Harsh Facts, Hard Choices

By WALTER ISAACSON

One congressional committee voted to cut the military aid he requested for besieged El Salvador. Another sought to ban covert U.S. operations against the aggressive leftist regime in Nicaragua. Polls showed that few voters shared his critical concern over Central America and even fewer wanted the U.S. to become involved in the problem. Yet because he fervently believes his policies are vital to the future of the hemisphere, Ronald Reagan made a bold but politically risky appearance last week before a special joint session of Congress. "A number of times in the past years, members of Congress and the President have come together in meetings like this to resolve a crisis," he said. "I have asked for this meeting in the hope that we can prevent one."

For such a grand occasion, the financial commitment sought by Reagan seemed piddling. As he put it, "The total amount requested for aid to all of Central America in 1984 is about $600 million; that is less than one-tenth of what Americans will spend this year on coin-operated video games." But failing to make such an investment, he insisted, would have dire consequences. "The national security of all the Americas is at stake in Central America. If we cannot defend ourselves there, we cannot expect to prevail else where. Our credibility would collapse, our alliances would crumble, and the safety of our homeland would be put at jeopardy."

Whether Reagan succeeded in heading off a crisis will not be known for months, perhaps years, but his speech could only have helped. It was one of the best of his presidency, forceful yet temperate, without the belligerent anti-Soviet rhetoric that has at times made his foreign policy pronouncements seem more simplistic and militaristic than hi fact they are. "It was a model of teamwork," exulted National Security Adviser William Clark at a meeting of Reagan's senior staff the next morning, reflecting the White House's jubilation over the speech.

The reaction on Capitol Hill was restrained. Congressional critics have been sullen and uneasy about the possibility of becoming involved in a no-win commitment in Central America, but most members are wary of an outright confrontation with the Administration.

Hanging over the dispute, as well as almost every other discussion of U.S. intervention abroad for the past decade, is the chill specter of Viet Nam. Out of fear of repeating that colossal misadventure, Americans have seized hold of its lessons, perhaps inaccurately, perhaps obsessively. There is a strong aversion to undertaking any commitment to shore up threatened pro-American regimes in the Third World, no matter how strategically important they are, and a reluctance to believe that the countries of a region could topple like dominoes, no matter how compelling the evidence of spreading subversion. This is particularly true of Central America, where the political vulnerability clearly also has indigenous causes, including widespread poverty and decades of governmental ineptitude and human rights abuses. "Everyone in Congress is steeped in Viet Nam," says Republican Congressman James Leach of Iowa. "We in Congress abdicated responsibility then, and no one wants to do it again."

In his speech, Reagan confronted the issue directly, as if trying to exorcise its paralyzing spell. "Let me say to those who invoke the memory of Viet Nam: there is no thought of sending American combat troops to Central America." This prompted the night's most thunderous ovation, one that was sustained on both sides of the aisle. (It also drew some querulous editorial fire. The New York Times, referring to his pledge not to send in combat troops, asked, "If the stakes are as he says, why on earth not?") In the televised Democratic response, Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut invoked Viet Nam as an argument against the Administration's policies in Central America. "The American people know that we have been down this road before," he said, "and that it only leads to a dark tunnel of endless intervention."

Simply by using a joint session of Congress to turn the spotlight once again on El Salvador, Reagan may have elevated a nagging foreign policy problem into a prominent campaign issue for 1984. Says one of his top political advisers: "It's waving a red flag. It's raising the urgency. It reminds me of Lyndon Johnson's escalating the Viet Nam War."

Yet counterbalancing these concerns, both within the Administration and in Congress, is the fear of being blamed for losing El Salvador and the rest of Central America. Explains Reagan's chief of staff, James Baker: "We do not want a Central American country to go Communist on our watch. We are pointing out to Congress that it shares that responsibility." Indeed, one reason that Congress has thus far been willing to give Reagan at least half a loaf in his requests for Salvadoran aid is the realization that the fragile regime might otherwise fall to Communist rebels, an event that could not only endanger U.S. security but also prove a political liability for those responsible. By taking his case to Capitol Hill, Reagan made it clear he would hold members accountable if they thwarted his policies. His concluding line: "Who among us would wish to bear responsibility for failing to meet our shared obligation?"

