Operation Southern Storm - Red Dawn Averted

Operation Southern Storm – Red Dawn Averted

The eight years covering the first term of US President Gerry Ford and the single term of President Ted Kennedy had seen the country which the two men had led fall back from its leading position in world affairs, especially in the manner of shaping them. Severe economic woes at home had caused an internal distraction, one which forced the country’s leaders to look inwards. There were no wars for the United States to fight. There were no conflicts chosen to get involved in. Criticism came yet the eye was taken off the ball when so much else was going on in the world which was hostile to American interests. Arguments took place with allies, long-standing traditional ones such as those in Western Europe, the Middle East and East Asia. There were the repeated claims that the United States was losing its role as the guarantor of the free world as it retreated into itself while hostile aggression from opponents of the United States, and enemies of its allies, flourished in the face of this. Neither Ford nor Kennedy had agreed with such a line of thinking. They had kept their country out of costly foreign wars post-Vietnam and had believed that the red lines which they set, ones which were continually crossed, hadn’t been stomped all over. Kennedy’s successor, taking office at the beginning of 1985, had a different opinion. Jack Kemp, aided by the recognised highly-influential Donald Rumsfeld as his vice president, would set out to reverse the coming danger.


The coming danger was the red tide which had swept through Latin America in the years 1977-84. The Soviets were busy with their wars through Afghanistan against Islamic insurgents and the ‘correcting’ the revolution which had been undertaken by communists not to Moscow’s liking through Iran. Whilst doing so, the Soviet Union led by Yuri Andropov since 1977 (after Brezhnev’s untimely death), gave support given to the country’s fraternal allies in Cuba as a proxy. The Castro Brothers, Fidel and Raul, oversaw Cuba getting involved in wars throughout Latin America. It started small. The Castros feared American intervention and were careful when they played a role in the defeat of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua to not show their full hand. Ford let Nicaragua fall to the communist insurgents and was more aware than Havana realised of how much Cuban interference there had been, including all of those so-called volunteers who were really professional Cuban soldiers. After Nicaragua, Cuban influence spread further. First it was to the island nation of Grenada and then the Central American country of El Salvador. Cuban weapons came first and then those volunteers showed up to help with the liberation. At all times, Cuba was able to do what it did because the Soviets gave their support. The support could have been cut at any moment. It was Honduras next where both urban & rural guerrillas (fighting two different type of wars) fought there once El Salvador was overrun. The civil war in Honduras was brutal and a bloodbath in terms of civilian casualties. Nicaraguan troops, not volunteers, showed up before the Honduran regime, one screaming for American support which new president Kennedy refused to send on a point of principle, fell in mid 1982.

Difficulties began to occur in the Latin America Bloc where the Ortega Brothers – Daniel and Humberto – started to push back against the change in direction which the Cubans began to move their alliance starting in 1983. The Castros were coming under pressure from the new Soviet leader Grigory Romanov to dial back what was seen by him as unnecessary international aggression. Cuba was exporting armed revolution and its wars caused concern in Moscow. Romanov wanted to see a new relationship with the Americans on strategic arms and other serious geo-political matters whether the United States remain under Kennedy or a new president after their late 1984 presidential election. The Castros responded positively once the Soviet Union delayed some shipments of arms and fuel to the country. The Ortegas refused to. They aimed to spread the revolution further afield, both southwards through Costa Rica and into Panama, while also northwards to Guatemala and Mexico. A real split between Cuba and Nicaragua started to occur. Things changed though when a bitter personal clash at an international summit between Kennedy and Romanov occurred on the matter of strategic arms. Cuba was given encouragement from Moscow to restart what it had begun when US-Soviet relations spiralled downhill. Soviet influence in Nicaragua started to become separate to its relations with Cuba as well. The sweeping change in the situation when it came to Soviet games in Latin America were seen in a different light up in the United States. Kennedy got tough – he tried to be seen to be anyway – on the Soviets and also what were regarded across his country as Moscow’s proxy wars through Latin America using its stooges in Cuba and Nicaragua. Whereas before the regime of Omar Torrijos in Panama had been something which Kennedy had animosity towards, Kennedy gave support to them and allowed Panamanian action to take place in Costa Rica to stop the red tide there. To Guatemala and Mexico, Kennedy did an about-turn and allowed for covert American support to go to those regimes (Guatemala’s being rather nasty; Mexico’s just being plain old corrupt) as they fought America’s proxy wars on the frontlines in Central America. Elsewhere in the world, the Soviets were busy too playing games in Spain to keep that country out of NATO and also manipulating tense Middle Eastern affairs against Israel whom Kennedy had wholeheartedly supported in its recent wars.

