HOW TO UNDERSTAND CENTRAL AMERICA

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88T00528R000100060026-8
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 10
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 27, 2008
• Sequence Number: 26
• Publication Date: September 6, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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I I I 1, fU5 113-t54 ? -
THE DIRECTOR OF
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
6 Sep 1984
FROM: Herbert E. Meyer, VC/NIC
Here's the piece I mentioned
yesterday.
Herbert E. Meyer
Distribution:
1 - DC I
1 - DDCI
1 - ER
1 - VC/NIC Chrono
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How to Understand Central America
Mark Falcof
IT is now more than three years since
Central America became the United
States' most dramatic and divisive foreign-policy
issue since the Vietnam war. It has dominated the
front pages of newspapers for many months; co-
opted almost all of the prime moments of national
television news; fueled acrimonious exchanges in
Congress; and ignited a national protest move-
ment, centered in the universities and the churches
but reaching into unions, professional associations,
and the cultural community. For a while it even
became a bone of contention between the two
leading candidates for the Democratic presidential
nomination, and it is certain to become one of the
three or four major issues of,the 1984 campaign.
Alongside all of these facts-impressive in them-
selves-one more must be placed. In spite of the
vast menu of information, allegation, and misin-
formation served up to them, most Americans
know almost nothing about Central America and,
it would appear, are determined to keep it that
way. An April poll conducted by CBS News found
that only 25 percent of those interviewed knew
which side the United States was supporting in El
Salvador, and a mere 13 percent could correctly
affirm that the United States was (at the time) sup-
porting anti-Sandinista rebels in Nicaragua. More-
over, knowledge about El Salvador is now lower
than it was a year ago, when 37 percent could cor-
?recdy state that the United States supported the
government there.
What, then, is the argument about? And who is
doing the arguing? In a very general way it could
be said that the Central American controversy is
really the latest installment in a fifteen-year-old
civil war between two branches of the foreign-
policy establishment and its affiliates over the
proper uses of U.S. power; over the causes of po-
litical insurgency; over the moral and political
character of "revolutionary" regimes in the Third
World; and, preeminently, over the nature of se-
curity threats to the United States and the proper
measures to meet them.
These are important subjects, even if only a
MARK FALCOFF is resident fellow at the American Enter;.
prise Institute. His most recent book (with Robert Royal)
is Crisis and Opportunity: U.S. Policy in the Caribbean and
Central America, published by the Ethics and Public Policy
Center.
small percentage of Americans have the interest
or the time to think much about them. They are
fraught with consequences for our foreign policy
generally, and the fact that they nicely mesh with
partisan political considerations does nothing to
detract from their charm. The form and intensity
with which they are debated also illustrate a point
about the United States which' many foreigners
persist in missing: this is a country where political
controversy often concerns ideas.
Where, then, do people get their ideas about
Central America? The variety of sources is wide,
but two in particular are of great significance to
policy-makers and foreign-policy professionals, if
not to the public at large. One is the reports issued
by commissions of distinguished citizens, "con-
cerned" laity of some religious denomination or
other, or equally "concerned" academics who have
made a trip to El Salvador or Nicaragua or (often)
both. The best-known such document-the Report
of the National Bipartisan Commission on Central
America, chaired by former Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger-is actually the least typical of
all, since it alone found itself, with slight quibbles
here and there, fundamentally in accord with the
policies of the Reagan administration. Far more
characteristic of the genre is The Americas in
1984: A Year for Decisions, the report of the Inter-
American Dialogue, a panel of distinguished po-
litical and business leaders from North and South
America, chaired by Ambassador Sol M. Linowitz
and former Ecuadorian President Galo Plaza.
While this document deals with several aspects of
U.S.-Latin American relations, the sections con-
cerned with Central America have been regarded
(quite properly) as the most newsworthy.
The second source is the collective studies con-
structed by teams of academics (and, sometimes,
policy-makers temporarily ou of government).
Nearly a dozen of these have a'gpeared since 1981,
some edited with a heavier ideological hand than
others but virtually all primly or not so primly
disapproving of our present course. The most in-
teresting and original is Central America: Anato-
my of Conflict, edited by Robert S. Leiken for the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
This group, three of whose members held positions
in the Carter administration, was at work roughly
during the same time as the Kissinger commission,
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and its study was published almost simultaneously.
Indeed, there is reason to believe that, in a man-
ner wholly characteristic of Washington, the
Leiken group was hastily assembled to provide a
ready-made alternative to the findings of the Kis-
singer commission; this, certainly, was the way it
was received by administration critics, although in
reality, as we shall see, Central America: Anatomy
of Conflict contains a far greater diversity of views
than one would have gathered from its reception.
