Light of the Nation - Part 19: Over There
Bill Clements, first Republican President since Ford, entered office promising a harder line against the Soviet Union. He envisioned his own version of Kennedy at the Berlin Wall, or something equally dramatic…
He would not get it.
The Soviet Union’s shaky economy and political apparatus had reached a breaking point. Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of of glasnost and perestroika were making some progress. But the rickety system could not hold. Over the course of the Winter of 1989-90, the Iron Curtain tore. Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia all fell without firing a shot, and quickly began a transition to democracy. Bulgaria’s Communists remained in power, moving towards a semi-liberal state. However not all transitions were peaceful. Romania fell into a brief civil war. In Germany, thousands were massacred at Leipzig. When it became apparent the Soviets would not intervene, the Army backpedaled and removed Erich Honecker from power. The new Junta cracked down on sporadic uprisings, while looking for political accommodation with the opposition. Eventually a peace was brokered, and East Germany began a slow, managed, transition to Civillian, and Democratic, rule. But the wall still stood, if lazily guarded, and negotiations with the west were badly hampered by the “Leipzig Incident,” as it was obliquely named.
Gorbachev watched with consternation, and had to fend off several Coup plots by the skin of his teeth. Meanwhile the “National Opposition” was gaining strength as well. Still, he pushed onward with his New Union treaty, which granted actual elections and a new constitution. Not everyone was impressed, with the Baltic States winding up breaking off and going their own way, despite the Government’s efforts, both open and nefarious. Moldova followed as well. It was a major blow to Gorbachev, who stationed tanks in Kyiv to avoid a similar result there. But the big problem was the Caucuses. Old political feuds meshed with nationalism meshed with old ethnic feuds. Every concession to group A provoked violence from group B. Islamists demanded this, Christians that. Violence broke out across the region. Gorbachev, perhaps hoping to avoid violence on his watch, committed to intervention for “peace, secuirty, and freedom” for the people of the Caucuses. This just made everything worse. Gorbachev’s gamble had dragged his country into a quagmire. With a quagmire at home, and the empire gone abroad, Gorbachev more or less threw in the towel at a summit with Clements in Salzburg in 1992. The Soviets were not gone, but the Cold War had frozen completely.
This was all fine and dandy for Clements, who got to trumpet this triumph to high heavens. The rise of Islamists in the Caucuses also helped him sell his big military intervention in the New World, both to skeptics at home and in the United Nations.
In 1990, members of the small Muslim minority in Trinidad and Tobago managed to dispose the government, including taking the royal representative hostage. Their approach to government blended leftist and Islamist ideals, but struggled to gain traction outside their small clique. Foreign sanctions piled on, and the Islamic Government tried to add nationalism to their cocktail. But attacks on foreign vessels, and especially American ones attracted international ire. Opposition was emboldened (and suddenly well supplied). One attack too many on American shipping, and Operation Revolver launched. It was quick. Setting up the blockade and landing forces took a bit, and the actual clearing of all of the islands took a bit. And yeah, Venezuelan complaints about airspace violations. But it was quick.
And, unlike Vietnam, American boots were out of Trinidad by Election Day 1992. Nothing like a quick, glorious war for Bill Clements. And he’d knocked over the USSR with less effort than it took the SMU Mustangs to beat the Rice Owls.
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