The Grenada Invasion, International Law and the Scoon Invitation: A 30-year Retrospective

Abstract

All the international legal rationales for the US-OECS (Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States) invasion of Grenada in October 1983 arguably depend, at least in part, on the nature, substance and circumstances of the request for external assistance that was made by Grenadian Governor-General Sir Paul Scoon. Of all the factual circumstances surrounding the Grenada episode, perhaps the least well known in the 1980s were those related to the so-called ‘Scoon invitation’. Thirty years later, this article identifies the politically and legally consequential details of the Scoon invitation to which we are now privy, drawing upon the memoir accounts of key participants, scholarly interviews with key Grenada decision-makers, and declassified US government documents. Situating the Grenada case within post-1983 state practice on ‘interventions by invitation’, it concludes that Sir Paul did not initiate his informal, oral invitation or author his formal, written one, and that even though he genuinely supported ‘Operation Urgent Fury’, the Governor-General’s invitation did not legally justify the operation.