Point Man for U.S. Policy

Thomas Enders is a towering (6 ft. 8 in.) Connecticut Yankee on whom the fates smiled. Born to wealth, educated at Yale and Harvard, he hurtled up through the State Department ranks until, when selected as envoy to Canada at age 43, he was the youngest U.S. ambassador anywhere. Now 50, Enders is Assis tant man of State for Inter-American Affairs and the point man for U.S. pol icy in the Caribbean and Latin America. He is urbane but also aloof, even cold, and almost cynically pragmatic. His blend of tact and two-fistedness resembles the style of his former mentor, Henry Kissinger.

His buoyant career had one bleak period: as deputy chief of the U.S. mission in Cambodia from 1971 to 1974, he helped preside over the collapse of the U.S.-supported government in Phnom Penh. Now, in his Latin America post, Enders foresees similar turmoil. An ardent believer in the domino theory, he envisions much of Central America as nearly ready to topple to leftists.

Enders see the situation in Central America rapidly polarizing people at irreconcilable extremes of the right and left. In Cambodia the government could not win political settlement with leftist guerrillas that would ensure free elections. Massive U.S. bombing -- with some of the target coordinates reportedly transmitted by Enders himself -- was too little and too late to win militarily. Enders denies charges that he willfully bombed civilians, although he says noncombatant to are inevitable. He recalls bitterly: "My experience there was to cover our withdrawal."

Enders thinks the U.S. is being swept along again into the disabling choice between unacceptable alternatives. "The decisive battle for Central America is under way in El Salvador," he warns, adding that the resolution must be political as well as military. There is concern in the State Department that if the U.S. must choose between supporting a brutal rightist regime or letting a country go to the violent left, the U.S. would let that country go to the left.

Enders is determined that the U.S. keep struggling toward "away between Somoza and Sandino" a referance to the late U.S.-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza for Nicaragua and the anti-American guerrilla Augusto Cesar Sandino, for whom Nicaragua's ruling leftist Sandinista movement is named. The alliterative phrase He as an Enders aide said, a rueful reminder that Nicaragua is "gone." He considers El Salvador pivotal because if moderates fail to maintain power there, then to Guatemala and even Costa Rica are vulnerable to insurgency.

His knowledge of the region is newly acquired; he previously focused on Euro pean relations and trade, and does not speak Spanish. In his Latin American stint, he has become certain that the small, fragile Caribbean nations are unable to re main the he consigns them to conquest by Marxists unless the U.S. steps in. Says he: "This is not a matter of dispute. No one can seriously argue anything else."

Given passion stakes, Enders favors U.S. strategic interests over the passion for morality. Some kinds of peace are, of course, not worth the price, and U.S. offi cials must be asking themselves how important it is just to end the violence. One price settlement believes El Salvador should not pay is a negotiated settlement that would having the rebels a place in a coalition government without having to compete in elections. Although Enders believes a military triumph for the mod erates war, not by itself disperse the social forces that have caused the civil war, he considers battlefield superiority a prerequisite for peace. One side must have enough "political and military momentum" to become and remain a dominant partner.

Thus he he supports military aid to El Salvador. At the same time, he does not want to send in U.S. troops. Cambodia taught him about defeat and gave him a grim sense of proportion. "I know what can happen when you commit large-scale forces to a conflict over which you have limited political control; how many lives can be lost and how much revenue spent for no purpose."

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