Sorting Out a High-Stakes Game

By Evan Thomas

The pros and cons of U.S. intervention in Central America

Central America, it sometimes seems, is caught in a looking-glass war. Covert operations become overt, rebels in one country get aid so that rebels in another get squeezed. Liberals look at El Salvador and see Viet Nam, while conservatives look at the map and see pawns in a game of Great Power chess. In the din of charge and countercharge, moral and practical issues sometimes become tangled and blurred. Here are answers to some basic questions:

Q. Does the U.S. have the right to back the contras against the Nicaraguan government?

A. To U.S. planners, the central lesson of the two world wars was the value of collective security. Aggression against one ally is aggression against all; it must be nipped early to prevent a larger conflagration. In this hemisphere, especially, the U.S. has a legitimate interest in maintaining friendly governments and containing hostile ones.

The U.S. did not move first against Nicaragua; indeed, it gave the Sandinistas $75 million in economic aid the year after the 1979 overthrow of Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle, which the U.S. implicitly encouraged. But Nicaragua joined with the Soviets and Cubans to preach Marxist-Leninist revolution through the region. Even the Democratic-controlled House Intelligence Committee found last year that the Salvadoran "insurgency depends for its lifeblood--arms, ammunition, financing, logistics and command-and-con-trol facilities--upon outside assistance from Nicaragua and Cuba." The crucial question is how far the Administration intends to go with its support of the contras. Its original stated aim--interdicting the flow of arms to the Salvadoran rebels--was morally valid if practically difficult.

Now it hopes to pressure the Sandinistas into negotiating an end to the region's revolutions. As the stakes become higher, the effort required is greater and the moral rectitude of the U.S. is less clear. Going the next step, actually trying to overthrow the Nicaraguan government, would be a violation of professed international standards and American ideals. These standards and ideals remain significant even though the contingencies of the real world sometimes force the U.S. and other countries to ignore them. France helped overthrow Emperor Bokassa of the Central African Republic in 1979, for example, and the U.S. played a role in deposing the governments of Guatemala (1954), the Dominican Republic (1965) and Chile (1973).

Q. If the U.S. is justified in backing the contras, are covert operations a legitimate way to do it?

A. In theory, yes. Covert operations are as old as the Trojan horse. Defined by the CIA as "clandestine activities designed to influence foreign governments," covert operations were one of the principal weapons in the cold war. Theodore G. Shackley, former CIA deputy to the director of operations, argues that covert action allows the U.S. to counter expanding Soviet influence "so that the balance of world power--the Soviets call it 'correlation offerees'--is never so favorable as to lead them to the ultimate temptation, or us to the ultimate desperation." American covert methods are tame compared with those used by the Soviets, who have no qualms about using front organizations, disinformation and even terrorist groups.

Obviously, the question of how far to go with covert activities is a difficult one for U.S. policymakers. While aiding the Afghan rebels against the Soviets, say, may be legitimate and laudable, many covert actions are morally ambiguous, drawing the U.S. into foreign intrigues that it ultimately may be unable to control.

Q. What happens when covert actions become overt?

A. They often backfire into anti-American propaganda weapons. Knowledge of CIA dirty tricks, former Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford told a congressional committee in 1975, "has become so widespread that our country has been accused of being responsible for practically every internal difficulty that has occurred in every country in the world."

Congressmen seem institutionally incapable of keeping secrets, but they are not the only ones to blame. Says a former top intelligence official: "Ninety percent of damaging leaks come from the White

House." When a political consensus is lacking, as in Central America, politicians become even leakier.

Although closer congressional oversight of U.S. intelligence activities has led to some blown secrets, it has also helped improve America's reputation around the world. The lesson is clear: there is room for covert activities in the U.S. policy arsenal, but care must be taken to make sure that they do not cause more problems than they solve.

Q. Is there a difference between backing contras with arms and logistics and mining harbors?

A. Yes, moral and pragmatic. Arming the contras generally confines the warfare to the two contending parties, although it does harm civilians. But mining harbors extends the violence to third countries. Some, like Japan and The Netherlands, whose ships were damaged by mines off Nicaragua, are wholly innocent; international law as well as morality protects them. Others, like the Soviets, may be indirectly complicitous. But the rules of law and restraints of Realpolitik discourage carrying the fight to these third parties.

Q. Why can't the U.S. play by the same rules as the Soviets? If the Soviets support "freedom fighters" that try to overthrow governments they do not like, why can't the U.S.?

A. Soviet rules are conveniently flexible. Under a doctrine of "limited sovereignty" that disregards national borders in the cause of spreading Marxism, the Soviets freely use proxy troops to serve their interests in "wars of national liberation." In the Third World they are even cheered for backing leftist "freedom fighters" like the P.L.O. Paralyzed by Viet Nam, the U.S. just sat back and watched the Soviet-backed Cuban mercenaries seize control of Angola in the mid-'70s. In Central America, the U.S. has returned to a more resolute method of countering the Soviets.