Reagan went to great pains to stress that saving Central America was a bipartisan burden. The only two Presidents he invoked were Democrats. He read at length from Harry Truman's 1947 speech to Congress arguing that international

Communism must be contained Communism must be contained and praised Jimmy Carter because he "did not hesitate" to send arms to El Salvador when the rebels launched their "final offensive" in the fall of 1980.

One specific bipartisan bow was the appointment of a special envoy to seek a peaceful solution in Central America. This was the brainchild of Maryland Congressman Clarence Long, chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that handles foreign aid. Long and his colleagues, however, were disappointed by Reagan's choice of former Democratic Senator Richard Stone of Florida (see box). They feel Stone is too aligned with the current Administration, for which he has undertaken several diplomatic missions in Central America, and with the deposed right-wing dictatorship of Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia in Guatemala, for which he served as a paid lobbyist. The White House held up the appointment for a day while aides assessed Stone's chances for confirmation by the Senate. Many Democrats felt the issue was irrelevant. "Rather than an envoy, we should have a good policy," said Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont. "It's like a used car with a leaky transmission. You won't make it better by hiring a new salesman."

Reagan decided three weeks ago to make a major speech on Central America, initially at the urging of CIA Director William Casey and U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. Both argued for a hard-line anti-Soviet address that would cast the region's problems in a stark East-West context. Kirkpatrick wrote an article last month arguing that denying aid to the Salvadoran government and the Nicaraguan insurgents "would be to make the U.S. the enforcer of [the late Soviet President Leonid] Brezhnev's doctrine of irreversible Communist revolution." In another article, Casey wrote that the problems in Central America reflected the Soviet Union's strategy of using surrogates like Nicaragua to spread its influence in the Third World.

The State Department was also eager for Reagan personally to take responsibility for selling the Administration's policies, but officials there argued that the hardline approach favored by Casey and Kirkpatrick would backfire. "The idea is to calm the opposition down," said one State Department official, "so that we can go ahead with what we're already doing." Reagan agreed. He made clear that he wanted to avoid the bellicose tone he had used in his "evil empire" speech in March. "I do not want a heavily anti-Soviet speech, because people will turn off their TV sets and say, 'There he goes again,' " Reagan told close aides. After receiving several drafts put together by a special team coordinated by the National Security Council, including one submitted later by Kirkpatrick, Reagan toned down much of the language and wrote six pages of additions in longhand. He also rejected a suggestion by Kirkpatrick that he announce a grand Marshall Plan for Latin America to tackle the continent's economic problems. The proposal struck him as unrealistic, since most of the Administration's less ambitious Caribbean Basin Initiative still has not been passed by Congress.

Some of Reagan's aides were fearful that summoning a joint session of Congress was too dramatic and would shift the political spotlight away from the budding economic recovery. Only twelve other times in the past 30 years have Presidents called such a special session.*But Reagan told his advisers that he felt it was necessary to make a major impact. "I have not succeeded in explaining to the public why they should care about Central and South America," he told a small group of national security advisers in late March. "This is of enormous importance to me personally."

Reagan began by stressing the strategic importance of the region. "Two-thirds of all our foreign trade and petroleum pass through the Panama Canal and the Caribbean," he said. "In a European crisis, at least half of our supplies for NATO would go through these areas by sea... Because of its importance, the Caribbean Basin is a magnet for adventurism."

