The Arias plan
Hehir, J. Bryan
than the one store we were stuck with, but there was something important in the feeling families knew during that one quiet day, an undercurrent which is not reinforced at the communal level...
...Such a strategy accepts the regime as a fact and invokes a multilateral strategy for containing Sandinista ambitions...
...They are the architects of potential disaster...
...proceed...
...Television exists to tell us things...
...Continuing aid is necessary because it keeps "options open for the future...
...How should the U.S...
...hands...
...American Program at the Council on Foreign Relations, is highly skeptical about the design and mechanisms of the proposal, while in Foreign Policy Viron Vaky, once Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs and a former ambassador to three Latin American nations, sees the Arias plan as a possible foundation for "positive containment" of Nicaragua...
...Kissinger and Purcell consider the contras a major reason why negotiations are now possible, and they argue against a cutoff ofcontra aid...
...Here the authors divide, reflecting the wider divisions among policy makers and the general public, too...
...strategic interests that Americans would rather not die for themselves...
...Now it produces a pattern of drift...
...But something changed in the tenor of many lives when that vague something was no longer honored, in however tenuous a way...
...Some agreement among these authors does exist on the present status of U.S...
...After six years public doubt persists about U.S...
...Adolescent boys tend to be its biggest fans...
...policy...
...For those who have argued that a fundamental problem in the past...
...There is something desperately wrong with this...
...dent Arias's peace plan for failing to limit 25 September 1987:521 definitively the Soviet-Cuban role in Nicaragua...
...All of them criticize its lack of coherence -- the failure to define objectives clearly and to propose means which are proportionate to the goals being pursued...
...As bad as many previous cultures were, they at least contained wisdom traditions, which said that life's meaning could not be found in the pursuit of money, physical comfort, or distraction...
...What the vanishing of the idea of the sabbath and the pervasive presence of television have in common is that both phenomena have come about because we have decided that profit, convenience, and distraction from our real daily lives matter deeply, more deeply than a common life...
...By 9 On the Sunday op-ed page of the January options now September 6 Washington Post, Henry open will be closed, a direction will Kissinger criticized Costa Rican Presiprobably be set for the rest of the 1980s...
...Essentially they want the congressional vote on aid divorced from the progress of the peace proposals since the viability of the Arias plan cannot be determined this autumn...
...Jews and Christians celebrate the sabbath for different reasons, at least at the level where we articulate the reasons for belief, and we celebrate it on different days...
...Incoherence led first to deception in the implementation of policy as revealed in the Iran-contra hearings...
...Central America...
...9 Equally contrasting views about the Arias plan next appeared in two of the leading foreign policy quarterlies...
...but even critics sympathetic to that aim, like Kissinger, still complain, of incoherence: "There has been next to no relationship between the administration's fierce rhetoric and its actions...
...The problem is the ease with which we can now distract ourselves, almost constantly, and the fact that since religion is given the place of a subjective preference, not a path to wisdom, we find it difficult to know how dangerous the way of distraction is...
...the more banal television programs become the subject of conversation and fantasy...
...Vaky is much less enamored of the past "Run for cover/ We're under attack/" contra role and devastatingly critical of its future prospects...
...Kissinger and Purcell envision continued, aid to the contras until the longterm viability of the Arias proposal can be tested...
...If television has become our common culture, with its emphasis on the immediate, the possibility of satisfying every desire, the importance of meeting every need ("need" and "desire" being interchangeable), we must see what this means in terms of cultural memory...
...all the liabilities are listed on the side of altering the present pblicy...
...It may be that this something had become so vague, so indefinite, that it was not worthy of honor...
...has against the Sandinistas...
...it perpetuates the killing without even a reasonable prospect of serving other purposes...
...Such an action would be irrevocable and would throw away the ultimate leverage the U.S...
...in effect asking Nicaraguans to bleed and die for U.S...
...One current best-selling video cassette series is called "Faces of Death...
...9 A contrasting piece by veteran Latin American correspondent Tad Szulc appeared on the same Sunday in the New York Times...
...the way of life offered to us as attractive and even necessary is one the Buddha, the prophets, Socrates, and Jesus would all find at least shallow and beside life's point, if not in fact deadly...
...It is a lot more convenient not to observe a sabbath at all, and more profitable as well...
