Editorials

...There are diplomatic strategies that might well serve the cause of democracy in Nicaragua, providing incentives for a modus vivendi between the Sandinistas and their democratic dissidents...

...The Russians will have to match us battle star for battle star...

...Yes, that would jar the standing government's legitimacy...

...has an interest in not being complicit with murderers and the protectors of murderers, whose immediate crimes cry to the heavens no matter what long-term justifications are made for them, and who stain with blood whatever benefit this nation would render to the cause of freedom and human dignity the world over...

...And finally the U.S...

...The United States has a number of interests in Central America...

...He finally saw the point, and his successor, Yuri H. Andropov must think it a cruel joke that he's now arguing as LBJ and Robert S. McNamara did only a decade ago.y a decade ago...

...And Nicaragua...

...The Carter administration did cut off arms to Guatemala...

...There is hardly a point among them on which we are not worse off than we were in 1980...

...Some American Catholics -as well as many non-Catholic fellow-citizens and, of course, many Latin Americans, too-have been in the one revolutionary regime to emerge in the region, Nicaragua's, a kind of beacon shining toward a just society...

...Central American policy have managed to achieve something nearly as difficult-the simultaneously disserving of all those interests...

...The U.S...

...has an interest in preventing the area from becoming an armed base for the Soviet Union...

...accepts the risk of nuclear war, and hence (2) Secretary Weinberger's $1.6 trillion five-year arms buildup which counts' on more of everything-carriers, naval forces, M-l tanks, MX missiles, B-l bombers, cruise missiles, and the skilled personnel to handle these complicated weapons-in order to fight either nuclear or conventional war "across the full spectrum of conflict...

...provide Guatemala with more assistance...

...Guatemala: mopping up exercises after last year's military sweeps that the Guatemalan bishops compared to genocide, writing , "Not even the lives of old people, pregnant women, or innocent children were respected...

...Is it surprising that Central Americans would link the U.S...

...assistance to Nicaraguan guerrillas retaining heavy Somocista leadership is both illegal and self-defeating...

...indeed, in 1973 he served as director of studies at the Department of Defense's Inter-American Defense College in Washington...

...There are risks in such a course, but more risks, it seems to us, in the path the U.S...

...But English crossbows didn't stop the French back then, nor are ASATs likely to deter Moscow this time...

...but it seems futile to recommend them to an administration that is blatantly contravening its own democratically voted laws...

...The U.S...

...Archbishop Hickey recently testified to Congress that while some continuation of military aid to El Salvador may be necessary, it must "be conditioned on stringent requirements linking it to a pursuit of dialogue and ceasefire...

...That makes about as much sense as sending Hitler ovens in hopes that he might be more moderate in using them...

...is now following...

...Despite several premature announcements of the guerrillas' demise, they now seem to be stronger than before...

...Hence the president's Star War speech gets us in our primary process, where our wishful thinking lies, just as it hits our enemies in the same place, where their worst fears lie...

...Who will deny the appeal of making nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete" like French armor at Crecy...

...Reagan disingenuously did not mention that laser and particle beam satellites can be used offensively as well as defensively, indeed for a first strike...

...For the fact is that Mr...

...So now there is talk of adding the games of rotating generals and new military tactics to the games of paper amnesties and periodic elections we have already begun, and please, please, don't anyone bring up Vietnamn...

...today, it is implicated in the struggles against that power and for a measure of equality and justice...

...to Rios Montt's terrorism, just as Eastern Europeans hold Moscow accountable for their Soviet-tutored local keepers...

...It is worth recalling, as Allan Nairn points out in the New Republic, that Rios Montt was trained in counter-insurgency at Fort Bragg...

...The alternative is to take up the insurgents' offer to enter negotiations...

...To this daunting arsenal Reagan would now add an estimated $200 billion to develop weapons for an even wider spectrum conflict...

...shipping routes...

...First, while it is understandable that so much hope has been placed, especially by many Catholic activists, in the Sandinista regime that succeeded a cruel Somoza dictatorship, Catholic liberationists have been delinquent in not subjecting that regime to the "social analysis" on which they pride themselves...

...The Russians aren't alone in needing assurances on this score...

...In the past, the church has been implicated in the maintenance of oligarchical power...

...Nor did he present his nuclear shield as part of a bilateral agreement with the Soviets, one that would guarantee their invulnerability as well as ours...