The President admitted that human rights were still a problem in El Salvador, but he extolled the nation's commitment to democracy and the bravery of its voters in turning out heavily in last year's elections. By contrast, the Cuban-backed regime in Nicaragua was depicted as an unmitigated villain, reneging on its promise to hold free elections, censoring its press and export-big its revolution despite the friendship and aid the U.S. had offered when the new government came to power in 1979. In the two years after the revolution, Reagan reminded his listeners, the U.S. provided five times as much aid ($118 million) to Nicaragua as in the two years prior to the revolution. This aid to the new regime was thought to be more than any other country gave initially. Declared Reagan: "It is the ultimate in hypocrisy for the unelected Nicaraguan government to charge that we seek their overthrow, when they are doing everything that they can to bring down the elected government of El Salvador." Republicans stood and cheered, exhorting their colleagues across the aisle to "Stand up! Stand up!" After sustained applause, House Speaker Tip O'Neill turned, smiling, to Vice President George Bush, and they joined the standing ovation.

The President flatly pledged that the U.S. was not planning to attack the regime in Nicaragua. "We do not seek its overthrow," he said. But he added that the U.S. "will not protect the Nicaraguan government from the anger of its own people." Using one of the lines suggested by Kirkpatrick, he argued that continued military aid must be given to those countries like El Salvador that are resisting Nicaraguan-supported rebels. "I do not believe that a majority of Congress or the country is prepared to stand by passively while the people of Central America are delivered to totalitarianism."

But Reagan was careful to balance his talk of military needs in Central America with an awareness of the political, economic and social problems that must be solved. "Seventy-seven cents out of every dollar we will spend in the area this year goes for food, fertilizers and other essentials for economic growth," he said. "We will support dialogue and negotiations both among the countries of the region and within each country."

Reagan's professed willingness to back regional diplomatic efforts did not represent any new U.S. policy. The Administration still opposes a negotiated settlement in El Salvador that would lead to the guerrillas' sharing political power that they had not won in free elections. Indeed, the word negotiations has become a rallying point for critics who think that the guerrillas would end their rebellion if given a share of government power at the bargaining table. But the tone of Reagan's speech was notably positive about pursuing diplomatic solutions. Only two weeks before, the Administration had been somewhat cool to the work of the Contadora group of Latin American nations, led by Mexico and Venezuela, which has been trying to work out a regional solution to the continued fighting.

Dodd's official Democratic response was more emotionally charged than Reagan's carefully modulated address. Calling the President's policies "a formula for failure," Dodd accused him of ignoring the fundamental factors that led to instability in the region. "If Central America were not racked with poverty, there would be no revolution," Dodd argued. He painted a bleak picture of the Salvadoran government, charging that its land-reform program had long been "abandoned" and that its repressive police tactics still terrorized the populace. "I have been to that country, and I know about the morticians who travel the streets each morning to collect the bodies of those summarily dispatched the night before by Salvadoran security forces." He said the U.S. ought to take up the offer made by some rebel leaders to negotiate a settlement, a prospect most analysts regard as highly dubious.

Dodd's reaction was much sharper than that of many of his Democratic colleagues. Although critical of portions of Reagan's speech, key Democrats admit to seeing very real dangers in reducing Reagan's requested military assistance to El Salvador. House Majority Leader Jim Wright of Texas, for instance, is among those who feel strongly that the U.S. must continue to support its Central American allies. Like their G.O.P. counterparts--and most of the public--Democrats are generally worried and confused about how to handle a problem they all wish would disappear.

This was reflected on the day before the speech, when House Democrats refrained from a head-on confrontation with the White House over a special appropriation for military aid to El Salvador. The Administration asked that $60 million now earmarked for Morocco be spent for this purpose. Clarence Long had originally opposed any additional money for El Salvador's military, but after a visit to that country in February, he became convinced that the government was improving its human rights record. By a 7-to-5 vote, his Democrat-dominated subcommittee gave the Administration half of what it requested.

