Taking Note
The Contra War and U.S. National Security T HE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION HAS LONG been in the grip of an obsession with Nicaragua. In its recent fight with Congress to secure approval for...
...Even Business Week, in an unusually astute column, recognized that if Congress approves the $14 million aid request, it will be cornered...
...It will have endorsed the president's obsessional vision of Nicaragua as a threat to national security and will be committed to following through on the military logic of the contras-whose chances of eventual military success against the heavily armed Nicaraguans are universally agreed to be nil...
...The four Contadora nations-all key U.S...
...Some waverers may have been tempted to change their votes in the hope that the Nicaragua nightmare will go away if they accept the contras as the de facto core of U.S...
...And third, it will push the United States closer to direct military involvement in Central America...
...It is a serious mistake to assume that the Sandinistas will continue to make concessions indefinitely as more pressure is exerted on them...
...Washington was alarmed that those terms could apply across the board, restricting its own military presence in Honduras and El Salvador, and pressed its allies in Central America to torpedo the treaty...
...Three hundred thousand people...
...Its political system is in disarray...
...If that minimum standard of international behavior is restored to the debate, more may follow...
...policy...
...But the elementary rules of schoolyard bullying may soon cease to apply...
...Both these approaches brazen out the mounting evidence of systematic atrocities by the contras, especially the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN), against Nicaragua's civilian population...
...With their readiness to sign the draft Contadora treaty last September, the Sandinistas explicitly addressed the issues of foreign bases and advisers and limits on the size of armed forces and military actions across national frontiers...
...If Congress's remaining qualms about these murderous thugs lead it to block the aid request, then we may face a turning point in U.S...
...Who received Daniel Ortega...
...Beyond the hemisphere, too, Washington's alliances will suffer...
...In response to the contra attacks, the Sandinistas will continue to acquire weapons, most likely from the Soviet bloc...
...Their first step must be to confront the most dangerous of Reagan's many lies: his recent assertion that the Sandinistas "are not a government...
...WHAT IS TO HAPPEN THEN IF THE CONTRA aid goes through...
...In the eyes of The New Republic, then, the recent Americas Watch report* which provides a nauseating catalogue of FDN rape, torture and indiscriminate butchery, and finds no significant evidence of Sandinista abuses since 1982, should not unduly disturb the unquiet liberal conscience...
...The recent inauguration of Uruguayan President Julio Marfa Sanguinetti, a civilian, brought a huge demonstraMARCHIAPR!L 19853 3 MARCH/APRIL 1985tion of public support for Nicaragua...
...pressure and Sandinista concessions...
...The administration's policy will, by the admission of its own senior officials, begin to unravel...
...The administration has had a remarkable degree of success in fanning congressional hostility toward the Sandinistas...
...At a certain point, those who make conciliatory gestures only to see them systematically spurned begin to look foolish to their own supporters...
...If it glimpses defeat, the administration may end up pulling out of the vote altogether...
...The hemispheric strain will also be felt at the level of mass opinion...
...They may also have grasped at the illusion that the contras' purpose was moral because it was directed at securing peace...
...The New Republic even admits disarmingly that to describe the contras as "freedom fighters" is "romantic myth-making...
...national security interests...
...If Congress cuts loose from the contra policy, the Democrats-admittedly through little merit of their own-will have a little space to stake out the alternative policy approach that is so desperately needed...
...The failure of this unprecedented diplomatic initiative by Latin American governments would also have grave implications for the future viability of the Organization of American States...
...In its recent fight with Congress to secure approval for $14 million in aid to the contras, the administration's hatred for the Sandinista regime has produced some of the ugliest invective heard in Washington in years...
...So far, the administration has had the Democrats over a barrel...
...The war on Nicaragua, like U.S...
...resolve to flout all the central security provisions of Contadora, above all its condemnation of foreign support for "irregular" military forces and cross-border attacks on sovereign states...
...In the course of the debate, many members of Congress have been rethinking their opposition to the contras...
...For a pungent contemporary variant on that theme, see Jerry Falwell's remark in this issue's "On the Record...
...national security...
...As one well-placed Latin American observer said, "Who received Shultz when he arrived in Montevideo...
...But far from promoting U.S...
...many of its generals are close to open revolt against Washington...
...It would he naive to deny the link between U.S...
...Is it too much to hope that one or two lone voices may begin to advance morality, rather than the paranoia of empire, as the basis of this country's Central America policy...
...Many key Western countries saw the November election in Nicaragua as a ratification of the Sandinistas' legitimacy...
...The Kaufman Purcell argument rests on the assumption that continued pressure by the contras will extract more and more concessions from the Sandinistas, leading eventually to a negotiated settlement through the Contadora process...
...And they may see no further sense in their unilateral offer to suspend the import of new weapons systems...
...A S FOR THE REACTIONS OF NICARAGUA itself, the Sandinistas will likely see a resumption of contra aid not as one more turn of the screw, but as a critical turning point...
...That means recognizing that Nicaragua is indeed a sovereign state, with which the United States has no right to interfere...
...policy of a more optimistic kind...
