The Limits of Frienship: Nicaragua and the West
Matthews, Robert
OF THE THREE SANDINISTA PRINCIPLES of political pluralism, mixed economy and in- national security zone. But Nicaragua embraced a conception of non-alignment that was radical and ternational...
...Somoza had plundered the treasury...
...The participation of the masses was less direct...
...given the country's unique history it interested the United States...
...The point was driven home early...
...Believe me," he said, "we are not naive about seeing Cubans everyARDE contras, Delta camp where for the fun of it...
...Of this, $618 million-more than one year's total export earnings-fell due in 1979.' The Carter Administration had squandered much of its political capital in Nicaragua by its clumsy efforts first to shore up Somoza and then to squeeze the Sandinistas out of a political settlement...
...In keeping with France's traditional distance from NATO and its experience with its former African colonies, Mitterrand was suspicious of what the French call the "primary anti-communism" of Reagan's Washington...
...In December 1979, U.S...
...The cost incurred by the United States in equipping what it considered a competent modem army in Honduras is a useful yardstick for judging the magnitude of the Sandinistas' shopping list...
...The dictator's side dictators such as Batista in Cuba, Trujillo in the of this devil's bargain was a loyalty to U.S...
...military, which had created, trained and upheld Somoza's National Guard...
...Nor did the Right have a monopoly on armed opposition...
...as a result of the Panama Canal treaties negotiated by Carter and Panamanian ruler Omar Torrijos, the United States had agreed to phase out the School of the Americas...
...Leslie Geib, "On Arms for Nicaragua," op-ed, The New York Times, August 29, 1979...
...XVIII,, no...
...Unlike Nicaragua, of course, the Honduran army was intact, if inept, when its buildup began, and it faced no serious insurgency...
...The Financial Times, March 31, 1982...
...The umbilical ties between Washington and The decision by a Latin American nation to join the Somozas made the insurgency synonymous with the NAM is not in itself judged a threat to U.S...
...Washington has closed its ears to efforts by its Western allies to provide a rational analysis of Nicaragua...
...By CIA estimates, the FSLN had only 250 active members in 1977...
...First, although tiny amounts of non-lethal sales trickled through the pipeline-S105,000 worth from 1979-83- the Nicaraguans ran into trouble when they tried to purchase arms commercially in the United States...
...XVIII...
...The Sandinistas had an army to equip from scratch, and they were looking for the best deal available...
...The Washington Post, July 14, 1982...
...A January 1985 letter from Shultz to IDB president Antonio Ortiz Mena complained that "fungible" bank funds might "free up other monies that could be used to help consolidate the Marxist regime and finance Nicaragua's aggression against its neighbors...
...28 (October 1983), p.4b...
...For the Nicaraguans, the choice of Panama made a lot of sense: police work was the Guard's forte in 26 REPORT ON THE AMERICA5 Sandinista Foreign Policy clared that, "We prefer the U.S...
...Latin America Political Report, August 10, 1979...
...The widespread belief in Spain that the Sandinistas have links to the Basque separatist group ETA-though not shared by Prime Minister Gonzilez--has not helped the Nicaraguan case...
...offer finally came, it was purely symbolic: $3,000 for binoculars and compasses, and $20,000 for six Sandinista army officers to tour Fort Stewart, Fort Benning and Fort Jackson...
...and grant ESF funds, Extracts frum State Department and Pentagon Congressional Presentation f,)ocu,neni, Security Assistance Programs, FY 1981 24 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS RSandinista Foreign Polic Sandinista Foreign Policy pressure, the Sandinistas were to become dependent on the Soviet Union for their military lifeline...
...In October, the hardening line of the Carter Administration was symbolized by its "discovery" of a Soviet combat brigade in Cuba...
...Washington was their first port of call...
...He suggested that arms deals with the Soviet bloc "would be a last resort...
...THE LIMITS OF FRIENDSHIP 1. Susanne Jonas, "The Nicaraguan Revolution and the Emerging Cold War," in Thomas W. Walker, ed., Nicaragua in Revolution (New York: Praeger, 1982), pp...
...Letter from Secretary of State George Shultz to IDB President Hon...
...Televisora Nacional (Panama) in FBIS -LAM, February 4, 1980...
...direct investment was relatively low- than at El Salvador, have observer status...
...The report in turn had a major impact on that year's Republican platform, which read, We deplore the Marxist Sandinista takeover of Nicaragua and the Marxist attempts to destabilize El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras...
...Author's interview with senior IDB official, Miami, March 1, 1985...
...MILITARY AID, no matter how historically or structurally inevitable, had far-reaching implications for future Sandinista foreign policy...
...buildup was underway long before that...
...The fact that Nicaragua has shown the desire to ask France for aid is a prime indication that the Managua government has no desire to count entirely on Cuba and the Soviet Union to supply its defense needs"35 The arms agreement, though the largest the MAY/JUNE 1985 29 now facilitate a repeat of the new Nicaraguan revolutionary model...
...At the September 1984 meeting of EEC foreign ministers in San Jos6, Costa Rica, an incensed Claude Cheysson made public a letter from Shultz to each of the delegates which urged-unsuccessfully-that European assistance to Central America "not lead to increased economic aid or any political support for Nicaragua...
...M-ls and M-16s, Belgian FALs and Israeli Galils-most without stocks of ammunition...
...attitudes moving from qualified tolerance to open hostility, support for Ni- caragua from Latin American and Western European nations would become more problematic even as the need for their backing became more acute...
...The new administration delivered its verdict from the start: in a rigidly bipolar world, the Sandinistas were Marxists--enemies-and a danger to U.S...
...assistance to any Marxist government in the hemisphere and we oppose the Carter Administration aid program for the government of Nicaragua...
...8. Ibid., pp...
...ambassador to Paris, Evan Galbraith, had protested France's support for guerrillas in El Salvador and its recent decision to normalize relations with Libya...
...Britain had elected the arch-conservative Thatcher government in May 1979...
...direct investment was relatively low-than at recovering the national sovereignty that had so long been mortgaged to Washington's geopolitical goals...
...By CIA estimates, the FSLN had only 250 active members in 1977...
...Over the next five years, the nature of Sandinista military relationships would thrust itself to center stage in the conflict with Washington...
...As long as Washington remains able to continue a low-intensity war, designed to bleed Nicaragua slowly to death on the back pages of the world's newspapers, protests from Western Europe or the Latin American democracies will not deflect the Reagan Administration from its goal of removing the Sandinistas...
...4 0 Mitterrand caved in...
...attitudes moving from qualified tolerance to open hostility, support for Nicaragua from Latin American and Western European nations would become more problematic even as the need for their backing became more acute...
...influence...
...These conditions required a swift response, but as late as mid-1980 the Sandinistas still had nothing approaching a modern army...
...Yet France made it clear that this was a Sandinista initiative...
...On January 18, 1981, two days before the Reagan inauguration, two Sandinista air force officers were arrested in Texas for trying to fly out of the country with two Huey helicopters-scheduled items on the U.S...
...On the heels of this rebuff came an equally harsh lesson in geopolitical realities which represented a watershed in Mitterrand's attitude toward the Third World...
...Cubans have so far been accorded a training role in the EPS but the Sandinistas seem to have a preference for US sources...
...We refuse to spend a single dollar on arms because our country is too poor...
...support for the contra war, Soviet bloc military support for Nicaragua was not substantial...
...allies such as Israel, Belgium and Brazil...
...Small though the deal was, Washington was outraged...
...MILITARY AID, no matter how historically or structurally inevitable, had far-reaching implications for future Sandinista foreign policy...
...The Sandinistas' longstanding relationship with Cuba, and the Cubans' experience in building a revolutionary army and militia, marked them out as the obvious candidates...
...Washington approved $3.98 million in military aid, including helicopters, weaponry and advisers...
...Confrontation, rather than accommodation, was the correct policy...
...To an even greater extent than other elements of government, the Nicaraguan defense establishment was swept away...
...A $1 billion arms deal with Iraq was in the pipeline...
...The Carter Administration had squandered much of its political capital in Nicaragua by its clumsy ef- forts first to shore up Somoza and then to squeeze the Sandinistas out of a political settlement, in August 1979, Carter prepared a S75 million aid pack- age-S5 million of it a grant, the remainder in credits- and in November presented it to Congress...
...In early 1980, the State Department and Pentagon made a similar assessment: To an even greater degree than other elements of government, the Nicaraguan defense establishment was swept away...
...Junta member Sergio Ramirez commented warmly on the growing closeness between the two nations...
...century Washington had cared little for democracy Nicaragua's civil war was anti-imperialist in its in Nicaragua...
...Panama- nian Chief of Staff Col...
...They took us on a tour of their armored battalion, and it was enough to give an American Legion type an orgasmic heart attack...
...see also Central America Report (Guatemala City), November 19, 1979...
...The dollar sum involved was also tiny in relation to other French arms transactions: France had recently concluded deals for $2.5 billion with Saudi Arabia and $1 billion with Egypt...
...Then, in February, House conservatives attached 16 conditions, among them a stipulation that the credits should be used to buy U.S.-made goods...
...A recent successful orientation tour to the U.S...
...ezuela...
...aggression...
...ADMINISTRATION CYNICS DISMISSED the Nicaraguan request as a setup by radicals in the FSLN directorate, who would engineer a U.S...
...military loans and grants to the region soared from $2.7 million in FY 1979 to $130.4 million in FY 1983, the lion's share to Honduras and El Salvador...
...In April, the National Liberation Army (ELN) issued a communique in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, declaring its goal of overthrowing the Sandinistas by force...
...Omar Cabezas, La montana es algo mas que una inmensa estepa verde (Managua: Nueva Nicaragua, 1982), p.27...
...2. William M. LeoGrande, 'The United States and the Nicaraguan Revolution," in Walker, op...
...cit., pp.73-75...
...forces in the region...
...US security assistance programs will also serve as a counterweight to Cuban influence in the Government of Nicaragua security apparatus...
...117 (November-December 1979), p.191...
...The New York Times, July 20, 1980...
...The search for arms in the West continued, but it was not until late 1981 that it bore any fruit...
...Neutrality Act...
...See also Center for International Policy Aid Memo, January 15, 1985...
...Washington Report on the Hemisphere, March 19, 1985...
...U I ITHIN TWO WEEKS OF THE VICTORY, VV Interior Minister Tomas Borge approached Ambassador Pezzullo...
...In June, Foreign Minister Miguel D'Escoto visited Paris...
...The country became not only a base for large-scale contra attacks but also a platform for a series of joint military maneuvers designed to intimidate Nicaragua and rehearse the rapid deployment of U.S...
...all of it battlescarred and most of it fit for little more than salvage...
...Congressional Presentation Document, Security Assistance Programs, FY 1981, p.419...
...and sufficient confidence in its future stability to guarantee continuous supplies of ammunition and spare parts...