...but besides complaining that Rios Montt had received "a bum rap," Reagan has started supplying spare parts plus who know what amount of covert aid...

...The account recently published in the New Republic (April 11,1983) of General Rios Montt's campaign of rural terror ought to make anyone's blood run cold...

...It may be difficult to serve all those interests equally well...

...Perhaps it should...

...American Catholics, directly touched by the experiences, the sufferings, and the martyrdoms of missionaries, have taken an unprecedented interest in those struggles...

...But that is the only basis upon which a high frontier defense might possibly lead to a safer world for our children...

...Americans who cannot understand that kind of rebellion should think back to European resistance movements in which Communists and democrats did not let competing visions of the future keep them from uniting against the evils of the moment...

...The U.S...

...The U.S...

...Some, after all, may conflict at times with others...

...Since the bulk of this issue explores the complexities of the situation there, we limit ourselves to two observations...

...has an interest in supporting the growth of democratic institutions in that region rather than military or revolutionary dictatorships...

...Capitals throughout the Western hemisphere: peace plans for Central America floating in the air like soap bubbles, only to be pricked by one or another nation's reticence...

...If one wants to play realpolitik, there are better arguments for supplying the Guatemalan guerrillas than for supplying the government...

...In private, these officials admit that the Salvadoran military is a mess-despite a great deal more arms and training from the U.S...

...Catholics, too, have a number of special interests in Central America The faith is woven deeply into the fabric of the region's life...

...But the last several years of U.S...

...The American bishops have been a strong voice for restraint and caution in the face of a U.S...

...has an interest in earning the good will of the people despite a history of thirty-three American military interventions in the Caribbean and Central America over the last ninety years...

...El Salvador is much more complicated...

...the American people might well be nervous too...

...Now, because of the deathly calm momentarily descending on Guatemala and because new aid may allegedly provide "leverage" with which to improve the Guatemalan army's human rights record, some people are urging that the U.S...

...BATTLE STARS Dreams of military invulnerability have got to be the oldest on record...

...In public, Washington and Salvadoran officials attribute the successes of these guerrillas to the arms and training they receive from Nicaragua, Cuba, and the Soviet bloc...

...policy that has preferred to ignore the local and social causes of Central American turmoil and recast the area's problems in military and East-West terms...

...Guatemala presents the simplest problem, because in most ways it presents the most horrifying situation...

...El Salvador: government forces so hard-pressed by the guerrilla insurgency that Reagan has asked Congress for $110 million in emergency military aid...

...Or should they really panic at the prospect of the Big American Brother o'erlooking their ICBMs, imagine the temptation of a pre-emptive first strike-or simply defending themselves with a small nuclear blast in space, thus wreaking command and control havoc...

...Women and children massacred, young men tortured, Indian villages bombed, a million people homeless-these were not incidental atrocities committed by troops run wild but established practices that were part of a centrally supervised effort...

...There are three focal points for policy in Central America...

...As it stood, the scheme seemed the usual one-upmanship that has locked the superpowers into their spiraling dance of death for decades...

...That social analysis must subsume the lessons of Montesquieu and Madison as well as of Marx and recognize that, regardless of Sandinista intentions, the Nicara-guan leaders' unwillingness to guarantee institutionally independent centers of thought and action promises to be disastrous to freedom...

...The guerrillas appear to be fueled in part by Marxist-Leninist ideology that hardly promises a better future for El Salvador, in part by simple revulsion against a regime that both fosters and tolerates widespread assassination, and that remains subservient to entrenched economic interests...

...has an interest in the security of the Panama Canal and of the biggest "domino," Mexico...

...Second, while we sympathize with those Nicara-guans struggling to force the Sandinistas to return to the original pledges of political pluralism and non-alignment, we believe that the current U.S...

...Reagan's dream must be put in the context of (1) those hard-line '' survivalists" in the administration who, contrary to standard deterrence doctrine, plan to let the Kremlin know the U.S...

...Moscow and Washington: dark references to Soviet schemes to implant strategic missiles in Nicaragua or otherwise threaten the Panama Canal and vital U.S...

...Back in 1967, Alexei Kosygin was arguing just as Ronald Reagan is today, for no limitation on futuristic weapons or defenses against them...

...It was, of course, just the lunatic prospect of this kind of runaway arms race which persuaded the Soviets, in 1972, to forgo anti-ballistic defenses through the ABM treaty...