After Grenada

While the media reporting of the anniversary of the 1983 American invasion of the tiny nation of Grenada has concentrated on the relationship between President Reagan of the US and our former prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, that event more than 30 years ago cast a long shadow over world affairs that gets longer and blacker as time goes by.

However, those of us who live in small Western democracies hate the idea of that invasion, along with the Chinese occupation of Tibet, helping to establish the concept that any super-
power can use lethal force to further its ends in countries which are outwith its borders but within its close sphere of influence.

Of course, the US has used force both covertly and openly in Central and South American countries for decades on the flimsiest of pretexts, and Putin’s Russia is escalating the practice by doing it on a large scale, brutally and blatantly, in the Ukraine today.

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And it will only be a matter of time before China picks off one more of its smaller neighbours on one pretext or another, while the UN and the rest of the world look on helplessly.

Should Britain still be trying to be involved in international affairs at that level? I don’t think so.

Irvine Inglis

Reston, Berwickshire