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State's Craft
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13825 |
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BOOK WORLD
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12 / 1988 |
2,942 Words |
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Philip Nicolaides
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According to the Democrats and their liberal allies in the media, the worst foreign policy blunder of the Reagan administration was the decision to sell arms to supposed Iranian "moderates," a blunder compounded by a rogue operation in the National Security Council that decided on its own to use the profits form these sales to assist the Contras in Nicaragua.
There can be little doubt that this was an ill-considered policy. Its political fallout damaged the president and weakened his administration. But the Iran-Contra affair was by no means the worst blunder. That title must go to the Reagan administration's failure—after eight years of trying—to dislodge or neutralize the Soviet colony and forward military base in Nicaragua.
Most Americans are well aware that the dominant liberal wing of the Democratic Party has fiercely opposed support for the Contras. If Reagan's goal was the liberation of the long-suffering people of Nicaragua, just as surely the objective of his political adversaries—domestic and foreign—was to see to it that when he left the White House, Ortega's communist dictatorship would still be firmly entrenched in Managua. Jim Wright, Speaker of the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, has demonstrated his protective impulses toward the Sandinista regime by, for example, blaming its brutal suppression of peaceful demonstrators on "provocation by U.S. intelligence agents."
But what most Americans do not know it that the State Department, under the leadership of George Schultz, and with the help of two successive career bureaucrats who headed the NSC, Bud McFarlane and John Poindexter, worked tirelessly to undercut, misdirect, and thwart the president's policy. This is the most stunning revelation of Constantine Menges' fascinating new book.
As the top Latin American expert in the National Security Council for several years, he witnessed this single-minded State Department effort to defeat the president's policy, a policy he—along with allies like Bill Casey, Cap Weinberger, and Jeane Kirkpatrick—gamely fought to save.
An unhealthy tilt
Menges chronicles in rich detail the array of cunning stratagems by which State attempted to mislead the president and implement its policy rather than his. He describes "seven major episodes where some of the president's closest advisers tried to short-circuit the process. Even after the president had clearly stated his policy—both in public speeches and in formal National Security Council Directives—one cabinet member [Schultz] would follow a critically different course of action. And … would make every effort to keep his initiatives secret, not just from his colleagues, but—it seemed—even from the president himself."
In 1981, when Menges presented Thomas Enders with the outline of a program to bring real democracy to Nicaragua, the Haig-appointed career diplomat crumpled the page in his fist and pounded the table: "Constantine," he exploded, "this is the real world. Get serious. There is no chance for democracy in Nicaragua." And, as if to fulfill the prophecy, Enders flew to Nicaragua and without authorization assured the Sandinistas that all they needed to do to satisfy the new administration was to quit assisting in the subversion of their
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