Corrupt Abroad, Corrupt at Home : To Reshape Ourselves, We Must Reshape Nicaragua Policy

The U.S. Congress, after years of ignoring the deafening cannon fire, appears finally to be closing in on the smoking gun proving the depths of the Reagan Administration’s involvement in illegal support of counterrevolutionaries fighting the Nicaraguan government. As things stand now, no one will be surprised if Congress votes against renewing aid to the contras in 1987. And then? It isn’t too early to look at the effect of the current scandal on the course of U.S. policy toward Nicaragua over the long haul.

The Democrats, sensing their new power after six years of Reagan Administration invincibility, seem determined to get to the bottom of the question of how U.S. policy toward Nicaragua has been carried out. But even the most rigorous inquiry into the Iran-contra arms connection--with its likely sequel of prosecutions, resignations and housecleanings--will not be, by itself, enough to pull the United States back from the disastrous course of its current policy toward Nicaragua.

There is an obvious element of opportunism in all of this. For the moment, if contra-bashing leads to George Bush’s demise as a viable presidential candidate, many Democrats (and not a few Republicans) are likely to line up for their share of pokes. So far it has been easy--and, in the face of presidential red-baiting, safe--to criticize the methods of Administration policy rather than to dispute its objectives.

Whatever happens in the next few months, the question of what to do about Nicaragua will be left to the next Administration. With aspirants already lining up, it is not too early to begin thinking about what new policy might be built from the ashes of the contra disaster. Here are some principles that might guide such a policy:

--Recognize the need for serious, even revolutionary, changes in social and economic structures in Central America. This means challenging the Reagan thesis that the contras’ war and El Salvador’s civil war are merely struggles for the formalities of democracy; it means considering the possibility that the Sandinista project may have something to contribute in this regard. It is wishful thinking on the part of both liberals and conservatives to believe that tens of thousands of people have given their lives over the past decade because of a thirst for parliamentary democracy or elected presidents.

--Pay more than lip service to the Contadora peace process, and take Nicaragua up on its stated willingness to negotiate a verifiable mutual-security treaty with the United States.

--Get our country back on the right side of international law by accepting the World Court’s finding against the United States’ involvement with the contras and its clandestine activities and economic embargo against Nicaragua.

These are fundamentals, and they deserve the immediate attention of both parties’ leadership. If the next Congress limits itself to stopping contra aid on the basis of scandals in the operation, the nation will find itself patching together a new Nicaragua policy in the midst of the 1988 presidential campaign. The election-year pressure cooker is not the best place to concoct foreign policy.

What happens if we wait till then? One likely scenario is as follows:

Congress refuses further funding of the contras sometime early in 1987, riding a wave of public disgust with the Iranian connection.

George Bush is crippled as a presidential candidate by his links to the effort.

The current contra leaders are discredited within their own ranks and internationally for misspending the millions that they received in assistance--or (though this is unlikely) for being duped in the Iranian arms deal.

A raft of “pragmatic” Democratic presidential candidates, fighting for the center in the early 1988 primaries, begin to scout the second-string contra leadership for “alternatives” who are “cleaner”--free of corruption, less bloodthirsty and more acceptable to the U.S. public, a Nicaraguan equivalent of El Salvador’s Jose Napoleon Duarte. (In the recent contra assembly in Costa Rica several younger leaders appeared to be strutting their stuff, jockeying for position if and when the current triumverate collapses with this latest scandal.)

Democratic support for such a force, conceived in the heat of a U.S. political battle with little reference to the internal Nicaraguan political reality, becomes the “new” U.S. foreign policy in 1989, no matter who wins the White House. The reconstituted contras, with a new democratic facade, position themselves for a new round of aid from the United States. And Nicaraguans brace for four more years of war. The prestige of U.S. politicians again will be tied to an eventual contra victory--or at least to the avoidance of a contra defeat.

A corrupt foreign policy once again threatens to corrupt our system of government at home. Once again we are learning the simple lesson that who we are abroad reflects and shapes who we are at home. In the short run Congress can minimize the damage by fully investigating the Iran-contra scandal. But only by simultaneously reopening the debate on the basic moral, legal and policy questions involved in our behavior toward Nicaragua can we avoid even greater scandal for ourselves and more suffering for Nicaraguans.