COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS DISCUSSION ON NICARAGUA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP87M00539R001802750018-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 5
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 10, 2009
• Sequence Number: 18
• Publication Date: January 9, 1985
• Content Type: MEMO

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The Director of Central Intelligence
Washington, D.C. 20505
NIC 00130-85
9 January 1985
National Intelligence Council
FROM: Robert D. Vickers, Jr.
National Intelligence Officer for Latin America
SUBJECT: Council on Foreign Relations Discussion on Nicaragua
1. On 7 January 1985, I attended a meeting of the Council on Foreign
Relations Discussion Group on Central America. (See Attachment A) The
main topic was Nicaragua, and the meeting rapidly reached the conclusion
that the United States had three basic options in dealing with the
Sandinistas.
-- Continued political, economic and military pressure to
force a change in the nature of the Sandinista regime or
its policies.
-- Continued efforts to reach a negotiated solution on terms
acceptable to both sides.
-- Accepting that neither of the above is obtainable, given
political and military constraints on US tactical options,
and adapting a policy of containment.
2. While several of the participants argued that the latter option
was the only realistic one, Winston Lord of the Council staff pointed out
that a containment policy had been unanimously rejected by the National
Bipartisan Commission on Central America, of which Mr. Lord was a Senior
Counsellor. The report of the Commission essentially concluded that such
a policy would be expensive to both the US and its allies and would
require a sustained level of effort that would be difficult to maintain.
(See Attachment B for relevant sections of the Bipartisan Report.)
3. Unfortunately, the discussion reached no consensus on which of
the other two options was most preferable.
Robert D. Vickers
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COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
Discussion Group of Central America
January 7, 1985.
Sixth Meeting
Nestor Sanchez, Discussion Leader - Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense
for Inter-American Affairs
Caesar Sereseres, Commentator- University of California,. Irvine and the
Rand Corporation
Robert White, Commentator - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Col. John D. Waghelstein, USA, Commentator- Army War College
Edward K. Hamilton, Chairman - Hamilton Rabinovitz & Szantcn Inc.
Susan K. Purcell, Group Director - Council on Foreign Relations
Kay King, Rapporteur - Council on Foreign Relations
Guests
James Connally - Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Col. Walter E. Hines, III - Executive Officer to General Nutting,
Jeffrey Puryear - Ford Foundation
Silvia Waghelstein
Rodman C. Rockefeller - IBDC, Inc.
Nathaniel Samuels - Lehman Brothers Kuhn Loeb
L. Ronald Scheman - Coudert Brothers L-~
Alfred C. Stepan - Columbia-University
Viron P. Vaky - Georgetown University
Major Andrew Bacevich, International Affairs Fellow, Council on Foreign
? Relations
James Chace - New York Times Review of Books
Kevin Corrigan - Chase Manhattan Bank
Robert Leiken - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
William LeoGrande - American University
Theodore Moran - Georgetown University
General Wallace Nutting, USAJ - U.S. Readiness Command
Staff
Col. Scott Fisher, USAF
Paul H. Kreisberg
Winston Lord
Andrew J. Pierre
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-114-
especially those with democratic traditions, we met leaders who
expressed regret and outrage that the revolution against Somoza
-- which their own governments had supported -- had been
betrayed by the Sandinistas.
For all of these reasons, the consolidation of a
Marxist-Leninist regime in Managua would be seen by its
neighbors as constituting a permanent security threat. 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...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.
Theoretically, the United States and its friends could
abandon any hope of such a settlement and simply try to contain
a Nicaragua which continued to receive military supplies on the
present scale. In,pratical terms, however, such a course would
present major difficulties. In the absence of a political
settlement, there would be little incentive for the Sandinistas
to act responsibly, even over a period of time, and much
inducement to escalate their efforts to subvert Nicaragua's
neighbors. To contain the export of revolution would.require a
level of vigilance and sustained effort that would be difficult
for Nicaragua's neighbors and even for the United States. A
fully militarized and equipped Nicaragua, with excellent
intelligence and command and control organizations, would weigh
heavily on the neighboring countries of the region. This
threat would be particularly acute for democratic, unarmed
Costa Rica. It would have especially serious implications for
vital U.S. interests in the Panama Canal. We would then face
the prospect, over time, of the collapse of the other countries
of-'Central America, bringing with it the spectre of Marxist
domination of the entire region and thus the danger of a larger
war. -
The notion that the United States should cope with a
Marxist-Leninist Nicaragua, militarily allied to the Soviet
Union and Cuba, through long-term containment assumes an
analogy between conditions in post-war Europe and the present
circumstances of Central America. The experience of the
post-war period, however, shows that containment is effective
as a long-term strategy only where U.S. military power serves
to back up local forces of stable allies fully capable of
coping with internal conflict and subversion from without. In
such circumstances, the United States can help to assure the
deterrence of overt military threats by contributing forces in
place, or merely by strategic guarantees.
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 On the other hand, where internal insecurity is a chronic
danger and where local governments are unable to deal with
externally supported subversion, a strategy of containment has
major disadvantages. It would risk the involvement of U.S.
forces as surrogate policemen. Any significant deployment of
U.S. forces in Central America would be very costly not just in
a domestic political sense but in geo-strategic terms as well.
The diversion of funds from the economic, social, medical, and
educational development of the region into military containment
would exacerbate poverty and encourage internal instability in
each of the countries that became heavily militarized.
Furthermore, the dangers facing the other Central American
countries might actually grow if each each side perceived that
the other was tempted to use its increased military power. And
the creation of garrison states would almost certainly
perpetuate the armies of the region as permanent political
elites. The hopes of true democracy would not be enhanced.
Therefore, though the Commission believes that the
Sandinista regime will pose a continuing threat to stability in
the region, we do not advocate a policy of static containment.
Instead, we recommend, first, an effort to arrange a
comprehensive regional settlement. This would elaborate and
build upon the 21 objectives of the Contadora Group. (For
these, see the annex to this chapter.) Within the framework of
basic principles, it would:
* Recognize linkage between democratization and security in
the region.
* Relate the incentives of increased development aid and
trade concessions to acceptance of mutual security
guaranteees.
* Engage the United States-and other developed nations in
the regional peace system.
* Establish an institutional mechanism in the region to
implement that system.
The original peace initiatives of Nicaragua have given
little cause for optimism that we could move toward these
objectives. The latest of the Sandinistas' formal proposals
were presented to the United States Government and to the
United Nations in October, 1983, as-four draft treaties
purportedly prepared "within the framework of the Contadora
process." The treaties would bind the parties to refrain from
sending arms from one country to?another in the region, and
otherwise to end intervention, "overt or covert," in the
internal affairs of other nations of the region.
Significantly, these Sandinista proposals.would prohibit
exercises and maneuvers of the type United States and Honduran
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SUBJECT: Council on Foreign Relations Discussion on Nicaragua NIC 00130-85
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