ROOTS OF CRISIS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403660002-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 20, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: March 30, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403660002-4
1 (Ci.E APP RED
)iN PAGE
ROOTS OF
CRISIS
The lessons of 1926
apply in 1986
By Walter LaFeber
The U.S. Marines, the State Department declared, must go into
Nicaragua to save that country from "Bolshevik aims and
policies." The Sun examined the State Department's case
and promptly pronounced it "drivel."
Historians agree that the newspaper was correct in 1926.
But the judgment of history was no solace for the U.S. soldiers who
returned home in coffins or the thousands of Nicaraguans who died in
the fighting. Those Nicaraguans included some who were killed by one of
the first dive-bombing attacks ever carried out by U.S. military planes.
Despite their superiority in firepower. however, North Americans found
themselves trapped in a bloody guerrilla war that lasted seven years.
The time was 1926. but the lessons clearly apply to 1986. The
president was Calvin Coolidge. whose discredited foreign and domestic
policies properly rank him with Pierce and Harding in the Pantheon of
Failed Presidents. (Ronald Reagan. however. has hung Coolidge's por-
trait on a White House wall once reserved for Harry Truman's picture.)
In retrospect. it is clear that U.S. policies in Nicaragua had failed well
before the mid- 1920s. Coolidge's use of force was simply an admission of
that failure.
The origins of the bankrupt policy are most instructive. During the
half-century between 1860 and 1910, the United States, for the only
time in the past 150 years. mostly kept its hands off Nicaragua. The
result was the one era when Nicaragua's political and economic institu-
tions stabilized. Jose Santos Zelaya presided over the last decade of this
era. Zelaya was a dictator. hardly a novel occupation in his region, but
he was also anti-U.S. - which was novel - preaching that Central
America should be for Central Americans and not under the control of
U.S. business and naval interests.
In 1909-1910, a U.S.-supported revolt overthrew Zelaya. But the
State Department suddenly found itself in a dilemma that deserves close
study. Having overthrown Zelava. U.S. officials discovered that their
nominee for his replacement. Adolfo Diaz. formerly a clerk in a U.S.
Dr. LaFeber is professor of history at Cornell University. His most
recent book is "Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central
America."
company, had a rather serious political disa-
billy: Nicaraguans refused to have anything
to go with him. They saw Diaz as a U.S.
puppet who seemed too willing to auction off
fhi nation to North American bidders. An-
othCr rebellion erupted. This time 2,500 U.S.
Marines landed to protect our Nicaraguan.
. Thus began a 20-year U.S. occupation of
the country, an experience few people in the
United States seem to know about, but
which has deeply branded the Nicaraguan
coriNciousness. The Marines temporarily
pulled out in 1925. They had supervised
"fair" elections, and a pro-U.S. regime en-
tered office. Within weeks, the thin political
crust laid on by Washington officials again
began bubbling dangerously. Fighting broke
out. The Marines returned, this time to de-
stroy the "Bolshevik alms" imagined by the
Coolidge administration.
Now, however, the troops encountered a
peasant-supported, anti-U.S. guerrilla war
led by young Augusto Sandino. Using the
northern mountains for cover and the peas-
ant masses for support, Sandino held off a
U.S. force that grew to more than 5.000
men.
Sandino was becoming a hero to Latin
Americans as a freedom fighter, but Coolidge
grimly determined to get that "bandit."
Sen. George Norris, a Republican from
Nebraska, observed that if the president's
objective was to capture bandits, the Ma-
rines might better be stationed in Chicago. A
leading journalist. Heywood Broun, noted
Coolidge's faith that U.S. troops could guar-
antee democracy in Nicaragua and conclud-
ed that if that was true, which Broun
doubted. the troops were badly needed to
"superintend the next balloting in Philadel-
phia."
Such growing criticism. Sandino's ruth-
lessness as a fighter, and the growing cost of
the war in both North American lives and
dollars finally drove President Herbert Hoo-
ver to pull out the troops in 1933. But they
left behind a U.S.-trained National Guard
under the command of Anastasio Somoza,
whose colloquial English and knowledge of
baseball commended him to Washington of-
ficials.
When Sandino came into Managua to lay
down his arms and support the Nicaraguan
regime. Somoza had him killed in cold blood.
Thus began the more than three-decade-
long Somoza dictatorship, supported by the
United States, that exploited and distorted
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403660002-4
 Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403660002-4
s 11 waiting,
Hi
t
i
e
u
s
or
ans who have n
y
n a e o
exam ne the 104 ocumen
a e
CIA's military response to imagin rests
in order to support disreputable exile ups
no on iv condemned 'ua ems a of hree
decades of terror, but corrupted U.S. policies
and ideals elsewhere. One exam le: Evi-
ence now reveals that the ease of the 1954
overthrow misled the CIA and other officials to try to mUcaLthe operation against
Fidel Castro's Cuba at the Bay of Pis in
1 1. T e ensuiriit disaster only established
Castro's Dower more firmly.
