A Historically Valid, All-American Solution to Nicaragua: Buy It

The Reagan Administration has one good way to seize the initiative and guarantee that Nicaragua gets our kind of government. Our President must persuade Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega that the best future for his country is for us to buy the place.

No less a President than Thomas Jefferson made such a move. In order to purchase Louisiana, his Administration had to persuade Napoleon to sell. Just as the point then was to stop the French empire from taking root in our front yard, buying Nicaragua will push the Soviets out. A real-estate deal will give us what military action might gain--but with more certainty and less mess.

A Washington group of retired admirals and generals found that a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua, including occupation and clean-up, would take four years and cost $12 billion. And no war has ever come in under budget. It so happens that on the open market Nicaragua would sell in the same price range, since its gross national product over the past decade has averaged $2 billion, and investment property these days sells for 6 to 10 times income.

A Contra victory might cost less than an invasion or a buy-out, yet the regime that took power next could be more trouble than the Sandinistas. If we buy Nicaragua, no matter who sits in Managua, we’ll be dealing with an American government. Once Congress absorbs this logic, it will surely say yea.

But swaying Ortega and his people to become part of the United States will take a crash effort that’s both deeply sincere and highly inventive. We can expect them to say no at first, as Napoleon did about Louisiana. So, rather than using one envoy, we must send a party of celebrated and avuncular Americans to plead our case--men who radiate such trust and kindness that people think of them as family, men like Gerald Ford, Charles Kuralt, Orville Redenbacher and John Madden. With his ability to draw diagrams that leap the language barrier, Madden could play a key role in making the deal clear to ordinary people in both nations.

Although history has never seen so much avuncularity on a single diplomatic mission, bringing Nicaragua home will take something bigger. We will need to wrap the deal in a carnival of reaching out and joining hands that ideally should flow fromthe words and music of a Broadway show celebrating Ortega’s country the way “Evita” did Argentina.

In fact, because the need for upbeat emotions is so intense, the State Department should hire the authors of “Evita” to immediately rework and whip together some old hits under the title “Nicaragua, Mon Amour.” Soon, in Los Angeles and Managua, New York and Matagalpa, people will be singing and strutting to such new old favorites as “Pardon me, boys, is this the Nicaragua Purchase,” “Oh, Danny be good,” and “This land is your land, it’s also our land.”

As “Nicaragua, Mon Amour” and the Ford-Madden initiative soften the atmosphere, we must look to the nitty-gritty and create a way for Ortega to say yes, so that selling Nicaragua is not an act of crying “uncle” but of marrying him with dignity. Thus, in return for its becoming part of the United States, Nicaragua must immediately be given a status equal to that of Texas, or Delaware.

Skeptics who doubt that the lure of statehood will grab President Ortega forget his last visit to Washington. The Sandinista leader made himself so much at home on the Capitol circuit that it’s easy to picturehim at the Democratic convention, announcing:

“Mr. Chairman,

“The splendorous state of Nicaragua, whose friendly and hard-working people, whose productive mines, farms and factories make it Old Glory’s rich new star . . . Nicaragua, the 51st and only state that, like the nation itself, stretches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and whose benign climate and inviting beaches make it a vacation paradise . . . Nicaragua, the Showdown State, casts one-half vote each for Michael Dukakis, Jesse Jackson and Paul Simon, and its remaining 12 1/2 votes for its favorite son, . . . “

As for the Republicans, a source close to the President hinted last week of a deal “that will put Ronnie in the history books next to Jefferson, Franklin and Bonaparte.” So it was not by accident that the GOP chose New Orleans, the jewel of Louisiana, for its national convention. We can expect much trumpeting there about how, with a real-estate deal, the Reagan Administration triumphed over those Johnny-come-lately peace processors who were butting into American policy.