Turning Back the Gathering Storm : All Democracies in Region Depend on the Contras’ Success

President Reagan’s critics keep berating his “obsession” with poor little Nicaragua. How can such a weak country be a threat to the United States? Why does the President insist on a military solution instead of supporting a diplomatic solution? If he feared the establishment of Soviet bases in Nicaragua, these critics assure us, he could make it clear to Mikhail S. Gorbachev that, should the Soviets put missiles or bombers there, we would “simply take them out.” In short, these critics argue that we ought to stick to a diplomatic approach now, and should it fail we would then have a nifty military solution to fix the problem.

These critics have it wrong on three counts.

First, they should not be so cavalier about “taking out” Soviet bases in Nicaragua. One of the most dangerous outcomes of our policy toward Central America would be a full-blown U.S.-Soviet military crisis. The United States no longer enjoys the strategic superiority that helped President John F. Kennedy get the Soviet missiles out of Cuba in 1962. In fact, it isn’t even clear that Kennedy came out ahead in that deal--what with the huge Soviet intelligence bases that are now in Cuba and Fidel Castro’s continuing armed intervention throughout Africa and Latin America.

Second, the Soviet danger in Nicaragua is not that Moscow might be so foolish as to put missiles or strategic bombers there. Given today’s intercontinental ranges, the Soviets have no need whatsoever for such bases in Nicaragua or anywhere else in Central America. No, the Soviet danger in Nicaragua is that they will go on doing what they have been doing for the last eight years without any plausible counter from us: sending small arms, helicopters, communications equipment and other supplies to the communist regime so as to build up and replenish Nicaragua as the best-equipped arsenal for police control and insurgency warfare.

Third, the problem of Nicaragua is not only that this arsenal is being used to prevent the Nicaraguan people from achieving the democratization of their own country, as promised in the Arias peace plan. The greater danger is that this arsenal will later be used to destroy democracy in the other Central American nations.

Reagan’s insistence on supporting the Contras is not an obsession; it stems from a necessary broader strategic concern for the future of the whole region, including Mexico. What is at stake is the political-military dynamic that will determine the struggle between democracy and communist insurgencies and other totalitarian threats. It is the dynamic of the hopes and fears of the people, the shifting of expectations as to which side is winning, the life-and-death question of whether to commit oneself to democracy, stay on the sidelines or flee to the United States.

Clearly the danger is not that the Nicaraguan army will march into Honduras one day to conquer that country. The recent hullabaloo about the skirmishing at the Honduran-Nicaraguan border has diverted everyone’s attention to the wrong issue.

A far more menacing warning of the gathering storm is what we now can learn about the political crisis in El Salvador. That fragile democracy has just passed through the first phase of a two-phase election process. To be sure, there is good news: Once again the brave voters in El Salvador have defied the brutal threats by the communist insurgents who sought to block the democratic process through terrorist violence, including the kidnaping and murder of candidates.

However, the popular mood in El Salvador and the result of these elections tell us something about this anguished country--like a cry of pain by a grievously injured person. The results, in which the ruling Christian Democrats lost control of the National Assembly to the rightist opposition, foreshadow the fiercely divisive conflict for next year’s vote in the succession to President Jose Napoleon Duarte. The mood of the people and of the military leadership speaks of deep frustration, if not despair.

El Salvador’s fledgling democracy has suffered from a long economic crisis and has been bled for eight years by a cruel insurgent war. For democracy to survive such an ordeal, the people must continue to expect that they will reach a better future if they stay the course.

It was the Salvadoran military that started its country on the road to democracy in 1979. But only after the election of Duarte in 1984 did our Congress grant military assistance sufficient to overcome the protracted stalemate. With improved training and equipment, and also with a better human-rights record, the prospects in the war changed radically. The Salvadoran armed forces were able to drive the insurgents back, cause their ranks to dwindle and curb their ability to damage the economy. The people could begin to hope that in a few more years their tormented country might be able to devote all of its energies to rebuilding the economy.

But whether the armed forces and the people of El Salvador will continue to support the struggle for democracy will depend on what they expect to happen in the region. Having fought a communist insurgency for eight years, they know full well that their own struggle is doomed to failure if the outside powers tilt the military balance against them. They know that the communists in Nicaragua have been receiving about eight times the military support from the Soviet Union that the Contras have received from the United States. And they now can watch House Speaker Jim Wright and his fellow Democrats on El Salvador’s television arguing for denying the Contras even that one-eighth of military support. Also, the people of El Salvador recall that the insurgents attacking democracy received training, supplies, communications support--and encouragement--from the communist regime in Nicaragua. If that regime now emerges triumphant, it is bound to boost the morale and to expand the ranks of the Salvadoran insurgents.

There comes a point when the morale of a people, their balance of hopes and fears, begins to tilt. The news reports from El Salvador today are a warning signal. Once the hope for democracy becomes extinguished in El Salvador--after years of generous, bipartisan support from the United States--the gathering storm in Central America will have turned into a hurricane.