These documents and their analogs play a dis-
proportionate role in determining the parameters
of the Central American debate. Indirectly, but
no less decisively, they shape the kinds of ques-
tions the President and others are asked at press
conferences, the agendas of congressional commit-
tees, and eventually the notions-however watered-
down or inaccurate-held by a majority of the
American people. They therefore deserve serious
examination.
B Y Now a majority of Americans-57
percent according to the April poll
of CBS News-think that "the greater cause of
unrest in Central America [is] poverty and lack of
human rights in the area, [as opposed to] subver-
sion from Cuba, Nicaragua, and the Soviet Union."
Yet as Richard Feinberg and Robert Pastor point
out in the Carnegie Endowment study, the image
of these countries as primitive, stagnant "banana
republics"-held even by many educated Ameri-
cans-is vastly out of date. In fact, few regions
since World War II have experienced such rapid,
dramatic, and sustained economic and social de-
velopment. Between 1950 and 1978, the Central
American republics registered a 5.3 percent annual
rate of economic growth, during which time real
per-capita income doubled, exports diversified,
and there was a significant growth in manufac-
turing, due largely to the creation in 1960 of a
Central American Common Market (CACM).
Moreover, meaningful progress was made in health
and education: between 1960 and 1977 the num-
ber of physicians doubled at a rate twice as fast
as the population, and the number of nurses six
times as fast. Adult literacy during roughly the
same period nearly doubled from 44 to 77 per-
cent, and the number of secondary students as a
percentage of their age group increased from 12
to 29 percent.
Of course, as Pastor and Feinberg hasten to
point out, there were considerable variations
among countries. Moreover, in Central America.
as elsewhere in the developing world, moderniza-
tion brought unforeseen (and undesired) conse-
quences. Pastor and Feinberg point specifically to
dramatic improvements in public health which
unleashed a "demographic earthquake"-between
1950 and 1980, the region's population tripled,
and today half are under the age of fifteen. (Signifi-
cantly, had the population only replaced itself,
per-capita income during the same period would
have quintupled.) The development of commer-
cial agriculture provoked new tensions over land
tenure in the countryside, just as industry gener-
ated new conflicts between management and a
struggling labor movement. While the "floor" be-
neath Central Americans rose dramatically, the
gap widened between rich and poor, and particu-
larly between rural and urban dwellers. Much of
the new infrastructure-roads, schools, hospitals,
and other public services-was financed either by
U.S. aid or by the international lending institu-
tions; tax collections generally remained low, so
that what the foreigner was not willing to finance
generally remained undone. That is why, in spite
of nearly two decades of progress, as late as 1981
it was estimated that 42 percent of the population
remained in "extreme poverty."
Even if the process of development just de-
scribed had continued in a linear fashion, raising
the floor still further to include most of those left
out, the region would have experienced serious
political instability because of the challenge posed
by economic and social change to existing politi-
cal structures, particularly in Guatemala and El
Salvador. But after 1978, Pastor and Feinberg
write, the problem was compounded "by the im-
pact of a global recession on small, open, depen-
dent economies," which, in the opinion of these
authors, put into place "the classic preconditions
for a revolutionary situation."
In other words. the causes of instability in Cen-
tral America are both the successes of past policies
and their failings; the promise of overcoming un-
derdevelopment and its lack of fulfillment; the
achievements of foreign aid and its limitations;
the imagination and flexibility of local elites and
their selfishness and myopia. Poverty is part of the
picture, and from a humanitarian point of view
perhaps the most important. But relative depriva-
tion and the sudden interruption of an ongoing
process, combined with political developments
both internal and external to the region, have
raised the stakes, costs, and risks of almost any
course of action designed to deal with poverty.
Thus even a resumption of massive economic aid
in and of itself may not guarantee a return to
social peace. It does, however, hold out far greater
promise than cheap political "fixes," or, worse, an
attitude of pious indifference as if "poverty," the
condition of centuries, were irrem;diable, and
therefore whatever unsavory political arrange-
ments may seem in the offing-namely armed
dictatorships of the Left-must be accepted as the
just retribution for an evil past.
N OWHERE has the conflict between eco-
nomic growth and outdated social
structures been more pointed than in El Salvador.
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In this tiny republic-slightly smaller than the
state of Massachusetts, with a population of five
million-no fewer than four revolutions are under
way.