Reagan will probably try later in the year to persuade Long's committee to approve the remaining $30 million. Still to be voted on are Reagan's requests for supplemental aid to El Salvador this year and $600 million in foreign assistance to all Central America for fiscal 1984. Said Long: "I've told the Administration that whether they get any additional funds will depend on the performance of the negotiator [Envoy Stone] in achieving the peaceful settlement, including elections, that we are looking for." By that he means elections in which the rebels can safely participate, a proposition the rebels reject as a contradiction in terms.

On the day after Reagan's speech, another House committee backed away, at least temporarily, from a showdown with the Administration over aid that is being secretly funneled to the rebels, known as the contras, fighting Nicaragua's left-wing Sandinista regime. An amendment passed last year sponsored by Edward Boland, a Massachusetts Democrat, forbids covert attempts to overthrow the Nicaraguan government, but the money supplied to the contras is ostensibly for the purpose of impeding arms shipments from Nicaragua to the left-wing insurgents in El Salvador. Boland, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, proposed legislation last week that would cut off covert funding entirely, while allowing for overt actions to restrict the arms flow. The vote in his committee was postponed until this week after Republican members protested that they had not been given enough time to consider the bill. (Their Senate counterparts have already approved more funds for the contras, but would probably reconsider if the Boland bill is passed by the House.)

Boland and other Democrats accepted the delay because they have been trying to negotiate a compromise with the White House. Committee members met with the President earlier in the week, and one Administration official noted that the lawmakers acknowledged the importance of preserving covert activity as an instrument of policy. The proposed compromise involves tightening up the original Boland amendment by making it clear that the U.S. would support only those activities of the contras aimed specifically at interdicting arms.

Other Democratic Senators are more supportive of the President's policies. Debating the issue of covert funding at a secret, closed-door Senate session the day before Reagan's speech, Democrat Lloyd Bentsen of Texas warned members they would be blamed for "losing" Central America if they cut off funds. He pointed out that the U.S. sends billions in aid as well as Marines to the Middle East while quibbling over millions and a few advisers in America's own backyard.

Leaders in El Salvador were heartened by Reagan's speech. U.S. Ambassador Deane Hinton invited seven prominent businessmen to his house to watch a tape of the address. Said Conrado Lopez Andreu, president of the Salvadoran Chamber of Commerce and Industry: "Despite the twisted misinformation in the U.S., President Reagan finally told the truth about the region and El Salvador." But some who were not at the dinner expressed the fear that Reagan was still not paying enough attention to the political and social situation. "He said the problem in Central America was political, not military, but all he spoke about was military solutions," noted Jacinto Morales, an official of El Salvador's human rights commission.

In Nicaragua, the reaction was suited to Reagan's attack. The government called for a massive demonstration the next day to denounce U.S. threats to Nicaragua. THE PEOPLE WILL RESPOND TO REAGAN IN THE STREETS, blared the Thursday headline of Barricada, the official Sandinista paper. More than 50,000 gathered for the rally in the sweltering afternoon sun, a somewhat smaller crowd than had been forecast by the government. Carrying rifles, sticks, shovels and hand-carved replicas of guns, they marched past a theater showing the 1980 American film Brubaker to the Plaza de la Revolucion.

Even if Reagan can line up political support in Congress and the country for his program, the U.S. will find it difficult to achieve the stability it seeks in Central America. The Salvadoran army is in trou ble, weakened by a corrupt and generally incompetent officer corps. Until recently the army was no more than an overgrown police force that kept 9-to-5 hours, five days a week, in its halfhearted struggle against the leftist guerrillas, and this attitude is changing only very slowly. The commanders had refused to adopt counterinsurgency tactics, like using small mobile units to pursue the rebels. Most of the army's activity consisted of massive sweeps, after which the guerrillas would return to the disputed territory.

The $30 million voted by the House subcommittee last week will be used as partial payment for a U.S. Army plan to restructure the Salvadoran forces through training of crack infantry troops and aggressive junior officers. American advisers hope that the newly appointed Defense Minister, Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova, will be better than his predecessor in adopting sophisticated tactics and strengthening morale.

