OUTPOST OF SOVIET INFLUENCE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000403000009-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 12, 2012
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: March 6, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

STAT
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000403000009-9
1.'_T4 r A??EARED
CHRISTIAN SCIEN
CE MONITOR
6 March 1985
JOHN HUGHES
Outpost of Soviet influence
I N the spring of 1983, a revealing con-
versation took place in Moscow
between the Soviet Union's then top
military man, Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov,
and the Army chief of staff from
Grenada, Einstein Louison. According
to Grenadian minutes, Marshal Ogarkov
said that "over two decades ago, there
was only Cuba in Latin America; today
there are Nicaragua, Grenada, and a se-
rious battle is going on in El Salvador."
The countries listed were presumably
those the Soviet military saw as out-
posts of Soviet influence and bases for
spreading it further.
Cuba remains in hock to the Soviet
Union. Grenada has dashed Soviet
hopes, and the three secret military
agreements its previous leaders signed
with Moscow are no longer in effect. In
El Salvador, a democratically elected
President, Jose Napoleon Duarte, is
holding his own against Marxist guerril-
las. Which brings us to Nicaragua.
Nicaragua today has 100,000 men un-
der arms, compared with a maximum of
14,000 during the Somoza regime. The
Soviets have armed that force with
tanks, armored vehicles, and the MI-24
ground attack helicopter. The Nicara-
guans have built airfields for high-speed
jets and have-sent pilots to Eastern Eu-
rope for flight training. To American
knowledge, no high-performance combat
planes have yet been delivered to Nicara-
gua, probably because of ominous and
clear-cut warnings to Moscow.
All this gives Nicaragua the biggest
military force in Central America. The
Nicaraguans argue that they need all
this because of the Yanqui threat.
That does not explain why, as
Salvadorean President Duarte charged.
last year, the Nicaraguans are fueling
the Marxist revolution in his country,
"sending in weapons, training people,
transporting bullets." Some of those bul-
lets come from Ammunition Factory No.
10 in Bulgaria. Some of the equipment
used by the Salvadorean guerrillas was
manufactured in North Vietnam. Some
of it is American, seized by the North
Vietnamese after the fall of Saigon.
So much for Nicaragua's capacity for
mischief outside its borders.
At home, Nicaragua has brutalized
the Miskito Indians. It humiliated the
Pope and has harassed the church. It
has shackled the press. It conducted
"elections" last year that were a mock-
ery of the democratic process. Some cler-
ics in Nicaragua wave all this aside, be-
cause, they say, the Sandinistas are
really trying to help the poor. Some hu-
man rights activists, so vocal against re-
pression in countries where the regimes
are pro-Western, seem curiously muted
about repression in a country that en-
joys fandangoing to Moscow's tune.
Frustrated by all this, the Reagan ad-
ministration has four options:
1. Direct military action by the US.
2. Overt military aid to the contras,
the "freedom fighters," or "counterrevo-
lutionaries," depending on one's point of
view, who have set themselves against
the Marxist Sandinista regime.
3. Covert aid to the contras.
4. No governmental support for the
contras, but a policy of diplomatic and
economic pressure on Managua.
There is little public support for the
first option, and the second would be vir-
tually a declaration of war.
The third option would be tough to
get through Congress. But President
Reagan is going to fight for it.
The fourth option is basically what
the administration has been pursuing
while Congress has frozen the contra
funding. But the administration's view is
that it has not worked too well. So it has
suspended the talks it has been having
with the Nicaraguans at the Mexican
town of Manzanillo, and last week's dis-
cussion between Secretary of State
George P. Shultz and Nicaraguan Presi-
dent Daniel Ortega does not seem to
have brought the two sides closer.
The problem of Nicaragua is com-
plex. The American options are hardly
ideal. But one critical question has yet to
be resolved within the Reagan adminis- i
tration: What is the President's tolera-
tion point? If the Sandinista regime _
stays home, minds its own business, and
lets its neighbors live in peace, is that
enough? Or must the regime give the op-
position a fair chance to run, and the
people a fair chance to vote? Or does the
President's desire for structural change
in Nicaragua mean that the incumbent
regime must commit an act of political
self-strangulation?
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/01/12 : CIA-RDP90-00965R000403000009-9