New world, new roles:
Hehir, J. Bryan
NEW WORLD, NEW ROLES J. Bryan Hehir GRASPING AN OPEN MOMENT IN LATIN AMERICA There seems to be a connection between Lent and Central America. At least that is the way I think of it. In 1980...
...The Arias proposal was an essential aid to the elections just held in Nicaragua...
...the Sandinista leadership has pledged cooperation but seems ambivalent...
...In 1980 Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated just before Holy Week...
...The prospect is Salvador as a Central American Lebanon...
...It faces policy choices on Nicaragua, Salvador, and Central America as a whole...
...role should be to support the work of the Central American presidents, the UN, and the OAS...
...The convergence of changes at the three decisive levels of the Central America question: geopolitics, regional relationships, and local conflicts...
...This is a particularly important possibility for the United States, a point to which I will return...
...The U.S...
...The military ideas in that report killed it, but its economic perspective and promises were impressive...
...This is where the U.S...
...conception of a "vital security interest" in Central America, the Soviet-Cuban involvement with the Sandinistas, and, by extension, with the FMLN in Salvador, all raised the local conflict to the level of high politics...
...The second positive force of the 1990s is the regional framework for peace which emerged under the leadership of the former president of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias...
...The election in Nicaragua is the first step in a demanding process...
...But movement beyond this conclusion to progress on the diplomatic front will take both internal leadership and external assistance...
...The results of the devastating battles of last November-December proved that the FMLN cannot defeat the government militarily, but they just as clearly showed that the FMLN cannot be defeated militarily...
...Kissinger and Carter are an unlikely team in American politics...
...The moment is perilous because failure to press a matic settlement at this time in Salvador could guarantee years of indecisive but brutal conflict...
...While I believe the aid question is important, I am convinced it is not the central question this year...
...After a decade of divisive politics, the choices on Nicaragua seem relatively simple: there is bipartisan support for the new government but pressing questions as to how much economic assistance can be generated from a foreign aid account faced with urgent new requests from Eastern Europe, the Philippines, Panama, and Central America...
...More broadly, the Arias framework placed the Central American leaders in the driver's seat in their region...
...Positively, the superpowers can make it clear they are now openly, aggressively on the side of a negotiated settlement of the Central American conflict...
...George Bush should use the ideas of one and the personal diplomacy of the other to grasp the open moment of 1990 in Central America...
...The questions of whether internal reconciliation can be achieved and how much political and economic assistance will be available from the United States and Western Europe remain open...
...now promises aid to the Nicaraguan economy rather than aid to the contras...
...a focused effort is needed for Salvador...
...The harder case is El Salvador...
...But top-down solutions, whether geopolitical or regional, cannot substitute for action within the nations of Central America...
...His determined role shaped a narrow but effective consensus among the Central American presidents that combined a cease fire, a call for free elections, and a dialogue among conflicting parties in each nation...
...Central America (and Cambodia) are the leading candidates for testing how significant the changes at the top are for those at the bottom of the diplomatic ladder...
...Several candidates are available, but none better in my view than Jimmy Carter...
...While the U.S...
...The new government of Mrs...
...What creates the opportunity...
...has repeatedly said we support a diplomatic settlement, the implementation of the pledge has been unper-suasive...
...effort to support and foster a diplomatic settlement in the region...
...But the fighting which consumed thirty thousand Nicaraguan lives is no longer the dominant fact in Nicaragua...
...it stands at a perilous crossroad...
...A number of careful observers have pointed recently to the narrow but real possibility that both sides in Salvador recognize the futility of a quest for a military victory...
...The superpowers provide arms...
...The changes within the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the consequences in the U.S.-Soviet relationship establish a new geopolitical setting for addressing Central America...
...policy in the late 1980s had to respond to the Arias initiative: the Nicaraguan election adds to the credibility of the Arias conception of a negotiated settlement in Central America...
...But this is a rare moment for Central America...
...is prepared to back a diplomatic settlement in the region with the kind of large-scale economic initiative originally proposed in the Kissinger Report on Central America...
...and Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn...
...Precisely because outside forces were never the primary cause of conflict, it would be a mistake to think that changes at the superpower level will guarantee a change on the ground in Central America...
...Someone with stature and the clear endorsement of President Bush is needed to signal a new diplomatic seriousness on the part of the United States...
...The United States should do two things: a personal representative of the president should be designated and entrusted with the U.S...
...In different ways there is a new moment in both Nicaragua and El Salvador...
...a coalition of groups-with prominent Catholic support from religious orders, some bishops, and Central America peace groups-favoring a total cutoff...
...and every year in March-hence always in Lent-the U.S...
...The geopolitical or U.S.Soviet relationship has never been the basic cause of the Central American conflict, but it has been a contributing cause...
...His track record on the Middle East negotiations and his crucial role in the Nicaraguan elections fit the requirements of the job perfectly...
...enters the picture...
...This Lent offers opportunities in Central America not available throughout the 1980s...
...the celebrated and conflicted visit of Pope John Paul II occurred in Lent of 1986...
...Chamorro is pledged to democracy...
...In addition to pressing a diplomatic resolution for the conflict, Carter could carry with him a pledge that the U.S...
...Congress debates Central America policy as it decides the foreign aid bill...
...There, they are not the only suppliers available to either side, but the devastation of the last decade would have been dramatically lessened if the superpowers had not fueled the fires of conflict...
...and the U.S...
...Military aid to Salvador will be a major struggle, with the Bush administration pressing for continuing present levels (or higher...
...The key objective should be a high-level public commitment by the United States to foster a diplomatic settlement in Salvador and to tie this to a wider diplomatic agreement for the region as a whole...
...Arias has established the framework, Nicaragua has contributed a successful election...
...supporting a 50 percent cut in military aid, holding the rest in escrow unless the FMLN refuses a good faith offer of negotiation from the government of El Salvador...
...The roots of the conflict-whether in El Salvador or Nicaragua-are sunk deep in the history and politics of Central American soil...
...The aid debate has been intensified by the killing of the Jesuits...
...Of all the areas of cold-war competition the most difficult to change may be the way in which the superpowers relate to regional conflicts...
...For El Salvador the policy debate is as conflicted as it was in the early 1980s...
...they can jointly decide to cut or stop the flow, especially important in El Salvador...
...But the U.S...
...The superpower possibilities are limited but crucial: they can reduce the violence and open channels of diplomatic discourse...
Vol. 117 • March 1990 • No. 6
