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Down for the Count
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13827 |
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Section : |
BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
Date : |
12 / 1988 |
2,427 Words |
| Author
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Philip Peters
Philip Peters, chief of staff to Rep. Jim Courter (R-N.J.),
has worked on Central America issues in Congress since 1983
and as a policy planning officer with the Department of State
in 1986-87. |
In retrospect, one questions whether the United States has led a just war in Nicaragua. In the Christian just war tradition, worthy goals alone do not justify a decision to wage war. States must intend to win; they must match means to ends so that they achieve their objectives without squandering lives in futile combat. On this score, America's record in the Contra war is mixed and so far unsatisfactory.
Constantine Menges is one of many Americans who have struggled to make our government deliver on a Nicaragua obligation we assumed but never articulated: to give the Contras the aid they needed to win democracy in Nicaragua. Menges focused on diplomacy, on making democracy the sine qua non of any Nicaraguan settlement. His NSC colleague Oliver North strove to hold the Contras together "body and soul" through frequent personal contacts and improvised funding. Others in the government—and in the private sector as well—worked to improve the Contras' military and political prowess. To see how these efforts fared, and to examine broader implications for the Reagan doctrine, a look back at the development of the war is in order.
Exacting a price
In late 1981, the Reagan administration's policy was not to build a full-scale counter-revolutionary insurgency. Rather, the United States sought to exact a price for Sandinista subversion of El Salvador through covert action to regroup and arm several hundred ex-military personnel from the ousted Somoza regime. Their military mission was to harass the Sandinistas to create an incentive for the Sandinistas to end their support for El Salvador 's communist insurgency. Such was Washington's design.
Events in Central America took their own course, however. Seeking to assert political control and to transform the economy in the early years of its revolutionary program, the Sandinista government began attacking the church and private property rights. This assault on two pillars of Nicaraguan society was a surefire formula for igniting opposition, especially among campesinos who had suffered decades of Somoza's rule without seeing their faith or their land subjected to government controls.
These two catalysts—an American covert paramilitary program and Sandinista repression—combined to create a genuine insurgency. By 1983, the Contras numbered in the thousands, with former National Guardsmen declining in relative number as raw recruits from the countryside and defectors from the revolutionary army
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