europe –, American forces wouldn’t be going far at the moment as long as hosting for them could be found. A wing of US Air Force F-16 multi-role fighter-bombers and another of A-10 attack-fighters would be removed along with the 56th Artillery Brigade from the US Army with their Pershing missiles. Also from the US Army would be combat formations in the form of one full division, two independent brigades and an armoured cavalry regiment; a corps headquarters would be coming out too. With those aircraft and the ground units, the Kennedy Plan called for the ability for those withdrawn forces to immediately return by leaving behind the infrastructure in-place. This meant that while combat forces were shrinking, combat-support (artillery, engineers & helicopters) and service-support elements (maintenance, supply & transportation) were staying behind. That wasn’t the same with the Pershing missiles, they were being fully withdrawn. The withdrawals would start in the New Year.


As can be imagined, this caused quite the uproar. That uproar was in many places among all sorts of different people and institutions. Not all of that was honest too for there was some hint of what was coming due to the rumours coming out but more-importantly Kennedy’s behaviour leading up to his big announcement. There had come words of praise for the Soviets in their actions in pulling out their own forces while at the same time only minor condemnation of such recent events like the Chinese airliner shootdown: previous outrages like the invasion of Iran were forgotten too. Kennedy himself had point-black refused to answer questions on whether he was considering mirroring the troop redeployments out of the divided Germanys and left the denials to others. That too had been seen before with his administration, one which defied so many precedents set by those which had come before. It was the Sinatra Doctrine again, one which had started back in January two years ago when he was inaugurated, where he did things his way. Congress was in recess for the summer though members of both chambers, especially the Senate in Republican hands, made media appearances where there was a promise to take action on this, maybe even block the whole thing if they could. Former senior officials back from the Ford Administration came out in protest, so too did other influential former politicians no longer in Congress. One of those foreign affairs think-tanks – one of the ones which had been constantly issuing those dire warnings that were mocked in off-the-record briefings from the White House – had its spokesman claim that Andropov was ill and soon to die; once he was gone, his successor, whomever that might be, wouldn’t honour agreements made with Kennedy therefore returning Soviet troops and nuclear missiles to East Germany in a hurry leaving Western Europe exposed and open to attack.

The real drama came across on the other side of the Atlantic though. One after another, Western European governments lined up to protest against yet another unilateral decision coming from Washington. None of the NATO members were happy at being left out of any discussions… no… not so much that, but instead ignored like they didn’t matter. NATO was an alliance of equals, the small countries mattered as equally as the big ones. All had a voice which counted the same as everyone else. The Kennedy Administration treated them like they didn’t matter. Initial comments coming from certain American figures that as this involved United States military forces, this was a solely American matter were met with incredulity at first and then outright anger. Kennedy spoke several times with Chancellor Vogel and calmed him somewhat but he was too busy to speak to other leaders such as Thatcher, Mitterrand, Craxi, Lubbers and Martens. Dealing with them was left to Glenn, Mondale and Muskie. Kennedy’s focus was on gaining West German acquiescence for the withdrawals to take place. He had been intending to do this before the announcement was made but ended up starting that process straight after he told the world. The Kennedy-Vogel talks were strained and demanded the president’s attention for some time. Vogel didn’t want US military forces to leave his country, even only in part, and did tell Kennedy that it would only strengthen the hand of domestic opponents-cum-allies of his (temporary allies) in the form of The Greens as they would present this as a victory for them and their people-power protests. Kennedy’s advisers told him that Vogel was taking nonsense – they had their own understanding of domestic politics in West Germany, an understanding surely better than the West German chancellor – and that Vogel was aiming to delay the inevitable in the hope that Kennedy would be voted out of office next year. Such remarks had been made to the president before, mirroring his own thinking when it came to many so-called allies, where they were all waiting for him to go down in flames next November. The Kennedy-Vogel talks (conducted through multiple phone calls) produced no meaningful result: the West Germans were still opposed to the withdrawals, especially in their unilateral manner. If the United States had gone through NATO with this, even government-to-government before a big domestic announcement, then things might have turned out differently. But that Kennedy hadn’t done.

Thatcher came to an agreement with Glenn where the British Prime Minister agreed to host a small element of the withdrawing forces coming out of West Germany at temporary holding points in Britain. The Vice President could only get the UK to take some (space considerations were what it was all about), but it was better than none. He didn’t report back to Kennedy that he was told unofficially, in a nod-and-a-wink fashion by the British that they were banking on Kennedy being voted out of office in fifteen months time: he probably should have, but he didn’t. Mitterrand and Craxi, France’s president and Italy’s brand new prime minister, had a meeting between themselves when they got little of substance from Mondale and Muskie regarding American long-term military commitment to United States defence of Europe. What worried them, and then others later, was that the Americans would eventually remove all American troops from West Germany. The consequences from that didn’t bode well for the future of Western Europe. In one worse case scenario, without taking any casualties of their own in any Soviet invasion limited to West Germany, the United States might decide not to fight. In another hypothetical, without troops to hold the line straight away, the Americans might decide to at once ‘defend’ West Germany with nuclear weapons coming from strikes launched from outside of Western Europe. This didn’t have to happen this year nor this decade, under this president nor the next… but sometime in the future and all coming long after the announcement of the Kennedy Plan. These two leaders started talking about that future. Their talks would eventually, in the coming months, develop significantly away from where they started and be influenced by external events elsewhere in the world. Kennedy had killed NATO as something relevant. He nor anyone else were yet to know that, but the organisation was now on its last legs. Who would have ever thought that would happen starting back with Soviet tanks going east and not west?



August 1983:

Endemic corruption at the top had brought about the situation where Mexico was open to an economic hit like it had done. Politicians and civil servants weren’t all on the take and all of them hadn’t stolen from the state, but so many had. El coronel could find few he trusted to sort out the mess his country was in. His only recourse was to turn to his fellow military officers, those free of the stain of corruption. He appointed dozens of them to senior positions at the federal level to try to repair the damage done. Elsewhere in the country though, he decided that there was enough honest people in positions of power to hold the reins of power there. Mexico was officially known as the United Mexican States. There were thirty-one of those plus the special federal territory in which Mexico City lay. Those states were granted emergency powers by el coronel to sort out the problems within them though were also expected to work together, guided by central authority in the form of him. If he had been trying to create further problems with such a scheme to apparently fix things, he couldn’t have a better job. This was a disaster in the making. Corruption went all the way down to the state level. There were rich states and poor states. There were existing disputes between them. Some had been hit by recent violence while others hadn’t. All Mexicans were meant to be in this together: now el coronel created the conditions to turn them against one another. Federal military forces, apart from those in Chiapas who remained on the Guatemalan border, were withdrawn back to the Mexico City area leaving police and local militia – the Rurales – to reestablish order. The previous violence petered out in most places following the immediate withdrawal of troops. The lightly-armed, locally-recruited and unpaid militia patrolled the streets alongside the police who came back out in most cases despite the outstanding issue of wages.

