Almost by Default, Unanimity for Peace

Costa Rica’s President Oscar Arias Sanchez is in Washington this week, hoping to mobilize U.S. support to bolster the diplomatic effort that he is spearheading to bring peace to Central America. He is attempting to build on the unexpected accord signed in Guatemala on Aug. 7 by the presidents of all five Central American nations (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua); to sustain the momentum exemplified last weekend by Nicaragua’s decision to permit the opposition daily, La Prensa, to reopen, and to persuade the Reagan Administration and Congress not to thwart Central America’s will to end a decade of bloody civil wars.

Fatigue with these wars and fear of their escalating costs and possible consequences have brought together many Central Americans who are otherwise still badly divided. Polarization is the dominant fact of political life in Central America, but the grim prospect of war without end is overcoming the divisive urge. What the Pentagon likes to call “low-intensity conflicts” are certainly not experienced that way by the people affected. The prospect of further calamity, of war expanding throughout the isthmus, has pushed Central Americans to explore the possibility of peace. Costa Rica, which as a democracy without an army has the most to lose from a general militarization of Central America, has understandably taken the lead.

It is important not to exaggerate what Central America’s presidents accomplished when they signed the Guatemala agreement six weeks ago. Strictly speaking, all that happened was that none of the presidents were then willing to run the risk, internally or internationally, of publicly rejecting the possibility of peaceful coexistence, or of refusing internal dialogue within that context. The presidents left much to be spelled out: They did not set forth the mechanism for establishing a cease-fire, for example, and they provided no specific sanctions for incomplete implementation of the commitments that each made, or even for outright violations.

Yet Central Americans of very diverse views agree that the Guatemala accord has already changed the nature of the region’s profound struggles. For the first time Central Americans are thinking and talking, in strategic and tactical terms, about how to wage peace rather than make war. They are asking themselves how to build strength under conditions of peaceful competition--a new and hopeful question.

This turn toward peace is significant but fragile; it needs to be nurtured, not denigrated. On a visit to Central America last month I found no one expecting that peace will suddenly blossom. But I also found consensus that there is a real chance to reverse the cycle of violence. Nicaragua’s Sandinistas, reeling from economic disaster, are widely thought to be ready to end material support for the FMLN insurgents in El Salvador in exchange for an end to the contra war, and to be ready to take meaningful steps to reopen Nicaragua’s politics in a pluralist direction.

What accounts for the surprising shift toward serious negotiations? Apart from the personal audacity and tenacity of Arias, the key reason is that the classic conditions for successful negotiations now exist.

All of the major actors--the governments of Nicaragua, El Salvador and the United States, the FMLN in El Salvador and the contras in Nicaragua--are confident enough of their strength to risk negotiations and offer concessions, and yet each is vulnerable enough to have a strong incentive to do so. Not one of the main actors is now sure that time is on its side, so all have a shared interest in seizing the opportunity to reduce the risks for all. A negotiated peace along the lines proposed by Arias would yield a result that none of the parties regard as really satisfactory, but the dominant faction in each might now find it tolerable. Such is the stuff that peace is made of.

A peace agreement in Central America would not end the region’s internal struggles; it would not even end their external dimensions. On the contrary, the peace process would open a new arena for conflict, through political and electoral competition. But there is a reasonable chance that the conflict could be reduced in costs and casualties, and that is certainly worth achieving.

Arias is in Washington because the prospects for peace in Central America now depend to a considerable extent on the attitude and behavior of the United States.

The Arias plan and the peace process that it has unleashed are based on the premise that the most powerful nation in the world can tolerate a Marxist regime in one of the smallest and poorest countries of the Americas, and that the nations of the hemisphere can and should work together to contain the Sandinista movement internationally and to affect its internal evolution through peaceful pressures.

The Reagan Administration and Congress must now face a central question that both have evaded for years: Can the United States accept peace with the Sandinistas on terms that limit their external behavior and dilute their control of Nicaragua’s politics without ousting them from power, or does U.S. security require eliminating the Sandinistas once and for all?