NICARAGUA INTERVENTION EMBRACED : Ask Not If, but How, to Aid Liberty : What’s the surprise? When the U.S. intervenes on the side of democracy, it’s a certain winner.

Violeta Barrios de Chamorro’s stunning victory Sunday proved that Nicaraguans, like Poles and Czechoslovaks, detest communism and took the first available chance to throw it off. After the upheavals in Eastern Europe, this should come as no shock. The surprise, and the lesson, is to be found in our own surprise.

It is long past time to realize that our active intervention is appreciated when it is on the side of democracy, just as our support for dictatorships is long remembered. Our collusion with the colonels’ junta in Greece spawned a generation of anti-Americanism there; conversely, our cashiering of Panama’s strongman has made our troops the toast of the town there.

Our interventions to fight for freedom have been handicapped by the reluctance of so many Americans to fight left-wing governments while they are eager to fight those on the right. Somehow it was clear that Chileans hated Pinochet, but it never could be admitted that Nicaraguans hated the Sandinista junta. U.S. pressure on Chile in the 1980s had strong bipartisan support; efforts against the Sandinistas gave rise to extreme partisan bitterness.

The Sandinistas’ best weapon in this election campaign, many Americans genuinely believed, was Chamorro’s obvious close ties to the United States. Worse yet, while she had never been a Contra (in fact, she had been in the Sandinista-led government in the early days), she clearly had links to that movement and many of its former officers were working with her. Her chief political adviser, Alfredo Cesar, had been a member of the Contras’ executive board, as had her son Pedro Joaquin Chamorro. Surely, these ties to the Contras would doom her campaign, for who could doubt that the Contras were as unpopular in Nicaragua as they were in Congress?

Nationalism, many Americans decided, would lead Nicaraguan voters to reject Yankee domination and reaffirm the Sandinista revolution. It was even said that the U.S. invasion of Panama had helped Daniel Ortega, for Nicaraguans would instinctively react against more Yankee imperialism. When polls showed that Nicaraguans understood the U. S. government supported Chamorro, very few analysts realized this was a source of strength for her, not a sign of weakness. Most American liberals honestly seemed to believe that Ortega would win a free election in Nicaragua, so disgusted were the voters there with our interventions, our embargo, “our” Contras.

The American liberal view since Vietnam has held that U.S. intervention is almost always morally wrong and politically harmful, a reflection of the many flaws that plague our society. This fundamentally negative view of our society was projected onto the people of other nations, who were said to want above all “to be left alone” by the United States--unless, of course, they were struggling with a right-wing dictatorship. It seems genuinely to have come as a shock when Grenadans in 1983, Panamanians in 1989 and Nicaraguans in 1990 welcomed our active opposition to their own governments.

But it should not be shocking that people welcome help in liberating themselves. In Latin America over the last 10 years, and in Eastern Europe last year, it has been magnificently demonstrated that the thirst for freedom is unquenchable. The issue with which we must grapple is how, not whether, to help: How can we dissociate ourselves from dictators, or undercut their oppression, and advance the cause of freedom? Tactics must vary, but goals never should. What we want for Czechs, we want for Chinese and Cubans. Compromises that appear “mature” and “statesmanlike” are not so, if what they compromise is someone else’s freedom. Liberals who have, quite rightly, criticized a Republican Administration’s dealings with the regime in Beijing, must ask themselves why they were so willing to seek accommodation with Managua.

It is still the case that our open society and free political system are the models that inspire demonstrators, and freedom fighters, on every continent. And it is still the case that our greatest asset as a nation is our support for liberty, at home and abroad. Our foreign policy must reflect our principles, and gratifyingly, it is crowned with success when it does so.

Chamorro’s victory not only liberates Nicaragua from oppression; it also should liberate us from the myths that so often dominate our foreign policy. In their triumph over the Sandinistas, the people of Nicaragua have reminded us that American intervention is welcome when we join the struggle for freedom.