THE NICARAGUA DEBATE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000504160064-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 14
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 9, 2012
• Sequence Number: 64
• Publication Date: December 1, 1986
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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ARTICLOREIGN AFFAIRS
ON PAGE fainter 1986/1987
Joshua Muravchik f _
THE NICARAGUA DEBATE
fter five grueling debates within the com
ass
f f
p
o
ive
months in 1986, the U.S. Congress agreed to President Rea-
gan's request for military aid for the rebels fighting Nicaragua's
Sandinista government. Whatever this decision may herald for
Nicaragua, for the United States it signals a further loosening
of the constraints that have bound U.S. policy since the trauma
of Vietnam. And by sanctioning, at least for the moment, the
"Reagan Doctrine," it constitutes a step, albeit a small and
reversible one, in America's continuing search for a global
strategy to replace the one-containment-that was shattered
in Vietnam.
To win this victory the President had to overcome misgivings
about the conduct of the rebels and the CIA, skepticism about
the rebels' prospects, anxiety about the Reagan Doctrine, and
public opinion polls showing that most Americans opposed his
policies. He won nonetheless by taking advantage of the con-
siderable persuasive powers inherent in his office, and by
making good use of the assistance proffered by a minority of
Democrats, including some legislators and some activists, who
split with their party's leadership. Above all he won because,
when the debate was done, his opponents had failed to offer a
compelling alternative policy for dealing with Nicaragua. Nor
had they offered, on a global scale, an alternative to the Reagan
Doctrine. Fear of "another Vietnam" was their most potent
argument, but that fear, however justified and however widely
shared, could not in itself generate a policy.
If
A new Congress will have to consider aid to the "contras,"
as the rebels are called, again in 1987. Despite the boasts of
some rebel spokesmen, a year will not be nearly enough time,
nor $100 million enough money, to bring the Sandinistas
down. And in 1987 the President's party will control neither
house. Yet, barring some egregious act on the part of the rebels
or some violation of trust on the part of U.S. officials, it is not
likely that Congress will choose to reverse direction soon.
Despite the loss of a few seats, the President's cushion of
support in the House may be somewhat, deeper than indicated
by the 12-vote margin by which rebel aid passed in 1986. A
couple dozen moderate-to-conservative legislators, mostly
Democrats, led by Representative Dave McCurdv (D-Okla.),
sought to stake out a middle ground, which would have allowed
nonmilitary aid to go forward while putting military aid off for
a later vote if further attempts at negotiation proved fruitless.
When the House Democratic leadership sensed that victory on
the issue lay within the President's grasp, it threw its support
behind McCurdy's compromise, over the objections of some
liberals. The President's legislative triumph thus came on a
vote that pitted his position against M1cCurdv's. But the Mc-
Curdy group harbors considerable sympathy for the rebels'
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cause (McCurdy was instrumental in negotiating the 1985
compromise providing $27 million in "humanitarian" aid to
the rebels) and might in the future provide additional votes for
continuing aid.
The President's position enjoys no similar cushion in the
Senate, which in Democratic hands may cause him more diffi-
culty over Nicaragua than the House. Senator Claiborne Pell
(D-R.I.), a strong opponent of rebel aid, will become chairman
of the Foreign Relations Committee. But this will be offset by
changes in the Select Committee on Intelligence. where two
supporters of aid, Senators David Boren (D-Okla.) and William
Cohen (R-Me.), will succeed two opponents. Senators David
Durenberger (R-Minn.) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), as chairman
and vice-chairman. Although the new Senate will have eight
more Democrats, several of them have voiced support for rebel
aid. Thus the Administration will have both the need and the
opportunity to build upon the lessons in bipartisanship it
learned in eking out its previous victories on the Nicaragua
issue.
In seeking further aid, the President will be able to argue
that reversing course would be a dangerous display of incon-
stancy. It took America years of pulling and hauling to decide
to give the rebels military aid openly and in sufficient quantity
to expand their forces significantly. To turn around a year
later and cut them off would be a demonstration of fickleness
that would worry our friends and tempt our foes in the region
and perhaps beyond. Carried to an absurd extreme this argu-
ment could justify perseverance in any wrong course, but that
is only to say that constancy cannot be the sole value guiding
U.S. policy. Enough swing legislators, however, are bound to
agree that it is one important value that Congress is likely to
allow the President's policy to play out at least for a while.