...The New York Times, December 25, 1984...
...Panama City Domestic Service in FBISLAM, November 30, 1979...
...emphasis on building a strategic consensus of regimes to combat Soviet expansionism around the globe, and pointed to the Middle East as an example of the limitations of this policy...
...However, even liberals made it clear to the Nicaraguans that they could expect nothing big...
...State Department liberals who favored granting the Nicaraguan request felt the Sandinistas had a legitimate need to develop what was agreed to be the weakest military capacity in Central America, and "to standardize equipment to fight the Somoza National Guard units still operating...
...By August 1979 rumors of a counterrevolutionary invasion were rife in Managua...
...According to U.S...
...intelligence...
...This grew to 1,200 in l978...
...Europeans recognize that their hands are more than usually tied in the Caribbean Basin, an undisputed sphere of U.S...
...81 (281B...
...cit., pp.73-75...
...Inside Nicaragua, there were still pockets of Somocista resistance in the south...
...orbit posed major problems for relations with Washington...
...The Administration's attitude was laid out clearly in a 1980 report by the Committee of Santa Fe, a group of New Right academics and policy analysts...
...8 Even if Washington had been willing to cooperate, it was hard to imagine the FSLN requesting strategic planners from the U.S...
...Training Nicaraguans there would have been an affront to Torrijos, a staunch supporter of the Nicaraguan insurrection...
...The government's overarching goal was to create a "nationalist, defensive, anti-imperialist army as an extension of the revolution...
...Honduras opened its arms to the exiles...
...5. Jorge Timossi, "Tres entrevistas: Daniel Ortega, Humberto Ortega y LuIs Carrion," Casa de las Americas (Havana), No...
...and sufficient confidence in its future stability to guarantee continuous supplies of ammunition and spare parts...
...Latin America Regional Report (Mexico and Central America), May 3, 1985...
...all of it battle scarred and most of it fit for little more than salvage...
...Author's interview with Alejandro Bendana, Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry, Managua, February 19, 1985...
...4 In September, Borge deLittle respite from U.S...
...some even ended up in paramilitary death squad activities there...
...Venezuela, for example, refused a joint request from Panamanian and Costa Rican officials to train the Sandinista Air Force on the grounds of Cuban involvement...
...4 - 5 . 28...
...troops, may Europe and Latin America find the space and the voice to influence the course of events more decisively...
...displeasure...
...Latin America Political Report, August 3, 1979...
...After its unsuccessful attempt in 1979 to secure military aid from the United States, Nicaragua spent two years exhausting other avenues of Western arms supplies...
...7. Cited in George Black, Triumph of the People: The Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua (London: Zed Press, 1981), p.224...
...The Cuban leader declared he had no objection to other nations' help for the Nicaraguan armed forces...
...enough political latitude from Washington to cope with U.S...
...The fight against Somoza had been waged mainly by loose-knit urban insurrectionary forces...
...The old governing structures and the people who ran them are gone: what the future will bring will be determined by those who seek to play a role - by participating with ideas and assistance in the rebuilding of Nicaragua...
...Southern Command...
...Televisora Nacional (Panama) in FBIS-LAM, February 4, 1980...
...In December, the outspoken U.S...
...The undisciplined mix of forces, with extremely disparate military experience, was equipped with an equally diverse array of vehicles and weapons-U.S...
...Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1984...
...17 In October, the hardening line of the Carter Administration was symbolized by its "discovery" of a Soviet combat brigade in Cuba...
...2 2 4 -26...
...Only if that option is removed, and Washington confronted with a choice between negotiated coexistence or a direct invasion by U.S...
...For the Republicans, poised to seize the White House in 1980, denial of the Sandinistas' right to exist became an article of faith...
...Throughout the 20th could hardly have been otherwise...
...3. The Washington Post, December I, 1979...
...but any more would have risked a major showdown with Washington...
...1 million in 1982, and $90.3 million in 1983.29 T HE THIRD IMPLICATION OF THE EM- bargo on arms sales to Nicaragua was that Washington's mounting drive to isolate the San- dinistas would extend to pressure on alternative arms suppliers in Latin America and Western Europe...
...5 Three thousand National Guardsmen had crossed the border into Honduras and linked up with other Somocistas exiled in Miami...
...3 The Carter Administration's ambivalence toward Nicaragua had given way to the incoming Republicans' full-blown hatred of the Sandinistas...
...5 Europe's own international priorities may relegate Central America to a secondary place, or may come into conflict with the FSLN's diverse diplomatic goals, especially its ties to Third World nations and movements...
...In August 1979 officers of the Panamanian National Guard arrived in Managua to train the Sandinista police...
...In April, the National Liberation Army (ELN) issued a communique in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, declaring its goal of overthrowing the Sandinistas by force...
...Again, in Quito for the inauguration of Ecuadorian President Jaime Rold6s in August, both Borge and Eddn Pastora-then deputy defense minister-discussed the issue with U.S...
...Not even the FSLN knew the size of its own forces in July 1979, but estimated them at no more than 3,000-5,000 disciplined fighters...
...market, but if it is closed to us then we will have to seek another, possibly the European market...
...For the Nicaraguans, the choice of Panama made a lot of sense: police work was the Guard's forte in REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Reort on te AmCL4* 26Panama, and in 1980 Panamanian police trainers were sent to Grenada on a similar mission...
...B Y THE BEGINNING OF 1982, NICARAgua's international course was set...
...Southern Command...
...In early 1980, the State Department and Pentagon the past," and expressing a "hope for improved relations in the future," he requested U.S...
...Figures from Ministerio de Cooperacion Exterior, 1985...
...There were political as well as moral objections...
...Radical shifts can also occur within a friendly government...
...It is the French who are naive to take their desires for reality...
...Alone among Western countries, the United States has a military assistance program able to provide significant arms transfers and training through outright grants...
...U LTIMATELY, EUROPE'S DILEMMA IS how much influence it can wield over a U.S...
...In order to make an impact in this area we will have to offer resources in terms of training opportunities at schools in the U.S...
...Latin America Political Report, August 3, 1979...
...given the country's unique history it could hardly have been otherwise...
...control in a region defined as a critical national security zone...
...The armed forces of the new Nicaragua must be entirely rebuilt, both its personnel and equipment...
...After 1981, under well-calibrated U.S...
...Just as significantly, 14 Latin American countries, including Venezuela and several U.S...
...National Directorate member Luis Carri6n predicted within weeks of the victory that, "We will have to face new kinds of aggression as a result of the reorganization of Somocista forces outside the country...
...see also Central America Report (Guatemala City), November 19, 1979...
...Venezuela, Costa Rica, even U.S...
...In Nicaragua's case, even a stance of neutrality would have signalled a loss of historic U.S...
...F ROM THE DAY THE SANDINISTAS TOOK the reins of government, their sovereign right to military defense against hostile forces became a primary concern...
...It would be "an army educated in loyalty to the vanguard of our nation.' Even if Washington had been willing to cooperate, it was hard to imagine the FSLN requesting strategic planners from the U.S...
...It was not enough to radically recast the nature of the Sandinista military...
...refusal as proof of the need for military agreements with the Soviet bloc...
...Envio (Managua: Instituto Historico Centroamericano), No...
...Ibid., March 10, 1982...
...After 1981, under well-calibrated U.S...
...3 83-84...
...it has worked overtime to engineer a self-fulfilling prophecy of an inexorable Nicaraguan drift into the Soviet orbit...
...Washington approved $3.98 million in military aid, including helicopters, weaponry and advisers...
...As U.S...
...It was not enough to radically recast the nature of the Sandinista military...
...The Washington Post, August 12, 1979...
...As one senior Nicaraguan official told the author, "The United States has not invaded Nicaragua, but not because it has not wanted to...
...The New York Times, January 30, 1982...
...Dissatisfaction with French policy in the Third World had been simmering for several months...
...and it has actively subverted any European or Latin American initiative that might offer Nicaragua an alternative path...
...B Y THE BEGINNING OF 1982, NICARAgua's international course was set...
...Nor did it suggest severing military ties...
...The old governing structures and the people who ran them are gone: what the future will bring will be determined by those who seek to play a role-by participating with ideas and assistance in the rebuilding of Nicaragua...
...The Mitterrand administration in France, beset by economic and political problems, has pulled back from its earlier commitment to Nicaragua...
...The New York Times, November 16, 1983...
...Confrontation, rather than accommodation, was the correct policy...
...The Financial Times (London), March 10, 1982...
...5. Jorge Timossi, "Tres entrevistas: Daniel Ortega, Humberto Ortega y Luis Carri6n," Casa de las Americas (Havana), No...
...Nicaragua's economy was in ruins...
...The Washington Post, August 12, 1979...
...Diversification would also lessen Nicaragua's vulnerability to trade and credit restrictions as instruments of foreign pressure...
...Both the helicopters and the cash for their purchase were confiscated, and the two officers charged with violating the U.S...
...He returned empty-handed...
...He returned empty-handed...
...Guatemala bought 10 Brazilian T-23 trainers...
...As the 1980 Literacy Crusade got underway, cross-border attacks killed seven teachers...
...The Reagan Administration has consistently depicted this aid as a response to Nicaragua's "Soviet-sponsored buildup," but the facts are otherwise...
...Snipers were the scourge of Managua...
...In Nicaragua's case, even a After 1979, the inescapable distancing of Nicara- stance of neutrality would have signalled a loss of gua from the U.S...
...Then again, although France extended credit, the deal was a sale: Soviet bloc military aid to Nicaragua was a donation...
...On the contrary, the decision to create a politicized, revolutionary army narrowed the choice of countries which could train the EPS and be integrated into all its workings, including security and intelligence...
...Robert Matthews, "Oil on Troubled Waters: Venezuelan Policy in the Caribbean," Report on the Americas, Vol...
...hostility grew, and blossomed into war under Reagan, the Sandinistas must have felt that their de- cision to play it safe with the Cubans had been a wise one...
...First, in January 1980, the Senate passed an amendment earmarking 60% of the funds for the private sector...
...Conceived in the throes of a political struggle for the future of Nicaraguan society, and designed to defend against a return of the old social order, it was to serve as "the principal guarantee of the revolutionary process...
...On January 18, 1981, two days before the Reagan inau- guration, two Sandinista air force officers were arrested in Texas for trying to fly out of the country with two Huey helicopters- scheduled items on the U.S...
...Antonio OrtIz Mena, January 30, 1985...
...contributions to the bank.49 The EEC has been a victim of similar arm-twisting...
...This problem is particularly difficult to solve," noted one comandante, "because we have requested gifts of weapons...
...troops, may Europe and Latin Amer- ica find the space and the voice to influence the course of events more decisively...
...On the contrary, the decision to create a politicized, revolutionary army narrowed the choice of countries which could train the EPS and be integrated into all its workings, including security and intelligence...