United States action blew up in Kennedy’s face during late 1983. Soviet exposure of what was spun as America’s so-called secret wars in Latin America drew sharp opposition. Kennedy’s base was up in arms; Kennedy’s opponents privately favoured what was being done but used the spotlight shone on the death squads and illegal funding to attack the president to stop him being re-elected. American arms shipments and funding was cut off by Congress in the fall-out. Soviet games extended in the region had fulfilled their goals of weakening Kennedy. They were done. Neither their new allies in Nicaragua nor old allies in Cuba were though. Guatemala was a lost cause yet Mexico was something different. Through happenstance, not design, the red tide of revolution spread there. It was an internal matter due to a spectacular domestic economic crash followed by an attempted coup d’état by the military. Mexico slowly descended into civil war. Kennedy talked tough but didn’t, couldn’t interfere. Romanov wanted nothing to do with the Mexican Civil War fearing that it would ignite a world war. The Castros and the Ortegas made nice with each other and interfered in Mexico. 1984 saw the civil war supported by those external actors from abroad. Again and again, Romanov urged his allies to back off yet didn’t turn off the tap of material and financial support for them. There was a plan in Moscow for how things in Mexico would go and how it would tie Cuba and Nicaragua firmly to the Soviet Union completely. Like Kennedy, Romanov had his scheme fail too. His allies couldn’t be trusted. They were aiming to bring down the whole country and establish a communist regime on America’s doorstep. Volunteers weren’t yet sent to Mexico: Romanov drew his red line for his allies on that matter. Yet, not to his knowledge, there were those within the Soviet leadership, the KGB head at the top, who were doing the opposite and encouraging (and helping) wreck Romanov’s plans for their own domestic powerplays.

Civil war in Mexico caused a strong domestic political reaction in the United States. Kennedy was seen as doing nothing as he tried to not upset his re-election campaign. Mexico plunged further into chaos though and there were refugees who came over the border. Suspicion of more foreign interference than there actually was occurred and the political mood in the country was ‘to act’. Kennedy sunk in the polls, faced by a challenger in the form of Kemp who promised ‘to act’. In November, Kemp won the election. Romanov by that point fully understood what would happen if he didn’t put a stop to everything: a world war against the United States and what allies it could muster, probably including China among them. He instructed his allies to cease and desist all and every activity in Mexico. The Castros and the Ortegas refused and instead did what Romanov had long told them not to: move troops into Mexico to aid the communists rebels who fought through the New Year to take control of much of Mexico. Romanov cut off aid and this had the effect of causing his opponents at home to try to make their move. They failed in that. Romanov had the new KGB chief aim to sow discord among the Cuban-Nicaraguan alliance and within each too. They carried onwards with their behaviour, convinced that Romanov would reverse course once again. He didn’t. This time it was different. A final warning was sent days before Kemp’s inauguration of no more support for Cuba and Nicaragua. The response was negative and more of their forces were sent to Mexico. They had made their bed, so the Castros and Ortegas must lie in it. The Soviet foreign minister and his new opposite number in Washington met in Geneva. Romanov’s abandonment of its allies was made clear to Kemp.

Operation Southern Storm commenced on February 4th 1985. Kemp kept his promise ‘to act’ when it came to Mexico and the red tide on America’s southern border.


The multi-stage military operation across a wide region had been in the planning for many months, crossing through the Kennedy and Kemp administrations behind the scenes. There had been an announced military build-up and also further American military preparations not made public. There was always going to be more time needed, but the Americans felt that they were ready enough to make their strike. A huge force had been assembled and was unleashed southwards.

Mexico was at first the main theatre of military operations. From the skies, American bombs rained down on Mexican forces fighting for the revolution against the governmental forces which were on the back-foot. Cuban and Nicaraguan troops were few in number but were hit hard by air strikes as well; where their fighters came up, were shot out of the skies above Mexico. American ground forces moved into Mexico. The Yucatan Peninsula saw the arrival of the US Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps land to take on the Cuban military presence there. The two combat divisions (the 82nd Airborne & 101st Air Assault) fought through February against stronger Cuban opposition than anticipated and then against Mexican revolutionaries as well. Their victory here was always going to happen though, especially since Cuba, just across the Yucatan Channel, might have been half a world away when US air and naval power came into play. Across the Rio Grande from Texas and down from New Mexico came the five-division US Army III Corps (1st Cavalry, 1st Infantry, 2nd Armored, 4th Infantry & 5th Infantry) which entered Mexico and took on all comers. Their destination was Mexico City. They got there within three weeks, smashing all before them though, like their fellow soldiers fighting in the Yucatan, it wasn’t as easy as first thought and not a fight whose cost wasn’t high in losses. US Marines with two divisions (the 1st & 3rd) went into northwestern Mexico from their starting points in California and Arizona overland as well as making amphibious inroads on Mexico’s Pacific coastline where rebels could be found too. They supported government forces in eliminating revolutionary elements and also a Nicaraguan force which had moved high up into Mexico. The Marines raced ahead soon enough, taking over a huge chunk of Mexico and at one point dreaming of Mexico City… until the US Army had Rumsfeld’s ear on that matter and made sure that the III Corps got there first.

