The Rhetoric of Empire
Landau, Saul
BOOKS The Rhetoric of Empire BANANA DIPLOMACY: The Making of American Policy in Nicaragua 1981-1987 by Roy Gutman Simon & Schuster. 404 pp. $19.95. by Saul Landau Roy Gutman's Banana Diplomacy...
...The rascals in the Reagan White House, the speech writers, saw the "rhetorician's dream come true...
...policy apparatus...
...The contra rogues—including Oliver North and his mentor, William Casey—gained control over the heady action and the resources that went with it...
...According to Gutman, U.S.-Nicaragua policy was analogous to the treatment of U.S.-controlled banana republics—thus the book's title...
...public was reluctant to pursue overseas adventures...
...Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick acknowledged that the contras could neither oust the Sandinistas nor form a viable government...
...The moral flag of the United States should be flown at half-staff...
...Nicaragua was the victim, but not the real target...
...The violence against Nicaragua emerged as a way to "force a decision at the top level," not as part of a clear strategy...
...Gutman beautifully demonstrates how, once the imperial urge asserts itself as natural and necessary, no meaningful debate is tolerated in policy circles over national interest, morality, and values...
...Because Reagan refused to designate a strategy or name a master strategist, decision-making fell by default into the hands of those who could not think strategically...
...Reagan did not link his Nicaragua decisions to their consequences, Gutman suggests...
...Both sides manipulated the President...
...The talks were doomed to failure because the right wing had captured the language of policy formulation, and any serious negotiations would appear as "surrender" to the communists...
...Those who thought Reagan's ideological fervor related to strategy should read this well-researched book...
...the clandestine operators chose to use the contras...
...As the diplomats fenced with the CIA-NSC war party, Nicaraguans were stabbed to death...
...Equally absent is the role of Nicaragua's own revolutionary process, some of it inspired by past U.S...
...Banana Diplomacy ignores the history that produced the interventionist impulse inside the U.S...
...The CIA was asked to stress the advantages of the mining operation, "without examining the downside...
...In place of a strategy," writes Gutman, "the advocates of waging war against Nicaragua through the contras and diplomacy offered public relations...
...The Sandinista leaders become actors in Banana Diplomacy only to make mistakes, but never emerge as key players shaping the destiny of an aroused people...
...Gutman shows that the themes discussed by the Restricted Interagency Group bore no relationship to real national interests...
...Despite his crusading language, Ronald Reagan was a lazy and irresponsible President, concludes Roy Gutman, a national-security correspondent for Newsday...
...Whenever one comes to close grips with so-called idealism," warned H.L...
...Gutman believes that "the Administration more or less drifted into commitment," and a "hard-line group working together behind the scenes helped push Saul Landau is a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C...
...By imposing national-security secrecy, the bureaucrats kept their petty squabbles from the public...
...by Saul Landau Roy Gutman's Banana Diplomacy is a tale of imperial idiocy...
...The well-endowed Defense apparatus cringed at the thought of U.S...
...The diplomats attacked Nicaragua with diplomacy...
...Nonetheless, she "did everything she could to subvert Manzillo [the site of the U.S.-Nicaragua] negotiations...
...Since there were no policy goals, Nicaragua became the arena for insider power games...
...The Sandinistas survived, but Nicaragua lost...
...Indeed, Gutman discovered that such contra advocates as U.N...
...They read the opinion polls: The U.S...
...It wanted little to do with dangerous clandestine operators...
...Reagan" in the contra direction...
...Mencken, "one is shocked by its rascality...
...so, according to National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane, even though "the President was fully involved and approved the recommendation by most around the table to go ahead" and mine Nicaraguan harbors, he did not ask for an analysis of options and risks...
...Because the national-security apparatus appeared inflexible, the CIA and NSC ideologues decided to circumvent the rules: Thus, the Iran-contra scandal emerged from the policy vacuum...
...Gutman demeans Sandinista nationalism, a myopia easily acquired by mainstream journalists who tend to view policy as an exclusive domain of the elite...
...Here was a President who visualized policy through speeches, who tried to achieve goals through aggressive advocacy rather than aggressive management...
...intervention, but possessing its own internal engine as well...
...Like CIA Chief William Casey and the Oliver North cabal, she had made an ideological investment in the notion of "freedom fighters," but cared little about what this actually meant...
...The "accident" approach to history begs the larger questions: Even if Nicaragua policy were an uncoordinated albeit bloody farce, how could one explain the compulsion to intervene, to attack all revolutions in our backyard...
...troops invading Nicaragua, a strategically and economically insignificant country...
...Who would win the internal policy battle to control the Nicaragua turf...
...Since no realizable Nicaragua agenda existed, Gutman concludes that Reagan's imperial rhetoric was a public-relations gimmick...
...Like the original decision to launch the covert war itself," Gutman concludes, "the discussion was unfocused and notable for its omissions...
...But when Gutman calls the right wing's insertion of ideology into Reagan's foreign policy an accident, he limits the usefulness of an otherwise insightful book and reveals the historical weakness in his journalistic method...
Vol. 53 • February 1989 • No. 2