III
The President's success climaxed a four-year struggle within
the House, which had opposed military aid to the rebels almost
from the program's inception. When the issue first came before
that body in 1982. it adopted, by unanimous vote, the Boland
Amendment, which barred aid to the rebels for any purpose
other than interdiction of the flow of supplies from the Nicar-
aguan government to the communist guerrillas in El Salvador.
This narrow scope was accepted by the Reagan Administration
in order to forestall a complete ban on aid to the rebels,
proposed by Representative (now Senator) Tom Harkin (D_
Iowa). Perhaps, too, the Administration recognized more
quickly than some of its opponents what an ambiguous thing
interdiction could be under these circumstances.
The United States might give the Nicaraguan rebels arms
for the purpose of defending El Salvador, but would they use
them to fight for El Salvador rather than for NicaraguarIThis
question was just the beginning of the ambiguity. Nicaragua
and El Salvador are not contiguous. Overland shipments from
one country to the other must pass through Honduras. Con-
ceivably the Nicaraguan rebels could aid the Honduran army
in disrupting these routes. A more direct route for materiel,
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however, is not through Honduras at all, but across (or over)
the Gulf of Fonseca. The Gulf of Fonseca borders Nicaragua
to the west, while the Nicaraguan rebels operate only in the
north, south and east of their country. How, exactly, could
they interdict this route% The answer is that the rebels cannot
directly block Sandinista aid to the Salvador guerrillas: what
they can do is to provide generalized military pressure that
might convince the Sandinistas to stop meddling in other
countries. But how clear is the line that separates a war designed
to bring such pressure from one designed to overthrow the
Sandinistas outright
The Administration was able to exploit these ambiguities in
the rubric of interdiction, but whether this benefited its policy
in the long run is debatable. Given America's reluctance. ever
since Vietnam, to embroil itself in violence in the Third World.
even in defense of friendly governments, it is no easy task for
the Administration to win support for the far more aggressive
posture of raising an insurrection against an unfriendly govern-
ment. Perhaps the program could only have been put across
by gradually enlarging its stated objectives, rather than by
confronting the public and Congress all at once with the idea
of seeking to overthrow the Sandinistas. But by thus finessing
the issue at the outset, the Administration sacrificed its ability
to make a clear argument for the moral and strategic benefits
of the policy it was pursuing and gave the impression that its
policy was either uncertain or duplicitous.
By 1983 the House had had enough of such ambiguity and,
led by Representative Edward Boland (D-Mass.), voted, by a
33-vote margin, to ban any aid to the Nicaraguan rebels. But
the Senate that year approved continuation of the program,
and in conference the two houses agreed on a compromise
allocating $24 million for the rebels, roughly half of what the
Senate bill would have allowed. More important, the legislators'
compromise measure barred the executive branch from spend-
ing any discretionary funds to continue the program after the
S24 million ran out unless it first secured congressional ap-
proval. something not ordinarily required for covert action
programs.
When the President sought such approval in 1984, the House
denied it, voting this time by a 64-vote margin against any
support for the rebels. And this time it insisted on its position
in conference with the Senate, thus shutting off the flow of
aid. Although the Senate had again approved aid to the rebels
in 1984, the President's strength on the issue had diminished
in that body as well. Revelations that year about the CIA's role
in mining Nicaragua's harbors and in publishing an instruction
manual for the guerrillas that seemed to recommend practices
against L.S. law and conscience had soured relations between
the agency and the Senate Intelligence Committee, which felt
that the agency had failed to keep it properly informed.
Given this outcome, and the fact that congressional momen-
tum was clearly flowing against the Administration, a less
ideologically engaged president might well have given up the
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fight at this point. But instead President Reagan encouraged
private and foreign sources to help keep the rebel movement
in operation. Buoyed by his own strong reelection victory and
by the apparent gains of the rebels in the months following the
cessation of U.S. assistance, he renewed hi
in 1985. request to Congress
.
An initial House vote showed that opposition to his program
was undiminished: a 68-vote majority rejected military aid for
the rebels. In response, the President redesigned his proposal
to make it more palatable. He kept the dollar figures low (S 14
million), limited the aid request temporarily to nonlethal equip-
ment (thus the designation ''humanitarian"), and linked it to a
new attempt to stimulate negotiations between the Nicaraguan
government and the rebels. These changes, especially the shift
from military to nonlethal aid, made a big difference in the
House, but not quite big enough. The package was defeated
in late April 1985 by just two votes.
