AT FIRST GLANCE
Radosh, Ronald
The Reagan policy in Central America appears to be moving toward even further disasters than at first seemed possible. The resignation of Secretary of State Alexander Haig seemed to be a portent...
...State Department saw the Beng-Masaryk democratic government as too "pro-Communist," simply because it was doing what it could under difficult circumstances to maintain its democratic structure and neutrality...
...But if our security is really so deeply at stake as it says, the time will have to come, as it did in Vietnam, when we either abandon our security needs or protect them with whatever force is necessary...
...and now these idiots in Washington have driven us straight into the Stalinist camp...
...backyard...
...And praise of sorts goes to those generals in the Pentagon who publicly warn that they do not favor sending in our boys when the people back home will not stand behind such an effort...
...As UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick moves to prominence as the major shaper of policy for Central America, Ambassador to El Salvador Dean Hinton stepped down and Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Enders was forced out...
...Recent events indicate that such hopes were illusory...
...troops to the area...
...Moreover, Leiken notes that the two major Salvadoran guerrilla groups are critical of the Cuban influence in Managua...
...Fortunately, the American people seem to hold to a different logic...
...In a brilliant piece of reportage and analysis in the June 1983 Worldview, Robert Leiken of the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies indicates that the major guerrilla leadership in El Salvador does not favor a military victory by their own forces...
...Deplorable as this development is, the Reagan support of armed rebellion by the contras based in Honduras has made it much easier for the Sandin1st commanders to push their country over the edge to Leninism...
...An interesting parallel can be drawn by taking a look at the events surrounding the Czech coup of 1948—the first modern example of how a coalition government collapsed and was replaced by a ruthless Stalinist regime...
...is to live peaceably with its southern neighbors...
...The rationale for Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he pointed out, could be used easily by the Reagan administration as a justification for invasion of his country...
...The U.S...
...A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll indicated that the majority of the population does not see our interests threatened and opposes, even after the president's speech to both houses of Congress, drastic military action in Central America...
...As in 1948, this lesson is not one that Washington seems capable of learning...
...Revolutionary movements in our hemisphere, Leiken maintains, do not necessarily have to be linked to Soviet expansionism...
...never came through, and Stalin took the opportunity to promise delivery of the needed wheat...
...However, they have been reluctant to do so in the U.S...
...policy makers have learned to distinguish leftism, even some varieties of Marxism . . . from Sovietism...
...In El Salvador, a political solution does not have to award the guerrillas a monopoly of political and military power...
...It seems a long time since their leadership was talking about pluralism, democracy, and nonalignment...
...At least, one could hope there would be a toning down of the rhetoric that made a political solution that much harder to obtain...
...ambassador to Czechoslovakia saw aid as a mechanism to pressure the government to be more proU.S...
...A good case can be made out that the "idiots in Washington" are still doing what they can to drive many into the Soviet camp, as well as into unwanted alliances with authoritarians of the "left...
...Hinton because he made a statement merely suggesting that right-wing death squads were as much of a danger to democracy in El Salvador as left-wing guerrillas...
...It is true, as others have argued in Dissent, that many of the "left" regimes in Latin America seem to move quickly to a thoroughgoing Leninization of their political structures...
...The Czech trade minister wrote Masaryk: Gottwald got in touch with Stalin, who promised the required wheat...
...Pluralism is possible, in other words, because a balance of power exists to assure its continuation...
...And he stressed that he also condemned any Soviet invasion of Poland...
...He includes a little-known item that reveals how the U.S...
...The resignation of Secretary of State Alexander Haig seemed to be a portent of a more rational policy—a retreat from viewing the region as a zone of East-West conflict...
...and less neutral...
...Indeed, the U.S...
...By ignoring this distinction and by its wholesale opposition to the entire Central American Left, U.S...
...Desperate for economic aid from the United States especially the sale of available wheat— Jan Masaryk found that American officials were not responsive to his requests...
...The military may yet save us from the wrath of the civilians...
...Ferman Cienfuegos, the top FMLN commander, emphasized to Leiken his opposition to the Brezhnev Doctrine...
...Enders because of his support of a "dual-track" policy—military aid while favoring quiet movement toward negotiations with the left...
...In answer to the common argument that one cannot negotiate with the left because the Marxist-Leninists have the guns, Leiken notes that it is the groups with the most troops that control two-thirds of the guerrilla fighting forces (the RN and the ERP), who "stand at the greatest distance from the Soviet Union...
...This distinction will have to be made if the U.S...
...The Administration promises that it is not even considering sending U.S...
...The fact that not America but Russia had saved us from starvation will have a tremendous effect inside Czechoslovakia—even among the peo403 ple whose sympathies are with the West rather than Moscow...
...They now support negotiations because they are linked with popular Salvadoran organizations that desire peace...
...that protracted fighting and a policy of militarization will only draw these groups closer to both the Nicaraguans and the Cubans...
...But Leiken warns: Over the past decade, U.S...
...But Leiken notes warily that the Reagan policy works to offset their attempts at independence...
...In the May 1983 Encounter, a journal not exactly known for its friendship to communism, author Richard Mayne presents a fascinating account of how Stalin put the coup into operation...
...They favor leaving intact the Salvadoran army and its officer corps, and having their own units integrated into it...
...How bizarre that Hinton and Enders are suspect as "doves...
...The Cuban and Soviet model, with each passing day, seems to become more surely a model for the Sandinists in Nicaragua...
...Now Enders is free to converse with Felipe Gonzalez, whose efforts to serve as a mediator in the region have met only with rebuffs from the Administration in Washington...
...policy pushes the non-aligned Left into the arms of those who are pro-Soviet...
Vol. 30 • September 1983 • No. 4
