Politics and Contra Aid

The contradictory votes in the House on aid to the Nicaraguan rebels exposed the issue for what it has become--an unprincipled scramble for political advantage.

The bulk of the Democrats don’t want Contra aid but are afraid of the political consequences of voting against it. The bulk of the Republicans would rather lose all U.S. assistance to the Contras than let the Democrats off the political hook.

On Thursday a few Democrats opposed to all aid voted with nearly all the Republicans to kill the Democratic leaders’ plan to continue providing what they fondly called “humanitarian” aid. So now, for the time being at least, there isn’t any new U.S. aid for the Contras at all. All they have is what’s left over.

Maybe, just maybe, the vote will finally persuade the Contra leaders that their string has just about run out, that Congress is just not going to keep on financing the Reagan Administration’s proxy war against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, no matter how much the outgoing President would like to. So maybe the Contra leaders will be more serious about negotiating an end to the struggle than they have been.

A visitor who called on Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo reported a conversation with him that neatly if gloomily describes the situation in Nicaragua. The cardinal, dismissed as mediator by President Daniel Ortega, reported that the Contras really don’t want a cease-fire, as they say, but just want to keep on fighting. The cardinal said that the Sandinistas really aren’t interested in democracy and would never accept a Western-style system.

Since the United States will not, and should not, try to overthrow the Sandinistas, its candid goal must be to hope for, and work for, the widest possible democratization short of overthrow. From the point of view of democracy, the results at best are going to be disappointing.

Yet the effort must be made, for some good has already come of it, and the most promising route still lies in the plan proposed by President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica and adopted by all the Central American nations. If it is true that the Sandinistas find the military threat a useful foil for tightening their control over their country, it is also true that the war and the country’s dismal economy are straining their popular support. Both sides have strong incentives to come to terms.