Broadsides in a War of Nerves

By George Russell

Washington and the Sandinistas take turns crying wolf

Once again the familiar tremors swept through Nicaragua. In the streets of Managua, the capital, dozens of Soviet-made T-55 tanks clattered into defensive positions. Antiaircraft crews manned their batteries, while zealous neighborhood defense committees scurried to dig air-raid trenches. Some 20,000 volunteer coffee pickers were reassigned to local militia units as the Sandinista government announced a "state of alert" affecting the country's 100,000-member military and security forces. For the third time in two years, the Sandinistas were loudly convinced--or so they said--that U.S. troops were about to invade their soil.

Most Nicaraguans, however, remained calm. Despite the government's repeated alarms, residents of Managua made their way to work as usual on the city's overcrowded buses. Schoolchildren played outdoors, even gathering in clusters around the squat, forbidding tanks. Occasionally the civic mood was shattered by a sonic boom, which the government attributed to high-flying U.S. SR-71 spy planes violating Nicaraguan airspace. Despite the noisy interruptions, few Nicaraguans seemed concerned about the putative Yanqui invasion.

A similar case of schizophrenia seemed to be afflicting the Reagan Administration. At a meeting of the 31-member Organization of American States in Brasilia, Secretary of State George Shultz pooh-poohed the Nicaraguan war hysteria as "self-induced... based on nothing." Said he: "Obviously they're trying to whip up their own population. But I can't imagine what the reason is for doing that." Then Shultz provided a possible answer. The U.S., he said in reference to Nicaragua's Soviet-sponsored arms buildup, was "trying to work in any way we can to cast this aggressive and subversive influence out of our hemisphere."

At the State Department and the Pentagon, those sentiments were stated more sharply. Even as U.S. officials repeatedly denied any aggressive intentions toward Nicaragua, they continued to issue stern warnings about the Central American republic's military buildup, especially the possible acquisition by the Sandinistas of high-performance Soviet-bloc aircraft. The U.S., said Pentagon Spokesman Michael Burch, would "provide whatever assistance is necessary" to protect its hemispheric interests. Did that include military intervention? Said Burch: "I'm not willing to include or exclude anything."

The superpower and the minipower had different motives for cranking up the mutual war of nerves. In the wake of President Reagan's election victory, Washington seemed intent on setting what one official called "the limits of U.S. tolerance" toward Marxist-led Nicaragua. After their somewhat less than democratic election triumph on Nov. 4, the Sandinistas seemed determined to keep building up their arsenal as rapidly as possible. Neither stance boded particularly well for the process of negotiated peace in the region, which both sides claim to support.

The latest spasms arose, ironically enough, from a false alarm. On Election Day, someone in the U.S. Government leaked word, based on sketchy and unconfirmed spy-satellite information, that crated Soviet MiG-21 interceptors were about to be unloaded at Nicaragua's Pacific port of Corinto from the Soviet freighter Bakuriani. The U.S. has long warned Nicaragua that the arrival of MiG-21s or similar fighters would be "unacceptable," since such weapons would upset the regional balance of air power.

By the time the Bakuriani unloaded its crated cargo and returned to sea, Washington was persuaded that MiG-21s had not been delivered. One reason, indicated by Shultz, was a Soviet assurance to the contrary. Another was the information gleaned from the rash of U.S. spy-plane flights, more probably low-flying F-4 reconnaissance jets than the superfast, supersophisticated SR-71s claimed by the Sandinistas (no sonic boom from an SR-71 can be heard when the aircraft flies, as it can on spy missions, at an altitude of 15 miles or more).

The U.S. conclusion: Soviet-bloc ships, including the Bakuriani, have more than likely delivered SA3 and SA-8 antiaircraft missiles, advanced radar equipment that would complete Nicaragua's air-defense system, and a supply of MI-24 "Hind" helicopters. The choppers are heavily armed gunships that the Soviets use against rebellious tribesmen in Afghanistan; they are probably intended to flush out 6,000 of the U.S.-backed contra guerrillas, who have now moved permanently inside Nicaragua to carry on their hit-and-run war against the Sandinistas.