The U.S. use of milita force, and more
recent v o activities to contra entral
America dominates the historical record.
That s o eac es at least three lesions.
First. witnout exception no U. . m
operation in the region has created the con-
ditions for democracy or more just economic
systems.
The opposite has occurred. In Honduras
between the 1890s and 1920s and now es-
pecially in the 1980s, as well as in Nicara-
gua and Guatemala before the 1980s, the
U.S. involvement helped polarize the poli-
tics, distorted the economics and, ironically.
often increased the appeal of the militant
left.
Second. Washington's policy has fol-
lowed strict "isolationism."
In U.S. diplomatic history, isolationism
- contrary to Defense Secretary Caspar W.
Weinberger's recent use of the word - has
not meant withdrawal from world affairs. It
has meant a unilateral, "go-it-alone" ap-
proach to those affairs. Only for a relatively
brief time in the 1930s has the United
States seriously considered its relationship
with Latin America as a two-way street.
Hopes for a more cooperative policy
ended in 1965 when U.S. officials persuaded
their neighbors in the hemisphere to inter-
vene militarily in the Dominican Republic to
stop a supposed Communist takeover. When
it turned out that the communist threat was
Nicaragua until the Somozas owned 25 per-
cent of the land and his National Guard offi-
cers - several of whom now head the U.S.-
backed "contras" forces - skimmed off the
most profitable businesses.
U.S. leaders learned little from this histo-
ry. Indeed, in 1954 they ordered a CIA o r-
ado that overthrew an-elected. reform-
minded government in Guatemala. The
post-193 Nicaraguan experience was re-
peated.
Reecentl the U.S. Marine Corps colonel
who helped lead the CIA-controlled Guate-
malan invaders called the overthrow "a terri-
emse.
"Our 'success,' " Phillip C. Roettinger now
believes, "led to 31 years of repressive mili-
tary rule and the deaths of more t an
10 000 Guatemalans." Moreover, Colonel
Roetttrt~er continued, the "success e-
sro ed bath needed social and economic
re orms. in ears a er, caraguans -
naily have such benefi s; ua em ans an
on urans are
non-existent, the Latin Americans devei-
oped an immunity to Washington's alarms.
In 1979 the Carter administration tried to
use inter-American groups to intervene in
Nicaragua before the Sandinistas could gain
power. But the memories of 1965, as well of
Guatemala in 1954, were too fresh. Without
exception, the Latin American nations re-
fused to join.
This background helps us understand
why so many Latin American governments
believe U.S. policies in Central America over
the past century have not only failed, but
have played a major role in creating the cur-
rent. deepening problems in the region. The
background also helps us understand why
the Reagan administration has consistently
refused to give anything more than lip ser-
vice to the Contadora peace plans. Those
plans for settling Central American issues
through diplomatic negotiations have been
endorsed by eight governments representing
350 million Latin Americans. But the Conta-
dora proposals run directly against the his-
toric U.S. policy of using military power in
Central America. and also ran counter to the
traditional U.S. determination to follow a
policy of isolationism rather than coopera-
tion in the hemisphere. Given the record
before as well as after 1981. there is little
evidence for believing that the United States
Is seriously interested in the Contadora ap-
proach.
A third lesson seems to be that the
Reagan administration is intent on repeat-
ing a history of failed U.S. policies in Central
America. It is striking to note how post-1981
policy has been opposed by U.S. military
officers and knowledgeable State Depart-
ment officials who have argued - on the
basis of solid historical evidence - that the
region's problems are economic and social.
not military and ideological, and that these
problems will best be solved by negotiation,
not force. It is equally striking to note that
for their understanding of this history. most
of these dissenters have been either silenced
or purged from top policy-making positions.
U.S. policies have consequently been sep-
arated from reality. The president tries to
bridge the widening gap with rhetoric. He
compares the Nicaraguan "contras" with
"the French Resistance that fought the Na-
zis." Those in Congress who disagree are
accused of giving comfort to the commu-
nists. Nicaragua. which has fewer adult
males than the United States has men un-
der arms and whose total national income is
less than North Americans spend on antacid
tablets, shaving products and cosmetics, be-
comes a nearly unstoppable source of the
Red Tide that, as administration maps
showed on television, washes down over
Brazil and up over Mexico. (Later the Reagan
administration apologized to angry Brazilian
officials for so blatantly misrepresenting
their country's situation.)
To paraphrase Robert Frost. an under-
standing of history can be a momentary stay
against confusion. With that understanding.
the United States, as the overwhelmingly
superior power in the region, can begin to
correct its past mistakes. Without that un-
derstanding, it will not only repeat that past.
but confuse the present and condemn the
future of our Central American policies.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/01/20: CIA-RDP90-00965R000403660002-4