|
|
Looking Beyond the Vote for Contra Aid
| Article
# : |
11380 |
|
|
Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
|
| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1986 |
3,055 Words |
| Author
: |
Sir Alfred Sherman
|
So long as the battle in Congress for aid to the Nicaraguan Contras was proceeding, supporters of the Reagan administration's Central American policies in general kept to themselves any misgivings regarding the soundness or effectiveness of the Contras and policies based on them. It was practical politics to support their own side in a confrontation with politicians and media men who were either supportive of communist inroads into the Western Hemisphere or preferred to close their eyes to them. Awkward questions were best left until afterward, a self-denying ordinance made easier by the nature of the opposition; to find oneself somehow on the same side as Sen. Edward Kennedy could not possibly be right.
Now that this particular obstacle has been surmounted-albeit by a wafer-thin majority and at the price of still further strengthening the Soviet drive into southern Africa-it is time to abandon reticence and to ask where we go from here. A strategy is needed. What can President Reagan and the American people expect for their $67 million? The overthrow of the communist government in Nicaragua and expulsion of its Cuban, East German, Bulgarian, and other mentors? Or failing that, can the Contras hope to exert sufficient military and political pressure inside Nicaragua to weaken effective aid to the Salvadoran insurgents to a point where President Jose Napoleon Duarte can stabilize the country? Or are there as yet unarticulated alternative outcomes: an undefined compromise of sorts, some tertium quid?
Let us list the assumptions. 'Assumption A' is that the Contras, fortified by their millions and by bolder U.S. aid and involvement, will mount an offensive, defeat the Sandinista army, and establish an alternative government in Managua. I do not know people in policymaking circles in Washington who believe this to be possible, though they may exist. But the prevailing attitude-first win the battle of Capitol Hill and then cross the next bridge when you come to it-tended to preclude discussion in depth.
The Battle of the Hill has been won; now we have to judge how much weight the next bridge will carry. The military assessment is fairly straightforward. The Managua government has had several years in which to train an army, with full assistance in weaponry and political techniques. Some of this time was won for it by the bogus pearl of the Contadora process. This was Mexico's protection payment to Cuban leader Fidel Castro in return for not exploiting popular discontent there, although Contadora could not have won three extra years for Managua but for compulsive self deception in Washington, London, Paris, and Latin American capitals.
All the political and psychological factors that permitted the Contadora fraud remain with us, the danger of Nicaragua being just one facet.
The Contras have neither the arms, the training, nor the organization to take on the Sandinista armed forces, unless the latter were already in a state of revolt or dissolution, which our knowledge of the state of affairs inside the country and our experience of communist rule generally does not indicate. To arm and train the Contras to a point where they could launch an invasion against a regular army on its own ground would take several years and a great deal more than $67 million. It would take staff and command officers and specialized arms from outside. Can we envisage the Honduran, government permitting all this in its border areas, least
...
Read Full Article
|
|
