The Contra War and U.S. National Security T HE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION HAS LONG been in the grip of an obsession with Nicaragua. In its recent fight with Congress to secure approval for $14 million in aid to the contras, the administration's hatred for the Sandinista regime has produced some of the ugliest invective heard in Washington in years. It has shamelessly bullied its congressional opponents, played on their fear of being blamed for allowing a "second Cuba" in Latin America and skillfully exploited the Democrats' dearth of alternative policy options. As we go to press, it remains to be seen whether the ad- ministration will win its case. Some optimists calculate that there is still a 50-vote margin against the aid; pes- simists say the gap could be as low as seven or eight. If it glimpses defeat, the administration may end up pulling out of the vote altogether. It would then seek one of a number of compromise solutions: perhaps so-called humanitarian aid to Nicaraguan refugees, perhaps aid through third parties and private donors. In the course of the debate, many members of Congress have been rethinking their opposition to the contras. Some waverers may have been tempted to change their votes in the hope that the Nicaragua nightmare will go away if they accept the contras as the de facto core of U.S. policy. They may also have grasped at the illusion that the con- tras' purpose was moral because it was directed at secur- ing peace. The doubters may have been swayed by a spate of fresh arguments in favor of aid to the contras, more subtle than the administration's own overheated rhetoric. Two recent articles from one-time critics of administration policy were characteristic of this trend. One was an op-ed piece in the March 12 New York Times by Susan Kaufman Pur- cell of the Council on Foreign Relations. The other was a March 25 editorial in The New Republic-the staple opin- ion-former these days for every disenchanted liberal in Washington. The Kaufman Purcell argument rests on the assumption that continued pressure by the contras will extract more and more concessions from the Sandinistas, leading even- tually to a negotiated settlement through the Contadora process. The New Republic piece is in some ways more pernicious. Like Kaufman Purcell, it sees the contras as an instrument toward the higher good-which in the The New Republic's case seems to mean bringing Arturo Cruz into the Nicaraguan government. Both these approaches brazen out the mounting evi- dence of systematic atrocities by the contras, especially the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN), against Nicaragua's civilian population. The New Republic even admits disarmingly that to describe the contras as "free- dom fighters" is "romantic myth-making." But, it con- tinues, "What is happening in Nicaragua . . . is a civil war-and like most civil wars it is a nasty affair." In the eyes of The New Republic, then, the recent Americas Watch report* which provides a nauseating catalogue of FDN rape, torture and indiscriminate butchery, and finds no significant evidence of Sandinista abuses since 1982, should not unduly disturb the unquiet liberal conscience. War is hell, and U.S. national security is at stake. Or, as they used to say in the good old days, "They may be sons of bitches, but they're our sons of bitches." (For a pun- gent contemporary variant on that theme, see Jerry Fal- well's remark in this issue's "On the Record.") WHATEVER THE OUTCOME OF THE DE- bate, its impact will be a lasting one. This aid re- quest is significantly different from its predecessors. More than just another incremental step in the hostilities against Nicaragua, the vote this time represents a major watershed in U.S.-Nicaraguan relations. The administration has had a remarkable degree of success in fanning congressional hostility toward the Sandinistas. If Reagan succeeds in getting the $14 million, he will have obliged Congress to underwrite his overall goal-which is now explicitly stated-of overthrowing a regime which is deemed to be a threat to U.S. national security. But far from promoting U.S. national security interests, a continuation of the con- tra war against Nicaragua will in fact prejudice those in- terests in several ways. First, renewed harassment may well convince Nicaragua that it is pointless to go on making unilateral gestures of conciliation. Second, the contra war is likely to kill the Contadora peace initiative. And third, it will push the United States closer to direct military involve- ment in Central America. To start with the second point, renewal of aid to the contras would lead to a serious deterioration in hemi- spheric relations. Already, Honduras has been destabilized by acting as a staging ground for the war. Its political sys- tem is in disarray; many of its generals are close to open revolt against Washington. The war now shows signs of shifting to Costa Rica, with the arrival of the ultra-rightist Lewis Tambs as new U.S. ambassador in San Jos6. It is only too easy to foresee the erosion of Costa Rica's fragile stability. The four Contadora nations-all key U.S. allies- would see a renewal of funding as the final blow to their peace initiative. The contra war means a U.S. resolve to flout all the central security provisions of Contadora, above all its condemnation of foreign support for "irregu- lar" military forces and cross-border attacks on sovereign states. The failure of this unprecedented diplomatic initia- tive by Latin American governments would also have grave implications for the future viability of the Organiza- tion of American States. The hemispheric strain will also be felt at the level of mass opinion. The war on Nicaragua, like U.S. support for Great Britain in the Falklands/Malvinas conflict and the invasion of Grenada, is turning a groundswell of nationalistic sentiment fiercely against the United States. The recent inauguration of Uruguayan President