Fortunately for the U.S., the leftist guerrillas in El Salvador, known as the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (F.M.L.N.), are also in disarray following an internal dispute that left two of their leaders dead. But they still dominate almost half of the countryside. Since the conflict began in 1979, they have disrupted the Salvadoran economy by inflicting up to $600 million in damages to farms, factories and utilities.

The political progress in El Salvador is more encouraging, even though there has been less success than the U.S. had hoped for. Begun in 1980, the government's land-reform program faltered in the face of right-wing opposition. The American embassy put pressure on the Salvadorans in early 1982 to get the plan moving again in earnest. Last month 241 land titles were awarded to Salvadoran peasants, bringing to 1,764 the number of new owners. In three years, more than 750,000 of the nation's 5,260,000 acres of farmland have been transferred from the country's oligarchy.

Right-wing security forces are killing civilians at a rate of 100 a week, down from a peak of 250 in 1980. These figures are still shocking, but the prosecution of soldiers who commit murder or other crimes is being stepped up sharply.

Elections last year resulted in a fragile civilian government, headed by President Alvaro Alfredo Magana. It is drafting a new constitution and, at the urging of the U.S., called a presidential election for December. The Christian Democratic candidate, centrist ex-President Jose Napoleon Duarte, is now the front runner. But the right-wing ARENA Party may nominate this month Major Roberto d'Aubuisson, the controversial president of the Constituent Assembly, whom American officials have tried to prevent from dominating El Salvador's interim government.

In Nicaragua, the military seems to be well supplied by its Cuban allies, with some 22,000 regular armed troops. But until last month, they have not entered the battle against the contra rebels struggling against the Sandinista regime. That work has generally been left to local militia and reserve units, which have been notably inept. American analysts speculate that the regular army has been held back either because it is not fully trained or, surprising as it may seem to North Americans, because it is preparing for a U.S. invasion. Recently some regular army troops, organized into mobile counterinsurgency battalions, have been effectively deployed against the contras.

The contra rebels, mainly organized under the banner of the Nicaraguan Democratic Front (F.D.N.), are a loose alliance pulled together partly by the CIA. The groups include some former supporters of the late right-wing dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, who was deposed by the Sandinista takeover in 1979, and "anti-Sandinista" rebels who became disenchanted with the repressive ways of their former colleagues in the revolution. The CIA has tried to weed out the more extreme elements of Somoza's former National Guard. The F.D.N., which operates out of Honduras, is controlled by three levels of general staffs, at the top of which are CIA operatives. Another rebel group, the A.S.D.E., has been formed in Costa Rica. It is led by Eden Pastora Gomez, a Sandinista defector and war hero, who is now fighting in southern Nicaragua. Also waging the struggle against the Nicaraguan regime are the Miskito Indians, a fiercely independent tribe along the country's Caribbean coast that the Sandinistas have tried and failed to suppress.

The Reagan Administration's greatest concern about the Sandinista regime is its avowed role in what its leaders call "a revolution without frontiers." Although the domino theory has been unfashionable since Viet Nam, it is increasingly apparent that the nations of Central America are vulnerable to a spreading Communist revolution. Even many liberals see this as a danger to the region. Morton Kondracke, the executive editor of the New Republic, last week compared the situation in Central America with what happened in Indochina in 1975 after Congress denied funds to South Viet Nam. He wrote in the Wall Street Journal: "We liberals cannot avert our eyes from what ensued: 3 million murders in Cambodia, total deprivation of human rights in Viet Nam and a falling of dominoes .. . Central America is more ethnically homogeneous than Indochina, so the dominoes there may fall faster."