One is among the military, which, alarmed by
the outcome of the Sandinista revolution in Nica-
ragua, divided in 1979 over continued support for
the traditional order. The second is among the
emerging political forces of the middle class and
the infant peasant and labor movements. For a
brief moment in 1979, these groups ruled in con-
junction with the younger officers who had ousted
dictator Carlos Humberto Romero. During that
time they decreed a series of extensive land, tax,
and banking reforms. However, shortly thereafter
the leadership split, with a Social-Democratic com-
ponent under Dr. Guillermo Ungo going over to
the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front
(FMLN), the political directorate of the guerrillas
who are fighting-this is the third revolution-to
impose a Marxist-Leninist regime on El Salvador.*
The fourth is actually a counterrevolution in the
most technical sense of the term-former military
officers (and some still on active duty), and a
coterie of landowners, businessmen, and profes-
sionals who object more or less equally to the
first three and who seek to extinguish their lead-
ers and supporters, real or imagined, by recourse
to political assassination. Hence the macabre term
which has entered our political vocabulary, "death
squads."
During the past five years the United States has
been supporting the efforts of those civilians and
military personnel willing to carry forward the
original objectives of the revolution of 1979. In
March 1982, elections were held for a constituent
assembly, and in May 1984 the Christian Demo-
crat Jose Napoleon Duarte (president of the first
junta in 1979) was elected president of El Salvador
by a majority of the popular vote. Meanwhile, the
country has received a massive infusion of U.S.
economic and military aid, both to combat the
rising guerrilla movement and to stabilize an
economy doubly beset by war and recession.
The Reagan administration is riding a difficult
tiger in El Salvador, in that its scenario calls for
some unwieldy pieces to fall neatly into place.
Duarte must meet some minimal popular expecta-
tions as a reformer and a democrat, without un-
duly antagonizing the large conservative minority
-approximately 45 percent of the electorate-
who voted for his far-Right opponent, Roberto
D'Aubuisson of the ARENA party. These two
agendas may be very hard to reconcile, given the
fact that the political spectrum in El Salvador is
far wider than in the United States and opinion
far more polarized. Like most Latin American
Christian Democrats, Duarte cherishes funda-
mentally pre-capitalist notions of property, and'
favors the use of state power to reduce social and
economic inequalities. His views on that subject,
by no means extreme by Latin American stand-
ards, would shock most American conservatives
if they knew more about them: in fact, were
Duarte only anti-American as well, he and not Dr.
Ungo would enjoy the status of a cult figure
among the elegant Left in Western Europe and
the United States.
This is not all: Duarte must also demonstrate
his capacity to control the armed forces, and to
reduce if not to eliminate human-rights abuses
and the activities of private vigilantes of the
Right. He must advance investigations of past
misdeeds, particularly those in which the U.S. Con-
gress and public have a strong and legitimate in-
terest. And lastly, the military itself must demon-
strate not merely that it can respect civilian au-
thority but also that it can prosecute effectively
the war against the insurgents. The contributors
to the Carnegie Endowment study who have exam-
ined whether this is possible point to the enor-
mous historical baggage which must first be dis-
carded, and one of them (Howard J. Wiarda) ar-
gues that the professionalization of the armed
forces, rather than producing less military inter-
vention in politics, may actually increase the ten-
dency of the officer corps to play a political role.
He also emphasizes the difficulties of trying to
reform an -essentially praetorian army, in which
clan, family, and patronage loyalties may be
stronger than ties to the nation or its civilian
government.
A shorthand way of describing the situation in
El Salvador is to say that the Center, or perhaps
more accurately the Center-Left, is split, with one
part in an uncomfortable relationship with the
military and the United States, the other in an
even more problematic relationship with the
FMLN, the Nicaraguans, the Cubans, and ulti-
mately the Soviets. The Right has so far been
unable to reassert itself as the dominant political
force, but it still possesses the capacity to under-
mine a moderate solution; this, U.S. officials and
not a few Salvadorans fear, would simply lead to
the worst of both worlds-first a coup and repres-
sion from the Right, followed by a revolution and
repression of a more systematic and permanent
kind from the Left.
I N THE United States, debate over El
Salvador has centered on two issues-
how to use U.S. influence to bring about an elimi-
nation of human-rights abuses, and whether and
under what circumstances it is possible to recon-
stitute the two sundered wings-of the Center-Left
so that each can afford to abandon its respective
dependence on the army or the guerrillas. The
first turns on some incredibly arcane formulations
? The.FMLN is an amalgam of five guerrilla groups uni-
fied under Cuban sponsorship in 1979. Those elements of
the first junta who went over to it are formally construed
as the Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR), affiliated
with the Socialist International. The correct designation of
the guerrillas' unified directorate is thus FMLN-FDR.