Almost at once, however, two events caused the House to
have second thoughts. The most widely reported event was
external-Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's much publi-
cized visit to Moscow. This undercut a chief argument of the
Administration's opponents-that U.S. aid to the rebels was
itself the factor driving the Sandinistas into the arms of Mos-
cow. Ortega's move suggested that Managua's ties to the
U.S.S.R. were rooted in its own predilections, not in U.S.
actions. And he seemed to be almost contemptuous of the
Congress.
The second event was internal to the House, but it was no
less important. The President's proposal had been defeated in
favor of an amendment offered by Michael Barnes (D-Md.),
chairman of the Foreign .Affairs Subcommittee on the Western
Hemisphere, and Intelligence Committee Chairman Lee Ham-
ilton (D-Ind.). The Barnes-Hamilton Amendment provided
funds for Nicaraguan refugees. notably to resettle contra fight-
ers and their families, and to underwrite the Contadora nego-
tiations. Its authors presented it as a peaceful vehicle for
achieving the same goals that the President sought through
martial means. But no sooner was the President's proposal
defeated than about 100 Democratic representatives reversed
themselves and voted against Barnes-Hamilton on final passage,
joining with Republicans to send it to overwhelming defeat.
For these Democrats, Barnes-Hamilton had been little more
than a device with which to defeat the administration's ap-
proach. The Washington Post explained that it had been "de-
signed in part to provide cover for [Democratic] party members
who not only oppose Reagan's program of arming and aiding
the rebels but also do not like Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista
government and did not want to be blamed for aiding it." And
The New York Times cited one typical vote-switcher as explaining
that "many Democrats had voted for the earlier proposal
because they wanted 'to vote for something' and protect them-
selves politically. But they voted against the final bill because
they were afraid of what legislation would emerge from a
conference with the Senate."
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For a considerable number of middle-of-the-road legislators
who had supported Barnes-Hamilton (including a dozen or so
of the more liberal Republicans and a few score of the more
conservative Democrats), this reversal was disconcerting. They
were uneasy about blocking the President's program without
having something to put in its place. Although polls repeatedly
showed that large majorities of the American electorate op-
posed aid to the Nicaraguan rebels (just as they had opposed
the increases in aid to the Salvadoran government that Presi-
dent Reagan had fought to wrest from Congress in earlier
years), the polls also recorded widespread apprehension about
the rise of communism in Central America.' The same elector-
ate that invariably tells pollsters that it favors increases in
government services and decreases in taxation now was telling
them that it was anxious to stop communism in our hemisphere
but reluctant to go to much trouble or accept many risks in
order to do so. Moderate Democrats in Congress grew fearful
that defeating the President's program-unpopular as it
seemed-without offering any genuine alternative would leave
them open to blame for whatever troubling developments
might unfold in the region.
Moreover, the liberals' volte-face belied their protestations
that they sought the same goals as the President but by different
means. Barnes-Hamilton, as was revealed in the glare of its
defeat, was only a cosmetic alternative. The Contadora process
was stalled, after all, over substantive issues, not lack of funds,
and resettling Nicaraguan rebels as refugees was a fine human-
itarian gesture, but no answer to the problems President Rea-
gan said the Sandinistas posed. Not all legislators agreed with
his assessment, but those who did were impelled to consider
afresh what realistic alternatives to his policies might exist. As
a result, an alliance of conservative and middle-of-the-road
representatives coalesced behind a compromise of their own
that came closer to the President's position than to Barnes-
Hamilton and that passed by margins of 36 votes and more on
a series of votes. This measure provided S27 million in nonle.
that "humanitarian" aid to the rebels in FY 1986, but barred
the CIA and Defense Department from any part in disbursing
it. This Set the stage for a renewed legislative battle in 1986
over the more controversial question of renewing direct mili-
tary aid to the rebels.
tv
The five-stage battle over rebel aid in 1986 was characterized
by numerous supporters and opponents alike as a "historic"
debate. And, indeed. it may well prove to be the most important
foreign policy debate that Congress has undertaken. save per-
haps some on arms control and strategic nuclear weapons, since
the battle over U.S. policy toward Indochina in the first half
of the I 970s. No issue since then has posed such fundamental
'.An April 1986 CBS/,%eu, York Times poll was tvpica I. A better than 2-to-I majority opposed
President Reagan's request for military aid to the rebels. but a 5-to-3 majority said they agreed
that -its important to the secunty of the L rated States to eliminate communism from Latin
America.-
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questions about the purposes and methods of U.S. foreign
policy. What is at stake, as Representative James Shannon (D-
Mass.) noted during the 1984 debate, "is not what we think
about the Nicaraguans, but rather what we think about the
United States and the role that we are going to play in the
world. "
In March 1986, the House defeated the President's request
for $100 million in mostly military aid by 12 votes. A week
later the Senate approved his proposal by. a vote of 53 to 47.