From Mexico City, el coronel carried on keeping his word on what he would do to fix everything that had gone wrong. There were arrests made of corrupt officials – causing others to begin to flee the country – and a comprehensive action plan announced to make sure that there were food and jobs for all. How would this be paid for? There remained money in Mexico, it was just that it was in what el coronel decided was the wrong places. There needed to be a fair distribution of wealth and then everything would sort itself out. At the US Embassy in the capital, the ambassador heard this and reported to Washington that while that might have sounded like communism, it wasn’t: el coronel was just fumbling in the dark and clutching at straws. Due consideration was given to that analysis at the State Department and there was an agreement that Mexico’s new leader was no communist. What he was though was a fool. The state governments, suddenly given plenty of power, didn’t want to do what they were told by Mexico City. Sharing out what little wealth some had by giving it to others was refused. Others demanded more and that more to come now. Within the state governments themselves there were disagreements. Capital flight had come downwards when it had happened and had hit hard on a local level as well as a national one, hence the violent riots. Everyone needed what they had and needed more in fact, especially right now. Food was one concern but so too were medical supplies and other basic essentials which was no longer coming in from abroad. El coronel lost his temper with several state governments, especially those he saw as infected with corrupt officials linked to the regime which he had taken apart. Nuevo León was one, Sonora another and Tamaulipas a third. They were all northern states and while different in their attitudes and needs, caused him problems. He signed a decree declaring their state governments not fit to rule. This was wholly illegal and the mark of the dictator which he repeatedly said he wasn’t. Those state governments were to be taken control of by military personnel leading civil servants selected for their honesty. Such teams were dispatched.

The Sonoran state government in Hermosillo rolled over; those in Monterrey and Ciudad Victoria refused to give in. Nuevo León and Tamaulipas were not about to be illegally subsumed into federal authority to strip them of what was theirs. When el coronel sent troops to their state capital (the numbers were extremely small and not a real combat force), the Rurales were called upon to face them down. In Monterrey especially but on a smaller scale in Ciudad Victoria, civilians assembled with the Rurales and blocked the passage of federal forces aiming to assert control. Mexicans were pointing guns at Mexicans soon enough and then it just took one mistake, one nervous rifleman, one idiotic troublemaker in the watching crowd. Both state capitals were hit with unplanned violence where federal forces coming up from Mexico City were turned away with bloodshed. Word spread fast despite all efforts of the el coronel and his control over the media to silence the news. This was news that couldn’t be stopped. It was also news which was fast subject to exaggeration by accident or design. Mexico had another Santa Anna, another Porfirio Díaz. That is what many had been expecting to happen and the news which came only confirmed that. State governments further afield which were wary of Mexico City taking what they had or not sending them enough, let alone having a military strongman take charge, reacted accordingly. Baja California, Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Veracruz were foremost among them: each hit with violence beforehand and struggling with the financial collapse more than others. These waited for their recently-given powers to be revoked and planned accordingly to defy such measures coming from Mexico City. There was a lot of honest intention in this, as had been the case in the other states, but also the work of agitators as well.


El coronel saw rebellion. He saw that spreading too. Mexico would collapse into anarchy if he didn’t put it down. He sent out warnings to state governments of retribution for rebellion and then mobilised the Mexican Army again. His focus was on those two states which lay across the Rio Grande from Texas and while he was making many fatal mistakes, he did have the presence of mind to make sure that the Americans were informed less there be any misunderstanding. The ambassador told him not to do it. Dialogue would solve this. El coronel told the ambassador that he didn’t understand Mexico, especially this new Mexico, one created by stock markets and banks in the United States doing what they had to his country. The ambassador shot off an urgent message to Washington saying that Mexico’s leader was out of control. He also included in his message a prophetic message warning of the flight of Mexicans when violence came their way. There was only one place where they would go: to the Rio Grande and across it. As to putting down the rebellions taking place in Nuevo León and Tamaulipas, el coronel sent troops against those in rebellion from afar but also within those states. Local troops which answered to federal control were ordered to come under central command for operations to restore federal authority. Officers in most cases responded positively; some cited delays. Those latter officers were unsure about their men who, like them, lived in those states apparently in rebellion but who knew the truth of the matter.

Federal troops started to take control over the rebellious states of Nuevo León and Tamaulipas. Where they met resistance, the troops overcame this. Civilian volunteers and the Rurales were wholly unable to stop this. Access to weaponry was one problem for those two states but more so lack of organisation and the inability to defend against multi-directional attacks. When fighting took place, civilians fled. The very first refugees, a few thousand who would precede several million within a year, went towards Texas. The anti-rebellion measures went excellent at first and within days, the Mexican Army looked to be wholly victorious. It appeared that nothing could stop them from retaking control. Then the mutinies began. These started small and among selected units based locally in Nuevo León and Tamaulipas now sent to fight civilians and militia from those states. Groups of soldiers wouldn’t fight. They refused to do so. Clashes occurred where an attempt was made to enforce discipline: orders from el coronel said that there must be discipline and while he wouldn’t have wanted to see the men refusing to obey orders, his primary concern had been that soldiers wouldn’t mistreat civilians when he wrote those orders. They were interpreted differently by those at the front. Soldiers who refused to fight were to be shot. Others flocked to their cause. The anti-rebellion offensive, on the cusp of success, was suddenly stalled by fighting in the rear with Mexican Army troops shooting each other. There was score-settling of unpopular officers which took place yet overall the refusal from so many to follow what were the orders from a dictator in Mexico City. Breathing space was given to the embattled state governments of Nuevo León and Tamaulipas to prepare for if the Mexican Army started advancing again. Other state governments, which had been aghast at what was happening, decided that they could no longer sit on the fence: they would have to take sides. News spread across Mexico of what had been going on with the military shooting civilians once again. Mexico’s Revolution now was getting going. Abroad, countries near and far were now really paying attention to the truly unexpected events in Mexico: supposedly a stable country, now one where there was the start of civil war taking place. How the hell had that happened?



September 1983:

Cuba’s armed forces conducted their third big combined arms exercise of the year come September. It was much larger than the preceding war games which had occurred in January and then in May. The former had taken place across western parts of Cuba and the latter had occurred inside Nicaragua. This third one was spread from the island of Cuba, down to Central America and as far out as Grenada too. There were parachute drops made of Cuban soldiers and an amphibious assault made as well. Live-fire exercises took place within the whole series of war games with Cuban aircraft making attack runs overland but also above the Caribbean as well. There were major ground operations inside both Guatemala and Nicaragua with the use of the new armies built for those nations taking place alongside Cuban forces. Cuba and its allies – who were starting to be called ‘LAComs’ (Latin American Communists) up in United States in short-hand form – were showing off not just all of their new military equipment but testing it out in realistic fashion should the situation where it might have to be used. Observers from many friendly nations were present to watch and so too were the training teams from across the Eastern Bloc who watched all their hard work put into practice.