At the same time, the U.S. holds itself out as the champion of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law. The right to self-determination is a cornerstone of American diplomacy; in fact, the cold war began over Soviet attempts to sow subversion in Greece, Turkey, Iran, Italy and Scandinavia. It is hard to know whom the people of Nicaragua would choose to govern them, since the Sandinistas have yet to allow elections. But it is far from certain that they would prefer the contras, some of whom were associated with the despised Somoza regime. By backing the contras, the U.S. leaves itself open to charges of hypocrisy. Says George Ball, Under Secretary of State in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations: "If the Russians were doing the same thing, we'd be jumping up and down and yelling our heads off protesting it." The Soviets are indeed "doing the same thing" in many parts of the world. The dilemma for the U.S. is to what extent it can afford to uphold its principles and to what extent it must fight fire with fire.

Q. Whether or not the U.S has the "right" to back the contras, can the policy work?

A. The Reagan Administration argues that its current approach can succeed only if Congress and the public support it. But as a practical matter, the level of financial and logistical support deemed appropriate by Reagan has so far failed to bring the Sandinistas to the bargaining table, much less won meaningful concessions or stopped the flow of arms.

Q. What are the alternatives?

A. Many liberals and conservatives argue that the real enemy is poverty, not Communism. The bipartisan Kissinger commission recommended an economic aid program along the lines of the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt the European economy after World War II. But in today's dollars the Marshall Plan would cost more than $50 billion, and there is no guarantee that such an effort would work in Central America; it lacks the industrial and educational base that Europe had.

Diplomacy is the solution urged by the so-called Contadora Group--Mexico, Venezuela, Panama and Colombia. These nations last year proposed a 21-point plan calling for the withdrawal of foreign military advisers, democratic elections and the balancing offerees in the region. The warring parties, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador, all agreed in principle to the pact--and promptly went back to fighting.

The most drastic option would be to commit U.S. military forces and overthrow the Nicaraguan regime. But the outcry, both abroad and at home, would be both loud and justified. Further, the U.S. would really find itself in a quagmire, chasing Sandinista guerrillas through the hills and jungles of their native land.

Another option is simply to walk away, adopt a live-and-let-live policy, and trust the Nicaraguans to stop trying to export their revolution. It is the Administration's view that this is totally unrealistic, no matter how conciliatory the Sandinistas' rhetoric has become.

Q. If left unchecked, would the Nicaraguan revolution spread through the region?

A. Sandinista leaders boast of a "revolution without frontiers," and their 50,000-man army is a larger force than needed for self-defense, according to military experts. Before his death last year, Salvadoran Rebel Leader Salvador Cayetano Carpio declared: "The revolutionary process is a single process ... Guatemala will have its hour. Honduras its. Costa Rica, too, will have its hour of glory." To hasten that hour along, the Soviets shipped Nicaragua 15,000 tons of arms last year, while the Cubans stand near by with 153,000 troops. The borders of every country in the region are porous. Honduras, flanked by El Salvador and Nicaragua, is already jittery, as is Costa Rica, which has no army of its own. Guatemala, however, has a 22,000-man army and 20 years of experience in often brutal counterinsurgency. The crucial question is what would happen to Mexico, the U.S.'s problem-ridden, potentially volatile neighbor.

Q. If the revolution does spread, what are the real risks to the U.S.?

A. "Are Marxists going to march up through the Peten (the Guatemalan rain forest), through Mexico and up to Texas?" asks Professor Nathaniel-Davis, of California's Claremont College. The answer obviously is no. But one does not need to imagine dominoes falling to worry about Mexico's vulnerable southern regions' becoming infected with Nicaraguan-style revolution. If Mexico actually did lurch left, coming under a Communist regime or, more likely, splitting apart into warring fiefs, the U.S. would be confronted by a teeming enemy (pop. 75 million) along its 2,000-mile, currently undefended border. The U.S. would have to divert troops now faced off against the Soviets from Berlin to the Persian Gulf to the western Pacific. The Soviets, of course, would like nothing better than to have the U.S. saddled with the Western Hemisphere equivalent of the U.S.S.R.'s own hostile neighbor, China. Refugees by the hundreds of thousands would pour over U.S. borders, competing with Americans for jobs and straining social services. Even if that scenario should not come to pass, the stakes are high. With its tough talk and lofty goals, the Administration has made Central America a test of U.S. prestige, credibility and power.

--By Evan Thomas. Reported by Johanna McGeary and Christopher Redman/ Washington

With reporting by Johanna McGeary and Christopher Redman/ Washington