The next month Administration supporters in the House failed
in an effort to resurrect the Administration's proposal. But in
June they prevailed, this time winning by 12 votes, as a handful
of key Democrats changed their positions and a few stray
Republicans returned to the party fold. Then in August the
Senate. again by 53 to 47. adopted a measure corresponding
to that approved by the House. In addition to providing $70
million in military and S30 million in nonlethal aid, these
measures repealed the prohibition on CIA and Defense Depart-
ment collaboration with the rebels.
To listen to or read these five debates over Nicaragua on
the floor of the House and Senate was to observe the clash of
two paradigms. On one side was the paradigm that dominated
U.S. discussion of foreign policy throughout the 1950s and
most of the 1960s, which viewed the struggle with and contain-
ment of communism as the sine qua non of U.S. policy. This
approach was best captured in President John F. Kennedy's
oft-repeated declaration that the United States would "pay any
price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend,
oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty."
On the other side was the paradigm that dominated foreign
policy debate from the late 1960s through the 1970s. It was
most succinctly expressed in the phrase "no more Vietnams."
To be sure. there was much sound and fury over other issues.
Supporters and opponents of the Administration traded atroc-
ity stories, one side focusing on the cruelties of the Sandinistas.
the other on those of the contras. There was no doubt some
truth and some exaggeration on both sides, but how much of
each was hard to tell given the remoteness of the areas where
the rebels operate, the secrecy in which the activities of Nicar-
aguan state security forces are shrouded, and the partisan
commitments of most of the sources of the charges and coun-
tercharges.
However intrinsically important these issues are in a human-
itarian sense, it is doubtful they made any difference in the
voting. There was probably not a single hawkish legislator who
turned against the rebels because of their alleged abuses, and
probably not a single dovish one who turned in their favor
because of those alleged against the Sandinistas.
Much the same can be said about some of the other issues
raised, such as the Administration's charges that the Sandinistas
engaged in drug smuggling or its opponents' claims that the
rebels had misspent earlier U.S. funds. Whatever the truth of
such charges, they were debating points and changed few, if
any, minds.
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Both sides engaged in question-begging arguments as well.
The Administration warned of a flood of refugees at our
borders if communism swept over Central America, but if
communism did sweep over the region, refugees might be the
least of our problems. On the other side, it was often argued,
for example as Senator Lowell Weicker (R-Conn.) put it, that
it will be far less expensive to eliminate those causes which
brought communism into our hemisphere" than to aid the
rebels. But poverty and injustice are not so quickly and easily
eliminated, and what is to be done about Sandinista militari-
zation and subversion in the meantime=
The opponents pointed out that a majority of the rebels'
high command %ere former members of Somoza's National
Guard. The Administration replied that the three top political
leaders of the rebel movement had been active against Somoza.
The opponents countered that this paralleled the situation in
El Salvador where an alliance of some democratic political
leaders with the communist guerrillas was viewed by the Ad-
ministration as a mere figleaf. But supporters of the'Adminis-
tration objected to this analogy, arguing that in contrast to the
clear ideological commitments of the Salvadoran guerrillas, the
former guardsmen among the Nicaraguan rebels had been
soldiers not politicians.
A stronger argument advanced by opponents of the aid was
that the Administration had often, over four years, changed its
description of its goals in Nicaragua. House Intelligence Com-
mittee Chairman Lee Hamilton complained: "The rationale
has shifted from the need to interdict alleged arms shipments
to El Salvador, to pressuring the Sandinistas to hold elections,
to giving the contras a bargaining chip in dealing with the
Sandinistas, to forcing the Sandinistas to restructure their
government, to forcing the Sandinistas to negotiate with the
contras." Though this account was somewhat embellished,
Hamilton's essential point was true.