The use of so many Cuban and LACom troops across many different theaters for the September war games wasn’t just to test everything out. There was a political angle too. Nicaragua, just like Grenada and Guatemala, was now firmly back in the Castro camp after a little flirtation with independence from Havana by Managua had seen Borge then killed, apparently by the CIA too (because that made so much sense!). Panamanian military officers from the army which Noriega was slowly building down in his country were watching and Cuba was aiming to impress upon Panama that they could too have access to all of this firepower if Noriega was willing to play the same game as the LAComs were doing. The exercises were also aimed further afield. The Belize War had left Guatemala humiliated but also Cuba too for it had been a Cuban proxy war: Cuban military units ‘transferred’ to Guatemala in the form of combat aircraft had been shot out of the sky by the British. Those were MiG-21s and older versions of the MiG-23; Cuba now had better-quality MiG-23s in service, was seeing the introduction of the MiG-27 and there was also a Soviet training team in Cuba (which didn’t take part in the exercises) with the brand-new MiG-29 aircraft. There were new tanks as well: more Soviet-manufactured equipment. Cuba was receiving upgrades to its T-55s while also getting its hands upon T-72s. Passed down to its allies were Cuban T-54s removed from service going to both Guatemala and Nicaragua while at the same time, Nicaragua was being directly supplied further T-72s by the Soviets. Such military equipment, the high-end visible pieces of gear like this used in the exercises, but also the necessary supporting equipment (the ‘boring’ stuff like trucks, engineering vehicles and signals gear), was being sent as foreign aid. Cuba nor her allies were able to pay for all of this directly even with cash crops being dispatched to the Soviets. Ammunition and military fuel was exchanged for the military equipment though and so Moscow was getting something out of the deal where there was this huge military build-up taking place, but there was still a loss being made with such supplies sent. It went regardless: it wasn’t like anyone in the Soviet Union had to answer to voters or stockholders.

The British with their commitment to Belize watched the exercises and so too did the Americans. Intelligence staffs shared the view that this was all for show and the big exercises were a façade because there was little behind-the-scenes activity. It was all great to have the crash of tank cannons, drop bombs from aircraft and have paratroopers assault the Isle of Pines in a mock assault, but where was the support network to support such armed forces? Cuba and the LAComs were front-loaded, that was how they saw it. There remained a Guatemalan threat to Belize and Cuba was still meddling elsewhere – El Salvador and Honduras were still having their civil wars –, yet there was no serious danger overall to the region from the Cuban / LACom alliance. The dots weren’t being connected though. There was that rear support being built for the LACom armies. Panama wasn’t seen for how Noriega saw the future of his country. And there was the five hundred pound elephant in the room which was Mexico now entering a civil war of its own, one on a far grander scale than the ‘little’ ones in Central America, to distract intelligence services of the West looking at Latin America.



September 1983:

The Mexican states which signed the September Declaration made it clear that they weren’t in rebellion and there was no intention of succession. They were still part of the United Mexican States. Down in Mexico City, the federal government there was illegal and they were standing together in opposition to the usurper who was killing his fellow Mexicans. More states were invited to join them in their formal alliance against el coronel and there was a call for the people to help them get rid of him: ‘the people’ included Mexico’s soldiers. To see the replacement of an illegitimate regime with a legitimate one, the declaration made up in Monterrey and supported at first by eight states – joined later in the month by two more –, called on resistance to come in a non-violent form, if possible. Strike, the people were told; soldiers were called upon to refuse to obey orders to kill fellow Mexicans. However, if el coronel continued to send troops against the people, then fighting would be necessary. From Monterrey, there was a deliberate intent to involve Mexico’s neighbour as well. Not in a military sense – no Mexican wanted that – but to have the Americans cut ties with Mexico City and temporarily transfer diplomatic relations to Monterrey. Quite the collection of politicians, prominent citizens and military officers (local defectors) had gathered there in what they kept saying wasn’t a secessionist government even if it looked like one. The Monterrey Government was a chaotic grouping who couldn’t agree on anything among themselves behind the façade they put on of unity and they certainly weren’t all happy at that state of Nuevo León being suddenly at the centre of power. Arguments raged among them because they had the time to do so. Washington knew this and wouldn’t be sending anyone to Monterrey into that mess; in addition, Mexico City was recognised as the centre of government and the Monterrey Government was seen in the eyes of the United States as secessionist. El coronel took no follow-up action from his late-August offensive against the rebellion where mass munities had broken out. First one then a second state government, those down in the southeast, joined the alliance. There was talk of more coming over to their side. Efforts were made to coerce others on-side. There was hope that the domino effect would see el coronel give in when fifteen, then twenty, then thirty states all signed up. No real military preparations were made by the ten states united and disunited as they were by political squabbles but also geography.

The dictator who didn’t want to be a dictator down in Mexico City had made his own military preparations. The Mexican Army had been hit by shameful mutinies and desertions from locally-based units which were still not solved. He would have wanted to wait, to sort the problems out, but the clear secessionism which he saw forced his hand. The brigades of the regular army were all called-up and sent into action. Monterrey was the heart of the rebellion and it was there that the paratroopers went: a small airborne drop was made though the majority of the men were then flown in to take control of that city and get their hands on those who defied Mexico City. Chihuahua, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas and Veracruz – further states were the rebellion was strongest in the eyes of el coronel – also saw the entry into them of professional troops in mobile columns charging on their state capitals. Everything was thrown at this one effort to finally kill off the last of resistance. Orders were for once again there to be shooting only if necessary. Arrests for rebellion were favoured over killing. If armed units stood in the way, the orders were for them to be bypassed if possible, otherwise they were to be engaged in talks to get them to at least stand aside if they refused to help put down the rebellion. Unlike last time, this second mass offensive didn’t get off to a good start. The states were still unable to properly fight to defend themselves but the Mexican Army was torn once again by mutinies and defections. Once it came down to it, when the reality kicked in of killing their fellow Mexicans for the benefit of a military strongman down in Mexico City, the soldiers in the main wouldn’t do it. There were some who did fight but not many. In addition, of those who initially did, they soon afterwards decided that they didn’t want no more of this. Monterrey was taken by Mexican paratroopers whose commander detained large numbers of the government there before he then declared his allegiance to them. Further Mexican Army units went over to the Monterrey Government or declared their neutrality. The Mexican Army fell apart as an organised force. There was no stomach in them to do as ordered, especially when they were sent into action against their fellow Mexicans. The September Declaration had had the desired effect.