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about the "conditionality" of U.S. aid. In the view
of some of the administration's critics, as long as
the Salvadoran military can take for granted U.S.
arms shipments and other forms of assistance, it
will have no incentive to eliminate human-rights
abuses. Those who served in the Carter adminis-
tration now point with some pride to the "lever-
age" which they supposedly obtained in El Salva-
dor in 1980, following a three-year arms embargo.
This, they assert, demonstrated to the Salvadoran
military how serious the United States was about
the issue-a lesson now lost by the "blank check"
supposedly issued by the Reagan team.
Unfortunately, whatever leverage might have
been obtained by the Carter policy was more meta-
physical than actual; for 1980 was the worst
year in Salvadoran history in terms of political
murders, disappearances, and other serious abuses.
This is not to argue against the concept of condi-
tionality, but merely to suggest that in practice it
may be unattainable, or that policies intended to
promote it may have consequences far different
from those intended. It is also possible-though
admittedly unprovable-that a clear reading by
Salvadorans of the general mood of the U.S. pub-
lic and Congress, combined with. strong represen-
tations by U.S. envoys and military representatives,
may accomplish just as much or even more. We do
know, for example, that estimates of civilian
deaths attributable to political violence in El
Salvador over the past two and a half years reflect
a very significant pattern of decline.
T HE SECOND issue-how to reconstitute
the Center-Left-is even more compli-
cated. It begins with the notion that the United
States is pursuing a military victory, which is im-
possible, instead of a "negotiated solution," which
is supposedly within reach. Precisely what form
the latter would take varies from source to source.
President Duarte has in fact offered to negotiate
a reconciliation with those forces of the non-Marx-
ist (or at any rate non-Leninist) Left who have
gone over to the guerrillas; this would allow them
to reenter Salvadoran political life with no re-
striction, much as occurred in the 1970's in Vene-
zuela. Dr. Ungo and his associates, as well as their
many foreign apologists, claim that the incapacity
of President Duarte to guarantee their safety from
the military and the death squads makes this impos-
sible; they favor negotiations leading to "power-
sharing."
The latter is a solution with which no Ameri-
can political figure has yet become identified, al-
though it has already found some resonance in
the foreign-policy community. The Inter-Ameri-
can Dialogue` recommends "negotiations among
the belligerents" which would not supplant the
recent Salvadoran elections but would somehow
modify their outcome in important (though not
wholly specified) ways; it hotly denies, however,
that this would be power-sharing pure and simple.
1'10 1' TO UNDERSTAND CENTRAL AMERICA/33
A number of the contributors to the Carnegie
Endowment study favor power-sharing quite open-
ly, but with an original twist-they suggest sym-
metrical solutions be imposed both on El Salvador
arid Nicaragua. In the former, the Left would be
brought into the government; in the latter, the
Center would be restored to the posts it held im-
mediately after the fall of Somoza. (One dissenting
voice in this group is that of Tom J. Farer, who
favors power-sharing in El Salvador but not in
Nicaragua.)
How well power-sharing would work in El Sal-
vador depends wholly upon one's view of what
the FMLN-FDR is and what it represents. Robert
S. Leiken, who directed the Carnegie study and
is its most widely-quoted author, has been for
many years a student of the Central American
revolutionary Left, and his portrait of the Salva-
doran insurgents draws upon a wide range of
personal contacts. He does not deny that the guer-
rillas are Marxist-Leninists, but the heart of his
analysis is that the largest, best-armed, and most
powerful faction in the rebel camp is, if not posi-
tively anti-Soviet, at any rate the one that "stand[s]
at greatest distance from the Soviet Union." Our
policy, by ignoring this fact, "pushes the non-
aligned Left into the arms of those who are pro-
Soviet." Leiken continues:
U.S. national security would indeed be threat-
ened by Soviet-aligned regimes in the Caribbean
Basin, but not necessarily by independent left-
ist regimes-even if they speak the language of
Marxism and seek to practice socialism.
This presumably puts our security concerns to
rest. It still leaves open the question, however, of
whether the integration of putatively anti-Soviet
Marxist-Leninists into the Salvadoran govern-
ment would advance the cause of human rights.
Or rather, it circles right around it, by taking for
granted that power-sharing would lead to some
sort of "moderate" leftist regime. All Leiken can
offer by way of assurance on this score is the
FMLN's own assurance that as part of a negoti-
ated settlement, it would be (in Leiken's words)
"prepared to participate in elections, and to guar-
antee a nonaligned foreign policy and a mixed
economy."
