Path to Peace

The rejection of President Reagan’s package of assistance for the Contras in Nicaragua by the House of Representatives on Wednesday was a personal defeat for the President as well as the defeat of a failed policy. It was not, however, any of the things that the President had suggested it would be--neither “win or lose for peace and freedom” nor “yes or no to America’s national security.”

Congress did what the leaders of Central America asked it to do--respecting the Aug. 7 peace agreement and, more important, respecting the ability of the Central Americans to put their own house in order. They may fail, but it is difficult to imagine that they can possibly make as many mistakes as the United States has made in its decades of courtship of dictatorships and oligarchies and its predilection to military interventions.

With this vote Congress has intensified pressures for a diplomatic solution, for negotiations and for peaceful alternatives to the terrible guerrilla wars that have raged with such dreadful tolls in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. The five Central American presidents now must meet the test of their own commitments, above all their commitments to democratic reforms, made when they signed the accord last summer in Guatemala. No one is under more intense scrutiny than Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, whose commitment to democratic institutions has yet to be proved.

The narrowness of the congressional decision measured the ferocity of the campaign that Reagan waged to try to win a prolongation of the Contras’ war. The campaign raged on through Thursday, ending with a hollow White House victory in the Senate--the aid bill requiring approval in both chambers. The President’s shrill rhetoric magnified the issues and eroded confidence in his judgment. Indeed, in the final appeals to the nation on the eve of the House vote it was Rep. Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.), speaking in opposition, who sounded presidential with his calm, thoughtful, sober, intelligent analysis of the problem and the prospects for peace. The President himself took on the air of huckster, of ideologue--careless with facts, embracing hyperbole in his desperation.

Reagan has now said, regardless of the setback, that he will continue to support the Contras. That is not helpful. What is needed is a commitment on his part to give authentic and wholehearted support to the Central American Peace Plan. We can think of no better place for him to begin than to press General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev concerning the proposals by the Soviet Union to cut off superpower arms for Central America. The White House dismissed the Gorbachev proposal as “absolutely unacceptable” and “ludicrous.” Perhaps. But those conclusions would seem premature. If Reagan can negotiate reductions in the deadliest armaments on Earth with the Soviet leader, it does not seem beyond his wit to devise ways to reduce the flow of conventional arms to the pathetic, miserable, impoverished nations of the region. The urgency was brought home by yet another Contra assault on a civilian target even as the House vote was taken--this time on a cooperative farm, with three children among the seven killed.

The responsibility of Congress has not ended with the turning back of a failed policy. Congress, too, has work to do to support the Central American effort to implement the plan for peace. There are U.S. obligations to the Contras in the transition to a negotiated settlement. And there are U.S. obligations to all the nations of the region to provide the resources for reform--reform that facilitates a peaceful future as bullets never could.