The Grenada Adventure

摘要

Grenada is the smallest and southernmost of the Windward Islands in the Caribbean, only 21 miles long and 12 miles wide. Except for the spice plantations that produced a third of the world's nutmeg, there was not much there in 1983. A medical school operated by investors in the United States accounted for 15 percent of its total economy. However, the little island nation offered several strategic benefits to the Soviet Union and its client state, Cuba. The leftist government in Grenada had given the Cubans permission to build a 9,000-foot airfield of military quality at Point Salines on the southern shore, and it was nearly complete.