Leiken's co-contributor Leonel Gbmez, a former
land-reform official who fled El Salvador in 1981,
is far less certain what the outcome of such an
arrangement would be:
While the true popular support of the FMLN-
FDR coalition is difficult to measure, given the
choice between the Left and the Right most
Salvadorans would choose the Left, due to its
less violent and corrupt history. Still, they won-
der how the Left would evolve if it came to
power.
However, given the Salvadoran centrists' lack
of trust toward the Left, and given the divisions
within the Left itself, a left-wing government in
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El Salvador might prove more repressive and
less flexible than that in Nicaragua.
To summarize, then: as an alternative to exist-
ing policy, with all of its admitted perils and dif-
ficulties, we are invited to believe that by with-
holding military aid from El Salvador-or at any
rate, credibly threatening to withhold it-we will
best serve the cause of human rights, notwith-
standing that doing so may lead in the meantime
to the victory of the Left revolutionary forces. Al-
though these forces openly and unashamedly avow
a totalitarian ideology which, among other things,
points to a deep affinity with the Soviet Union,
we are asked to sponsor their entry into a govern-
ing coalition in El Salvador on the strength of the
fact that they say they favor nonalignment, free
elections, and a mixed economy. In a word, we
are urged not to take Marxism-Leninism any more
seriously than loyalty to a brand name; if we per-
sist in taking it seriously, we are warned that we
will actually bring about the outcome we most
fear. All this rings with a certain depressing
familiarity.
T HE familiarity stems from the fact that
the same arguments were advanced a
mere five years ago on behalf of a similar policy
toward Nicaragua. There, a vast popular revolu-
tion against the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza
was at its culminating moment, led by the Marxist
FSLN but including a wide range of moderate,
even conservative political and social groups. In
exchange for promises of free elections, a mixed
economy, and a nonaligned foreign policy, the
Organization of American States (including a re-
luctant United States) took the unprecedented
step of withdrawing recognition from a sitting
government. This had the effect-deliberately in-
tended-of opening the road to power of its
armed opponents.
The victorious revolutionary coalition in Nica-
ragua lasted an extraordinarily short time. Somoza
fled the country in July 1979; in April 1980,
Violeta Chamorro, publisher of the courageously
independent newspaper La Prensa, and business-
man Alfonso Robelo resigned from the new Coun-
cil of State, largely in protest against a plan by
the Sandinistas "to reflect the concrete and ob-
jective reality of political forces in Nicaragua,"
which is to say, to swamp it with representatives
from the revolutionary army and other, hastily-
organized Sandinista groups.
After several weeks of harsh verbal exchanges
between the Sandinistas and their quondam allies
in the private sector, a temporary peace was
achieved. Banker Arturo Cruz and Supreme Court,-
.Justice Rafael Cordova Rivas were brought into
the Council of State; decrees confiscating lands
and privately-owned companies were canceled;
dates were set in 1981 and 1982 for elections to
municipal councils and a constituent assembly.
"Then suddenly in August 1980 the Sandinista
directorate announced that elections would be
postponed to 1985, and in November all the re-
maining non-Sandinista "members of the Council
walked out in protest over an attack on the office
of an independent political party in Managua;
the directorate also forbade a rally which had been
convoked by Robelo's National Democratic Move-
ment. On that occasion-the first of many-cen-
sorship was applied to non-government media,
most notably La Prensa.
Dates are important here, because so many for-
eigners have claimed that the unfortunate turn of
events in Nicaragua is in some undefined way a
reaction to hostility and incomprehension on the
part of the United States. The truth is that in
September 1980 the U.S. Congress-after a long
and bruising battle-finally approved $75-million
worth of economic aid to the new Nicaraguan gov-
ernment, and, what was surely more important, at
the very same time U.S. bankers rescheduled the
country's $582-million foreign debt under favor-
able and even generous terms. The conciliatory
posture of the Carter administration, its support-
ers in Congress, and the financial community
quite clearly had no impact whatsoever on un-
folding events in Nicaragua, except possibly in a
counterproductive fashion.
During this same period, when the United
States was straining to conciliate the Sandinistas,
they also received $262-million worth of loans
from international financial institutions. Private
U.S. sources disbursed an additional $45 million
in gifts and grants to assist in reconstruction, and
equally impressive sums were forthcoming from
Western European governments, churches, and
private relief organizations. Meanwhile, the gov-
ernment in Managua, far from remaining non-
aligned, was supporting the Soviets at the United
Nations and elsewhere on issues where Moscow
could normally count on the backing only of its
most faithful followers-namely, on the questions
of Afghanistan, Kampuchea, and China.