The primary argument, from the Administration's side, was
that the Sandinistas were turning Nicaragua into a communist
state closely tied to Cuba and the Soviet Union. If not stopped,
the Sandinistas would subject the Nicaraguan people to all of
the miseries of totalitarianism and turn Nicaragua into a base
for fostering communist movements throughout the region
and the hemisphere, as well as for the Soviet Union's own
military forces. Nothing short of force was likely to stop them,
and it would be better if that force were exerted by Nicaraguan
fighters than by Americans. All of this was somewhat obscured
by the Administration's repeated insistence that it hoped to
compel the Sandinistas to change course, but few within the
Administration or without it actually seemed to believe that
the Sandinistas could be stopped except by their ouster.
The Administration's opponents effectively criticized this
ambiguity, but this was still a secondary point. Their primary
argument was that the President's policies would lead the
nation into "another Vietnam." Again and again on the floor
of the House and Senate the Tonkin Gulf Resolution was
invoked, and dozens of legislators spoke of the parallels they
saw between U.S. involvement in Indochina and the course the
IN-or
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President was steering on Central America. As Speaker of the
House Thomas O'Neill (D-Mass.) succinctly put it: "The shad-
ows of Vietnam haven't left us."
The argument came in different variants. The simplest was
O'Neill's refrain that the President would not be "happy" until
Americans were fighting in Nicaragua. A more sophisticated
argument was put by Senator Edward Kennedy (D-Mass. ),
among others: "The President's claim that U.S. combat troops
will not become involved in Nicaragua is inconsistent with his
description of' what is at stake." The point was telling, but it
did not necessarily lead to the conclusion Kennedy had in
mind-that the threat was exaggerated. The President's esti-
mate of the stakes was either right or wrong. It could be
challenged on empirical or analytical grounds, but it could not
logically be challenged on the grounds of its consequences.
Indeed, if it were right, then Kennedy's argument meant that
the President ought more actively to consider using American
troops.
The most compelling variant of the "no more Vietnams"
argument held that by backing the rebels the United States
was investing its prestige in their battle and building a moral
obligation to them. It was also exacerbating Nicaragua's rela-
tions with its neighbors. Even though the President might be
quite sincere in his protestations that he had no intention to
involve Americans in the fighting, circumstances could easily
arise in which the United States might feel impelled to rescue
the rebels, or rescue Honduras, or rescue American prestige.
Although the President and most of his men, notably ex-
cepting Secretary of State George Shultz, rejected this argu-
ment outright, their denials rang hollow. In fact, the argument
was irrefutable, and the Administration had only one effective
answer to it: failure to back the rebels now would make it more
likely that the United States itself would have to confront the
Sandinistas at some later point. This point 'as apparently
convincing enough to neutralize some of the impact of the
Vietnam analogy.
In reality, no one can foresee which course-aiding the
rebels further or dissociating from them-is more likely to
lead to direct U.S. engagement. There is no denying. though.
the truth of the critics' charge that President Reagan's policy
contains at least the possibility of such an outcome.
V
Should this possibility be allowed to paralyze U.S. policv'~
Two years ago, the same warnings were raised, just as vocifer-
ously and often by the same voices, about President Reagan's
military aid program for El Salvador. Representative Thomas
Downev (D-N.Y.) called the 1984 Broomfield Amendment that
increased military aid to El Salvador "the modern Gulf of
Tonkin resolution." And Senator Patrick Leahv declared that
near: "American troops will be used in El Salvador.... It's
inexorable." It seems clear now that they were wrong. And
with the benefit of hindsight, it seems clear too that had military
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aid been denied El Salvador, as the majority of congressional
liberals urged. the United States might well have been drawn
into conflict, either to stave off a communist victory in El
Salvador, or in response to other events in the region that such
a victory might have precipitated. It should be added that the
apparent success of U.S. policy in El Salvador owes something
as well to congressional pressures that compelled the Admin-
istration to press harder for human rights reforms there.
