El Salvador: Victory Impossible, Peace Is the Only Policy : Civil war: No more rebels as Robin Hoods. No more government commitment to human rights. The Salvadoran slaughter continues.

With the smoke from the guerrilla offensive still hanging over San Salvador, three things are clear. First, there are no white hats in El Salvador any more. Second, after more than a decade of civil war, each side can still deny victory to the other. Third, the best hope now is not victory for either side, but simply an end to death and destruction. While peace seems more remote than ever, it has never been more necessary. The alternative is ineluctably for El Salvador to become another Lebanon; San Salvador, a new Beirut.

In the late 1970s, the young rebels who took up the guerrilla cause seemed genuine idealists. When their efforts to promote social justice through reform were brutally put down, they abandoned their university educations and budding professions for the hilly terrain of revolutionary warfare. In the early 1980s, the murderous handiwork of right-wing death squads--thousands of would-be reformers slain on the streets--seemed only to confirm that the rebels’ worrisome adherence to Marxism was less important than their understandable rejection of the status quo.

During recent years, however, the early sheen of the rebels has tarnished badly. Initially, there was the forced recruitment of young teen-agers, then the internecine struggles, the kidnaping and murder of elected mayors, the indiscriminate mining of roads and the terrorist bombings. And now, by occupying residential areas in their San Salvador offensive, the guerrillas use civilians--against their will--as human shields. The Robin Hood image is long gone; the rebels are now themselves violators of human rights.

The guerrillas are caught in a time warp within a rapidly changing world. Many of the young veterans from the hills who invaded San Salvador last month were reportedly amazed by its wealth and modernity. One can only wonder what their reactions are to the historic transformations under way in Eastern Europe. Unreconciled as they may be to the persistent injustices of El Salvador’s ruling order, they could hardly conclude that Marxism is the wave of the future. Even now they must sense that the tattered revolutions of Cuba and Nicaragua are ever more anachronistic.

U.S. military and economic assistance may have been critical to preventing rebel victory in the early 1980s; it has not been--and is unlikely to be--sufficient to vanquish the guerrillas. Neither the Salvadoran government nor its U.S. backers have displayed the vision or flexibility required for bringing about peace.

The United States has pursued a multiple counterinsurgency strategy in El Salvador, trying to strengthen the armed forces while also promoting electoral democracy, economic development, social reform and human rights. Both the Reagan and Bush administrations have endorsed all elements of that strategy as necessary, not only for success in El Salvador but also for success in Congress.

A full decade of deep U.S. involvement, including $4 billion in aid to this Connecticut-sized country, has made little positive difference in El Salvador. And the trends are not encouraging.

The United States has succeeded in strengthening the Salvadoran armed forces. They are much better trained and equipped than they were 10 years ago. Their command structure is more disciplined, more unified and their troop strength is considerably greater. The problem is that the rebels adroitly shifted tactics and strategy, making prolonged warfare and stalemate the most likely military prospect. The guerrillas’ urban offensive has dramatically demonstrated that not even the capital’s elite are immune from their reach.

In the early period of Jose Napoleon Duarte’s presidency, the U.S. commitment to electoral democracy in El Salvador seemed to be riding high. Yet Duarte failed long before his health gave way, partly because Salvadorans on both left and right came to see his power as emanating from Washington. We now know the Central Intelligence Agency did its best to divide the extreme right and to preserve the centrist option for El Salvador. Once the Christian Democrats themselves--awash in corruption--turned on one another, however, nothing could be done to prevent President Alfredo Cristiani and the right-wing Arena party from sweeping into power.

The real problem with Salvadoran “democracy” is not that it has produced a right-wing president, but that elections in El Salvador--although relatively free and open--have not been enough to produce a democratic government. Elected governments have proved incapable of controling the Salvadoran security apparatus. Duarte’s closest aide once ruefully confided to me that “the military is not ours.” The former president was forced to rely on the U.S. government and its control of the military-assistance spigot to keep the Salvadoran armed forces even partially in line.

