A Vote for Moderation

The House of Representatives has summoned up its courage and its common sense and said no to continued U.S. support for the rebels fighting the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. The question now is whether President Reagan will take no for an answer.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind) said that “the President is going to continue to support the contras , whatever the votes are here today.” To do that the President can keep trying to break the will of the House. Or was Lugar suggesting that the President will ignore the House and act as if the Senate’s approval of his plan was all he needs? The first course has a dubious prospect; the Senate is showing no taste for returning to the issue. The second course would be unconstitutional.

So U.S. policy will probably drift, as it has drifted for more than a year, pushed ahead by an Administration that grossly misunderstands Central America, pulled back by a reluctant House and a skeptical people.

Having presented the Central American situation in terms that are grotesquely exaggerated,the President faces, by his own definition, a shattering repudiation of his vision of the U.S.interest in Central America and U.S. policy there.

It need not have been this way; it need not be this way yet.

That as a nearby superpower the United States has certain security interests in Central America even the Sandinistas concede. Despite the wild words from Washington, no sober observer, U.S. or foreign, expects the Sandinistas to be willing or able to invade their neighbors, or to permit their dirt-poor country to become a Soviet or Cuban military platform. The Sandinistas, under military and economic pressure, are willing to negotiate military stand-downs in the region.

Bent on overthrowing the Sandinistas, the United States has balked at talks. If the cold water of the House vote brings the Administration to its senses, there is yet a chance for negotiation to achieve what force could not, a regional settlement that offers some prospect for peace and some hope for restraint by the Sandinistas inside and outside the borders of Nicaragua.

If the Sandinistas regard the vote in the House as a vote for them, they will be grievously mistaken. It was a vote for moderation. The responsibility for a sensible settlement lies in both Washington and Managua.