WAR OF ATTRITION
Armstrong, Robert
War of Attrition BY ROBERT ARMSTRONG Washington turns the screws on the Sandinistas Invasion, war of attrition, negotiation. Those are the three options the Reagan Administration has in...
...It's a rut...
...It doesn't intrude into their daily life," says LeoGrande...
...Mounting internal discontent has already led the Sandinista government to declare a state of emergency...
...If the government of Nicaragua were to show signs of serious divisions, says LeoGrande, then "a pretext" would be all that is needed...
...And 12,000 Nicaraguans have died so far in the contra war, President Ortega told The New York Times in July...
...Still, the threat of an outright invasion hovers as an everyday presence...
...So the policy stays where it is and keeps going forward...
...At the distant fringe of the debate, an occasional voice suggests a deal with the six-year-old Sandinista regime: all Soviet and Cuban military advisers out of Nicaragua, a reduction in the Nicaraguan military, U.S...
...policy of helping to overthrow the Sandinistas: 53 per cent still oppose it, a figure that has remained approximately the same since June 1983...
...This low-profile war also wears away at its opposition in the United States...
...But that is a voice in the wilderness...
...Neither LeoGrande nor Reuben expects an invasion, however...
...The first national conscription in Nicaraguan history has been confronted by considerable resistance...
...Under what circumstances would the United States invade...
...In Nicaragua, the war must prevent the Sandinista government from delivering on the promises of the revolution...
...It's the whole Third World...
...In the United States, the battle for public opinion is all-important to Administration strategy...
...Such diffidence has carried the day, at least so far...
...It's El Salvador...
...The grass-roots opposition complains of being overloaded...
...The price of basic goods has been driven up by inflation, and life is hard...
...Even more disquieting is the fact that the Administration seems to be steadily winning converts to its cause...
...The liberals are fed up...
...Casey and other gung-ho types appear eager to send the troops in...
...There's a faction that wants to invade and another that thinks invasion is unwise," says Bill LeoGrande, a staff member of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee...
...MIGs could provoke a full-scale invasion," says LeoGrande, echoing Congressional warnings that the acquisition of sophisticated weaponry by Managua would entail serious risks...
...But the polls show an ominous shift that reflects the partial success of the Administration's media campaign to paint the Sandinistas as "evil" and "communists": Those favoring U.S...
...Government, though it is still little understood in the lesser bureaucracy and in the political community at large...
...imports—from toothpaste to sanitary napkins to drinking glasses—are either in short supply and prohibitively expensive or just don't exist...
...And it's not just Nicaragua...
...Rumors persist that Langhorne Motley, former Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, left his post last June because he favored negotiations with the Sandinistas...
...critics of Reagan policy have to answer is how to deal not with an invasion but with this enervating, constant war...
...There is a new strategy at work in Nicaragua and Central America: low-intensity war," says Deborah Barry, an American analyst of U.S...
...To some extent, U.S...
...Administration policy has meant continued funding for the contras, economic embargo, pressure on private and multilateral banks to limit loans, pressure on allied governments that try to maintain normal relations with the Sandinista government, travel bans, and the prospect of breaking diplomatic relations...
...But at the CIA, Director William Robert Armstrong is the executive director of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), a New York research institute founded in 1966 to study U.S...
...After an initial reluctance, the Pentagon now says it can take control of 60 per cent of Nicaraguan territory in two weeks...
...Careful attention is paid to present the enemy in increasingly strident terms...
...Manipulation of the media agenda is essential, and simplicity and repetition the secret to success," says Barry...
...But neither side can do it...
...Their idea is that there always is a small group which is hoodwinking the masses," says Barry...
...It's what was learned from Vietnam...
...with the civilian population, winning their hearts and minds...
...Only one out of every four persons polled in June knew the United States was backing the contras...
...It is the result of the reinterpretation of Vietnam and the experience of the Third World liberation struggles of the last forty years...
...Even the word "revolution" itself is turned against the Sandinistas, as the contras claim to be the rightful bearers of the revolutionary banner...
...The battlefield," says Barry, "is against the insurgents or radical government, using guerrilla and 'resistance' soldiers...
...For Deborah Barry and her associates in the Caribbean and Central America, more than Reagan's good luck is at work...
...Everybody is sick and tired of Nicaragua," one Congressional observer told me...
...This policy of attrition aims to turn the screws so tightly that the Nicaraguan government will run out of resources, its people will rise up in frustration, the leaders of the revolution will turn against each other in fratricidal recrimination, and the Sandinistas will be squeezed dry and lifeless at the feet of the Yankee giant...
...guarantees of Nicaraguan sovereignty, a "Finlandization" solution...
...policy toward Nicaragua results not so much from stalemate as from the gradual victory of a particular position...
...Distribution prpblems bring periodic shortages...
...But it might not even take such a misstep by the Sandinistas to loose the dogs...
...Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger "usually follows the uniform guys," LeoGrande observes...
...But it isn't one department versus another...
...And the Administration won't leave it alone...
...Most, Americans, however, remain ignorant of U.S...
...Its advocates are found in all of the national security agencies of the U.S...
...New ideas are combated with old, simple, and familiar ones...
...On the eve of his retirement in June, General Wallace H. Nutting, commander of Army and Air Force combat forces in the United States, strongly expressed his opposition to invasion and went so far as to suggest "that we are going to have to learn to live with Nicaragua...
