So, long story short, I've been revisiting The Third World War , a fictional military history of a NATO-WTO war which occurs in 1985. It's not a remotely interesting book, but sometimes those are the only ones left on your bookshelf.
Since it was authored by a bunch of NATO generals and military experts, the martial scenarios were considered, at the time, to be remarkably precise and well-thought out. Looking back, it does have an awful lot of Cold War canards: heroic white Rhodesians defending their homelands from guerrilla savages, the Shah of Iran protecting the Gulf, and Russia ultimately collapsing because they don't have Freedom like 'Murica.
But there are a few odds and ends that seem too weird to even be considered anachronisms. Like the prediction that, by 1985, Jamaica has replaced Cuba as the center of communist revolution in both Africa and the Americas.
Was there any basis, in fact or fantasy, for this prediction? Was John Hacket prescient about the Sandinistas, but didn't know how to spell "Nicaragua?" Or did he just need a communist country in the Carribean and just say "Fuck it, let's go with Jamaica?"
Some elements of the American intelligence community were indeed concerned about Jamaica as a potential site of communist influence in the 1970s. The key figure in this regard was Prime Minister Michael Manley, whose People’s National Party was swept into power in the 1972 election on a platform of democratic socialism and a promise to “give power to the people.”
A handsome and dashing figure who rejected suits and ties in favour of his trademark Kariba look, Manley instituted a minimum wage, guaranteed free education and free health care, implemented land reform, subsidized public housing, and strengthened labour unions, while promising to deliver a higher quality of life and a more democratic culture to all Jamaicans.
But of even greater concern to the United States was his foreign policy: Manley played a prominent role in the Non-Aligned movement, which was meant to free developing countries from the shackles of neo-colonialism by positioning them outside both the Soviet and American spheres of influence. One of the ways of doing this was to form alliances with other Third World countries – Manley was a strong advocate of a Caribbean union – and this policy brought Manley into a close relationship with Fidel Castro, who also played a central role in Non-Aligned affairs. (And remember that Cuba lies only 90 miles to the north of Jamaica.)
This relationship involved a plethora of cultural exchanges, from medical assistance to large-scale construction projects, and many Jamaican doctors received their training in Cuba. It also involved Manley breaking ranks with other Western countries by supporting policies that might have been deemed communist. In particular, Manley supported Cuba’s military intervention in the war in Angola, which was designed to support the country’s leftist government against a US-backed South African incursion. He also refused to join the boycott against the Moscow Olympics in 1980.
This alliance between Manley and Castro made many American intelligence observers nervous, and there is widespread suspicion – confirmed to some degree by the reporting of the journalist Gary Webb – that the CIA sought to destabilize the Manley government by funding the opposition Jamaica Labour Party as well as drug bosses who fuelled the increasing street violence of the 1970s.
This violence culminated with the bloody election of 1980, which saw over 800 Jamaicans killed, and brought Manley’s government to a close with a victory by the JLP.
That being said, there was actually no real likelihood that communism would have taken hold in Jamaica: Manley described himself as a democratic socialist, and the Marxist left had never held much sway in Jamaica. (The PNP had in fact been purged of communists in 1952.) In fact, by the end of his second term Manley began moving the country in an increasingly neo-liberal direction in order to satisfy the terms of a loan he had received from the International Monetary Fund, cutting back on public spending and introducing austerity measures.
So in short, there was some basis for the notion that Jamaica might flirt with communism – although this basis was mostly in the paranoid flights of fancy of the more right-leaning figures in the State Department and CIA.
Additional source: Brian Meeks, “Cuba from Due South: An Anglo-Caribbean Perspective,” Caribbean Quarterly, 58 (2012): 87-98