The Deepening Morass

A recent series of articles by a team of Times correspondents about the rebels fighting Nicaragua’s Sandinista government illustrates yet again what a serious mistake President Reagan made by building his Nicaragua policy around the contras.

The series made clear that there are many grievances in revolutionary Nicaragua, frustrations that have led many patriotic Nicaraguans to abandon the hope that they once had in the popular revolution that overthrew the hated Somoza dictatorship in 1979. Ever since then the increasingly authoritarian nature of the new Nicaraguan government, controlled by the Sandinista militants who were the principal fighters in the rebellion that overthrew Gen. Anastasio Somoza, has alienated many of its own citizens--Roman Catholics, business leaders, independent unionists and peasant farmers among them. Clearly there would be opposition to the Sandinistas even if the United States had not helped create the contras.

Unfortunately, the United States did help create the contras. Or, to be precise, operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency did so at the behest of Reagan Administration officials who saw tiny Nicaragua as a test case of U.S. resolve against the Eastern Bloc. Creating a Nicaraguan opposition was a profoundly ignorant mistake from the perspective of Nicaraguan history. The Somoza dynasty was created by past U.S. interference in Nicaragua, after all. And the CIA compounded this error by dealing with the most visible remaining symbols of the Somoza regime--the officers of Somoza’s defeated National Guard. Somocistas remain in key positions of authority in the contra movement to this day, tainting other contras who are former Sandinista allies with democratic credentials.

Now, with the $100 million in aid that Reagan wrested from a reluctant and craven Congress earlier this year, the Administration is trying to turn the contras into an effective guerrilla army. But it is too late. Convinced that the United States wants to overthrow them at all costs, the Sandinistas have heavily armed themselves with the help of the Soviet Union, and have tightened their political grip on Nicaragua. Budging them even slightly will require more than firepower. It demands a basic ingredient of guerrilla warfare that the contras lack--widespread popular support among the people they claim to be fighting for.

Thus, as the contras infiltrate into Nicaragua to engage the Sandinistas early next year with their new weapons and supplies from the United States, the reality is that they have little chance of success. Reagan’s contra war is shaping up as a disaster akin to the Bay of Pigs in slow motion. His surrogates can’t win, and the longer that they flail about in futility the greater the chance that they will spark a regional war in Central America, which the United States could easily be drawn into with unpredictable consequences.

The tragedy of this deepening morass is that Reagan has an alternative for dealing with Nicaragua, even if he does not want to dirty his hands by negotiating directly with Managua. He has been advised many times by our Latin American allies, principally the Contadora Group (Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Panama), to step back and let them negotiate with Nicaragua. Latin American diplomats believe that if the Sandinistas let down their guard long enough to talk with their neighbors, they will realize that Nicaragua has more to gain from cooperation with the Western democracies than it has by becoming a Soviet client like Cuba.

Despite resistance and even outright hostility from Reagan, the Contadora Group quietly and patiently continues trying to negotiate peace in Central America. Contadora is a viable alternative to the contras. But the United States must give it a chance to work.