As before, news travelled fast. The rumours did too. Mexico City saw a protest march where the people came out to demonstrate against el coronel. The city’s police stood aside rather than try to stop them. Where were the military police who had put down trouble in Mexico City before? They were elsewhere in the country. This time there was little violence, this wasn’t a riot, but it was a peaceful protest. The police helped redirect traffic as the protesters marched on the centre of the city. The call went up in the crowd for the resignation of the acting president. If el coronel couldn’t resign, they would force him out of office. It all went really fast and those behind the demonstration lost control of it to the mob. Still, it was a non-violent mob. That was until they finally ran into soldiers near the National Palace, which was the centre of the federal government. The crowd was ordered to stop. Rocks were thrown and so were Molotov cocktails. Bullets – live ones – were fired back. Some in the crowd fell down dead, others surged forwards in anger. Panic went down the line of soldiers and some broke ranks to run to the rear. Then the mob was among them. Civilians attacked soldiers, taking out long-held frustration with fists and boots. Shots rang out to the very end but the soldiers lost and most were killed in an uncontrollable event. Then the National Palace was first trashed and looted before a fire started. It went up in flames and no one really knew why there was the need to do that. It was the centre of government but el coronel was using the official residence for Mexico’s presidents elsewhere. That was over at Los Pinos, next to the imposing Chapultepec Castle. Some in the mob headed that way; most of the crowd which had killed the soldiers in front of the National Palace just watched it burn.

El coronel watched the National Palace burn too. He was told of the massive crowds in the city where there were no more soldiers. He decided that he wanted none of this. He hadn’t taken power to oversee what had happened. He loved Mexico and was only trying to save it. The country refused to be saved though. No more could he do it. A helicopter was called and his personal pilot, a long-serving loyal man, arrived. El coronel left for a military airbase near to the city. He would find somewhere to go into exile… probably the United States. Staying and killing his own people wasn’t what he couldn’t face. He’d rather be a coward than a butcher. There was now to be a power vacuum in Mexico City. Plenty of candidates would love to fill it.



September 1983:

The ongoing situation in Mexico and the after-effects of the announcement of the Kennedy Plan when it came to NATO were two entirely separate things. They should have been anyway. But they weren’t once Congress was back in session. In both chambers, the pair of apparently unconnected events were linked by many from both sides of the aisle. The Republicans made a lot of noise though there was a concentration of message from many as the party geared up for a presidential run next year with a candidate still to be chosen to retake the White House from Kennedy. Two early favourites, Senator Dole and Representative Kemp, were gaining support yet the primaries then the general election were a long time off. Meanwhile, in the Senate where the Republicans held a majority and in the House where they were in the minority, the party stayed on-message in attacking the president’s decisions to ‘ignore’ Mexico and ‘cave into the Soviets’ when it came to the defences of Western Europe. More drama, column inches and airtime in the media, came from the Democrats with Kennedy’s own party tearing into him in a different fashion and with confusion being the order of the day when the end result of what was said came to the public. Where the Democrats behind their president or not? Such questions like that made the Republicans rub their hands together with glee. There was hope among them that Kennedy might face a primary challenge from within his own party, someone strong on national security & foreign affairs, to hurt the president next year. It would be denied, but there were plans afoot to encourage someone to do so and for that candidate – whomever it might be – to receive funding from long-term Republican donors without their knowledge. Those who underestimate the ability of politicians to be sneaky bastards should do so at their peril.

Senator Scoop Jackson – Democratic candidate in 1976 and ’80; a noted critic of Kennedy on foreign relations – wasn’t going to be the one to challenge Kennedy in the primary season for his own ends or unwillingly serving the Republicans. Two defeats had been enough for him. Regardless, the Republican party establishment was still affected by his death in mid-September where he had a heart attack on the floor of the Senate and was rushed to hospital. He died before he got there. A long-serving member he was and he was genuinely mourned among his colleagues. He was also missed by his fellow senators because he had been, including at the moment of his heart attack, been laying into the Kennedy Plan rather effectively. People spoke when he listened. He had been warning that not only would the withdrawals – and there would be more, he said, because that was what the president had in mind – leave Western Europe open to Soviet attack, but it was driving the United States and its allies apart. He’d been making an eloquent case before his demise. Others pushed on the same theme though they didn’t have the same standing as Jackson did. Well-known anti-communists from the House, Democrats in the form of Representatives McDonald of Georgia and Wilson of Texas, savaged Kennedy too. Efforts by the House Speaker to stop them failed. Tip O’Neil was an ally of Kennedy with great influence but the president was out of step with too many congressmen in what he had done. Many Democrats kept silent and while they weren’t joining in, that silence was deafening. All that said, in both chambers, the Kennedy Plan still had certain support from selected senators and congressmen. Some on the isolationist-right like it, others on the left who believed that it would relax US-Soviet tensions. Those two polar extremes couldn’t and wouldn’t work together though. Many of their fellow senators and all congressmen were up for election next year. This was a hot-button topic with the media paying attention, and thus voters back home. They made a big deal out of it all when it came to NATO. There was too the lack of a response from the Kennedy Administration to Mexico. Representative Wilson – sometimes known as ‘goodtime Charlie’ (take from that what you will) – went down from his Houston district to Brownsville, right on the Mexican border. Speaking of the situation across Rio Grande, he asked when would the president take notice? Would that be when Cuban tanks came pouring across into Brownsville? Because, as in the case he made, that was what was going to happen when Mexico fell apart: the Cubans would move in, followed next by the KGB and finally the Soviet Army! Furthermore, there would come more refugees first. Who was really listening though?

Republican-controlled Senate committees called both Mondale and Muskie before them to demand that the secretaries of state & defence respectively explain the Kennedy Plan. Moreover, why had nothing been done to work with allies abroad first? The committees had Democratic members and the Republican chairmen let them speak, especially when they went on the attack. Mondale handled himself better than Muskie. It was said in a news report afterwards the Muskie looked ‘like a deer caught in a truck’s headlights’ when before the Armed Services Committee. That was an exaggeration but a story which stuck. His appearance there came at the same time as he was dealing with the resignations of a pair of senior US Army officers in relation to the Kennedy Plan as well. Muskie forced each to retire after comments both had made openly condemning the Kennedy Plan had not just been made in front of allies but reached the press too. Kennedy wanted the higher-ranking member of the two fired rather than allowed to resign yet Muskie defied his president by telling him that would only make things worse and got their resignations first. All of this could combine into Muskie’s own ‘resignation’ the next month when he and the president fell out for good. The two officers were General (four-star) Bernard Rogers and three-star Lieutenant-General John Singlaub. Rogers held the position of SACEUR, field commander of NATO in Europe, and he’d called the Kennedy Plan ‘idiotic’. Singlaub had said that the president was a ‘babe in the woods’ when it came to American national security: he had been commanding the V Corps, whose headquarters was due to leave West Germany along with half of its combat strength. Worse things had been said in Congress, far more cutting remarks had been made in the media. The chain-of-command was clear though and the two of them were asked for their resignation from the US Army’ Chief-of-Staff at Muskie’s behest. If anyone thought that that was the end of the matter, they were very wrong.