...6. Inforpress Centroamericana (Guatemala City), November 17, 1979...
...Daniel Ortega declared in Paris that "the Nicaraguan government has a total convergence with France on the situation in Central America...
...Indeed, one Panamanian official conceded that Sandinista suspicions were "logical up to a point...
...The Miami Herald, August 1 and 17, September 13, 1979...
...EFE (Madrid) in FBIS-LAM, June 14, 1983...
...This strategy would accept aid from any quarter, as long as it came with no harmful conditions...
...The Sandinistas have not received a cent from the IDB since 1982 because of their "macroeconomic policies...
...Extracts from State Department and Pentagon Congressional Presentation Document, Security Assistance Programs, FY 1981...
...As late as November 1980, they submitted a 54-page want-list for spare parts.23 But by September 1979 the issue was dead in Washington, and the Carter Administration was convinced it had made a prudent decision...
...Before late 1981 and the start of U.S...
...Panama City Domestic Service in FBISLAM, November 30, 1979...
...By then, however, Washington had made its decision...
...THE LIMITS OF FRIENDSHIP 1. Susanne Jonas, 'The Nicaraguan Revolution and the Emerging Cold War," in Thomas W. Walker, ed., Nicaragua in Revolution (New York: Praeger, 1982), pp.383-84...
...support for the contra war, Soviet bloc military support for Nicaragua was not substantial...
...its chief distinction was that, from 1949-76, the National Guard had trained more troops there than any other Latin American army...
...In March 1980, within weeks of a narrow and controversial House vote on the $75 million aid package, the Honduran role took on a more ominous coloration...
...Figures from Ministerio de Cooperaci6n Exteri6r, Managua, 1985...
...The official FSLN newspaper Barricada heralded Mitterrand's win as a major triumph for Nicaragua...
...Most disconcerting to the Sandinistas was the pressure exerted on France after the sale, and Mitterrand's reaction to it...
...3 The Carter Administration's ambivalence toward Nicaragua had given way to the incoming Republi- cans' full-blown hatred of the Sandinistas...
...At the same time, 100 Nicaraguans travelled to Panama for a similar training program, which included some intelligence and internal security work...
...Reagan came into office obsessed with Soviet-Cuban penetration of the Caribbean Basin and fearing that "the Nicaraguan base on the American continent will 28 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Ret04t Os he A rolica Sandinista Foreign Policy Reagan Administration, its predecessor set the ball rolling...
...2 The Sandinistas were aghast at the episode...
...Secretary of State Alexander Haig told French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson that the deal was "a stab in the back...
...it has worked overtime to engineer a self-fulfilling prophecy of an inexorable Nicaraguan drift into the Soviet orbit...
...The Miami Herald, August I and 17, September 13, 1979...
...Both the helicopters and the cash for their purchase were confiscated, and the two officers charged with violating the U.S...
...Nothing remains except for some small arms and the battered remnants of other equipment...
...One senior bank official told the author, "I have never seen such political pressure on the bank as in the last four years...
...ibid., April 6, 1984...
...Ant6nio Ortiz Mena, January 30, 1985...
...Congress to swallow in the mood of late 1979...
...attitudes...
...Figures from Banco Central de Nicaragua, 1985...
...They took us on a tour of their armored battalion, and it was enough to give an American Legion type an orgasmic heart attack...
...ACAN (Panama City) in FBIS-LAJi'.f, September 6, 1979...
...For the Sandinistas, the lesson was clear...
...displeasure...
...military aid for another year...
...administration as ideologically fixated as that of Ronald Reagan...
...The issue was raised for a third and last time in conversations with President Carter during the September visit to Washington by Junta members Daniel Ortega, Sergio RamIrez and Moises Hassan...
...Sandinista People's Army (EPS) leadership has demonstrated a remarkable openness to the U.S...
...The New York Times, August 12 and 13, 1979...
...48 Secretary of State George Shultz spearheaded a drive against Nicaragua's recent request to the IDB for $58 million to develop private sector agriculture...
...an insistence that no funds could be used for health or educational projects involving Cubans...
...As one senior Nicaraguan official told the author, "The United States has not invaded Nicaragua, but not because it has not wanted to...
...Political wrangling, including an almost unprecedented secret session of Congress, held up disbursement of the money until September 1980...
...See also Timossi, op.cit., pp.191-93...
...Daniel Smith, the November 1979 tour would allow the Nicaraguans "to see how our army trains and how it operates" and let "the American people see they're not all 'bad guys.' "20 After the Junta's September trip to Washington, the Carter Administration countered with its own "good faith test"--an invitation to train Sandinista officers at the U.S...
...buildup was underway long before that...
...Most importantly, relations with Western democ- racies face the inherent dilemma of continuity...
...Over the last four years, the United States has also coerced European and Latin American representatives to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) into denying loans to Nicaragua...
...Inside Nicaragua, there were still pockets of Somocista resistance in the south...
...Ambassador Lawrence Pezzullo described the sorry state of the Sandinista military: They want uniforms and . . . everything from coffee-cups for the troops to wheeled vehicles...
...Robert Matthews, "Oil on Troubled Waters: Venezuelan Policy in the Caribbean," Report on the Americas, Vol...
...The U.S...
...While Sweden has virtually assured an unbroken flow of economic aid by elevating Nicaragua (alone among Latin America nations) to "program status," ties to most other European governments are plagued by inconsistency...
...and a demand that 1% of the total funds be used to publicize US, generosity...
...Many of France's Western allies also criticized the sale...
...ibid., April 6, 1984...
...MEANWHILE, THE SANDINISTAS WERE having further problems with the Panama connection, this time underscoring the dilemma of engaging Western as well as Cuban trainers...
...In 1979, within months of the Sandinista victory, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala all acquired new high-performance aircraft...
...The U.S...
...Honduras nine of the same model...
...The search for arms in the West continued, but it was not until late 1981 that it bore any fruit...
...Jacobsen, "The Jacobsen Report: Soviet Attitudes towards, Aid to and Contacts with Central American Revolutionaries," paper prepared for the Department of State external research program (June 1984), p.19...
...Its relations with Nicaragua were cor- dial from the start...
...In August 1981, France issued a joint declaration with Mexico recognizing El Salvador's FMLN-FDR as a "representative political force...
...Political wrangling, including an almost unprecedented secret session of Congress, held up disbursement of the money until September 1980...
...Nothing beyond small amounts of non-lethal aid, which could not in itself meet Nicaragua's defense needs, would fly politically in Washington...
...The escalating clashes with Somocistas during the fall included one cross-border attack by 60 exNational Guardsmen in November...
...The FSLN also had the misfortune to take power at a critical juncture in U.S...
...arms.'3 Again, in Quito for the inauguration of Ecuadorian President Jaime Roldos in August, both Borge and Eden Pastora- then deputy defense minister- discussed the issue with U.S...
...Each of the Western members of the "Big Six" presented problems as a potential supplier for Nicaragua: West Germany had banned arms exports to "areas of tension" in 1977...
...In December 1979, U.S...
...An intelligence analysis in August concluded that Nicaragua's coalition government was a facade that would last only until the United States was "lulled...
...French officials conceded privately that they contemplated no new arms sales to Nicaragua...
...Latin America Regional Report (Mexico and Central America), May I, 1981...
...The Miami Herald, August 17, 1979...
...of second echelon EPS leadership underlined this disposition...
...But their main concern was, as one official put it, that "if we don't provide them with arms, the Cubans will...
...Initially, the Mitterrand government was the most active in Western Europe in pursuing diplo- matic initiatives in Central America...
...Radio Sandino (Managua) in FBIS-LAM, September 3, 1983...
...Secretary of State Alexander Haig told French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson that the deal was "a stab in the back...
...The Washington Post, July 10 and 29, 1982...
...some even ended up in paramilitary death squad activities there...
...The Financial Times, March 31, 1982...
...The issue was raised for a third and last time in conversations with President Carter during the September visit to Washington by Junta members Daniel Ortega, Sergio Ramirez and Mois6s Hassdn...
...In columnist Jack Anderson's memorable phrase, Honduras was to replace Somoza's Nicaragua as "a bulwark of anti-communism against the pressures of popular revolt...
...What can be achieved by Western opponents of administration policy...
...Italy's Christian Demo- cratic administration collapsed in March 1980, the latest in the country's notorious series of revolvingdoor governments...
...and in Panama, credit for purchase of non-lethal equipment...
...2 The Sandinistas were aghast at the episode...
...Aware that Nicaragua's size, underdevelopment and proximity to the United States made full independence an impossible short-term goal, the Sandinistas spoke of "diversifying dependency" in both the economic and military spheres...
...The Washington Post, July 10, 1982...
...Latin America Political Report, August 3, 1979...
...Spain (another of Nicaragua's potential arms suppliers) condemned the French for "meddling in areas where they had no business.' ' Even Mexico was unhappy...
...The Administration's attitude was laid out clearly in a 1980 report by the Committee of Santa Fe, a group of New Right academics and policy analysts...
...The Sandinistas have probed the limits of diplomatic space in Latin America, especially around three key junctures: the Latin American-U.S...
...Envi6 (Managua: Instituto Historico Centroamericano), No...
...Though the primary escalation took place under the MAY/JUNE 1985 I 27Sandinista Foreign Policy Reagan Administration, its predecessor set the ball rolling...
...ambassador to Paris, Evan Galbraith, had protested France's support for guerrillas in El Salvador and its recent decision to normalize relations with Libya...
...3 U.S.-French relations over defense policy in Europe and Africa were the closest in 25 years, and Paris could not afford to ignore these stern protests...
...ACAN (Panama City) in FBIS-LAM, October 10, 1979...
...With U.S...
...The Washington Post, December 1, 1979...
...officials...
...24 Other Latin American governments, however, proved unwilling to share the burden...
...The Sandinistas have not received a cent from the 1DB since 1982 because of their "macroeconomic policies...
...In April 1981, Deputy Defense Minister Eden Pastora complained that Nicaragua had been forced to buy arms from the Mafia in Miami: "I talked to the CIA and they wouldn't help us...
...52 LTIMATELY, EUROPE'S DILEMMA IS how much influence it can wield over a U.S...
...A recent successful orientation tour to the U.S...
...Small though the deal was, Washington was outraged...
...M EANWHILE, THE SANDINISTAS WERE having further problems with the Panama connection, this time underscoring the dilemma of engaging Western as well as Cuban trainers...
...The armed lorces of the new Nicaragua must be entirely rebuilt, both its personnel and equipment...
...Department of Defense, Defense Security Assistance Agency, Foreign Military Sales and Military Assistance Facts, September 30, 1983, p.33...
...influence...
...In March 1980, within weeks of a narrow and controversial House vote on the $75 million aid package, the Honduran role took on a more ominous coloration...
