The word was out. Costa Rica would no longer look the other way while U.S.-backed rebels fighting against the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua used Costa Rican territory.
Costa Rican President Oscar Arias had made his position clear even before his inauguration in May of 1986, alarming key U.S. officials. But the president's subsequent strong condemnation of the Sandinista regime also made clear his dislike of his neighbor's politics and his staunch support for democracy in the region.
Costa Rica officially declared itself neutral in November 1983, putting into words a longstanding tradition of nonintervention and peaceful solutions to problems. Solving something "a la Tica," it is said, using the affectionate nickname for Costa Ricans, means settling the matter through discussions, without resorting to harsh exchanges or threats.
After a two-month civil war in 1948, the country abolished its armed forces, hoping to use the money for domestic purposes and to avoid the problems it had seen other countries have with their military sectors. Alberto Fait, now the majority party leader in the Legislative Assembly (congress), was the vice president when President Luis Monge declared a policy of "perpetual, active, and unarmed neutrality" for Costa Rica. Fait said this means, that "we will not be involved in any war between two countries no matter where these countries are. That means we reaffirm our decision of abolishing the army and we stick with the principle that problems among nations should be solved by political negotiation and not by weapons or armies."
Technically, the Costa Rican policy is not neutrality as usually defined by international law, according to Costa Rican lawyer Bernd Niehaus. To be truly neutral a country must not be part of an international defense treaty, as Costa Rica is, belonging to the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (the so-called Rio Treaty), as well as to the United Nations and Organization of American States. Additionally, to qualify for a neutral status, a country must have its own defense forces to enforce its policy, according to Niehaus. President Monge's policy is really a policy of nonintervention. "Monge put a more attractive name on it to make it sound more important," Niehaus said, "but it's a misnomer." Luis Guillermo Solis, the chief of staff for the Costa Rican Foreign Ministry, said that the Monge "neutrality" is understood as meaning neutral only in a military sense, since Costa Rica is clearly aligned ideologically with the United States and the West. Nevertheless, the Monge doctrine continues to be known popularly as neutrality.
Costa Rica's neutrality was sorely tested when ideological warfare broke out in Central America. In the 1970s, fed up with the long years of Anastasio Somoza's dictatorship in Nicaragua, Costa Ricans strongly supported the Sandinista insurgents. The Costa Rican government also supported them, allowing shipments of arms and supplies from other countries to flow through national territory. When the Sandinistas finally won, "celebrations in San Jose were second only to those in Managua," according to Fred Morris of the Institute for Central American Studies in San Jose. But the Costa Ricans' euphoria quickly turned to disillusionment when the Marxist nature of their neighbor became apparent. A recent poll showed that 71 of every 100 Costa Ricans have a negative view of the Nicaraguan
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