CENTRAL AMERICA AS A NATO ISSUE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000200710006-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 5, 2010
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: April 3, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/05: CIA-R
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Central America as a NATO issue
Those in the Reagan Administration who
have conceived its Central America policies
are fond of justifying them as geopolitical ne-
cessities. They say that vital US security inter-
ests are endangered by left-wing forces in El
Salvador and by the Sandinista revolutionar-
ies in Nicaragua. At symposiums and in back-
ground briefings, they evoke a need to protect
hemispheric shipping lanes and they warn of
the disastrous strategic consequences that
would follow more.Cubas in the US backyard.,
A strategic rationale for the proxy wars
that Washington sponsors in El Salvador and
Nicaragua cannot be confined, however, to the
Central American isthmus. To be truly strate-
gic, the Administration's policymaking would
have to take into account how the world views
the effects of US actions.
A recent study by the US Council on For-
eign Relations suggests that the very founda-
tion of America's global strategy, the NATO
alliance, might be jeopardized should the Rea
olicy premises
llow its
f
ti
p
o
on
ganAdministra
to their ultimate conclusion - an intervention , may not stand for the scandal of an American
by1JS combat troops. military intervention. In 'this instance, the
The title of the Council's book,' "Third feelings of millions of private citizens could be
World Instability: Central America as a Euro- a strategic consideration.
pean-American issue," defines European
anxieties in an explicit manner. An essay by
Spanish Foreign Minister Fernando Moran
Lopez predicts that a US military intervention
in Ccntral America "would strengthen neu-
tralist and pacifist movements [in Europe', to
such an extent that it could jeopardize the
continued participation in NATO of some of
its members, especially Spain.
Alos Mertes. minister of state in the foreign
ministry of West Germany, laments that Rea-
Administration deeds such as the mining
o Nicaraguan harbors and publication of a
CIA primer on contra terror "create in Europe,
especially among voung people. the impres-
sion that the United States is enmeshed in
sinister intrigues." Mertes says he is dis-
turbed by these actions because they foster "a
virulent anti-Americanism that leads straight
to pacifism and neutralism."
The -NATO allies are not making a moral
argument against US actions in Central
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/08/05: CIA-RDP90-00806R000200710006-5