Part of the Administration's difficulty in effectively countering the complex problems in Central America is that its policies have often been obscured by an excess of anti-Soviet rhetoric. This has provoked mistrust and opposition in the U.S., among West European allies and in Latin America. Former Secretary of State Alexander Haig set the tone shortly after Reagan's Inauguration by vowing to "draw the line" against Soviet expansionism at El Salvador. Since then, Administration officials have periodically flogged the Red Menace, sometimes with unhappy results. The most notable diplomatic debacle occurred when the Administration promised to produce a Nicaraguan defector who would reveal evidence of outside control of the Salvadoran rebellion; the young soldier dutifully appeared before a group of American reporters and then denied the entire scenario.

Yet behind the Administration's often caustic rhetoric has been a relatively steady and moderate approach to Central America that is generally consistent with that taken by the Carter Administration. The State Department has worked to foster centrist democratic institutions in El Salvador and prodded the right-leaning government there into making some reforms. Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Enders attempted to negotiate with Nicaragua an end to that regime's support for the Salvadoran rebels in return for U.S. aid and a pledge of nonintervention. His overtures were spurned by the Nicaraguans.

Even the covert activity being directed by the Reagan Administration against the Nicaraguan regime is an extension of policies initiated by Carter, who authorized the CIA to provide financial assistance to opponents of the new Sandinista regime in that country. During his first year in office, Reagan considered options like establishing an American-organized commando force to destabilize Nicaragua. Instead, he decided on a strategy of placing pressure on Nicaragua by organizing the contras into a political and military force with U.S. training and assistance.

The underlying goal of the Administration throughout has been to provide the necessary military support for El Salvador in order to protect it against subversion while it attempts to strengthen its economy and domestic political institutions. As Reagan said last week, "We do not view security assistance as an end in itself but as a shield for democratization, economic development and diplomacy."

But the Administration also feels that the revolution in El Salvador can never be won so long as the Nicaraguans continue to funnel supplies to the guerrillas. "There is no way, no matter how much reform and economic development occurs in El Salvador, that the war there can be ended as long as it is being fueled from Nicaragua," Enders said last week on the Independent Network interview show From the Editor's Desk. "That link has to be broken. You can trump any amount of reform by an outside field insurgency." Enders said this is one reason the U.S. feels it necessary to support the contra rebels. "That's why the armed opposition that has appeared in Nicaragua, which is challenging that government to permit it to participate in free elections, is important. Earlier efforts to bring the Nicaraguans to the bargaining table and get a general settlement have not worked. Maybe this opposition that has appeared will be able to do it."

Even the most optimistic analysts suspect this struggle could take years. The question that plagues U.S. policy is whether the Congress and the country will be willing to persevere in such a difficult task for an extended period. "To put everything the way we would like to see it is a question of years and generational change," Ambassador Hinton said in San Salvador last week. "To establish a civilian democratic government dedicated to making the country run and to get the military out of politics will take a generation." For all his well-chosen words last week, Reagan only bought a bit more time for his policies. "If we needed a presidential speech to get a few dollars more this time," one State Department official noted glumly, "what do we use as leverage next time?"

The most basic reason that the Administration has difficulty in mustering support for its policies in Central America is that they have produced no clear victories, either militarily against left-wing insurgents or politically in promoting a stable democracy respectful of human rights. Nor are such results expected in the near future. The U.S. has never had much patience for protracted struggles in ambiguous circumstances. Having defined the issues and the priorities with passion and skill, President Reagan must now be prepared to keep at it, time and again, with all his considerable powers of persuasion.

--By Walter Isaacson.

Reported by Douglas Brew/Washington and James Willwerth/Mexico City

*Among the others: Carter's presentation -Among the others: Carter's presentation of the SALT II agreement in 1979, Carter's report on the Camp David peace accord in 1978, Nixon's message on returning from the Soviet Union in 1972, Johnson's appeal for passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, and Eisenhower's address on the crisis in the Middle East in 1957. Truman's containment speech quoted by Reagan was also made to a joint session.

With reporting by Douglas Brew/Washington, James Willwerth/Mexico City This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.