Let’s Deal on Nicaragua

Few issues facing our country today are more divisive than our policy toward Nicaragua. Should we be aiding the anti-communist rebels there--the group that one side calls contras and the other calls freedom fighters?

No policy can succeed without a clear objective, yet Americans are confused about exactly what we are trying to achieve through aiding the contras. If our goal is (as some policy critics say) to overthrow the Nicaraguan government, then a policy of giving limited aid to the contras really doesn’t make sense. What, then, is our objective?

So far, our debate has centered on means, not ends. Rather than continuously debating the scope of aid, it’s time to get back to basics: U.S. policy should focus squarely not on overthrowing the Sandinistas but on removing the threat to our neighbors’ security, and eventually our own, posed by the Soviet military presence in Nicaragua.

This is the purpose of a resolution that I have introduced in the Senate: It would end all U.S. military aid to the contras in return for a complete and verified removal from Nicaragua of the Cuban, Soviet and other East Bloc military personnel and their destabilizing heavy weaponry.

By introducing this resolution I hope to refocus our debate. I believe that the Sandinistas’ Marxist economic ideology and unpopular domestic rule are doomed to failure. However, I also believe that this is the Nicaraguans’ business. My concern is the Soviet military intervention that transforms internal conflicts, such as Nicaragua’s, into ones that the United States cannot afford to ignore. If the Soviets, who last year alone poured $570 million in military aid into this civil war, stayed out of Nicaragua, so would we.

A foreign policy that results in removal of the superpowers from Nicaragua would disentangle that conflict from the East-West power balance and pave the way for a local or regional resolution. This approach would enable us to work with democratic Central American leaders in neighboring countries who oppose and fear the Soviet presence but cannot support a North American attempt to overthrow a Latin American government.

Ending Soviet and American military aid wouldn’t mean the end of the insurgency against the Sandinistas. If the freedom fighters have developed the broad, indigenous support that I believe they have, their movement will continue on its own and eventually triumph. What the resistance forces seek, and what U.S. policy seeks, is a democratic Nicaragua. This was the promise of the Sandinista revolution.

Most important, by focusing on getting the Soviets and their surrogates out, Congress would help establish a new consensus on our goals in Central America. And only a consensus, not an exchange of narrow votes and presidential vetoes, can sustain a policy with the consistency required for success.

At the same time, if we are successful in establishing a consensus for U.S. policy in Central America, we may learn an important lesson about how to deal with radical regimes. Revolutionary conflicts in the developing world are inevitable. But not every one must necessarily become embroiled in the East-West struggle. The Senate resolution on Nicaragua would carry a message to Latin Americans and to the world that we will stay out of local Third World conflicts--provided the Soviets keep their military out.