From both Guatemala and Panama, the US Army used their I Corps to lead a joint effort with those two countries – the Americans did the heavy work though – to smash Central America’s red regimes. Honduras was where the 7th Infantry fought; the 9th Infantry went to El Salvador and the 25th Infantry (having moved from Hawaii to Panama) advanced through Costa Rica into Nicaragua. The Ortega regime collapsed faster than anyone could have thought; there were too many troops sent abroad. In El Salvador and Honduras, the fighting went on for far longer and the conflict might have been officially over by the eventual ceasefire but it really wasn’t. The killing would go on for a long time afterwards in those two unfortunate countries, drawing in more and more Guatemalan and Panamanian action after American troops would eventually leave.

Cuba was hit with air and naval attacks as Southern Storm struck at the island nation. Soviet forces in-country had been ordered inside their garrisons and such places were off-limits to American action. Havana was bombed and Cuba’s military targeted. Despite all the bombs and naval shelling, Cuba did what America feared it would and attacked Guantanamo Bay. An infantry assault took place, one supported by tanks too. Cuba’s army in Mexico took a battering and couldn’t move but on home soil those who advanced on ‘Gitmo’ were able to charge towards the long-held American base in number. Once Cuba’s troops made their move, the Americans did what they hadn’t wanted to but what Kemp knew was necessary: put troops into Cuba. There were US Marines at Gitmo but more arrived when the II MAF made their opposed landing on Cuban soil either side, putting the 2nd Marine Division (reinforced by Marine Reservists in number) in first and then the US Army’s 24th Infantry Division to follow. The Army troops here were under Marine command and there were inter-service difficulties more than anywhere else during the ongoing war including friendly fire. Gitmo was defended outside of the base perimeter, deep on Cuban soil. The Cubans kept on moving in men, despite immense air attacks. The Americans had committed so many troops elsewhere and had no more of their own to spare due to standing European commitments (Kennedy had not got around to removing them despite at the nadir of trans-Atlantic relations in 1982 threatening to). National guardsmen from selected units had been mobilised before Southern Storm started and units of them, forming a trio of composite divisions as part of the new US XI Corps, arrived in Cuba by the end of February.

By March, the war in Mexico was effectively won and it could be argued that the Central American fight was done with too when Nicaragua had fallen. In Cuba the fighting continued though. Romanov and Kemp talked through intermediaries first and then directly: Soviet assurance was given that Cuba had been cut loose. There was a deal struck where the Soviets would get what they wanted somewhere else in the world later, something that would later haunt Kemp’s presidency, but for now the Americans got what they wanted in having Cuba all to themselves. The XVIII Airborne Corps made an assault on Cuba, at its western end. The 82nd & 101st Divisions landed in and around the port of Mariel. More national guardsmen would join them as Kemp caught political flak at home with such deployments but made them anyway as he sought to win the war in Cuba. The war was to be won in Havana where American forces advanced on. US Navy warships with gunfire support aided that drive from Mariel towards the Cuban capital and so did the US Air Force with tactical aircraft as well as wings of B-52s dropping bombs aplenty. Havana was entered on March 10th and taken within four days. Cuban resistance was stubborn. The Castros had declared a patriotic war and got their people to fight. Havana was the key though to ending the war. The majority of Cuba’s army had been elsewhere and the capital was lost. The Castros were nowhere to be found by the Americans searching for them. Their presence was betrayed though when the KGB passed on information to the CIA through a go-between: Romanov sold out the Castros once again. Fidel was killed and Raul captured alive. The Americans, fighting and dying every day in Cuba despite victory after victory, finally managed to achieve victory when the complete fall of the Castros was announced and, more so, believed across Cuba.

Southern Storm was over after six weeks. Cuba and Nicaragua had been beaten and fallen to American occupation. Kemp had fulfilled his campaign promise to stop the red tide through Latin America which had swept as far as the Rio Grande before being stopped… if it hadn’t, it could have carried on going northwards. Romanov had abandoned his allies though the Soviet Union would soon reap the benefits elsewhere in the world. World War Three had been averted though the consequences of America’s sudden war against its southern neighbours would be long in the making.

That also happen in the C&C game Red Alert II.