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The Contras: R.I.P.?
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16416 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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5 / 1989 |
3,466 Words |
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William Lewis
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The epitaph has not yet been drawn, but the heads of the five Central American governments who convened in El Salvador in mid-February made clear their desire to bury the Contra movement. Their communiqué, after two days of intense negotiations, agreed that the U.S.-financed freedom fighter force of 11,000 men should be disarmed, disbanded, and, for all purposes, dismembered. The quid pro quo for the burial of the Contras would be the introduction of democracy into Nicaragua.
The foreign ministers of the Central American "five" were presented with a 90-day deadline to draft a plan to implement the communiqué.
The deliberations of the Central American five--Jose Napoleon Duarte of El Salvador, Jose Azcona of Honduras, Vinicio Cerezo of Guatemala, Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua--and their proposals for "peace" in the region signaled that policy gravity was shifting away from the United States. This was reflected in the fact that Secretary of State James. A Baker III had met with the foreign ministers of Costa Rica and Honduras the previous week, but neither of them had alerted him to the impending change in Central American strategy. Furthermore, American friends in the region, such as Duarte, who himself faces Marxist guerrillas, endorsed the plan to disband guerillas fighting a leftist government in Nicaragua. While Washington was registering surprise, the pendulum of decision appeared to be swinging away from the "colossus of the north."
The Bush administration's feeble response has been attributed to the palsied transition that seems to characterize Washington at present. Most critically, the sensitive post of assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs was still empty in mid-February as the Central American leaders convened. The secretary of state's choice, Bernard, W. Aronson--a Washington-based political consultant--had not yet been nominated by the White House. As a result, no presidential appointee was in place to formulate and articulate an appropriate response to the unfolding situation in Central America.
Policy paralysis in Washington was also underscored by the deep split that had emerged between Congress and the executive branch over the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. The U.S. Congress had vacillated for years over the Reagan Doctrine approach of supplying arms to the Contra movement, all of which led to the audacious leaps of Lt. Col. Oliver North and Company. Finally, the introduction of the Arias plan in August 1987 suggested that some Central Americans found the strategy devised by the Reagan administration unrewarding. Endorsement of the Arias plan--calling for a cease-fire and "restoration" of democracy to Nicaragua--by House Speaker James Wright virtually sealed the fate of U.S. arms transfers to the Contras. New pressures were emerging for recourse to diplomacy and for U.S. disengagement from the strategy of armed confrontation with Managua by American surrogates. The Reagan administration acquiesced, albeit grudgingly, despite its assumption that the Sandinista regime would not honor its pledge to permit political pluralism to flourish in Nicaragua.
Terms of the communiqué
The two-day meeting of the presidents of the five Central American republics was held at the luxurious Tesoro Beach Hotel in Costa del Sol, El Salvador. The goals of the participants
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