...6. Selser, Sandino, p.97...
...Any prospective arms supplier to Nicaragua would need to offer a number of characteristics: a substantial arms export market...
...Shultz's letter also contained a scarcely veiled threat that 1DB approval of the Nicaraguan request could jeopardize future U.S...
...48 Secretary of State George Shultz spearheaded a drive against Nicaragua's recent request to the 1DB for $58 million to develop private sector agriculture...
...Nor did it suggest severing military ties...
...Legitimate arms dealers refused to sell us weapons.' Second, the obverse of the military aid embargo on Nicaragua was a heavy U.S...
...Europeans recognize that their hands are more than usually tied in the Caribbean Basin, an undisputed sphere of U.S...
...Yet Borge in particular went to great pains to assure Washington that even an enforced arms purchase from the Soviet bloc "would not necessarily signify that we were aligning ourselves with them politically, because non-socialist countries have bought arms from socialist countries...
...Radical shifts can also occur within a friendly government...
...The Sandinistas' foreign policy also looked to build a diplomatic wall in the West that would raise the costs of U.S...
...Only France remained, and its modest effort to test the limits of Washington's tolerance graphically illustrated the structural boundaries to the Sandinistas' effort to diversify their "military dependency...
...The Washington Post, December I, 1979...
...Latin America Regional Report (Mexico and Central America), May 1, 1981...
...The French stressed the defensive character of all this materiel, and the terms of the contract also expressly forbade resale or transshipment to a third party .3 The sale was in accord with France's belief that such deals would weaken Nicaraguan ties to the USSR to the extent that they reduced the revolu- tion's dependency on military supplies from the Soviet bloc...
...The Sandinistas had an army to equip from scratch, and they were looking for the best deal available...
...military, which had created, trained and upheld Somoza's National Guard...
...its chief distinction was that, from 1949-76, the National Guard had trained more troops there than any other Latin American army...
...The report in turn had a major impact on that year's Republican platform, which read, We deplore the Marxist Sandinista takeover of Nicaragua and the Marxist attempts to destabilize El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras...
...But their main concern was, as one official put it, that "if we don't provide them with arms, the Cubans will...
...military loans and grants to the region soared from $2.7 million in FY 1979 to $130.4 million in FY 1983, the lion's share to Honduras and El Salvador.27 Nicaragua's neighbors also began to arm themselves heavily from other sources...
...At that point, "the present Sandinista-led Junta will be replaced by an authoritarian Marxist government...
...The New York Times, January 9, 1982...
...France believed instead that the East-West conflict must be won in the South, and argued that support for revolutionary forces was necessary to prevent their inexorable gravitation into the Soviet camp...
...2 8 In September 1979, Carter's Under Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, Viron P. Vaky, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that Honduras was the keystone of U.S...
...Friction developed when the Panamanians found that Cubans had filled all the important military advisory positions and that Panamanian personnel would have no role in army intelligence...
...This strategy would accept aid from any quarter, as long as it came with no harmful conditions...
...foreign policy...
...Its twin priorities of securing continued military aid and economic support both became more critical as the contra war escalated and took its toll on the country's resources...
...The Washington Post, August 30, 1979...
...For one thing, Washington's ability to apply diplomatic and finan- cial pressure on Europe is more than enough to neutralize any political clout the Europeans can bring to bear on the White House or Congress...
...The largest arms suppliers to the Third World are the "Big Six"-the United States, the USSR, France, Italy, Great Britain and West Germany, who between them account for 88% of all arms sales to the Third World...
...and has expressed a desire to obtain military know-how and non-Ietha equipment from the U.S...
...Equally threatening to the United States would be any action by the West that might challenge the Republican thesis about the Sandinistas' true nature and options by proving that Nicaragua could indeed pursue a non-aligned course outside the Soviet bloc...
...The Washington Post, August 30, 1979...
...and it has actively subverted any European or Latin American initiative that might offer Nicaragua an alternative path...
...As U.S...
...was a pressing need...
...By then a final condition had demanded presidential certification that the Sandinistas were not "exporting revolu- tion...
...3 (1984), pp...
...Yet France made it clear that this was a Sandinista initiative...
...They were indis- tinguishable from the mostly non-uniformed FSLN forces...
...Figures from Banco Central de Nicaragua, 1985...
...The FSLN aimed, against all historical precedent, to build a professional army with Cuban mentors and Western military aid...
...Panamanian Chief of Staff Col...
...The advent of the Reagan Administration brought a quantum leap in Honduras' role...
...market, but if it is closed to us then we will have to seek another, possibly the European market"15 He named Belgium as the first choice...
...Relations between the two countries deteriorated fast...
...The FSLN program aimed less at purely economic independenceU.S...
...3 The arms agreement, though the largest the MAY/JUNE 1985 29efri c: Ui Sandinista Foreign Policy Nicaraguans had so far received, should be put into perspective...
...For Eden Pastora, "To accept would have been equivalent to following in the footsteps of the Somocista Guard, and to send our men there would be to offend the Panamanian people...
...as a result of the Panama Canal treaties negotiated by Carter and Panamanian ruler Omar Torrijos, the United States had agreed to phase out the School of the Americas...
...in- a fight for national independence...
...In September 1979, then-Defense Minister Bernardino Larfos set off on an arms-buying mission to Belgium-the Sandinistas' first choice-West Germany, Spain, Mexico and Brazil...
...7. Cited in George Black, Triumph of the People: The San...
...Army School of the Americas at Fort Gulick, Panama...
...aggression...
...Nicaragua was concerned that the Panamanian mission might serve as a cover for U.S...
...Aware that Nicaragua's size, underdevelopment and proximity to the United States made full independence an impossible short-term goal, the Sandinistas spoke of "diversifying dependency" in both the economic and military spheres...
...Honduras opened its arms to the exiles...
...Latin America Weekly Report, December 21, 1979...
...The Washington Post, De- cember I, 1979...
...Relations between the two countries deteriorated fast...
...Yet there are severe constraints on the amount of economic and diplomatic support they can expect from the West...
...We do not support U.S...
...By 1983, Mitterrand's senior adviser on Latin America, R6gis Debray, declared that he was "extremely disappointed" with Nicaragua...
...The Miami Herald, August 7, 1981...
...First, although tiny amounts of non-lethal sales trickled through the pipeline--$105,000 worth from 1979-83-the Nicaraguans ran into trouble when they tried to purchase arms commercially in the United States...
...Los Angeles Times, September 30, 1984...
...117 (November-December 1979), p. 1 9 1 . 6. Inforpress Centroamericana (Guatemala City), November 17, 1979...
...military MAY/JUNE 1985 23 gime professing non-alignment would stand as a model for replication in the region and cast doubts on the credibility of U.S...
...By then a final condition had demanded presidential certification that the Sandinistas were not "exporting revolution...
...By then, however, Washington had made its decision...
...El Salvador received 18 Dassault Super Mystere B-2 fighter-bombers from Israel...
...B Y LATE 1981 THE PRESSURE FROM Washington for its Western allies to toe the line on Central America was intense...
...Leslie Gelb, "On Arms for Nicaragua," op-ed, The New York Times, August 29, 1979...
...The dictator's side of this devil's bargain was a loyalty to U.S...
...with standardized weaponry and equipment and a reliable source of restocking...
...He named Belgium as the first choice...
...Unlike Ni...
...EFE (Madrid) in FBIS -LAM, June 14, 1983...
...enough political latitude from Washington to cope with U.S...
...seal of approval required by the international banking community to begin renegotiating Nicaragua's foreign debt...
...By this time, the Right was clearly gaining the upper hand in Washington...
...Central American Historical Institute, "U.S.-Honduran Relations: A Background Briefing Packet," (Georgetown, 1984...
...a modest US security assistance program will support the rational development of a realistic military structure...
...an insistence that no funds could be used for health or educational projects involving Cubans...
...XIII, no...
...3 0 Europe's own international priorities may relegate Central America to a secondary place, or may come into conflict with the FSLN's diverse diplomatic goals, especially its ties to Third World nations and movements...
...Rubdn Dario Paredes travelled to Cuba to discuss the matter directly with Castro...
...concern over the demonstration effect of the Sandinista revolution...
...2 The Sandinistas continued to pursue their appeal for U.S...
...Others countered that the Sandinistas already had all the arms they needed after two years of war, that Congress would react adversely to the request, and that Washington would end up supplying the Salvadorean guerrillas if the FSLN transshipped "excess" arms.' 6 These arguments prevailed...
...The decision by a Latin American nation to join the NAM is not in itself judged a threat to U.S...
...The Mitterrand administration in France, beset by economic and political problems, has pulled back from its earlier commitment to Nica- ragua...
...and Michael Gardenswartz, "Has Politics Spoiled the IDB?," Institutional Investor (March 1985), pp.97-100...
...NACLA interview with former State Department official, April I, 1985...
...By August 1979 rumors of a counterrevolutionary invasion were rife in Managua...
...A friendly government may be voted out of office and a valuable aid package lost, as happened when West Germany's Social Democrats lost to Helmut Kohl's Christian Democrats in 1982...
...At that point, "the present Sandinista-led Junta will be replaced by an authoritarian Marxist government...
...22 The Sandinistas continued to pursue their appeal for U.S...
...The advent of the Reagan Administration brought a quantum leap in Honduras' role...
...Latin America Weekly Report, December 21, 1979...
...Lea Guido in Margaret Randall, Todas estamos des54 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Uc Ase' Sandinista Foreign Poficy Repot onr te AI olica Sandinista Foreign Policy SOVEREIGNTY AND NON-ALIGNMENT 1. Tomas Borge, Daniel Ortega et al., Sandinistas Speak (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1982), p. 4 5 . 2. Letter to Froylin Turcios, June 10, 1928, quoted in Gregorio Selser, Sandino (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1981), p.108...
...The Washington Post, July 10 and 29, 1982...
...allies in Central America, protested this "extracontinental interference in the affairs of a sovereign nation...
...M-Is and M-16s, Belgian FALs and Israeli Galils-most without stocks of ammunition...
...The largest arms suppliers to the Third World are the "Big Six"- the United States, the USSR, France, Italy, Great Britain and West Germany, who between them account for 88% of all arms sales to the Third World.3 Some distance behind are the smaller Western arms exporters: Norway, the Netherlands, Brazil, Israel, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland and Spain...
...Prefiguring the administration's later backing for the contras, the Republicans added, 'We will support the efforts of the Nicaraguan people to establish a free and independent government...
...Radio Sandino (Managua) in FBIS-LAM, September 3, 1983...
...Nicaragua's economy was in ruins...
...The school was anathema to them...
...The New York Times, July 30, 1981...
...The Nicaraguans quickly declined the offer...
...The $2.5 million in military aid approved in Somoza's last year and then held in the pipeline, was cancelled...
