Our Attitude of Dominance Must Go : U.S. Should Turn to the Construction of Partnerships

The Iran- contra hearings have focused on whether U.S. government officials and private citizens violated this country’s laws in their efforts to carry out what they took to be national policy toward Iran and Nicaragua.

This is obviously a significant question. The chances of reestablishing a bipartisan foreign policy depend on restoring congressional trust in the Administration as well as public faith in the integrity of senior officials. This restoration of trust in turn may depend at least in part on establishing clearly who did what and on whose authorization, if any.

But it is important not to become so concerned with the issues of responsibility and credibility as to lose sight of even more basic questions. Last week’s testimony by Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams, for example, provoked extended colloquies regarding exactly what Abrams told various congressional committees and what his motives were.

What has thus far escaped much discussion, however, has been what Abrams’ testimony showed about the prevailing attitudes of senior U.S. officials. Even if one were to assume that Abrams’ testimony was entirely candid and truthful, it was extraordinarily revealing.

Abrams said, for instance, that it had not occurred to him that the permission of the Costa Rican government might be required for the establishment on Costa Rican territory of a military airstrip to be used to launch attacks against Nicaragua. Abrams also admitted that when he presented an appeal to a representative of the government of Brunei for a $10-million contribution by that government to the contra insurgents, he had not thought to ask himself what the government of Brunei would obtain in exchange for the proposed donation.

This testimony, glossed over because it does not illustrate illegal conduct, speaks volumes about Abrams’ basic attitudes. Imagine these two events occurring in reverse. Is it conceivable that a foreign government would plan, finance and construct a military airstrip within the territory of the United States, to be used for attacks on a neighbor of this country, without considering this a matter in which the U.S. government would take a major interest? Is it imaginable, even for the most imaginative of us, that a foreign official would ask for a $10-million contribution from the U.S. government without arguing that such a contribution would be in this country’s vital interest?

The plain truth is that many senior officials of the Reagan Administration have been so committed to the contra policy that they have abandoned their critical faculties in its pursuit. A Harvard Law School graduate who would surely not imagine that an airport could be built in suburban Virginia without governmental approval assumes that a clandestine airstrip could be set up in Costa Rica without that government’s permission. A senior State Department official could ask the representative of a foreign government to commit funds to support U.S. policy without bothering to ask himself whether such a commitment would be in the foreign government’s interest.

Even when dealing with close and perhaps compliant allies, like Costa Rica and Brunei, Reagan Administration officials have not considered foreign views particularly relevant. The policies of nations not committed to the U.S. position, like the Contadora countries (Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela and Panama), have been treated as bothersome distractions. The views of Nicaragua itself have been considered illegitimate. With regard to Nicaragua, the Administration has established its negotiating objectives as “pre-conditions,” stipulating in effect that the United States will negotiate with Nicaragua only if the Sandinista government agrees in advance to capitulate.

The Administration’s policies toward Nicaragua have been fundamentally grounded in underlying attitudes of dominance and in longstanding habits of hegemony. This basic stance, much more than deliberate policy choice, accounts for a foreign policy that is almost universally repudiated by other nations.

Attitudes of dominance cannot be eliminated simply by removing one or another official, although some personnel shifts would no doubt improve the conduct of U.S. policy. They cannot be rooted out by congressional action, although clear congressional constraints on Administration policy can have a positive effect. What is required, ultimately, are fundamental changes in national attitudes.

If the United States is ever to secure from other nations the kind of cooperation on which our prosperity and even our security increasingly depend, the American people and its political leaders need to turn from presumptions of dominance to the construction of partnerships. That may be the ultimate lesson of the Iran-contra scandal. It should not be overlooked.