...Americas Watch, Violations of the Laws of War by Both Sides in Nicaragua 1981-1985, New York, March 1985...
...The Sandinistas' increased defense preparednessbased, incidentally, on distributing 200,000 machine guns to the civilian population-is habitually interpreted in this country as evidence of an "authoritarian crackdown" at home...
...War is hell, and U.S...
...WHATEVER THE OUTCOME OF THE DEbate, its impact will be a lasting one...
...It would then seek one of a number of compromise solutions: perhaps so-called humanitarian aid to Nicaraguan refugees, perhaps aid through third parties and private donors...
...And if that subversive truth is acknowledged...
...The doubters may have been swayed by a spate of fresh arguments in favor of aid to the contras, more subtle than the administration's own overheated rhetoric...
...But, it continues, "What is happening in Nicaragua . . . is a civil war-and like most civil wars it is a nasty affair...
...Or, as they used to say in the good old days, "They may be sons of bitches, but they're our sons of bitches...
...As Sergio Ramirez recently stressed, conciliation without reciprocity eventually becomes meaningless...
...The contra war means a U.S...
...It has shamelessly bullied its congressional opponents, played on their fear of being blamed for allowing a "second Cuba" in Latin America and skillfully exploited the Democrats' dearth of alternative policy options...
...Even Margaret Thatcher gave a surprisingly cordial welcome to Nicaraguan Vice President Sergio Ramirez when he passed through London in February...
...their hostility to a contra-based policy will grow...
...Two Mercedes and 600 bodyguards...
...We may have now reached that point, where the most pragmatic course for the Sandinistas is to stand firm...
...The other was a March 25 editorial in The New Republic-the staple opinion-former these days for every disenchanted liberal in Washington...
...national security interests, a continuation of the contra war against Nicaragua will in fact prejudice those interests in several ways...
...To start with the second point, renewal of aid to the contras would lead to a serious deterioration in hemispheric relations...
...Finally, the most obvious reaction to military pressure is military buildup...
...Also, unilateral concessions are always a political risk...
...Already, Honduras has been destabilized by acting as a staging ground for the war...
...It is absurd to argue that continued funding of the contras is the only thing that will oblige the Sandinistas to acknowledge legitimate U.S...
...But the spell cast by the president's bullying and the Democrats' cowardice can now perhaps be broken...
...That is precisely the point at which the logic of Vietnam takes over, with the seductive argument that "We have to go in because we are already there...
...If Congress sticks with the contras now, it must also be prepared to stick with the consequences-a national security nightmare of ever deeper proportions...
...security concerns...
...If Reagan succeeds in getting the $14 million, he will have obliged Congress to underwrite his overall goal-which is now explicitly stated-of overthrowing a regime which is deemed to be a threat to U.S...
...Two recent articles from one-time critics of administration policy were characteristic of this trend...
...Once Congress stops looking at Nicaragua through a national security prism, it may understand that the Sandinistas' only real crime in the first place is to have demanded sovereignty...
...As we go to press, it remains to be seen whether the administration will win its case...
...One major motive for the Sandinistas' gestures has been to stay the hand of Congress on the contra vote: that restraint would be futile-if not suicidal-if the aid request were granted...
...Some optimists calculate that there is still a 50-vote margin against the aid...
...Again, the evidence suggests just the opposite...
...It is only too easy to foresee the erosion of Costa Rica's fragile stability...
...Washington ignores signals like this at its peril...
...The Sandinistas have long recognized those interests, both in the Contadora framework and in the bilateral U.S.-Nicaraguan talks at Manzanillo, which the administration unilaterally abandoned...
...More than just another incremental step in the hostilities against Nicaragua, the vote this time represents a major watershed in U.S.-Nicaraguan relations...
...One was an op-ed piece in the March 12 New York Times by Susan Kaufman Purcell of the Council on Foreign Relations...
...The months since the November elections have seen a radical decentralization and democratization of politics at the grassroots and a vibrant daily debate in the National Assembly between the FSLN and its opponents...
...Like Kaufman Purcell, it sees the contras as an instrument toward the higher good-which in the The New Republic's case seems to mean bringing Arturo Cruz into the Nicaraguan government...
...The war now shows signs of shifting to Costa Rica, with the arrival of the ultra-rightist Lewis Tambs as new U.S...
...This aid request is significantly different from its predecessors...
...Second, the contra war is likely to kill the Contadora peace initiative...
...support for Great Britain in the Falklands/Malvinas conflict and the invasion of Grenada, is turning a groundswell of nationalistic sentiment fiercely against the United States...
...Managua now says it is open to the argument that, for example, a permanent military base in Honduras might also be added to the list of legitimate U.S...
...pessimists say the gap could be as low as seven or eight...
...After all, their credibility with their domestic constituency is at stake...
...ambassador in San Jos6...
...national security is at stake...
...First, renewed harassment may well convince Nicaragua that it is pointless to go on making unilateral gestures of conciliation...
...The New Republic piece is in some ways more pernicious...
...allieswould see a renewal of funding as the final blow to their peace initiative...
Vol. 19 • March 1985 • No. 2