...For the Sandinistas, the lesson was clear...
...4' As late as September 1983 the Sandinistas were complaining that the rockets and armaments for the patrol boats had still not arrived.4 French officials conceded privately that they contemplated no new arms sales to Nicaragua . France, with the world's third largest arms export industry, a popular new left-wing government and a history of relative independence from Washington, proved unable to fulfill Nicaragua's hopes of Western arms supplies...
...Further clauses spelled out the circumstances for terminating aid if the Nicaraguans failed to hold elections...
...Two weeks later, Nicaragua protested that contras were being harbored in training camps inside Honduras...
...The outspoken Pastora warned that a refusal from Washington would force Nicaragua to "go to the socialist bloc for help...
...foreign policy...
...Carrion noted that, We have this difference from almost every Voices From the Past Justificailon of Program - In the wake of a prolonged civil war and a popular uprising to overthrow a dictatorial regime...
...military aid and ESF (Security Support) funds to Honduras jumped to $8.9 million in 1981, $68...
...4 (July-August 1984), p.37...
...Spain (another of Nicaragua's potential arms suppliers) condemned the French for "meddling in areas where they had no business...
...1ST ON-ALIGNMENT DID NOT IMPLY A IN Sandinista rejection of "correct" diplomatic and economic relations with Washington...
...Any prospective arms supplier to Nicaragua would need to offer a number of characteristics: a substantial arms export market...
...The FSLN aimed, against all historical precedent, to build a professional army with Cuban mentors and Western military aid...
...Most disconcerting to the Sandinistas was the pressure exerted on France after the sale, and Mitterrand's reaction to it...
...Yet many Sandinistas believe it has been a crucial deterrent to military intervention...
...The Washington Post, December 1, 1979...
...One senior bank official told the author, "I have never seen such political pressure on the bank as in the last four years...
...and Michael Gardenswartz, "Has Politics Spoiled the 1DB?," Institutional Investor (March 1985), pp.97-100...
...Guatemala bought 10 Brazilian 1-23 trainers.28 In September 1979, Carter's Under Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs, Viron P. Vaky, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that Hon- duras was the keystone of U.S...
...The Financial Times, December 15, 1981...
...Nicaragua's relations with the PLO and Libya, which has supplied the Sandinistas with $100 million in credits, as well as arms and petroleum, have clashed with the Mitterrand government's agenda in Lebanon and in Chad, where Libya is challenging French control...
...Venezuela, for example, refused a joint request from Panamanian and Costa Rican officials to train the Sandinista Air Force on the grounds of Cuban involvement...
...U.S...
...Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS-LAM), October 16 and November 3, 1979...
...NACLA interview with former State Department official, April 1, 1985...
...Nicaragua closely watched the progress of the bill as a signal of U.S...
...arms...
...The New York Times, December 25, 1984...
...The New York Times, August 12 and 13, 1979...
...They were indistinguishable from the mostly non-uniformed FSLN forces...
...officials...
...Shultz's letter also contained a scarcely veiled threat that IDB approval of the Nicaraguan request could jeopardize future U.S...
...Latin America Regional Report (Mexico and Central America), May 3, 1985...
...The Defense Monitor (Washington, D.C.: Center for Tiefense Information), Vol...
...Carter himself was unwilling to make a fight of the military aid issue, preferring not to further complicate the congressional battle for approval of the $75 million loan...
...T HE DEADEND OF U.S...
...Most important, Nicaragua was concerned that the Panamanian mission might serve as a cover for U.S...
...Nothing beyond small amounts of non-lethal aid, which could not in itself meet Nicaragua's defense needs, would fly politically in Washington...
...and a demand that 1% of the total funds be used to publicize U.S...
...with some 10,000 irregular militias.'" The insurrection had been too rapid to harness this mutinous tidal wave into a coherent military structure...
...3. TomAs Borge, Carlos, el amanecer ya no es una tentacidn (Havana: Casa de las Americas, 1980), p.31...
...conREPORT ON THE AMERICAS 30MAY/JUNE 1985 __ :iiL efr , Z Sandinista Foreign Policy made available $605.6 million, or 24.2% of the total.41 (see tables pp...
...The Washington Post, July 14, 1982...
...Congress failed the test...
...When a country such as Nicaragua applies to France for aid," said one official, "it is often because it is seeking to escape dependency on one of the superpowers...
...assistance to any Marxist government in the hemisphere and we oppose the Carter Administration aid program for the government of Nicaragua...
...3. Tomas Borge, Carlos, el amanecer ya no es una tentacton (Havana: Casa de las Americas, 1980), p.20...
...It would be "an army educated in loyalty to the vanguard of our nation...
...Latin America Weekly Report, January IS, 1982...
...dinista Revolution in Nicaragua (London: Zed Press, 1981), p.224...
...bridge-building" in Central America...
...objectives that Somoza used to boast was second to none...
...The umbilical ties between Washington and the Somozas made the insurgency synonymous with a fight for national independence...
...Yet many Sandinistas believe it has been a crucial deterrent to military intervention...
...Reagan came into office obsessed with Soviet-Cuban penetration of the Caribbean Basin and fearing that "the Nicaraguan base on the American continent will 28REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 28 REPORT ON THE AMERICASnow facilitate a repeat of the new Nicaraguan revo- lutionary model...
...pressure made a similar assessment: To an even greater degree than other elements of government, the Nicaraguan defense establishment was swept away...
...The New York Times, July 20, 1980...
...B Y LATE 1981 THE PRESSURE FROM Washington for its Western allies to toe the line on Central America was intense...
...4. LeMonde (Paris), March 21, 1980...
...The point was driven home early...
...Somoza had plundered the treasury...
...As long as Washington remains able to continue a low-intensity war, designed to bleed Nicaragua slowly to death on the back pages of the world's newspapers, protests from Western Europe or the Latin American democracies will not deflect the Reagan Administration from its goal of removing the Sandinistas...
...for further details, see ibid., September 13, 1979...
...M AY 1981 SAW THE ELECTION IN France of Francois Mitterrand's socialist government...
...See The New York Times, January 9, 1982...
...At the same time, 100 Nicaraguans travelled to Panama for a similar training program, which included some intelligence and internal security work...
...49-51) IN THE FACE OF U.S...
...intelligence...
...The country became not only a base for large-scale contra attacks but also a platform for a series of joint military ma- neuvers designed to intimidate Nicaragua and rehearse the rapid deployment of U.S...
...Ruben Darlo Paredes travelled to Cuba to discuss the matter directly with Castro...
...The undisciplined mix of forces, with extremely disparate military experience, was equipped with an equally diverse array of vehicles and weapons- U.S...
...But there was an immediate clash between the nature of Nicaragua's military needs and the consensus in Washington on containing Cuban and Soviet influence in the region...
...Its twin priorities of securing continued military aid and economic support both became more critical as the contra war escalated and took its toll on the country's resources...
...The new administration delivered its verdict from the start: in a rigidly bipolar world, the Sandinistas were Marxists- enemies- and a danger to U.S...
...The FSLN also had the misfortune to take power at a critical juncture in U.S...
...The cost incurred by the United States in equipping what it considered a competent modern army in Honduras is a useful yardstick for judging the magnitude of the Sandinistas' shopping list...
...We will return to the fundamental principle of treating a friend as a friend and self-proclaimed enemies as enemies, without apology...
...Even Major James Pitts, Public Affairs Officer for the School of the Americas, acknowledged that, "So many Somoza men trained here that I am sure it will take time before the Sandinistas decide to send anyone...
...Nicaragua's relations with the PLO and Libya, which has supplied the Sandinistas with $100 million in credits, as well as arms and petroleum, have clashed with the Mitterrand government's agenda in Lebanon and in Chad, where Libya is challenging French control...
...Only if that option is removed, and Washington confronted with a choice between negotiated coexistence or a direct invasion by U.S...
...emphasis on building a strategic consensus of regimes to combat Soviet expansionism around the globe, and pointed to the Middle East as an example of the limitations of this policy...
...REPORT ON THE AMERICAS -24other revolutionary experience in the world: elsewhere regular armies were clearly formed, and in the course of a relatively prolonged struggle, were consolidated and structured...
...As late as November 1980, they submitted a 54-page want-list for spare parts...
...The new government inherited a pitiful $3.5 million in international reserves, and a $1.6 billion foreign debt...
...The New York Times, August 13, 1979...
...France's chastening experience over Nicaragua and El Salvador was seen as proof...
...Groups of extreme leftists maintained an insurgency to pressure the government into a more radical course, until a crackdown in the spring of 1980...
...The US response to Nicaraguan aspirations can have a significant bearing on the outcome...
...The Miami Herald, August 17, 1979...
...Central American Historical Institute, "U.S-Honduran Relations: A Background Briefing Packet," (Georgetown, 1984...
...Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), World Armaments and Disarmament: SIPRI Yearbook 1984 (London: Taylor and Francis Ltd., 1984), p. 2 1 5 . 31...
...In June, Foreign Minister Miguel D'Escoto visited Paris...
...Most important...
...As the year went on, Nicaragua lavished praise on France...
...To make matters worse, gangs of common criminals took advantage of the chaos after July 19, and seized the weapons dropped by retreating Guardsmen...
...capital flight amounted to $500 million...
...9. Central Intelligence Agency, "Background Article," Sep- tember 6, 1978, Declassfied Documents Reference System, Document no.81 (281B...
...after informal talks with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in September 1979, visiting Junta members complained that "they felt more like witnesses under criminal investigation than visiting heads of state...
...control in a region defined as a critical relations with Washington...
...U.S.-French relations over defense policy in Europe and Africa were the closest in 25 years, and Paris could not afford to ignore these stern protests...
...It is the French who are naive to take their desires for reality...
...4 3 France, with the world's third largest arms export industry, a popular new left-wing government and a history of relative independence from Washington, proved unable to fulfill Nicaragua's hopes of Western arms supplies...
...Some liberals in the Carter Administration were prepared to take the risk, but the Sandinistas' radicalism and their historic ties to Cuba were too much for the majority of the U.S...
...The new government inherited a pitiful $3.5 million in international reserves, and a $1.6 billion foreign debt...
...By implication, any Western government that helped the Nicaraguan regime would be the object of attack by Washington...
...concern over the demonstration effect of the Sandinista revolu- tion...
...Army School of the Americas at Fort Gulick, Panama...
...When the U.S...
...U.S...
...In April 1981, Deputy Defense Minister Eddn Pastora complained that Nicaragua had been forced to buy arms from the Mafia in Miami: "I talked to the CIA and they wouldn't help us...
...The Nicaraguans quickly declined the offer...
...3 Even so, they accepted the aid with all its onerous conditions, both out of real need for the money and because the agreement constituted a U.S...
...The Washington Post, July 10, 1982...
...Before late 1981 and the start of U.S...
...capital flight amounted to $500 million...