The illusions which a self-effacing U.S. policy
inevitably nourished in the Sandinista directorate
came to an abrupt end in January 1981, when the
Carter administration, having `already transferred
$65 million in aid, suspended further disburse-
ments in its final days to protest Nicaraguan ship-
ments of arms to the Salvadccjjran rebels. The
Reagan administration wentfu-rfher still. It began
training anti-Sandinista exiles, and by the end of
1982 hit-and-run attacks, launched from bases in
neighboring Honduras, were becoming increasing-
ly common. The United States permanently can-
celed any further economic aid, opposed new
Nicaraguan loan applications, and canceled the
country's quota of sugar imports. By 1983, several
thousand U.S. troops were engaged in "training"
exercises in Honduras, and a massive naval and
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w Mr
intelligence presence dispatched to the area.
Even before the full I' S. reaction to Sandinista
policy was in evidence. Managua announced (in
March 1981) that its :iinied force would be ex-
panded to 30,000, making it by far the largest in
the region and twice the size of the National
Guard under Somoza. The presence of rebel com-
mandos operating on the Atlantic coast was used
as a pretext to "relocate" the Miskito Indians un-
der exceedingly cruel, if not genocidal, conditions.
Growing unrest over economic policies, censor-
ship, and the harassment of opponents led to wide-'
spread domestic turmoil. In April 1982, Eden
Pastora, who as "Commander Zero" had been one
of the greatest heroes of the anti-Somoza revolu-
tion, broke with his former comrades over their
failure to fulfill their promises of "political plural-
ism and the practice of free elections with respect
for individual rights." From exile in Costa Rica,
he called upon his fellow-citizens to overthrow a
regime of "traitors and assassins."
While many critics in the United States and
elsewhere may be willing to acknowledge that it
was the Sandinistas who turned away the friendly
overtures of the Carter administration, they re-
gard the stepped-up countermeasures of the Reagan
administration as disproportionate and tending to
strengthen the hard-liners among the nine co-
mandantes who now rule Nicaragua. This position
has a superficial plausibility, but those who hold
it must still deal with two inconvenient facts. First,
in April 1982 Nicaragua was tendered an eight-
point U.S. plan which would have ended military
training of exiles, resumed economic aid, and re-
duced U.S. military presence in the area. All the
Sandinistas had to do was to make good their
promise to the OAS of nonalignment and free
elections, and to cease meddling in the affairs of
their neighbors. The offer was haughtily rejected.
Second, Venezuela, which originally opposed the
termination of U.S. aid as precipitous and which
continued to disburse assistance on its own-in
this case, oil shipments at very generous prices
under very convenient terms of repayment-found
that its leverage was no greater; in fact, the Vene-
zuelans' counsels of moderation were so harshly
turned aside by the Sandinistas that in 1983 they
began quietly to assist opposition parties and
trade unions in Nicaragua.
AT THIS point, the Nicaraguan contro-
versy in the United States has gone
beyond debate over who is responsible for the
present situation to the propriety or convenience
of supporting-at first covertly, then semi-covertly,
and perhaps eventually openly-the Nicaraguan
counterrevolutionaries, or contras. It is true that
Congress, after a series of wafer-thin majorities,
finally reversed itself and ended that aid in June,
but since the cutoff was more of a defeat on parlia-
mentary tactics than a definitive judgment on the
policy itself, the issue will in all probability re-
main to vex the 1984-85 legislative season and
indeed those beyond it.
Some objections to this policy are wholly legal-
istic: critics point to the U.S. Neutrality Act and
long-standing commitments under various OAS
treaties not to intervene in the affairs of member
states. If the aim of foreign policy is for the
United States to demonstrate its adherence to the
rule of law above all other considerations, includ-
ing the right to counter the illegal activities of
other parties, then such prohibition should be ob-
served literally and aid to the contras should be
immediately terminated. But this should be done
in the clear prospect of no other favorable out-
come than, at best, a momentary public-relations
victory: the United States might claim some posi-
tion of virtue in debate at international forums,
and the Sandinistas would have to find new ways
of blaming Washington for all that ails their
country. Neither of these satisfactions is likely to
alter the situation on the ground, where on the
contrary a cutoff of aid to the insurgents would
enable the Sandinistas further to consolidate their
hold on power at home and would free them for
more extensive activities elsewhere.
A second objection to the policy of aiding the
contras is that it.purportedly places the United
States in league with the darkest elements of the
Nicaraguan past, the old National Guard, which
served for decades as the watchdog (and bully-boy)
of the Somoza dynasty. These are men whom
Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill has colorfully labeled
"murderers, marauders, and rapists."