High political drama was going on in Moscow at the same time. This was all behind the scenes, not in the spotlight of the media, and concerned something else rather than Mexico or NATO. That something else was food… the soon to be lack of it. All summer there had been warnings coming of something wrong down in the Ukraine, the breadbasket of the Soviet Union. Shcherbytsky had been quashing those rumours. The Ukrainian party boss and high-ranking Politburo member had been busy with better things to do than to have rumourmongers say that there was something wrong with the harvest when it would be brought in. His focus was on securing a higher position for himself after Andropov finally died. While the general secretary remained in the hospital with machines keeping him alive, Shcherbytsky was one of the trio from the Politburo chairing weekly meetings in his absence. Andropov rotated (not equally it must be said) that between him, Chebrikov and Ustinov. He demanded full access to everything from the meetings plus had his own spies among the three he was playing favourites with. Shcherbytsky had barely been back to the Ukraine all year. This had been rather an unfortunate time for Shcherbytsky to be distracted: he forgot his ‘base’ while busy at the big table.

That base was the Ukrainian branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He was at the top of the pile. The responsibility for everything was his. Shcherbytsky had long claimed credit for everything that had gone right and when things had gone wrong, was an expert at passing the blame elsewhere. In the Soviet Ukraine, like elsewhere in the union, that was how to survive. Shcherbytsky had played this game for many long years. In 1983, it finally caught up with him. There was something which he had championed and put his name on which went very, very wrong. That was that experimental bio-genetic programme when it came to growing corn, grain, rye and wheat. It had been tested beforehand though with results skewed to only show the best outcomes. Crop yields were supposed to be massive and there weren’t going to be any negative side-effects. How wrong that turned out to be. The complicated chemicals not only failed to do their job in increasing yield but killed off the crops themselves. It occurred very late where previously-promising crop fields seemingly overnight died off. It wasn’t a case of that at all. Scientists were busy studying the programme as it went on – filing reports saying THIS IS A BAD IDEA – but Shcherbytsky had quashed those reports because his own people, his yes-men, could see with their own eyes how everything was going swimmingly. Then the die-off happened. It was bad. Thankfully, because Shcherbytsky had so jealously-guarded the whole programme, the crops over in Kazakhstan hadn’t been treated with the same chemicals. The Kazakh party boss, Kunayev, had been eager to have access to this ‘wonder’ treatment beforehand. He was fast to deny that when it became apparent what had happened in the Ukraine. Furthermore, he went to Chebrikov first then the two of them went to see Andropov in his sick bed. The two of them told Andropov what Shcherbytsky had done. It was all down to him. He had pushed for the chemicals, fudged the reports from the scientists and then silenced all those who spoke out through the year. No, they had no idea of why he would have done this, but, surely he must be punished?

Shcherbytsky was given the chop – figuratively; Andropov was no Stalin – and the Politburo met to discuss this. Of course it was bad. It wasn’t the end of the world though. The country had food from elsewhere internally – thankfully Kunayev had had the presence of mind to long swear off this untested technology! – and the shortfall could be made up from buying abroad. Gromyko said that that would help with foreign relations with certain countries. Everyone else agreed that this must be kept secret. Chebrikov would get the word out to those with listening ears that local weather conditions had affected the harvest in the Ukraine though the problem was small. As to those fields across the Ukraine, it was decided to save what was possible from the harvest and then remove the topsoil ready for replanting. The chemicals themselves were to be dumped and the autumn rains would wash away the last traces of those chemicals. They had done their worse. Reports from scientists agreeing with this line of thinking coming from the Politburo were given as proof that this would work; dissenting opinion that again THIS IS A BAD IDEA because there would be soil mutations were hushed up. Their betters knew better. If only those underlings had been listening to…



October 1983:

When he’d taken power, el coronel had literally had the doors barred for the two chambers of Mexico’s federal Congress. Senators and deputies had been told to go home. Many had fled soon enough back to their home states or up to the ones in the north and west which made the September Declaration asserting that el coronel’s government was illegal. Not all of the politicians had left Mexico City though with some staying. A few ended up detained on criminal charges of corruption (trumped-up allegations) while the rest stayed away from their separate meeting places and held non-advertised gatherings where they debated the legitimacy of el coronel and also how they would fix things when the country’s dictator was kind enough to let them return. There had been no real repression of them during the short military rule as el coronel hadn’t declared the Congress illegal nor nullified previous election results. He just had refused to let them meet officially. Their numbers in Mexico City dwindled, especially once the Monterrey Government was set up. Only the dedicated stayed with deputies being far more prominent in numbers than senators. They deemed themselves the only honest men in Mexico. A leader emerged among them – as leaders always do – though there was no real fire in his belly nor among his colleagues to directly challenge el coronel because he had already shown he would use force if necessary… as had been the case with President García Paniagua when he’d been deposed with a pistol shot to the forehead.

Right before el coronel fled for exile up in the United States and on the eve of the start of the riots in Mexico City, the rump of what had once been a total of nearly four hundred and fifty politicians, now down to sixty-one, had been recalled by el coronel. He’d demanded that they return to the Chamber of Deputies (there were only a very few senators among them) and declare the ‘succession’ up in the northern and western states just that. He’d been clutching at straws. What difference would it have made? Well… they didn’t do that. They finally got some fire in their bellies and declared his regime illegal just like the Monterrey Government had done. They also asserted that they, acting as united body, were the only legitimate government of Mexico too. Legally they were correct. In Mexico City, that mattered for naught though when the city was torn apart. First it had been that demonstration which had turned violent after a peaceful start and then the slums all around the city, where Mexicans had poured into through recent years in search of work, were torn apart by gunfire then flames before criminal gangs rampaged across the city. They sought to steal from the rich… anyone who had any possessions in fact while destroying what they couldn’t take. The police cracked down on them as they transferred their authority to the Congress and brought most of it to an end. As September turned to October, the Congress began to finally exert itself. Mexico had to have a government and they were it.