...Munitions Control List...
...Ibid...
...After reminding him of the United States' "painful attitude toward Nicaragua in the past," and expressing a "hope for improved relations in the future," he requested U.S...
...4 Washington was their first port of call...
...FROM THE DAY THE SANDINISTAS TOOK the reins of government, their sovereign right to military defense against hostile forces became a primary concern...
...Countries as diverse as Argentina, Peru and gram aimed less at purely economic independenceJamaica are members...
...For the Republicans, poised to seize the White House in 1980, denial of the Sandinistas' right to exist became an article of faith...
...and has expressed a desire to obtain military know-how and non-lethal equipment from the U.S...
...nor had it greatly minded the essence, different in character from the opposition to Somozas' abuse of the economy...
...49-5 1) I N THE FACE OF U.S...
...offer finally came, it was purely symbolic: $3,000 for binoculars and compasses, and $20,000 for six Sandinista army officers to tour Fort Stewart, Fort Benning and Fort Jackson...
...4 7 (see tables pp...
...After its un- successful attempt in 1979 to secure military aid from the United States, Nicaragua spent two years exhausting other avenues of Western arms supplies...
...Trained at Fort Gulick, the Panamanian Guard had strong links with the U.S...
...By 1983, Mitterrand's senior adviser on Latin America, Regis Debray, declared that he was "extremely disappointed" with Nicaragua . A 1984 report stated that French interest and influence in Central America have "virtually disappeared" and, according to Debray, French sympathy for anti- imperialist enterprises had been subordinated to ''socialist realpolitik...
...Washington was not amused...
...France believed instead that the East-West conflict must be won in the South, and argued that support for revolutionary forces was necessary to pre- vent their inexorable gravitation into the Soviet camp...
...Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), World Armaments and Disarmament: SIPRI Yearbook 1984 (London: Taylor and Francis Ltd., 1984), p.215...
...Some liberals in the Carter Administration were prepared to take the risk, but the Sandinistas' radicalism and their historic ties to Cuba were too much for the majority of the U.S...
...Ibid...
...France's chastening experience over Nicaragua and El Salvador was seen as proof...
...generosity...
...The $2.5 million in military aid approved in Somoza's last year and then held in the pipeline, was cancelled...
...Figures from Ministerio de Cooperaci6n Exteri6r, 1985...
...The escalating clashes with Somocistas during the fall included one cross-border attack by 60 ex- National Guardsmen in November...
...attacks also began by ex-Guardsmen in Costa Rica...
...ACAN (Panama City) in FBIS-LAM, October 10, 1979...
...Over the last four years, the United States has also coerced European and Latin American representatives to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (1DB) into denying loans to Nicaragua...
...The deal included two Alouette3 helicopters, two coastal patrol boats, 45 troop transport trucks, 100 helicopter-mounted STRIM 89 rocket launchers and 7,000 rocket rounds...
...The New York Times, November 16, 1983...
...9 The EEC has been a victim of similar arm-twisting...
...military aid for another year...
...of second echelon EPS leadership underlined this disposi- tion, In order to make an impact in this area we will have to offer resources in terms of training opportunities at schc'ols in the US...
...The first acid test of future U.S.-Nicaraguan relations was the Sandinistas' request for economic aid from the Carter Administration...
...allies in Central America, protested this "extracontinental interference in the affairs of a sovereign nation...
...XIII, no...
...Many received Honduran nationality...
...officials charged that France was doing the Soviets' job, and argued that the weapons would further "militarize the Nicaraguan regime, helping it export revolution and destabilize the region...
...In August 1979, Carter prepared a $75 million aid package-$5 million of it a grant, the remainder in credits-and in November presented it to Congress...
...In a private meeting with Reagan in March 1982, the French president in- formed him that the delivery of the helicopters "would face indefinite delays...
...power...
...3 0 Some distance behind are the smaller Western arms exporters: Norway, the Netherlands, Brazil, Israel, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland and Spain...
...What can be achieved by Western opponents of administration policy...
...In August 1981, France issued a joint declaration with Mexico recognizing El Salvador's FMLN-FDR as a "representative political force...
...This wall, made up of a network of relationships with Western gov- ernments, social democratic parties and transnational bodies like the SI and the European Economic Community (EEC), admittedly had more than a few loose bricks...
...By this time, the Right was clearly gaining the upper hand in Washington...
...7 There was no pretense that the new Sandinista People's Army (EPS) would be apolitical...
...6 U.S...
...The problem is recovering the national sovereignty that had so long how Washington perceives a country's interpreta- been mortgaged to Washington's geopolitical goals...
...For one thing, Washington's ability to apply diplomatic and financial pressure on Europe is more than enough to neutralize any political clout the Europeans can bring to bear on the White House or Congress...
...military aid and ESF (Security Support) funds to Honduras jumped to $8.9 million in 1981, $68.1 million in 1982, and $90.3 million in 1983.29 T HE THIRD IMPLICATION OF THE EMbargo on arms sales to Nicaragua was that Washington's mounting drive to isolate the Sandinistas would extend to pressure on alternative arms suppliers in Latin America and Western Europe...
...Throughout the 20th century Washington had cared little for democracy in Nicaragua...
...26 Second, the obverse of the military aid embargo on Nicaragua was a heavy U.S...
...contributions to the bank...
...We refuse to spend a single dollar on arms because our country is too poor...
...see also Kai Bird and Max Holland, "Nicaragua: No Friend at the JDB," The Nation, March 2, 1985...
...Carter himself was unwilling to make a fight of the military aid issue, preferring not to further complicate the congressional battle for approval of the $75 million loan...
...State Department liberals who favored granting the Nicaraguan request felt the Sandinistas had a legitimate need to develop what was agreed to be the weakest military capacity in Central America, and "to standardize equipment to fight the Somoza National Guard units still operating...
...attitudes...
...At the September 1984 meeting of EEC foreign ministers in San Jose, Costa Rica, an incensed Claude Cheysson made public a letter from Shultz to each of the delegates which urged- unsuccessfully- that European assistance to Central America "not lead to increased economic aid or any political support for Nicaragua...
...By implication, any Western government that helped the Nicaraguan regime would be the object of attack by Washington...
...Those ties, in turn, would prejudice Nicaragua's image as a non-aligned nation, serve in the campaign to discredit the revolution as "totalitarian" and determine the categorical limits on Western economic and diplomatic support...
...officials charged that France was doing the Soviets' job, and argued that the weapons would further "militarize the Nicaraguan regime, helping it export revolution and destabilize the region...
...For Ed6n Pastora, "To accept would have been equivalent to following in the footsteps of the Somocista Guard, and to send our men there would be to offend the Panamanian people...
...2. JesUs M. Blandon, Entre Sandino y Fonseca (Managua: DPEP del FSLN, 1981), pp.86, 109...
...Army liaison officer Lt...
...attacks also began by ex-Guardsmen in Costa Rica...
...Nothing remains except for some small arms and the battered remnants of other equipment, all of it battlescarred and most of it fit for little more than salvage...
...To an even greater extent than other elements of government, the Nicaraguan defense establishment was swept away...
...The fact that Nicaragua has shown the desire to ask France for aid is a prime indication that the Managua government has no desire to count entirely on Cuba and the Soviet Union to supply its defense needs...
...In particular, the French objected to the U.S...
...Italy's Christian Democratic administration collapsed in March 1980, the latest in the country's notorious series of revolvingdoor governments...
...Figures from Ministerio de Cooperacion Exterior, Managua, 1985...
...orbit posed major problems for historic U.S...
...One French high technology firm complained that "its markets in at least three countries had been cut off" as a result of the sale.4 Mitterrand caved in...
...But Borge overruled him, saying that he would prefer aid from the United States, and that Nicaragua would avoid obtaining socialist country arms in order not to give a "pretext to feelings that we are aligning ourselves with them politically...
...The Washington Post, January 20, 1985...
...8. Ibid., pp.224-26...
...military investment in the rest of Central America...
...9 Even Mexico was unhappy...
...Washington Report on the Hemisphere, March 19, 1985...
...The school was anathema to them...
...Carri6n noted that, We have this difference from almost every Voices From the Past Justrfication of Program - In the wake of a prolonged civil war and a popular uprising to overthrow a dictatorial regime, Nicaragua is forging a new national identity...
...33 On the heels of this rebuff came an equally harsh lesson in geopolitical realities which represented a watershed in Mitterrand's attitude toward the Third World...
...Honduras nine of the same model...
...U NDER A SECRET DEAL SIGNED ON DEcember 21, 1981, France agreed to sell Nicaragua $15.8 million worth of military equipment, an idea that had arisen during D'Escoto's June visit to Paris...
...Latin America Political Report, August 3, 1979...
...The participation of the masses was less direct...
...The New York Times, January 30, 1982...
...HE CREATION OF WHAT CARRION called a "relatively small" modern army, with standardized weaponry and equipment and a reliable source of restocking, was a pressing need...
...Of this, S618 million- more than one year's total export earnings-fell due in 1979...
...Department of Defense, Defense Security Assistance Agency, Foreign Military Sales and Military Assistance Facts, September 30, 1983, p.33...
...Just as significantly, 14 Latin American countries, including Venezuela and several U.S...
...32 Much like the government of Felipe Gonzalez, which took power in Spain the following year, and in line with the position of the Socialist International (SI), Mitterrand aimed to balance a firm commit- ment to containment of the Soviet Union with a measure of sensitivity to North-South issues...
...Los Angeles Times, October 6, 1979...
...The Sandinistas' foreign policy also looked to build a diplomatic wall in the West that would raise the costs of U.S...
...Three thousand National Guardsmen had crossed the border into Honduras and linked up with other Somocistas exiled in Miami...
...T HE DEADEND OF U.S...
...Munitions Control List...
...Most importantly, relations with Western democracies face the inherent dilemma of continuity...
...ACAN (Panama City) in FBIS-LAM, September 6, 1979...
...Ambassador Lawrence Pezzullo described the sorry state of the Sandinista military: They want uniforms and . . . everything from coffee-cups for the troops to wheeled vehicles...
...Congressional Presentation Document, Security Assistance Programs, FY 1981, p.419...
...With U.S...
...Junta member Sergio RamIrez commented warmly on the growing closeness between the two nations...
...El Salvador received 18 Dassault Super Mystbre B-2 fighter-bombers from Israel...
...Nor did the Right have a monopoly on armed opposition...
...National Directorate member LuIs Carrion predicted within weeks of the victory that, "We will have to face new kinds of aggression as a result of the reorganization of Somocista forces outside the country...
...One European diplomat commented that "It is avery, very delicate issue right now," and that governments had to "walk a thin line between their commitment to social justice and their desire for a working relationship with the United States...
...MAY 1981 SAW THE ELECTION IN France of Francois Mitterrand's socialist government...
...bridge-building" in Central America...
