Now for a Salvadoran Miracle : The Nicaraguan Upset Shows the Power of a Secret Ballot

The election defeat of the Sandinistas was almost as big a stunner in El Salvador as it was in Nicaragua. Now the Cristiani government and the leftist rebels--and the Bush Administration--have a great opportunity to reopen stalled peace talks and end that bloody civil war.

Some leaders in San Salvador and Washington may be tempted to view the electoral rout of the Sandinistas as the precursor of a battlefield rout of their ideological kin, the Salvadoran rebels of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front. But that’s simplistic and probably wishful thinking. Sure, the Sandinistas gave aid and comfort to the FMLN, but that aid was never all that pivotal. In terms of battlefield tactics and, even more important, popular support inside El Salvador, the FMLN repeatedly proves itself quite capable--even against a 50,000-man army backed up by $1.4 million a day in U.S. aid.

Not only are the FMLN rebels tough, but the Salvadoran army’s performance still leaves a lot to be desired. Despite 10 years of scolding and prodding by U.S. advisers--many of whom learned painful lessons about guerrilla war in Vietnam--the Salvadoran generals still insist on pursuing small, mobile rebel bands with large army units--and only in the daytime. Worse, Salvadoran military leaders still have not won the hearts and minds of their own people. The murder of six Jesuit priests by an elite army unit did not help to win a whole lot of public support.

So the defeat of the FMLN’s allies in Managua doesn’t mean the Salvadoran government should launch a renewed frenzy of war. That would resolve nothing and prolong the bloodshed. The lesson to learn from Nicaragua is that a peaceful political fight can be more devastating to Marxists than anti-guerrilla warfare. Consider the Chamorro political miracle: It was only when the Nicaraguans took their political differences to the polling booth that a white-haired grandmother accomplished what the Contra rebels and the CIA failed to do: beat the Sandinistas. The Salvadoran government may be able to the same thing, but we won’t know until it draws the FMLN into the political process, too. That won’t happen at the point of a gun, but it just might at the conference table.