Up in Monterrey, there was a different opinion. Those who had stayed in Mexico City and did the bidding of el coronel (though they actually hadn’t in the end was beside the point) were just as bad as he was. It was the Monterrey Government which had legitimacy, those who had stood firm in opposition all along to el coronel. The state governments acting together represented the people, not that odd collection of politicians down in Mexico City, almost all of whom weren’t even from the ruling PRI party who legally held power according to the results of the last nationwide election. Many in Monterrey – PRI members – were keen to go down to Mexico City and boot those collaborators and pretenders out on their behinds! They didn’t feel safe to go down to the capital though. They waited up in Monterrey for the situation there to calm itself down. The reports which came of a city full of violence and alight from end to end – just a bit of an exaggeration! – worried them. They argued among themselves as well. This was over who would take power once they were down in Mexico City. A few voices said that these arguments should take place in Mexico City not in Monterrey, but they were discarded. The majority of members of the Monterrey Government were federal politicians but state politicians instead. Too many interests clashed. Too many egos were present. And too many rumours came up from Mexico City that it was dangerous there.

There were further distractions which delayed the move down to Mexico City as well. Up in Sonora, where rebellion had been put down before it could be started when el coronel had launched his August offensive, that state government declared itself beholden to the September Declaration and the Monterrey Government: it was one of several that did so in early October. At once, there was trouble in Sonora and around the city of Hermosillo where soldiers still loyal to el coronel – he had buggered off and abandoned them but they didn’t know that – tried to put down that apparent secessionism. The effort failed miserably. As in so many other things, the truth of the matter, how few the numbers were and how little they managed to achieve, was lost in the panic. The Monterrey Government looked at all of the soldiers inside the states under their control. There were organised units which were either loyal to them or still declaring themselves neutral as well as disorganised groups of soldiers all over the place who had deserted and often took their weapons with them. Chaos hit parts of the countryside, especially through the states of Sinaloa in the west and Veracruz in the east with these bandits. The parachute brigade commander who’d gone over to the Monterrey Government rather than fight them, was impressed upon the need to get control over his men and all the others. He and his fellow military officers urged for a move to be made down to Mexico City but they weren’t listened to. El coronel’s actions had poisoned any trust in the Mexican Army for so many. There was a fear among many high-ranking people in the Monterrey Government that the military officers couldn’t be trusted (they’d betrayed one master already) and also that they shouldn’t lead the move down to Mexico City because the people wouldn’t welcome that after all of the killing done nationwide when the Mexican Army had used its guns against civilians. Political developments across in the Yucatan Peninsula were another distraction which kept the Monterrey Government from yet moving down to Mexico City. There were there states there: Campeche, Quintana Roo and Yucatan. Yucatan had been a late signatory to the September Declaration with the two others following later. Geographical distance exasperated by the (short) fighting in Veracruz had isolated the three states. In the city of Merida, representatives from all three had agreed to put on a united front where their voice would be heard as one when they sent delegates to the Monterrey Government. Once in Monterrey, they caused problems. Others from different states had delayed things in Monterrey where they spoke of what they needed to get through the current difficult times but none were as disruptive as the Yucatan Three. They wanted much in terms of promised economic assistance when the federal government was restored and wouldn’t give in. This brought forth demands from others who didn’t want to be left out. In Monterrey they argued amongst themselves and they stayed put. They were going to Mexico City soon, very soon. Just not yet.


Someone else went to Mexico City before them. The Cuban DGI facilitated the entry of Tirado López into the power vacuum which remained open. He’d been in the city of Guadalajara first then moved to the town of Morelia. The state governments of Jalisco and Michoacán hadn’t been part of the Monterrey Government before nor after the fall of el coronel. They had only been theoretically answerable to the rump Congress in Mexico City as well, just like much of the country. In these recently-ignored areas of the country where there had been sudden mass unemployment and food riots, loss of state-level control had come after the federal government focused elsewhere. Charlatans and agitators had gained influence. The rule of the gun wasn’t what brought them temporary power but the ability to whip up the people. Just like in Mexico City, the rest of the country was full of a recent urban population who’d flooded to the cities and big towns when times had been good and there were jobs. Jalisco and Michoacán had been hotbeds of union activity and the violence which came with government efforts to crack down on that. Some of the worse elements of society had gained access to weaponry which came first from the influx that came from border spillover from the end of the civil war in Guatemala and then the desertion of soldiers from the Mexican Army not just in the north but nationwide too… the deserters always left with their rifles but also walked away from guarding armories as well. No one was paying them to keep them under guard and the search for food to feed their families was paramount. Rampaging mobs of the unruly had been brought under control by improvised militias answerable to those with dreams of power. Actual armed combat was rare across these two southern states: intimidation from one side over the other was what happened in most instances.

Tirado López was an outsider but one who when he arrived knew how to engage with the needy and the angry, especially when working a crowd. The message from him wasn’t about restoring the economy and reestablishing Mexico’s international trade. No, instead, it was bread and jobs. The simple message worked well. The romantic notion of a ‘march in Mexico City’ put forth afterwards was a fairytale. There was nothing like that. No Nicaraguans and certainly no Cubans were openly present among his small entourage which went to the capital city either. This was a Mexican-only affair with very few numbers travelling in vehicles from one crowd to another who didn’t end up following the route like the vehicle column did. There was no resistance in Mexico City against such a man as Tirado López and the crowds there which came out to welcome him when he came to the capital. A big public gathering heard him speak, recalling later the emotion rather than any specific words beyond ‘bread’ and ‘jobs’. What more did they need to hear? His crowd was the downtrodden, the forgotten and the desperate. It was all a bluff though. Tirado López could have lost the crowds and the mob which then followed him at any moment. He held them though, mainly because they held themselves together. It was a people power revolution which came to Mexico City in late October. A battalion of troops might have held Tirado López back when he led tens of thousands towards the centre of the city but then maybe not. There was no battalion of troops anyway. The police stepped aside. The politicians from the rump Congress, who were still meeting in the Saint Lazarus Palace and discussing the specific aspects of restoring international trade using tariff cuts and tax incentives, were only informed when the crowds were in Zócalo Square. They left, only for a ‘temporary period’. Tirado López took Mexico City without a shot. The Mexican who had long fought as a guerrilla commander with the Sandinistas down in Nicaragua (winning in the very end due to Cuban overt military assistance rather than on their own) had no need for bullets in his home country. When the politicians representing one of Mexico’s two current governments, and which had been the de jure one as far as international recognition was, ran away fearing for their lives now that someone could really control the people effectively.

From out in the Zócalo, Tirado López – still in shock at how easy it had been – declared the Second Mexican Revolution. The crowds roared in approval, almost none of them knowing what that would truly mean: bread and jobs would be a long way off for them. The country had seen months of civil strife and outbreaks of fighting but Tirado López was about to give his country a real civil war. That would be one which would, just like the others that had taken place across Central America over the past years, drag in other countries too.