...than the one store we were stuck with, but there was something important in the feeling families knew during that one quiet day, an undercurrent which is not reinforced at the communal level now, except by those who choose -- like the Amish or Orthodox Jews --to live apart in some way from the surrounding culture...
...One thing you never see on "Dynasty," "Spencer," or "Family Ties," is characters watching television about other people's lives...
...intentions: is the Reagan policy aimed at changing the internal practices and external activities of the Sandinista government, or is the White House irrevocably committed to nothing short of removal of the Sandinistas...
...people have enjoyed executions and torture for years, and the fact that religious allegiances are no longer coerced is a great advance...
...A sabbath, a day of rest, became an individual choice, one made against a busy and noisy backdrop, without a common cultural recognition...
...Not only does the urgency of television news, the illusion of immediacy it creates, emphasize what we are to find important...
...But the fact still remains, as Vaky puts it, that "no negotiated settlement can be achieved without U.S...
...Not a very benign instrument of policy...
...In the Fall 1987 issue of Foreign Affairs, Susan Kaufman Purcell, director of the Latin...
...What a society says when it decides that the observance of the sabbath is less important than profit, or convenience, or competition, is that profit and convenience matter more than the something (admittedly something we are unwilling to define too closely in a pluralistic society) which the sabbath honored...
...An equally plausible description -- at the very least -- is that contra aid has obstructed any coherent and serious diplomatic approach by the United States, that it is inevitably a stop-gap measure, and that the most it can promise is continuation of war in Nicaragua with the potential of wider war in the region...
...several years has been the subordination of Central American interests to superpower concerns, the emergence of-a Central American initiative is a positive development and a sign of hope...
...The acceptance of the Arias proposal by the other Central American presidents caught the administration by surprise, and took the action substantially out of U.S...
...The language of the policy has often suggested the latter goal...
...That noise was increased by the presence of television, which is not only a part of our common culture but pervades it...
...policy toward of the policy debate...
...It is clear that watching television has become one of the few common family experiences ir~ America...
...This depiction of the policy choice on contra aid -- admittedly only one dimension of the larger Nicaraguan, Central American, and East-West questions -fails to meet two objections...
...There is something sad, and a little absurd, about the fact that so many people watch stories about other people's lives on television, and spend so much time doing it that their own lives are passed that way...
...A society which has a place for the monastery, even though most of its members find that life a difficult or unpalatable one, is culturally stronger than one which finds the choice of such a life merely baffling...
...According to Szulc, Mr...
...but the old saw that "hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue" contains an important truth, and tribute was, at least, paid...
...participation or over U.S...
...In an ominous sounding, warning, Kissinger asserts, "The opponents of administration policy should not take upon themselves the historic responsibility of perpetuating in this hemisphere a Marxist-Leninist regime without any safeguards with respect either to security or to human rights...
...it consists of film footage of real people, really being killed, taken from every documentary source the producers could find...
...Second, contra aid stands indicted on other grounds...
...Gorbachev is signaling a desire to disengage from a disappointing client in the region...
...What a society says when it observes a sabbath -- even with some reluctance and irritation, and even when its members may celebrate on different days and for different reasons --" is that it recognizes something which matters more than profit or convenience...
...Vaky sums it up bluntly...
...First, it is a very benign and complimentary conception of the role the contra connection has played in Central American policy...
...It is depressingly common to hear people at the next table in a cafeteria talking about last night's episode of "Dynasty" or what someone said on Carson's show...
...opposition...
...WORLD WATCH I J. Bryan Hehir THE ARIAS PLAN FRAMING OUR POLICY CHOICES utumn 1987 will be a In the opening days of September a spate decisive time for of articles were staking out the main lines U.S...
...Most people, of course, didn't life up to what their cultures' wisest traditions revered...
...Cable television offers a variety ranging from old Disney films to pornography, and VCR technology allows people to watch virtually anything they like, anytime...
...522" Commonweal...
...Not that the past was wonderfully healthy...
...Vaky proposes a sharp break with past policy and the adoption of a more complex mix of incentives and pressures which he describes as "positive containment...
...there is also no clear way out of our dilemma...
...Framing the choice this way places all the burden on the opponents of aid...
Vol. 114 • September 1987 • No. 16