Actually, there are three different contra forces
-the FDN (Nicaraguan Democratic Force), the
ARDE (Democratic Revolutionary Action), and
the FARN (Nicaraguan Armed Revolutionary
Forces). The FDN comes closest to justifying
Speaker O'Neill's remark, since it is officered by
former Guardsmen and commanded by former
Guard General Enrique Bermudez. Even so, as
Richard Millett, a veteran student (and critic) of
the Nicaraguan military, has pointed out in the
Carnegie study, Bermudez does not fully fit the
somocista mold. He was "viewed by Soinoza as too
popular with the troops and not sufficiently com-
mitted to the Somoza family," Millett writes, and
during the last years of the dictatorship he was
consigned to virtual "diplomatic exile" in the
United States and Japan. Consequently, he had
no connection with the atrocities associated with
Somoza's final years of power.
The ARDE, on the other hand, is.lekl by Eden
Pastora, and officered not by ex-Guardsmen but
by ex-Sandinistas. In fact, these people are the
"democratic Left" the United States is always
being urged to support in Latin America; in this
particular incarnation, however, such democratic
leftism provokes discomfort and aversion in its
North American counterpart. Ironically, far from
being puppets of the CIA, Pastora and his men
have pointedly distanced themselves from it, and
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36/COMME I.? KS JLPI~ir.K ijo~
are reliably reported to be distrusted by the
Reagan administration. As for the tiny FARN, it
is of minor importance; though its leader Fer-
nando Chamorro and his lieutenants are undoubt-
edly conservative, they have no ties to ilie Sonioza
dynasty or the old National Guard.
This is certainly a more complex picture than
Speaker O'Neill has painted; and when one exam-
ines the base of these movements, the picture be-
comes more complex still. FDN draws its fighting
force-in some estimates as much as 10,000 men-
from peasants, small landowners, and shopkeepers
who resent the Sandinistas for religious or ideo-
logical reasons. Many, Millett reports, are Miskito
Indians "reacting to Sandinista actions which have
disrupted their traditional pattern of living, de-
stroyed their homes, and transformed them into
bitter refugees." ARDE's small army-about 2,000
combatants-is also an amalgam of Miskito In-
dians, veterans of the 1978-79 civil war against
Somoza, and civilians active in the struggle against
the old dictatorship, notably Alfonso Robelo.
Clearly, whatever differences may exist at the
top, at the level of the rank-and-file the contras
are not fighting and dying to enthrone a new
Somoza, or even to obtain veterans' pensions from
the CIA (as if such things existed). While the work
of the FDN would be more-difficult without "co-
vert" U.S. aid, the example of ARDE strongly
suggests that for the Sandinistas this is a problem
which even in the absence of U.S. involvement
will not go away.
Finally, it is often said that the contras are not
really fighting, as they claim, to compel the San-
dinistas to live up to their promises to the OAS,
or (as the U.S. government additionally claims) to
interrupt arms traffic to neighboring countries, but
are rather attempting to overthrow the Nicaraguan
government. '"'hen and if this happens, it is added,
the differences between the FDN and the ARDE
will make the country ungovernable. Oddly
enough, this view is advanced by people who only
yesterday saw nothing improbable in an alliance
between Sandinistas and Nicaraguan democrats,
and who today are likely to commend a coalition
government in El Salvador between the Christian
Democrats and the FMLN.
As it happens, however, the contras have re-
peatedly stated that they will lay down their arms
if and when the Sandinistas permit genuinely free
elections and open the political process so that all
elements of the opposition may freely organize
and campaign. (The elections now announced for
the fall clearly do not meet these criteria.) The
Sandinistas need not even believe in the contras'
sincerity to test their offer: were they to do what
the contras have asked, there would be no possi-
bility of the Reagan administration's successfully
reviving in Congress the aid program to the FDN;
and the contras themselves would suffer massive
defections from their ranks. It is entirely possible
that even now the Sandinistas would win such elec-
W
tions, but in a subsequent political order in which
the opposition had a legitimate role they would
have to accept some of the restraints characteristic
of pluralistic political systems. This is admittedly
an unlikely outcome, but less likely still in the
absence of the kinds of pressures which the contras
are uniquely positioned to apply.
THE internal political problems of El
Salvador and Nicaragua would be in-
finitely less vexing for the United States if they
had no larger implications for our foreign policy
or for the strategic balance generally. Of course,
that they have no such implications is precisely
what many critics of U.S. policy have been insist-
ing all along-from the prestige press and the
religious lobbies in the United States to the Con-
tadora countries (Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia,
Panama) in Latin America and most of the signa-
tories to the Inter-American Dialogue. In their
view, the United States has made a small problem
large by artificially placing it in the context of the
"East-West struggle."