...In particular, the French objected to the U.S...
...4 (July-August 1984), p.37...
...We will return to the fundamental principle of treating a friend as a friend and self-proclaimed enemies as enemies, without apology...
...A friendly government may be voted out of office and a valuable aid package lost, as happened when West Germany's Social Democrats lost to Helmut Kohl's Christian Democrats in 1982...
...Diversification would also lessen Nicaragua's vulnerability to trade and credit restrictions as instruments of foreign pressure...
...caragua, of course, the Honduran army was intact, if inept, when its buildup began, and it faced no serious insurgency...
...pressure MAY/JUNE 1985 25 dl 1 other revolutionary experience in the world: elsewhere regular armies were clearly formed, and in the course of a relatively prolonged struggle, were consolidated and structured...
...The Defense Monitor (Washington, D.C.: Center for Defense Information), Vol...
...N ON-ALIGNMENT DID NOT IMPLY A Sandinista rejection of "correct" diplomatic and economic relations with Washington...
...32 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS Sandinista Foreign APolic Sandinista Foreign Policy made available $605.6 million, or 24.2% of the total...
...3 (1984), pp.4-5...
...3 2 Much like the government of Felipe Gonzalez, which took power in Spain the following year, and in line with the position of the Socialist International (SI), Mitterrand aimed to balance a firm commitment to containment of the Soviet Union with a measure of sensitivity to North-South issues...
...See also Timossi, op.cit., pp.191-93...
...In Au- gust 1979 officers of the Panamanian National Guard arrived in Managua to train the Sandinista police...
...and in Panama, credit for purchase of non-lethal equipment, and grant ESF funds...
...Only France remained, and its modest effort to test the limits of Washington's tolerance graphically illustrated the structural bound- aries to the Sandinistas' effort to diversify their "military dependency...
...Friction developed when the Panamanians found that Cubans had filled all the important military advisory positions and that Panamanian personnel would have no role in army intelligence...
...But there was an immediate clash between the nature of Nicaragua's military needs and the consensus in Washington on containing Cuban and Soviet influence in the region...
...military MAY/JUNE 1985 23Sandinista Foreign Policy pressure, the Sandinistas were to become dependent on the Soviet Union for their military lifeline...
...influence...
...T HE CREATION OF WHAT CARRION called a "relatively small" modern army...
...2 3 But by September 1979 the issue was dead in Washington, and the Carter Administration was convinced it had made a prudent decision...
...In Sep- tember 1979, then-Defense Minister Bernardino LarIos set off on an arms-buying mission to Bel- gium- the Sandinistas' first choice-West Germany, Spain, Mexico and Brazil...
...Letter from Secretary of State George Shultz to 1DB President Hon...
...The New York Times, August 13, 1979...
...4. Le Monde (Paris), March 21, 1980...
...Latin America Political Report, August 10, 1979...
...T HIS VITAL PERIOD IN THE EVOLUTION of Nicaraguan foreign policy was marked by the more crucial discovery that the United States was not going to supply military aid...
...Indeed, one Panamanian official conceded that Sandinista suspicions were logical up to a point.' '' Trained at Fort Gulick, the Panamanian Guard had strong links with the U.S...
...One French high technology firm complained that "its markets in at least three countries had been cut off" as a result of the sale...
...Believe me," he said, "we are not naive about seeing Cubans everywhere for the fun of it...
...Plant and infrastructure were devastated by war...
...This grew to 1,200 in 1978.' Not even the FSLN knew the size of its own forces in July 1979, but estimated them at no more than 3,000-5,000 disciplined fighters, with some 10,000 irregular militias.'" The insurrection had been too rapid to harness this mutinous tidal wave into a coherent military structure...
...Each of the Western members of the "Big Six" presented problems as a potential supplier for Nicaragua: West Germany had banned arms exports to "areas of tension" in 1977...
...This wall, made up of a network of relationships with Western governments, social democratic parties and transnational bodies like the SI and the European Economic Community (EEC), admittedly had more than a few loose bricks...
...Even so, they accepted the aid with all its onerous conditions, both out of real need for the money and because the agreement constituted a U.S...
...4 In September, Borge deMAY/JUNE 1985 Little respite from U.S...
...One European diplomat commented that "It is a very, very delicate issue right now," and that governments had to "walk a thin line between their commitment to social justice and their desire for a working relationship with the United States...
...The Reagan Administration has consistently depicted this aid as a response to Nicaragua's "Soviet-sponsored buildup," but the facts are otherwise...
...The dollar sum involved was also tiny in relation to other French arms transactions: France had recently concluded deals for $2.5 billion with Saudi Arabia and $1 billion with Egypt...
...Yet there are severe constraints on the amount of economic and diplomatic support they can expect from the West...
...The problem is how Washington perceives a country's interpretation of non-alignment...
...The widespread belief in Spain that the Sandinistas have links to the Basque separatist group ETA- though not shared by Prime Minister Gonzalez-has not helped the Nicaraguan case...
...The Miami Herald, November 18, 1979...
...An intelligence analysis in August concluded that Nicaragua's coalition government was a facade that would last only until the United States was "lulled...
...Latin America Weekly Report, January 15, 1982...
...When the U.S...
...liberalism was in retreat before the ascendant influ- ence of the Right, for whom even a Sandinista pledge of equidistance from the superpowers would have constituted an intolerable loss of U.S...
...Several armed contra groups, like the FAD and FARAC, were now operating...
...After reminding him of the United States' "painful attitude toward Nicaragua in 254 At'"i Sandinista Foreign Policy dared that, "We prefer the U.S...
...Congress failed the test...
...Cubans have so far been accorded a training role in the EPS but the Sandinistas seem to have a preference for US sources...
...Alone among Western countries, the United States has a military assistance program able to provide significant arms transfers and training through outright grants...
...US security assistance programs will also serve as a counterweight to Cuban influence in the Government of Nicaragua security apparatus...
...objec- Dominican Republic or Perez Jimenez in Ventives that Somoza used to boast was second to none...
...The Miami Herald, August 7, 1981...
...The Financial Times, December 15, 1981...
...Daniel Ortega declared in Paris that "the Nicaraguan government has a total convergence with France on the situation in Central America...
...The French stressed the defensive character of all this materiel, and the terms of the contract also expressly forbade resale or transshipment to a third party . The sale was in accord with France's belief that such deals would weaken Nicaraguan ties to the USSR to the extent that they reduced the revolu- tion's dependency on military supplies from the Soviet bloc...
...Though the primary escalation took place under the I MAY/JUNE 1985 27 Peasant militia, Tipitapa Panama, and in 1980 Panamanian police trainers were sent to Grenada on a similar mission...
...for further details, see ibid., September 13, 1979...
...Ibid...
...Our own case is quite different.' There was no pretense that the new Sandinista People's Army (EPS) would be apolitical...
...The quickening crisis in El Salvador heightened U.S...
...The Cuban leader declared he had no objection to other nations' help for the Nicaraguan armed forces...
...see also Kai Bird and Max Holland, "Nicaragua: No Friend at the IDB," The Nation, March 2, 1985...
...after informal talks with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in September 1979, visiting Junta members complained that "they felt more like witnesses under criminal investigation than visiting heads of state...
...The Sandinistas' longstanding relationship with Cuba, and the Cubans' experience in building a revolutionary army and militia, marked them out as the obvious candidates...
...Nicaragua faced a Hobson's Choice: accept Cuban offers of military help and arouse Western antagonism, or risk taking the Panamanians into sensitive security areas...
...A DMINISTRATION CYNICS DISMISSED the Nicaraguan request as a setup by radicals in the FSLN directorate, who would engineer a U.S...
...In October 1979, 20 militia members died in an ambush...
...One senior Carter Administration official close to the issue acknowledged that the Sandinista request was sincere...
...a modest US security assistance program will support the rational development of a realistic military structure...
...In 1979, within months of the Sandinista victory, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala all acquired new high-performance aircraft...
...A radical nationalist reReport on the Amercas Sandinista Foreign Policy The Limits of Friendship: Nicaragua and the West BY ROBERT MATTHEWS July 1979: Military equipment fit only for salvage OF THE THREE SANDINISTA PRINCIPLES of political pluralism, mixed economy and international non-alignment, it was the last that most interested the United States...
...But Nicaragua embraced a conception of non-alignment that was radical and anti-imperialist...
...Nicaragua's neighbors also began to arm themselves heavily from other sources...
...Others countered that the Sandinistas already had all the arms they needed after two years of war, that Congress would react adversely to the request, and that Washington would end up supplying the Salvadorean guerrillas if the FSLN transshipped "excess'' arms.'6 These arguments prevailed...
...Our own case is quite different...
...This problem is particularly difficult to solve," noted one coman- dante, "because we have requested gifts of weapons...
...Henceforth, Nicaraguan diplomacy, trade and aid initiatives would have to factor in the Soviet bloc's exclusive role as supplier of Nicaragua's defense needs- which escalated rapidly as Washington's preference for a military solution became ever more apparent...
...The Financial Times (London), March 10, 1982...
...See also Center for International Policy Aid Memo, January IS, 1985...
...It is because it has not been politically expedient...
...But Nicaragua embraced a conception of non-alignment that was radical and ternational non-alignment, it was the last that most anti-imperialist...
...Henceforth, Nicaraguan diplomacy, trade and aid initiatives would have to factor in the Soviet bloc's exclusive role as supplier of Nicaragua's defense needs-which escalated rapidly as Washington's preference for a military solution became ever more apparent...
...Nothing re- mains except for some small arms and the battered remnaxus of other equipment...
...Nothing remains except for some small arms and the battered remnants of other equipment, all of it battle scarred and most of it fit for little more than salvage...
...As the year went on, Nicaragua lavished praise on France...
...A 1984 report stated that French interest and influence in Central America have "virtually disappeared" and, according to Debray, French sympathy for antiimperialist enterprises had been subordinated to " socialist realpolitik...
...but any more would have risked a major showdown with Washington...
...The official FSLN newspaper Barricada heralded Mitterrand's win as a major triumph for Nicaragua...
...Daniel Smith, the November 1979 tour would allow the Nicaraguans "to see how our army trains and how it oper- ates" and let "the American people see they're not all bad guys.' "20 After the Junta's September trip to Washington, the Carter Administration countered with its own "good faith test"-an invitation to train Sandinista officers at the U.S...
...Equally threatening to the United States would be any action by the West that might challenge the Re- publican thesis about the Sandinistas' true nature and options by proving that Nicaragua could indeed pursue a non-aligned course outside the Soviet bloc...
...Yet Borge in particular went to great pains to assure Washington that even an enforced arms purchase from the Soviet bloc "would not necessarily signify that we were aligning ourselves with them politically, because non-socialist countries have bought arms from socialist countries...
