Bypassing Peace

Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s announcement that the Reagan Administration will ask Congress for $270 million to fund the Nicaraguan contras for the next 18 months is a blow to such prospects for peace as there are in Central America.

No less ominous than the request are the terms by which Shultz defined how the peace process must work for the United States to support it.

In short, the United States is trying to muscle its way into Central American’s own peace plan, arrived at by Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras.

A regional peace plan has always seemed to have the best chance of success; the creation of one by the five Central American presidents in Guatemala City last month was both heartening and somewhat surprising. It needs nurturing, not bullying. Foreign Minister Rodrigo Madrigal of Costa Rica said as much on Wednesday when he expressed hope that Congress would not vote on new aid for the contras until at least Nov. 7, when all measures in the plan--a regional cease-fire, an end to foreign aid to guerrilla groups, and movement toward democracy in each country--are to take effect. The foreign minister said he didn’t want the United States to provide the Sandinista government of Nicaragua with the excuse to reject the plan.

Congress is not likely to vote on the request before Nov. 7, as long as the peace process is still working; the Democratic congressional response to Shultz’s announcement was blunt and hostile. The larger but more subtle danger to the plan is that the Administration will so tightly define what the Sandinistas must do for the plan to work that the plan will be undone. The Administration has long sought the overthrow of the Sandinista government; the Central American plan would, realistically, leave the Sandinistas in place, predicated on their leaving their neighbors alone and opening up their society somewhat; the United States would in turn stop helping the contra Nicaraguan rebels. These conditions would satisfy the legitimate security concerns of the United States.

An attempt by the United States, however, to turn the peace plan into a demand for the ousting of the Sandinistas would doom both the plan and the hope for peace in Central America. Shultz said the plan, the principal architect of which was President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica, was a “good beginning.” But Shultz’s analysis of the plan can be easily read as a preparation for its rejection, and as a dare to the Sandinistas to give up their power. Fulminating against the Sandinistas, and saying at one point, “If any part fails, the entire structure fails,” the secretary’s presentation to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee left the impression that the Administration is distinctly unhappy with the Arias plan, perhaps so unhappy as to wish it would fail. Certainly the Republican right wing hopes it will fail.

The timing of Shultz’s announcement of the forthcoming request for aid to the contras and the content of his analysis of the plan, together with the lack of U.S. diplomatic support for the Arias plan from the day it was introduced, make the prospects for a reasonable and satisfactory settlement in Central America look pretty grim.