Julio Marfa Sanguinetti, a civilian, brought a huge demonstra- MARCHIAPR!L 19853 3 MARCH/APRIL 1985tion of public support for Nicaragua. As one well-placed Latin American observer said, "Who received Shultz when he arrived in Montevideo? Two Mercedes and 600 bodyguards. Who received Daniel Ortega? Three hundred thousand people." Washington ignores signals like this at its peril. Beyond the hemisphere, too, Washington's alliances will suffer. Many key Western countries saw the November election in Nicaragua as a ratification of the Sandinistas' legitimacy; their hostility to a contra-based policy will grow. Even Margaret Thatcher gave a surpris- ingly cordial welcome to Nicaraguan Vice President Ser- gio Ramirez when he passed through London in February. A S FOR THE REACTIONS OF NICARAGUA itself, the Sandinistas will likely see a resumption of contra aid not as one more turn of the screw, but as a critical turning point. It is absurd to argue that continued funding of the contras is the only thing that will oblige the Sandinistas to acknowledge legitimate U.S. national secu- rity interests. The Sandinistas have long recognized those interests, both in the Contadora framework and in the bilateral U.S.-Nicaraguan talks at Manzanillo, which the administration unilaterally abandoned. With their readiness to sign the draft Contadora treaty last September, the Sandinistas explicitly addressed the is- sues of foreign bases and advisers and limits on the size of armed forces and military actions across national fron- tiers. Washington was alarmed that those terms could apply across the board, restricting its own military pres- ence in Honduras and El Salvador, and pressed its allies in Central America to torpedo the treaty; Managua now says it is open to the argument that, for example, a permanent military base in Honduras might also be added to the list of legitimate U.S. security concerns. It would he naive to deny the link between U.S. pres- sure and Sandinista concessions. But the elementary rules of schoolyard bullying may soon cease to apply. It is a serious mistake to assume that the Sandinistas will con- tinue to make concessions indefinitely as more pressure is exerted on them. One major motive for the Sandinistas' gestures has been to stay the hand of Congress on the con- tra vote: that restraint would be futile-if not suicidal-if the aid request were granted. Also, unilateral concessions are always a political risk. At a certain point, those who make conciliatory gestures only to see them systematically spurned begin to look foolish to their own supporters. We may have now reached that point, where the most pragmatic course for the Sandinistas is to stand firm. After all, their credibility with their domestic constituency is at stake. As Sergio Ramirez recently stressed, conciliation without reciproc- ity eventually becomes meaningless. Finally, the most obvious reaction to military pressure is military buildup. In response to the contra attacks, the Sandinistas will continue to acquire weapons, most likely from the Soviet bloc. And they may see no further sense in their unilateral offer to suspend the import of new weapons systems. The Sandinistas' increased defense preparedness- based, incidentally, on distributing 200,000 machine guns to the civilian population-is habitually interpreted in this country as evidence of an "authoritarian crackdown" at home. Again, the evidence suggests just the opposite. The months since the November elections have seen a radical decentralization and democratization of politics at the grassroots and a vibrant daily debate in the National As- sembly between the FSLN and its opponents. WHAT IS TO HAPPEN THEN IF THE CONTRA aid goes through? Even Business Week, in an un- usually astute column, recognized that if Congress ap- proves the $14 million aid request, it will be cornered. It will have endorsed the president's obsessional vision of Nicaragua as a threat to national security and will be com- mitted to following through on the military logic of the contras-whose chances of eventual military success against the heavily armed Nicaraguans are universally agreed to be nil. That is precisely the point at which the logic of Vietnam takes over, with the seductive argument that "We have to go in because we are already there." If Congress sticks with the contras now, it must also be prepared to stick with the consequences-a national security nightmare of ever deeper proportions. If Congress's remaining qualms about these murderous thugs lead it to block the aid request, then we may face a turning point in U.S. policy of a more optimistic kind. The administration's policy will, by the admission of its own senior officials, begin to unravel. So far, the adminis- tration has had the Democrats over a barrel. But the spell cast by the president's bullying and the Democrats' cow- ardice can now perhaps be broken. If Congress cuts loose from the contra policy, the Democrats-admittedly through little merit of their own-will have a little space to stake out the alternative policy approach that is so des- perately needed. Their first step must be to confront the most dangerous of Reagan's many lies: his recent assertion that the San- dinistas "are not a government." That means recognizing that Nicaragua is indeed a sovereign state, with which the United States has no right to interfere. If that minimum standard of international behavior is restored to the de- bate, more may follow. Once Congress stops looking at Nicaragua through a national security prism, it may under- stand that the Sandinistas' only real crime in the first place is to have demanded sovereignty. And if that subversive truth is acknowledged? Is it too much to hope that one or two lone voices may begin to advance morality, rather than the paranoia of empire, as the basis of this country's Central America policy? *Americas Watch, Violations of the Laws of War by Both Sides in Nicaragua 1981-1985, New York, March 1985.
