It’s a Fact: Sandinistas Spell Trouble

President Reagan’s campaign to promote the overthrow of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua may be as wrongheaded and ultimately destructive to U.S. interests as his critics say it is. But whatever Americans think of the Administration’s cure for the problem posed by the Sandinistas, it would be foolish to forget that there is indeed a problem.

The long fight over Reagan’s request for $100 million in military and humanitarian aid to the anti-Sandinista contras has not been marked by respect for truth or common sense.

The Administration, in justifying its contra aid proposals, has professed interest in a negotiated solution but in fact is pursuing the forcible overthrow of the Nicaraguan government. A lot of congressional Democrats, on the other hand, find it convenient to ignore the true nature of the regime that Reagan and the contras are trying to throw out.

It’s instructive to sit back and review what has happened since the hated Somoza dictatorship was forced out in 1979.

The Sandinistas spearheaded the armed revolt against dictator Anastasio Somoza. But, to quote the Neue Zuricher Zeitung, Switzerland’s most influential newspaper, “there could have been no quick victory against Somoza, and perhaps no victory at all, without the participation of the middle class, conservative businessmen, the Catholic Church and the campesinos. “

The anti-Somoza rebellion also had the sympathy and active support of the Mexican and most Central American governments. Even the Carter Administration climbed on board in time to help force Somoza into exile.

The Cuban connections and Marxist-Leninist orientation of key members of the leadership were well known, but the new government included people not attracted to Marxist solutions. In the heady days after Somoza’s overthrow, Nicaraguan democrats and neighboring countries were disposed to accept the Sandinistas’ formal pledge of democratic pluralism, nonalignment and a mixed economy.

The private sector operates under tight restraints, but a mixed economy of sorts still exists. The other promises, however, have long since fallen by the wayside.

Many people are under the impression that the Sandinista revolution turned ugly only under the extreme provocation of U.S. support for the Honduran-based contras. The facts are otherwise--not just in the eyes of Administration spokesmen but also in the view of foreign observers who themselves are critical of Reagan’s pursuit of a military solution in Nicaragua.

The Carter Administration initially extended economic aid to the new government, but suspended it in late 1980 after concluding that the Sandinistas were neither nonaligned nor interested in arranging a transition to democratic rule.

Even before the end of 1979 the Sandinistas had established fraternal relations with the Soviet Communist Party. And to quote a ranking official of the West German government, which has deep reservations of its own about the heavy-handed Reagan policy in Central America, a massive, Soviet-aided arms buildup began “even before the contras took up arms.”

By the end of 1980, before Reagan took office, Nicaragua’s armed forces were already twice as large as the Somoza national guard at its height. Two years later, but still before the Reagan Administration swung behind the contras, the army had doubled again.

Meanwhile, the Sandinistas began the process of excluding opposition political forces from genuine power-sharing.

With the help of a small army of Cuban and East European advisers, the Sandinistas created an interlocking network of Cuba-style neighborhood defense committees, women’s federations, youth organizations and trade unions to facilitate the control and indoctrination of the people.

Discouraged moderates began to leave the government and the country: men like Arturo Cruz, who had been jailed by Somoza, and Alfonso Robelo, founder of a democratically oriented party of businessmen and professionals who had opposed the former dictator.

In 1984 the Sandinistas finally held the elections that they had promised in 1979. But Carlos Andres Perez--former president of Venezuela, key figure in the Socialist International and one-time admirer of the Sandinistas--felt compelled to express his disappointment in a letter to Managua: “Those of us who believe we have done so much for the Sandinista revolution feel cheated, because sufficient guarantees were not provided to assure the participation of all political forces.”

More recently the Sandinista Directorate, citing the threat from the U.S.-backed contras, declared a state of emergency. La Prensa, the opposition newspaper whose former editor was assassinated by Somoza goons, has been closed. Attempts are being made to silence criticism from church leaders. Strikes are strictly forbidden.

Virgilio Godoy, leader of the Independent Liberal Party and labor minister in the Sandinista government until 1984, told Le Monde of France last month, “If the contras didn’t exist, the government would have to invent them, for it needs them to justify its policy and silence civil dissent.”

International support for the Reagan strategy of intervention in Nicaragua is close to zilch--not just on the democratic left but also among most conservative governments. But illusions about the true nature of the Sandinista regime evaporated long ago in Latin America, and are evaporating now even among democratic socialists in Europe who began as dewy-eyed apologists for the regime.

The Administration is vulnerable to criticism that its support of the contras is a dead-end street--that the contras can’t win, even with stepped-up U.S. aid, and that the failure of U.S. policy will then feed the tide of anti-American revolution in the hemisphere.

But the quest for an effective alternative should begin with realizing that the oft-proposed switch from military coercion to diplomacy would not convert the Sandinistas into a nice bunch of social democrats.