October 1983:

The fighting continued in El Salvador and Honduras. It was more bloody and wide-ranging in the former yet in the latter it was just as serious. The regimes in the two small Central American nations, squeezed between Guatemala and Nicaragua, fought to survive the onslaught against them from guerrillas inside backed by those outside. El Salvador continued to have foreign support while Honduras remained friendless. Government forces and those of the rebels each committed further gross violations of human rights against civilians and also captured opponents. For the majority of those involved in the fighting, what it was all about, the cause which they were engaged in, was a side matter when it came to expressing the brutality which they did. There was no reprieve for those caught in the crossfire whether they be in rural or urban areas as it seemed like the fighting stretched across the whole of each nation. Terror was the order of the day for government forces and rebels where they sought to bring the civilian population on-side by either frightening them into supporting them or killing them if they refused to. The two civil wars saw no armies line up opposite each other and fight a full-scale battle where the frontlines were clear and the goals out in the open. No, instead, each were all about multiple clashes day and night between small groups of armed men. There were patrols ambushed and those about to ambush a patrol caught beforehand. Bomb attacks took place against soldiers and guerrillas when they were in the rear. False flag strikes were made against civilian targets so the other side would get the blame as the internal propaganda war was fought. For the people each side fought… and by doing so it was the people whom they killed. Each conflict continued to rage in the two nations with no sign yet that there was any end in sight.

Honduras could hold out because even while alone, the rebels which it faced weren’t that strong. There were several groups fighting the government with varying degrees of success and not coordinated in that fight. President Paz García was able to direct the attention of his security forces against one then another where and when the threat from each intensified without having to worry that this might cause major problems elsewhere. Several of his generals feared that soon enough the rebels would unite and this strategy would backfire but it had yet to do so. Paz García was sure he knew what he was doing as well: that was all that mattered in the end. The strongest rebel groups were the two now receiving significant Nicaraguan support: the Chinchoneres’ and the Zelayas. Each styled themselves as popular and for liberating the people while used the names of long-dead apparent revolutionaries who’d been martyred fighting government oppression etc. They weren’t popular nor fighting to liberate the people. Each would oppress the people the first chance they got at power. Nicaragua was supporting each with weapons, money and a safe base of operations. Advisors were present too, former Sandinista guerrillas who weren’t suited to the new Nicaraguan People’s Army built along Cuban lines and no longer something designed for guerrilla warfare. The skill-set for guerrilla warfare among many Sandinistas remained and, under orders, they were inside Honduras. If the Chinchoneres’ and the Zelayas were to start fighting together, and joined by either some more of the smaller rebel groups or possibly given increased Nicaraguan support, then Paz García and his regime were going to be finished. The rebels were yet to unite though and neither had Nicaragua fully thrown everything it could do against Honduras. No longer was Honduras a safe-haven for anti-Sandinista rebels (Nicaragua’s intent for intervening in Honduras) – they hadn’t lasted that long – and so the situation remained as it was with the innocent dying in Honduras and no one lifting a finger to stop that.

Argentina and Venezuela had pulled their support for El Salvador with General Romero recognised in Buenos Aires and Caracas as being a bloodthirsty maniac. Only Chile remained supporting the little nation. From down in Santiago, General Pinochet kept on seeing his proxy war with Cuba continue. Those two countries both had a stake in the fight for the eventual future of El Salvador. Meanwhile, those on the ground, government forces and guerrillas alike, engaged in their own battles for what they believed would be their eventual full control over their own nation, not to satisfy those from countries so very far away. The rebels in El Salvador were united and they had a friendly base of operations across in Guatemala. Guatemala was still licking its wounds after the Belize War and while there was a new army being built, it wasn’t one destined for the fighting in El Salvador. The rebels were doing that all on their own. They received Cuban help with weapons but it was they who took the fight to their own countrymen, those in uniform and those not. In San Salvador, the capital city rocked by almost daily outbursts of gunfire or the blasts of bombs, Romero threw everything he had at trying to defeat them. He would bring the whole country down before he gave it over to the rebels. Noriega came up once again in October and it was Panama’s leader – a man with long-standing military ties to El Salvador; ones recently frayed it must be said – who urged him to consider the future of the Salvadoran people in what he was doing. Romero would have none of it. No, no, no. The guerrillas and the Cubans wouldn’t have his country! His regime would fight to the very end. Only in total victory, not any form of surrender dressed up as a compromise, would the Salvadoran Civil War end, for one side or the other.



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.



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.



December 1983:

The second wave of refugees coming from Mexico started to arrive at the US border. There were more of them than the first time, far more. No longer were they middle-class Mexicans but those with less means to support themselves or none at all. The Americans weren’t expecting them. There seemed no reason for them to flee. Flee they did though. They left Mexico and headed for what was seen as safety in the United States. From California through to Arizona across to New Mexico and down to Texas, tens of thousands turned up at ports of entry along the border through early December. Families and single people came in vehicles or on foot. They all wanted to enter the United States. Why? Because Mexico was having its civil war and they wanted no part of it. That civil war erupted with the first armed clashes between the two sides through the early part of the month which intensified fast. Mexico City and Monterrey both had governments claiming to be the sole legitimate one for Mexico: up in the United States, they were respectively called the Communists and the Northern Alliance. Both had spent last month trying to build together armed forces to assert that legitimacy which they claimed and defend themselves from the other. With varying degrees of success, they each had put together the basics though when elements of those clashed, the improvising which had been done showed. The scale of the destruction with the Mexican Army had previously done to themselves with the desertions and munities wasn’t something that could be overcome in a month. Moreover, as was the case especially with Communists which Tirado López led, but also with the Northern Alliance too, there was little real commitment from men forced back into uniform and pushed onwards to fight ‘the enemy’. Mexico’s communist fighters weren’t communists; those fighting for the politicians in Monterrey didn’t have a real cause either. The latter was now being led by the former cabinet financial secretary Jesús Silva Herzog Flores after he’d won a power struggle out over Miguel de la Madrid. Herzog Flores didn’t like the name ‘Northern Alliance’ nor the idea that the Monterrey Government which represented northern and western states of Mexico was anything but the real Mexican government. His regime was still trying to define itself: it wasn’t communist, that was the only certainty.