This view would carry somewhat greater weight
were it not advanced by many who habitually
doubt the relevance of the "East-West" struggle
to other and more central theaters of world poli-
tics. But the real problem with it, as Morris Roth-
enberg points out in the Carnegie study, is that it
requires us to ignore the most basic fact of Soviet
foreign policy, which is that Moscow believes that
all international problems impinge upon the su-
perpower struggle. In Soviet thinking, Central
America figures as the "strategic rear" of the
United States; keeping it in turmoil or ultimately
converting it into a security threat could signifi-
cantly detract from the ability of the U.S. to meet
Soviet challenges elsewhere in the world. It is
entirely understandable that the Soviets have not
made much of this in their public statements. As
Rothenberg writes,
Moscow has consistently muted the East-West
aspects. . . . Indeed, the Soviets deny that the
USSR, Cuba, or Nicaragua are involved mili-
tarily in El Salvador, presumably so as not to
lend credence to administration arguments
about the nature of these conflicts or to provide
justification for increased U.S. intervention.
The Soviet strategy dictates a different short-
term policy for El Salvador, where the outcome is
still in doubt, from Nicaragua, where it appears
more secure. In El Salvador the Soviets have
chosen for the moment to remain in the back-
ground, steering the revolutionaries toward third-
party sources of arms-other members of the
Eastern bloc, Vietnam, or Ethiopia, utilizing Cuba
as the point of transshipment through Nicaragua.
In Nicaragua, they have made fewer efforts to dis-
guise their presence, and in fact since 1979 they
have moved rapidly to strengthen their relation-
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ship with the Sandinistas' military, intelligence,
and security agencies. A recent defector from Nica-
raguan intelligence, for example, reported that
the security forces are now equipped with Soviet
arms; that there are 100 Soviet tanks now in
Nicaragua; and that 80 MIG's are waiting in Cuba
while the Nicaraguans who will fly them are being
trained in Bulgaria. He also claimed that the San-
dinistas had received radar-guided and heat-seek-
ing ground-to-air missiles.
Whatever the precise configuration of Soviet
arms shipments to Nicaragua, the state-to-state re-
lationship is beyond all doubt. In March 1980-
during the period when the Carter administration
was avidly courting the new regime-Comandante
Daniel Ortega signed an agreement in Moscow for
Soviet repair and use of the Pacific port of San
Juan del Sur. (Such agreements elsewhere, Rothen-
berg remarks, "have opened the way to use of
these facilities for naval surveillance and military
purposes.") Since then it has been authoritatively
reported that there are 70 Soviet advisers in all
aspects of state security, along with 400 Cubans,
40 to 50 East Germans, and 20 to 25 Bulgarians.
The FSLN has signed party-to-party agreements
with East Germany, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia;
affiliated with all major international Communist
front organizations; and joined InterSputnik, the
Soviet-controlled telecommunications network.
Nicaragua has also obtained observer status in the
Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CEMA),
which puts it on a par with "socialist" countries
like Yugoslavia or "socialist-oriented" states such
as Angola, Afghanistan, and Ethiopia. Interest-
ingly, for several months in 1982 Soviet journals
referred to Nicaragua as a "people's democracy"-
a term normally reserved for the bloc states of
Eastern Europe.
None of this is meant to discount the role of the
Cubans-indeed, without them the Soviets would
have to make -their presence more visible and ob-
vious in places where it is currently inexpedient
to do so. In El Salvador, it was Castro who unified
five contending guerrilla factions into the FMLN-
FDR in 1979 by leveraging promises of arms, eco-
nomic assistance, and training of cadres; a similar
process has been reported in Guatemala and
Honduras in 1982. The Cubans are also -the Nica-
raguans' primary source of political advice, mili-
tary and intelligence training, and access to the
international terror network; some 8,000 of them
are now at work in that country, and not-as is
often suggested-principally to heal the sick or
teach people to read. Finally, the Cubans pro-
vide a legitimizing myth that the Sandinista
revolution is but part of a chain of "Hispanic"
revolts against "Anglo-Saxon" world domination,
which in spite of obvious distortions of fact plays
equally well in Madrid, Buenos Aires, and now
in New York and parts of the Southwestern
United States.
All of this suggests remarkable subtlety and
tactical prudence on the part of Soviet strategists.
But it is \ cry strange conduct indeed from a super-
power supposedly uninterested and uninvolved in
the Ccnual American struggle. Obviously the So-
viets did n