down with DOCTRINES up with a TREATY : Finding the Proper Terms for a World Reborn : Geopolitics: With the Soviets following the Sinatra Doctrine in Europe, can the U.S. come up with a version of its own for Central America and Cuba?

In December of 1968 I traveled to Prague with Argentinian writer Julio Cortazar and Colombian novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Our purpose was to express solidarity with the Dubcek government, which was formally still in power, in spite of the Soviet invasion in August of that year.

The Czechs, children of Franz Kafka and “The Good Soldier Schweik,” were maintaining the fiction that, if they withstood morally and intellectually, they could maintain the Prague Spring in the face of Russian tanks surrounding the city.

It was a brave but unrealistic myth. Yet, as Latin American writers, we were asked to speak not of the Brezhnev Doctrine, which had come into existence to justify the crushing of “socialism with a human face” in Czechoslovakia, and which declared that once a country entered the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence and established a communist regime, it could never change the regime or leave the sphere of influence.

We were asked, instead, to talk about the Monroe Doctrine. By mentioning U.S. interventions in Latin America, our audiences would understand that we were talking about Soviet interventions in Central Europe. “Monroe” would stand for “Brezhnev.”

Perestroika and glasnost began in Czechoslovakia two decades ago and were then crushed right there. It is only fitting that now both concepts should return to their place of origin. Instead of the Brezhnev Doctrine, we have what the impish Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman, Gennady I. Gerasimov, whose humor is perhaps more Gogolian than Kafkaesque, calls the Frank Sinatra Doctrine: Let each country do it its way.

But comparing situations in the Soviet and the U.S. spheres of influence (Central Europe and Central America), we have to wonder whether the Bush Administration can come up with its own Sinatra Doctrine for El Salvador, Nicaragua and Cuba; or whether we will all find ourselves in the paradoxical position that while the Soviet Union moves forward with breathtaking initiatives toward the 21st Century, it is the United States that hangs on to anachronistic illusions about spheres of influence and ideological rigidity.

For the United States is not responding in Central America and the Caribbean to imaginative and renovative Soviet policies in Europe. Perhaps this is explainable because of yet another current paradox. In the era of economic interdependence and instant communications, we are witnessing a resurrection of the oldest nationalistic claims. From Armenia to Lithuania to the Ukraine, and from Northern Ireland to Brittany to the Basque country, regional nationalisms are sending warning signs to the process of European unification. The “common house of Europe” will have to come up with some inventive forms of federalism to meet these challenges.

But in Latin America, nationalism is not dispersed in eccentric regions, it is strictly contained within national boundaries and states which, furthermore, it identifies. Countries such as Brazil or Mexico have by now consolidated their nationalism and can face the challenges of political and economic modernization without outside interference. But nations such as Nicaragua are barely establishing their national institutions, and defending them from constant outside aggression. In fact, the Sandinista government has already defeated the Contras and is now pushing for their elimination. But what Nicaragua is really asking for is the liquidation of a century-old story of North American interventionism. The current Nicaraguan regime bases its legitimacy, among other things, on the fact that it is the first government since 1909 that does not take orders from Washington. Once this is established, the elections next February can proceed, under international supervision, to give free play to opposition parties, consolidating national institutions and opening the way for a greater participation of the infant civil society. But, again, the Bush Administration has thought fit to forget the lessons of the past and imprint its kiss of death on the cheek of Violetta Barrios de Chamorro, endorsed as the U.S. candidate. The election thus becomes a contest between George Bush and Daniel Ortega, much as the 1946 election in Argentina became a contest between Juan Domingo Peron and his enemy, U.S. Ambassador Spruille Braden. Naturally, the nationalist candidate won.

The Salvadoran situation cannot be compared with the one developing in Nicaragua. The FMLN guerrillas were not invented, as the Contras were, abroad. They are native to El Salvador and in El Salvador they win or lose. The FMLN not only controls big chunks of territory, it has also been capable of launching a violent offensive in the capital itself, to force President Alfredo Cristiani into serious negotiations or face the reality of uninterrupted bloodletting in a stalemated situation.

The Bush Administration pretends to go on arming the Salvadoran army and death squads while demanding that the Soviet Union cease to arm Nicaragua or the FMLN. This attitude not only rejects Moscow’s assurance that it has ceased to arm any parties in Central America, it evades the responsibility shared by both the United States and the Soviet Union not to send arms to anyone in Central America. This is the issue, and Bush will not join it. One can only surmise that perhaps Washington stands more to lose if no U.S. arms are sent to the Contras and the Salvadorans than if the Sandinistas or the FMLN receive no further shipments.

But if Bush were to proclaim the Sinatra Doctrine in Central America, we would quickly see a rush to the negotiating table in El Salvador and normalizing political relations in Nicaragua. Can anyone truly believe, as the East Bloc opens, that Gorbachev has the intention, let alone the capacity, of gambling it all away on establishing Stalinist dictatorships in two remote Central American ministates? If not Kafka or Gogol, this idea defies Marx--not Karl, Groucho.

The problem, of course, is Cuba--and that is where the proof will come. The Castro regime is each day more isolated from its old alliances in the communist world. In 1963, a stormy session of the Cuban Cabinet debated whether to denounce or support the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact forces. Fidel Castro hoped that the Czechs would resist. But there is no Sierra Maestra on the Danube. Once more, Fidel was forced to follow not the policy he would have wanted to, but the policy he had to.

U.S.-Cuban relations reveal a reciprocal insecurity. Castro is afraid that if he opens any door, the gringos will play a trick on him. And Bush, perhaps, is afraid that if relations with Cuba are mended, the United States will be left without enemies for one of its deepest needs: to identify villains, put on its white hat and ride off to combat the bad guys. Without an evil empire, the United States is forced to match the diplomatic imagination of Gorbachev. It is in Central America and Cuba where Bush, with as much guts as Gorbachev in Central Europe, can restore credibility to North American statesmanship.