The armed clashes which drove the refugees towards the United States were small in scale but took place from Sonora across to Chihuahua & Coahuila down to Nuevo León & Tamaulipas plus into Veracruz. There were no frontlines and no big armies on the march. Each side either attacked or defended from the other. Transport routes were the focus in some instances where elsewhere it was big towns and cities. These were the opening moves where the opposing sides were feeling each other out. There had been confidence expressed from on high that the other wouldn’t fight and would roll over once determination was shown. That believe was shown to be right but, conversely, wrong too. What happened was nothing more than a mess. There was death and destruction all over the place for no gain. It wasn’t just soldiers and militias in the service of the two sides who were killed and injured either. Civilians were caught up in this with them suffering. This was the cause of the flight of refugees. Few, very few, had seen any of the fighting. They ran from it instead, long before it came to them. Safety was that way, up in the United States. The Communists and the Northern Alliance were starting to forcibly draft men to fight as well, further driving the flight of civilians to avoid that for themselves. These were people that had witnessed their country collapse in the last several months and where it was now fully at war with itself. There was mass unemployment, no food, violent crime was springing up all over the place and there were closures of schools & hospitals as Mexico came apart. They had to go north, there was no other choice for themselves that so many could see.


Rejection from Mexico City of the hand of friendship was a hard pill to swallow for Washington. The first brush-off hadn’t been taken seriously, Tirado López had to say it many times for the message to get through. Revolutionary Mexico wanted nothing from the United States and the gringos could get lost with their demands that Mexico honour its debts to American banks. He refused to meet with the ambassador when efforts were made from the latter to do so. Finally, Tirado López sent him an angry letter hand-delivered to the embassy. Its contents were rather undiplomatic. The money lent to the former Mexico wasn’t something that the new Mexico recognised. It had been lent in bad faith too, in a manner to leave the Mexican people dependent upon the United States so as to destroy the ‘national soul’ of Mexico. Furthermore, on other matters, Mexico no longer recognised oil contacts signed with the United States either and would be looking elsewhere to sell the ‘property of the Mexican people’ rather than to American companies who claimed future ownership.

A copy of the latter was then released to the media in Mexico City for domestic and foreign consumption. On Wall Street, the banks took notice. So did those aboard elsewhere in Western Europe and the Far East where there were more banks which held Mexican debt. This was something which within weeks was to come to a head.



December 1983:

Two significant international events occurred in the last week of December 1983 which would push the world to war the following September. Without either, the Third World War couldn’t, wouldn’t take place. Even alone, neither would. The two of them, when combined together and playing into so much before and afterwards, would cause that conflict. Only later would they be looked back upon with the significance realized. At the time, the future wasn’t something that could be seen.

The first was the Wall Street Crash of ’83. Just before Christmas, the stock market took a sudden and sharp slump. Billions were wiped off the value of shares in American companies. The follow-up would be no temporary blip as many would say in response: starting in the new year, the United States and then the West would enter a recession following the Crash of ’83. The economic effects would fast spread from Wall Street outwards across the world through nations far afield. It would feel like everyone was affected and that was generally the case too. Countries, companies, workers and pensioners around the world would feel the effects of the financial crash. It occurred on a Thursday morning in New York, though actually began late the previous day in the Far East on the Hong Kong and Tokyo markets. There were Asian banks which were holding a lot of American commercial debt, debt that was owed to them by Mexico and other Latin American nations. It wasn’t going to be paid. Mexico was steadfastly refusing to honour its debts and there was real concern that other countries across the region who said they would honour theirs just weren’t going to be able to either. They had all borrowed heavily to finance infrastructure while not using the money wisely. The realization came that that money was gone. The value of the holdings by Asian banks were corrected in Hong Kong and Tokyo. The next morning, with that in mind, there was an avalanche effect on Wall Street. American traders reacted to what had happened in Asia yet more so they were already gravely concerned over the state of the domestic US economy. The rate of personal savings was too low and personal debt too high. Access to credit was being restricted and inflation was climbing at an alarming rate. The US Treasury and the Federal Reserve had both been trying to dampen the latest figures but there had come a news story the day before where it was alleged that both were doing so due to political pressure from the Kennedy Administration: his re-election campaign next year was to be run on how he had ‘fixed’ the economy. The correction from Asia was met with a correction on Wall Street. Things soon afterwards got out of hand. Other country’s debts were looked at too that morning, those being across Greece and Eastern Europe, so many more countries were there was real or perceived political instability that could cause complete economic collapse within. No one on Wall Street wanted to be the last one holding the debt at home nor abroad. Sell, sell, sell. Keep selling they just did. The New York Stock Exchange was closed early that day. The intention was to give the traders the afternoon off so they could reconsider their actions. The Treasury and the Federal Reserve made announcements about injecting money into the economy while working behind the scenes with key figures. By then though, Western European markets were opening and having crashes of their own. They had long been granting major loans across Eastern Europe – plus Greece, now sent over the edge into complete financial collapse – that all were looking lost. Panic hit Western Europe as well and they had their own market corrections. Too much damage was being done. It was irreversible, in the short-term at least, and would bring about that recession come January.

Andropov died. The general secretary passed away and the country would need a new leader. Fast appointed by his colleagues in what wasn’t a unanimous vote (the way things were usually done) and instead a contentious decision to head-up the Funeral Committee for Andropov, was Marshal Ustinov. Chebrikov had been stopped from succeeding Andropov with the latter going to his grave with that knowledge and believing that he had achieved his goal of avoiding a future war. The alliances and secret agreements in the Politburo had seen upheaval at the last minute where Chebrikov was unable to gain enough support. Once Ustinov had that position to oversee the burial of Andropov, he was guaranteed to succeed his dead comrade as general secretary. That was the way things were done. Ustinov had the votes to assure his reaching of that position and, after the unexpected drama with the funeral decision, other colleagues who had favoured Chebrikov over him would rather see less drama occur when it came to that second decision and vote for Ustinov while urging Chebrikov to take a step back. Unity was what was favoured, not division. The unity would be for a man very different from Andropov. Marshal Dmitri Fyodorovich Ustinov was a military officer who had never served in the military. He wore the uniform and the (many) medals to show service in the armed forces though those had been during World War Two where he had been a military commissar rather than a soldier. He was a technocrat with a long background in the defence industry. Andropov had been an ally, a friend even, and Ustinov had been prepared to follow Andropov’s earlier wishes of supporting a younger candidate for general secretary. When Andropov decided that that wasn’t to be done due to the threat from Chebrikov, he put himself forward. His leadership of the Soviet Union, which would commence in the New Year, was meant to focus upon domestic affairs at home and continuing to ensure security for the state from threats based abroad. Ustinov would continue the military build-up at home but attempt to scale back the course of events in Latin America where Soviet and American interests were colliding. There would be other priorities for his government too such a making sure that issue with the Ukrainian breadbasket was fixed and that Eastern Europe was kept from rebellion. Those were all big challenges. Only the spending on more tanks, more aircraft, more missiles, more warships and so on would succeed. Instead, despite not wanting to, he would be at the helm of the ship of state when there would be complete reversal of all that Andropov had done in improving direct superpower-to-superpower relations with the Americans. Ustinov would lead his country to war with Andropov turning over in his grave at such a mistake.


[End of Part II]