...Political and social campaigns become as important as the military front...
...In announcing the suspension of civil liberties in mid-October, President Daniel Ortega blamed U.S...
...There is less willingness to listen...
...For all the problems facing the anti-interventionist movement, the number of people committed to opposing U.S...
...At the National Security Council, the President's national security adviser, Robert C. McFarlane, generally argues against invasion...
...meddling...
...The question that both the Nicaraguan government and U.S...
...The result of the disagreement is that nothing happens," says LeoGrande...
...Battle lines are drawn between the advocates of invasion, who look for a symbolic "rollback" of the Soviet empire and a spectacular demonstration of American military prowess, versus the proponents of a war of attrition, who seek the slow strangulation of the Sandinistas...
...Some 40,000 Americans have gone to Nicaragua since 1979, Reuben estimates, including leaders from trade union, minority, artistic, and citizen groups...
...It's an irritant...
...It's not about gun-boats and invasions...
...CIA analysts, however, recognize the many pitfalls of an invasion: another Vietnam-like quagmire, an explosive reaction in Latin America, the destabilization of many of its governments, and strong opposition here at home...
...Instead, they assume the war of attrition will simply continue...
...His successor, Elliott Abrams, has a reputation as a hard-liner...
...The embargo which the Reagan Administration imposed in May has meant that all U.S...
...The most recent polls on Nicaragua, taken in June before the House of Representatives voted $27 million in aid to the contras, continue to show decided disagreement with the U.S...
...The ideological climate is changing," says Debra Reuben, coordinator of the Nicaragua Network...
...it cuts across departments and agencies...
...It has taken its toll already...
...Up to 50 per cent of Nicaragua's national budget already goes to support the war effort...
...It's a new strategic conception, prolonged counterrevolutionary war," she says...
...Justice, peace, democracy, dialogue—these become goals of the contras, according to Washington's propaganda...
...And the Reagan Administration's recent string of foreign policy victories has weakened domestic opposition to the overthrow of the Nicaraguan government—as well as to other military adventures around the world...
...The objectives of the war are moved onto a political plane: to render your enemy politically useless...
...The State Department is thought to be the most dovish, although Secretary of State George Shultz plays his cards close to the vest...
...policy...
...The Reagan Administration gradually escalates the rhetoric about the Sandinistas from "untrustworthy" to "Soviet-Cuban surrogate" to "Marxist-Leninist" to "terrorist...
...They don't like to vote on unpopular things...
...the Administration beat them once, and that's all that it needed to walk away with victory...
...The objective is not, as in conventional war, to eliminate your enemy and seize territory, but to render your enemy politically useless "The objective is not, as in conventional war, to eliminate your enemy and seize territory," says Barry...
...It doesn't even touch it...
...It's a major shift from the concept of conventional warfare...
...She points to the 70,000 persons who have signed the Pledge of Resistance, a church-inspired campaign that enlists people to perform civil disobedience in the event of U.S...
...Those are the three options the Reagan Administration has in Nicaragua...
...assistance in toppling the Managua regime have increased from 23 per cent to 32 per cent over the past two years...
...Your educational campaigns suffer...
...It plays up Nicaragua's mistakes and appropriates the language of the revolution, Barry notes...
...It tears at the veins and the arteries of the economy and internationally it blocks access to international financing, trade, and aid...
...The policy is working...
...To support the terrorist policy of the American leaders," Ortega said, "allies and agents of imperialism who act from some political parties, press outlets, or religious institutions, are stepping up their actions to sabotage national defense efforts, hinder our economic policies, and provoke discontent and confusion in the popular bases...
...There are too many crises too often," Reuben laments...
...Congress and the liberals beat the Administration three times...
...pressuring foreign governments and organizations, like the Socialist International, and convincing American and world public opinion through manipulation of the media...
...Some want to push the policy out to the right, some want to push it to the left...
...The doctrine of low-intensity war, Barry argues, refines the counterinsurgency theories of the Vietnam era...
...your humanitarian aid campaigns and sister-city projects get put aside...
...The feeling is one of perpetual siege, "and with the shift in the ideological climate, we expect more harassment from the Government...
...New sectors are getting involved," says Reuben, "and people are digging in for a long-term struggle...
...foreign policy who lives in Nicaragua and works as a research fellow with the Regional Coordinating Council for Economic and Social Studies...
...To render the enemy "politically useless," the principal task must be to separate the population from the revolutionary government...
...Here are the major players: Fred C. Ikle, Under Secretary for Policy at the Department of Defense, is the Pentagon's principal hawk, while the Joint Chiefs of Staff, still twinging from Vietnam, counsel caution...
...hemispheric relations...
...As Barry sees it, it is a total and integrated conception of war...
...policy in Nicaragua "has skyrocketed," says Reuben...
...escalation of the existing war or the invasion of Nicaragua...
...shortages mean long lines...
...They keep bringing it back and bringing it back...
...At the grass-roots level, when you go out to talk about Nicaragua, the barriers, the questions, come much sooner...
...But since negotiation does not suit the Administration's style, it is seriously considering only the other two alternatives, which share the same objective: getting rid of the Sandinistas...
...The policy is the synthesis of their disagreement...
Vol. 49 • December 1985 • No. 12