The Nicaraguan situation, moreover, is even less like Viet-
nam than was El Salvador. In El Salvador, as in Vietnam, the
United States was supporting a rather ineffective army against
a growing insurgency. In Nicaragua, in contrast, we support
the insurgents. And Nicaragua is unlike Vietnam in other
important ways; for one thing it is much smaller. Americans
tend to think of Vietnam as a small country. It is not. Its total
population, north and south, is larger than that of France or
England. Nicaragua, in contrast, is a genuinely small country.
one-twentieth the size of Vietnam in population. Second, in
relation to Nicaragua, the logistical situations of the United
States and its adversaries are reversed. In Vietnam, the United
States had to reach around the globe to supply its forces and
its allies, while the Soviets and the Chinese had, in comparison,
short and easy access. In Nicaragua. we have easy reach, while
the Soviets have great distances to travel. More important, the
battlefields of Indochina lay in the shadow of China's vast
People's Liberation Armv, which America was loath to con-
front. Therefore, U.S. planning was constrained by the imper-
ative of avoiding actions that threatened to draw China into
the war. One consequence was the decision to avoid carrying
the ground war to the north. In contrast, Central America lies
in the shadow of the United States, and this constrains what
the Sandinistas and their Soviet and Cuban allies can do, for
example, in regard to rebel sanctuaries in Honduras.
In the case of Nicaragua, as with El Salvador, the "no more
Vietnams" argument is strictly negative and offers little guid-
ance for U.S. policy. The 1985 reversal on the Barnes-Hamil-
ton Amendment was. in this sense, an epiphany. ".Another
Vietnam" is certainly something to be avoided. but the question
is how to do it. The Administration has tried to turn the
Vietnam argument around by saying that L'.5. rilitary inyolye-
ment in Nicaragua Hill result not from giving the rebels aid
but from failure to aid them. Administration opponents tacitly
concede the plausibility of this when they argue, as many do,
even including such outstanding doves as Senator Pell, that
they can envision circumstances in %hich they would favor
using American military force against the Sandinistas. Of
course, Pell and those of a similar view believe that the Presi-
dent's policies are far more likely, to lead to direct military
intervention, but their point serves to acknowledge that no
sure formula exists for avoiding "another Vietnam" in Nica-
ragua. Thus this line of argument against the Administration's
policy loses much of' its force unless it is coupled with the
presentation of a compelling alternative policy.
:AT
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VI
The most serious alternative has been articulated by Repre-
sentative Stephen Solarz (D-N.Y.), among others. Solarz urges
a policy that distinguishes between what he calls "security"
issues-the size of Nicaragua's armed forces, the presence of
Soviet-bloc forces or bases, and subversion of Nicaragua's
neighbors-and what he calls "political" issues-democrati-
zation and civil liberties within Nicaragua. While insisting on
his concern for the Nicaraguan people, he argues that Nicara-
gua's domestic conditions are not realistically negotiable be-
cause the Sandinistas will not agree to relinquish or share
power. But, he argues, the Sandinistas might well agree to
satisfy the United States on the security issues in exchange for
an end to U.S. aid to the rebels.
Such an agreement would, however, not be easy to enforce.
Once the rebel movement is choked off, there will be no
resurrecting it. Instead, as most who have argued for this kind
of agreement acknowledge, it will only be enforceable by use
of American military might. But to use U.S. military force for
such purposes is to rely on a blunt instrument. Will we invade
Nicaragua if it violates the treaty? Will we send warships to
bombard its coast? Even "surgical" air strikes, as the U.S. raid
in Libya reminded us, inevitably also inflict civilian casualties.
No administration will want to take such action without hard
intelligence, and hard intelligence may be difficult to come by.
In addition, public disclosure of intelligence information to
justify retaliatory measures (or its use in a private diplomatic
protest to the offending party) risks the destruction of the
source, as for example is reported to have happened when the
Administration, in justifying its attack on Libya, revealed its
interception of communications between Tripoli and Libyan
embassies abroad. In short, the U.S. government would face
recurring dilemmas over whether to risk using military force
in response to violations that could not be proven, or to risk
ignoring violations that, though unprovable, might well be real
and damaging.
Perhaps some kind of verification system could be developed
as part of a treaty, involving teams of on-the-ground observers,
but the Contadora process has foundered in part over Mana-
gua's footdragging on all of the verification issues. And even if
Managua were more forthcoming, the practical obstacles are
enormous. Nicaragua's border with Honduras runs for 600
miles of rugged, densely foliated wilderness, and the quantity
of personnel and materiel that would have to cross it to service
guerrilla forces in Honduras or El Salvador is not that great.