...Groups of extreme leftists maintained an insurgency to pressure the government into a more radical course, until a crackdown in the spring of 1980...
...Many of France's Western allies also criticized the sale...
...But Cuba did not intend to reduce its contribution "after supporting the Sandinistas . . . for 20 years...
...Those ties, in turn, would prejudice Nicaragua's image as a non-aligned nation, serve in the campaign to discredit the revolution as "totalitarian" and determine the categorical limits on Western economic and diplomatic support...
...Congress to swallow in the mood of late 1979...
...In December, the outspoken U.S...
...See The New York Times, January 9, 1982...
...power...
...conREPORT ON THE AMERICAS RSandnsta Foregn APolic Sandinista Foreign Policy Nicaraguans had so far received, should be put into perspective...
...Author's interview with senior 1DB official, Miami, March I, 1985...
...Dissatisfaction with French policy in the Third World had been simmering for several months...
...But Cuba did not intend to reduce its contribution 'after supporting the Sandinistas . . . for 20 years...
...The agreement also provided for training 10 Nicaraguan pilots and 10 naval officers...
...The outspoken Pastora warned that a refusal from Washington would force Nicaragua to "go to the socialist bloc for help...
...When a country such as Ni caragua applies to France for aid," said one official, "it is often because it is seeking to escape dependency on one of the superpowers...
...Plant and infrastructure were devastated by war...
...5. Quoted in Selser, Sandino, p.132...
...The agreement also provided for training 10 Nicaraguan pilots and 10 naval officers...
...28 (October 1983), p.4b...
...These conditions required a swift response, but as late as mid-1980 the Sandinistas still had nothing approaching a modern army...
...interests...
...The quickening crisis in El Salvador heightened U.S...
...6 The conflict escalated in early 1980...
...It is because it has not been politically expedient...
...The New York Times, January 9, 1982...
...The US response to Nicaraguan aspirations can have a significant bearing on the outcome...
...refusal as proof of the need for military agreements with the Soviet bloc...
...We do not support U.S...
...Venezuela, Costa Rica, even El Salvador, have observer status...
...Even then, Nicaragua's requests for arms were bedevilled by its inability to pay market rates...
...The armed forces of Nicaragua must be entirely rebuilt, both its personnel and equipment...
...A January 1985 letter from Shultz to 1DB president Antonio OrtIz Mena complained that "fungible" bank funds might "free up other monies that could be used to help consolidate the Marxist regime and finance Nicaragua's aggression against its neighbors...
...Los Angeles Times, October 6, 1979...
...After 1979, the inescapable distancing of Nicaragua from the U.S...
...Author's interview with Alejandro Bendana, Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry, Managua, February 19, 1985...
...24 Other Latin American governments, how- ever, proved unwilling to share the burden...
...military investment in the rest of Central America...
...Army liaison officer Lt...
...Many received Honduran nation- ality...
...In columnist Jack Anderson's memorable phrase, Honduras was to replace Somoza's Nicaragua as "a bulwark of anti-communism against the pressures of popular revolt...
...Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS-LAM), October 16 and November 3, 1979...
...Nicaragua's civil war was anti-imperialist in its essence, different in character from the opposition to dictators such as Batista in Cuba, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic or P6rez Jimenez in Venezuela...
...Then, in February, House conservatives attached 16 conditions, among them a stipulation that the credits should be used to buy U.S.-made goods...
...Conceived in the throes of a political struggle for the future of Nicaraguan society, and designed to defend against a return of the old social order, it was to serve as "the principal guarantee of the revolutionary process...
...The Washington Post, January 20, 1985...
...While Sweden has virtually assured an unbroken flow of economic aid by elevating Nicaragua (alone among Latin America nations) to "program status," ties to most other European governments are plagued by inconsistency...
...Washington was not amused...
...Ibid., March 10, 1982...
...liberalism was in retreat before the ascendant influence of the Right, for whom even a Sandinista pledge of equidistance from the superpowers would have constituted an intolerable loss of U.S...
...Here, Nicaragua's experience was a strik- ing contrast with that of Guatemala, which after a cutoff of military funds on human rights grounds in 1977 had continued to receive substantial shipments of arms from U.S...
...8 One senior Carter Administration official close to the issue acknowledged that the Sandinista request was sincere.'9 However, even liberals made it clear to the Nicaraguans that they could expect nothing big...
...In a private meeting with Reagan in March 1982, the French president informed him that the delivery of the helicopters "would face indefinite delays...
...EFFORTS TO DIScredit Nicaragua's non-aligned stance, the Sandinistas have shown considerable skill in their EastWest balancing act...
...4. Sergio Ramirez, Pensamiento vivo de Sandino (San Jos6, Costa Rica: EDUCA, 1974...
...EFFORTS TO DIScredit Nicaragua's non-aligned stance, the Sandinistas have shown considerable skill in their EastWest balancing act...
...In October 1979, 20 militia members died in an ambush...
...LIFELINES I. Carlos Fonseca, Viva Sandino (Managua: Departarnento de Propaganda y Educacion PolItica del FSLN, 1984), p.7...
...4. Comments of Cabs Fonseca, Jose Valdivia and Bayardo Arce in Pilar Arias, ed., Nicaragua revoluciOn (Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1980), pp.31, 80, 86...
...The gov- ernments overarching goal was to create a "nationalist, defensive, anti-imperialist army as an extension of the revolution...
...forces in the region...
...The FSLN proterests...
...administration as ideologically fixated as that of Ronald Reagan...
...Several armed contra groups, like the FAD and FARAC, were now operating...
...In keeping with France's traditional distance from NATO and its experience with its former African colonies, Mitterrand was suspicious of what the French call the "primary anti-communism" of Reagan's Washington...
...Even then, Nicaragua's requests for arms were bedevilled by its inability to pay market rates...
...for two months, Central America was gripped by rumors of a Honduras-Nicaragua war...
...Neutrality Act...
...Nicaragua closely watched the progress of the bill as a signal of U.S...
...The deal included two Alouette-3 helicopters, two coastal patrol boats, 45 troop transport trucks, 100 helicopter-mounted STRIM 89 rocket launchers and 7,000 rocket rounds...
...Nicaragua is forging a new national identity...
...Snipers were the scourge of Managua...
...Washington has closed its ears to efforts by its Western allies to provide a rational analysis of Nicaragua...
...The Miami Herald, February 2, 1981...
...The Miami Herald, November 18, 1979...
...influence...
...According to U.S...
...Initially, the Mitterrand government was the most active in Western Europe in pursuing diplomatic initiatives in Central America...
...Ibid...
...Sandinista People's Army (EPS) leadership has demonstrated a remarkable openness to the U.S...
...HIS VITAL PERIOD IN THE EVOLUTION of Nicaraguan foreign policy was marked by the more crucial discovery that the United States was not going to supply military aid...
...Then again, although France extended credit, the deal was a sale: Soviet bloc military aid to Nicaragua was a donation...
...4 ' As late as September 1983 the Sandinistas were complaining that the rockets and armaments for the patrol boats had still not arrived...
...Countries as diverse as Argentina, Peru and Jamaica are members...
...Even Major James Pitts, Public Affairs Officer for the School of the Americas, acknowledged that, "So many Somoza men trained here that I am sure it will take time before the Sandinistas decide to send anyone...
...The Sandinistas have probed the limits of diplomatic space in Latin America, especially around three key junctures: the Latin American-U.S...
...Legitimate arms dealers refused to sell us weapons...
...Its relations with Nicaragua were cordial from the start...
...Over the next five years, the nature of Sandinista military relationships would thrust itself to center stage in the conflict with Washington...
...He suggested that arms deals with the Soviet bloc "would be a last resort...
...9. Central Intelligence Agency, "Background Article," September 6, 1978, Declassified Documents Reference System, Document no...
...Prefiguring the administration's later backing for the contras, the Republicans added, "We will support the efforts of the Nicaraguan people to establish a free and independent government...
...Britain had elected the arch-conservative Thatcher government in May 1979...
...Nicaragua faced a Hobson's Choice: accept Cuban offers of military help and arouse Western antagonism, or risk taking the Panamanians into sensitive security areas...
...The Miami Herald, February 2, 1981...
...Further clauses spelled out the circumstances for terminating aid if the Nicaraguans failed to hold elections...
...There were political as well as moral objections...
...allies such as Israel, Belgium and Brazil...
...2 WITHIN TWO WEEKS OF THE VICTORY, Interior Minister Tomfis Borge approached Ambassador Pezzullo...
...But Borge overruled him, saying that he would prefer aid from the United States, and that Nicaragua would avoid obtaining socialist country arms in order not to give a "pretext to feelings that we are aligning ourselves with them politically...
...The fight against Somoza had been waged mainly by loose-knit urban insurrectionary forces...
...A $1 billion arms deal with Iraq was in the pipeline...
...The armed forces of Nicaragua must be entirely rebuilt, both its personnel and equipment...
...3. The Washington Post, December 1, 1979...
...To make matters worse, gangs of common criminals took advantage of the chaos after July 19, and seized the weapons dropped by retreating Guardsmen...
...seal of approval required by the international banking community to begin renegotiating Nicaragua's foreign debt...
...First, in January 1980, the Senate passed an amendment earmarking 60% of the funds for the private sector...
...2. William M. LeoGrande, "The United States and the Nicaraguan Revolution," in Walker, op...
...nor had it greatly minded the Somozas' abuse of the economy...
...As the 1980 Literacy Crusade got underway, cross-border at- tacks killed seven teachers...
...Jacobsen, "The Jacobsen Report: Soviet Attitudes towards, Aid to and Contacts with Central American Revolutionaries," paper prepared for the Department of State external research program (June 1984), p.19...
...A radical nationalist reREPORT ON THE AMERICAS 22gime professing non-alignment would stand as a model for replication in the region and cast doubts on the credibility of U.S...
...Training Nicaraguans there would have been an affront to Torrijos, a staunch supporter of the Nicaraguan insurrection...
...The first acid test of future U.S.-Nicaraguan relations was the Sandinistas' request for economic aid from the Carter Administration...
...U NDER A SECRET DEAL SIGNED ON DEcember 21, 1981, France agreed to sell Nicaragua $15.8 million worth of military equipment, an idea that had arisen during D'Escoto's June visit to Paris...
...hostility grew, and blossomed into war under Reagan, the Sandinistas must have felt that their decision to play it safe with the Cubans had been a wise one...
...for two months, Central America was gripped by rumors of a Honduras-Nicaragua war.6 The conflict escalated in early 1980...
...Here, Nicaragua's experience was a striking contrast with that of Guatemala, which after a cutoff of military funds on human rights grounds in 1977 had continued to receive substantial shipments of arms from U.S...
...The New York Times, July 30, 1981...
...Two weeks later, Nicaragua protested that contras were being harbored in training camps inside Honduras...
Vol. 19 • May 1985 • No. 3