The United States, unfortunately, has little about which to boast. Despite large infusions of U.S. economic assistance, the war-torn Salvadoran economy is mired in stagnation. Per capita income has plummeted by 25% in this decade. The centerpiece of the U.S. social agenda has been an ambitious agricultural reform, but it has fallen far short of its much vaunted goals. The economic and social structure of El Salvador is as skewed today as it was in the 1970s.

Although the Salvadoran military has never had a proud human-rights record, it did clean up its act considerably after then-Vice President Bush visited at the end of 1983. For several years, the paramilitary death squads were leashed. But other violations, including cases of torture, massacres of peasants and indiscriminate serial bombings continued, and became a terrifying new facet of the war. Over the last year, there have been disquieting signs of worsening abuses, led by the return of death-squad killings.

The recent slaughter of six Jesuit priests and their servants was only the most visible act of barbarity. Whether or not Jennifer Jean Casolo, the young American arrested last week, is guilty of storing weapons for the rebels, the Salvadoran government clearly means to use her case to smear all those working for peace. Like the Jesuit martyrs, she fits within the new campaign to discredit and intimidate religious workers and rights activists.

After a decade of deepening involvement in El Salvador, it is time for the United States to take stock. Just a few years ago, El Salvador looked like a foreign-policy success. We could be proud of helping prevent a rebel takeover, curbing the death squads and opening the electoral way to democracy. It has become evident, however, that, although the Salvadoran government is betting primarily on a strengthened military to defeat the rebels, victory for either side is not in the cards. Even with 60,000 to 80,000 Salvadorans already dead, the war could continue for a long time.

Cristiani and his Arena allies have now dropped the pretense of commitment to social reform, human rights or democracy itself. Both the right-wing government and the rebel comandantes are getting their wish: increasing polarization of Salvadoran society. Meanwhile, as the situation becomes uglier, official U.S. spokesmen are reduced to defending the indefensible. President Bush suggests that the uniformed killers of the priests may have been “renegades”--of left or right-- while Secretary of State James A. Baker III rails against rebel “terrorists.”

Reminiscent of Saigon, U.S. Embassy officers in San Salvador daily try to put the best face on the latest piece of bad news, whether prematurely announcing that rebel attackers have been routed, assuring us of Cristiani’s commitment to get to the bottom of the Jesuit killings or joining in the Salvadoran denunciations against Casolo.

It is time to reassess objectives, to abandon our pursuit of a military victory and to make peace the overriding objective of U.S. policy. It will not come easily or quickly, but the prospect for peace is much greater with U.S. support than without it.

What can the United States do to increase the chances? Bush is presumably taking a first step with Mikhail S. Gorbchev this weekend. He is reported to be pressing the Soviet leader for help in stemming the outside flow of arms to Salvadoran rebels. Bush would be more convincing, however, if he could assure Gorbachev that our aim is not to defeat a less well-armed guerrilla force but to promote their re-entry into society through a negotiated settlement.

The United States must also make clear to our Salvadoran clients that the world is changing. Given the new look from Moscow, there is less justification for viewing the Salvadoran rebels as threatening the security of the Western Hemisphere. While we certainly do not want to see a rebel victory, we also do not want to be party to endless killing. The United States has important leverage in El Salvador and should use it. We must be prepared to discontinue military assistance if the Salvadorans do not end human rights abuses or fail to make a genuine search for peace. By the same token, we must convey equally firm resolve to be generous with economic aid to help rebuild a peaceful El Salvador.

In the end, if there is to be peace it must be made between Salvadorans. Virulent though the forces of polarization and violence may be, there is a peace constituency made up of moderate business, political and church leaders-- and the vast majority of ordinary Salvadoran citizens.

Five years ago, I traveled to La Palma for the first talks between the government and rebels and I will always remember seeing thousands of peasants along the mountainous road, waving white flags, aching for peace.

Those peasants still represent El Salvador’s silenced majority.