These problems led the National Bipartisan Commission on
Central America to reject the Solarz approach, on the grounds
that the "political" and "security" issues could not be decou-
pled. It argued in its report:
Because of its secretive nature, the existence of a political order on the
Cuban model in Nicaragua would pose major difficulties in negotiating,
implementing, and verifying any Sandinista commitment to refrain from
supporting insurgency and subversion in other countries. In this sense, the
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development of an open political system in Nicaragua. with a free press and
an active opposition, would provide an important security guarantee for
the other countries of the region and would be a key element in any
negotiated settlement.-'
In this judgment the commission was expressing its concur-
rence with the unanimous opinion of Nicaragua's Central
American neighbors. These four countries have insisted in the
Contadora negotiations that the issue of democratization not
be separated from security issues, and that it be buttressed with
guarantees no less firm than those on security issues. As the
Costa Rican response to the most recent Contadora draft put
it: "peace is not valid unless it is based on democracy."
Moreover, the kind of deal that Solarz proposes is precisely
what then Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Enders traveled
to Nicaragua to offer the Sandinistas in 1981. which they
turned aside. Solarz argues that events since 198 1. notably the
U.S. invasion of Grenada and the rise of the contra movement.
may have softened up the Sandinistas, making them more
willing to compromise now. But if so, this is an argument for,
and not against, sustaining the rebels. If military pressure by
the United States and the rebels has made the Sandinistas ready
to accept the compromise they once scorned, does it make any
sense to withdraw this pressure at the outset of the long
negotiating process that would inevitably be required to trans-
late this deal into an enforceable treaty:'
While the Administration argues that the kind of settlement
Solarz envisions is unrealistic, he and many of his colleagues
say the same about the kind of military solution the rebels seek.
"Virtually everybody agrees that with or without American
assistance, there is no way the contras [can] overthrow the
Sandinistas," he says. But it is hard to see the grounds for such
certainty. An insurgency of these proportions against an indig-
enous communist government is without precedent. The San-
dinistas had merely a few thousand men under arms by the
time they marched into Managua in July 19 9, but they
reached even that number only by virtue of snow balling re-
cruitment during the preceding months as the tide of history
seemed to be flowing their way. Humberto Ortega, the Sandi-
nistas' chief military commander, re%ealed in a 11480 interview
in the Cuban newspaper Granma that the Sandinistas threw
150 men into their penultimate national offensive in September
1978, just ten months before they seized power. That was
almost surely the bulk of their available forces. Yet they had
been in the field for 17 years' Today's rebels have been at it
for five years and have one hundred times as many men. Who
is to say what strength they might (or might not) have in ten
months, or a few nears=
VII
Many of those who rose in Congress to warn of "another
Vietnam" in Nicaragua also were alarmed about consecrating
the global policy of which the President's Nicaragua program
Report of the \attona! Bipartttan (ommustan on (antra! lmertra, ~%a,hington (:.P O.,
J.uiujr' 14M4. p 1 14,
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was a part. The Reagan Doctrine, they feared, contained the
danger of dragging America into "Vietnams" many times over.
Often they voiced objection in principle to U.S. ' support for
the overthrow of a sitting government or of one with which
the United States has diplomatic relations. But this is probably
not the real issue. No congressional voices were raised in protest
against the logistical support that U.S. agencies were reported
to have given to the rebellious soldiers and officers who toppled
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, with whom we had
diplomatic relations and more.
What seems more likely to have been on their minds is that
any attempt to overthrow a communist government is sure to
entail a long and bitter struggle and to engage the interests of
our superpower adversary, while helping to topple the likes of
Marcos could be done relatively quickly and painlessly. Once
again, the motivation seems to be to avoid "more Vietnams."
But this goal is no more adequate a guide for U.S. policy on a
global scale than for policy toward Nicaragua.
What, after all, is meant by "no more Vietnams If it means
no more wars, then it expresses a wish widely shared, but
beyond the power of any policy to assure, for 'a nation may
always be subjected to war by others. If it means no more
losing wars, then, too, it is a wish widely shared that cannot be
assured. Perhaps its meaning is best expressed in a phrase
recently coined by .Vein York Times columnist Tom Wicker:
Nicaragua is like Vietnam, he wrote, because it is a "policy
war." By this he apparently means a war not imposed on the
United States by a direct attack upon our territory or that of
allies to whom we have defense obligations, but fought for
political objectives or to stave off some danger that seems less
than clear and present. In other words. a war of the type
Chamberlain and Daladier averted at Munich.
In the aftermath of World War II. Western publics con-
curred in the painful conclusion that the failure to take up
arms against dangers that had seemed distant had led directly
to the necessity to confront them on their on shores. For
some this bitter lesson was all but canceled by the experience
of Vietnam. Not that the policy of appeasement was resur-
rected. But a new theory was raised that held that the rr,e of'
force had lost much of its efficacy in the contemporar% world.
Armed with this conviction-or perhaps disarmed by it-the
Carter Administration attempted to pursue a foreign policy of
which one chief principle was the avoidance of "policy wars."
But within four years that policy had been rocked by such
severe setbacks that the President felt compelled to proclaim a
new "doctrine" embracing ,weeping U.S. commitments to the
defense of the Persian Gulfand thus threatening to involve the
nation in "policy wars" larger and more dangerous than any
before.
But if the lessons of World War 11 ought not to be quickly
discarded, what is to he learned from America's harrowing
experience in V'ietnam' What Vietnam proved was that the
policy of containment-the first expression of our masterv of
the lessons of World War II-was flawed. Resisting communist
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expansion in a strictly detensive way and wherever it might
threaten was ultimately beyond our means, or at least beyond
our will.
We have vet to find a satisfactory policy to supplant contain-
ment. During the Kissinger years, the United States turned to
detente, hoping to create a "vested interest in mutual :strairit"
and thereby restrain communist expansion with less call upon
American force. It is a moot point whether detente would have
worked out better had the public and Congress given fuller
support to all of its components and the presidency not been
paralyzed by Watergate. But from the outset the Soviets as-
serted their determination to continue supporting "liberation"
struggles, that is, to continue to try to expand communism's
domain by force. Thus, at best. detente alone could not have
been an adequate substitute for containment.
After Kissinger's version President Carter tried his own more
conciliatory version of detente, aiming, as he put it, to meet
the great challenge ... to demonstrate to the Soviet Union
that our good will is as great as our strength until, despite all
the obstacles, our two nations can achieve new attitudes and
new trust." But he himself recognized after the invasion of
Afghanistan that this approach severely misconstrued Soviet
motivations.
With the failure of detente, in either the Kissinger or Carter
variants, the United States repaired, in fact if not in doctrine.
to what some call "selective containment": resisting the ad-
vance of communism where we feel we can, where it seems
important. where we are obliged by treaty to do so. This
approach has severe shortcomings. If we declare in advance
the perimeter within which we are determined to resist com-
munism. then we virtually invite mischief everywhere else, as
may have been the case in Korea in 1950. Leaving the issue
vague, on the other hand, creates uncertainties not only in the
minds of our adversaries but in those of our allies and ourselves
as well. Either way, selective containment means that if the
Soviets or their proxies press in the right places they will meet
little resistance front us, and that the Third World sill hold
lots of such places.
These shortcomings may be inescapable. but there is one
obvious way in which this policy can be strengthened. That is
by what is now called the Reagan Doctrine, to w%it, lending
support to forces seeking to oust communist governments at
the periphery of the Soviet empire. Indeed, the Reagan Doc-
trine is a natural if not inescapable concomitant to ";elective
containment." If global containment is impossible. as Vietnam
taught us. because we cannot match our adversaries at every
point of their choosing, we can compensate by choosing some
points of engagement ourselves, points that seem favorable to
us and where their assets can be put in question rather than
ours. In the process, if a communist government is successfully
ousted anywhere. we will reap the added benefit of undercut-
ting communism's claim to represent the tide of history.
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If we must discard containment's ambition to resist everv-
where, then we must also discard its constraint of resisting only
defensively. When the policy of containment was first formu-
lated, some conservatives, such as James Burnham, protested
against its purely defensive approach. But at that time the
Soviet empire rested entirely to Eastern Europe, and to seek
to "roll it back" meant to risk directly a new general war.
Today, the Soviet empire stretches far from its borders and
can be attacked at its fringes without similar peril.
Without the Reagan Doctrine, selective containment is a
policy without promise. Thus as long as the Soviet Union
continues to foster the rise of communist gokernments wher-
ever on the globe it can, there really is no alternative to it.
That was the essential truth that the Congress encountered in
1986 as it wrestled with our policy toward Nicaragua.
Joshua Muravchik is the author of The Uncertain Crusade: Jimmy Carter
and the Dilemmas of Human Rights Policy.
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