Nonetheless, the Pentagon kept up its threatening expressions of concern. Even without the MiG-21s, U.S. officials said, the arrival of the Bakuriani marked the first time the Soviets had sent weapons to Nicaragua under their own flag, rather than through such surrogates as Cuba or Bulgaria. U.S. military officials said last week that four more Soviet and East-bloc freighters were on their way to Nicaragua, without saying when the ships would arrive, or where. Said Pentagon Spokesman Burch: "Nicaragua has now armed itself to a greater degree or in quantities far greater than any of its neighbors, or even a coalition of its neighbors."

The Sandinista buildup is indeed impressive. Nicaragua's regular army and mobilized reserves now total 62,000, more than the armies of nearby El Salvador and Honduras combined. The U.S. estimates that Nicaragua has 150 tanks and 200 other armored vehicles, 200 antiaircraft guns and 300 missile launchers, in addition to perhaps 18 of the fearsome Hinds. By contrast El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras combined have 53 tanks and 104 armored vehicles; none of them has any advanced missile system. Neighboring Costa Rica has only a poorly equipped 9,800-member civil guard.

The Pentagon, moreover, maintains that the Sandinistas still want the MiGs and intend to get them. U.S. military officials also charged that five airfields are either currently receiving improvements or under construction in Nicaragua; at least one of them might be used for stopovers by Soviet long-range Backfire bombers. Bases in Nicaragua, says a Pentagon official, "would enormously facilitate Soviet reconnaissance flights over America's West Coast."

The emphasis on that argument is relatively new. In the past, the Administration has more often justified its actions in Central America by stressing that the Sandinistas were shipping arms to insurgents in El Salvador. The U.S. has also pointed to signs of creeping totalitarianism in Nicaragua, as the Marxist-led regime has curbed press freedom, expropriated the property of private entrepreneurs and built a pervasive security apparatus with the aid of Cuban and East German advisers.

The switch in reasoning seemed to reflect the Administration's recurring tendency to speak with different voices about Nicaragua. Privately, some Pentagon sources attributed the hyping of concern over the Bakuriani and its cargo to officials at the White House and National Security Council. The State Department also expressed frustration over the way the MiG issue had materialized: on his way to the OAS meeting, Shultz characterized the original leak as "a criminal act." For his part, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger coolly deplored the "hysteria" that had arisen over the incident, even as the Pentagon provided the varying rationales for U.S. unhappiness with the Sandinistas.

The same fractiousness is evident in the Administration's solutions for Central America. Hard-liners in Washington, including CIA Director William Casey and U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, seem to believe that in the long run it is impossible to deal with the Sandinistas. They would prefer to see the Managua regime ousted from power, although any action by the U.S. toward that end is expressly forbidden by a 1982 resolution of Congress. More moderate officials, including Shultz, believe that diplomacy can play a role in curbing Nicaragua's radical tendencies. In their view, the U.S. must show that it has the power and the will to halt the spread of Communism, but that should be balanced by a willingness to negotiate a regional settlement.

Thus, as the Nicaraguan debate continues to percolate within the Administration, the U.S. tends to pick and choose among different reasons for confronting the Sandinistas. Among the hardliners, the latest outcry may have the ultimate aim of restoring shattered congressional support for the rebellious contras. That prospect, however, has grown even less likely in the wake of the controversy over a CIA-drafted counterinsurgency manual (see box). Among moderates, the hope is to force the Sandinistas to accept a version of the so-called Contadora peace process that will adequately guarantee security and democracy in the region.

For their part, the Sandinistas are intensely concerned about U.S. activity in the area. Up to 1,000 U.S. military personnel are involved in seven separate regional exercises. The U.S. contingents include about 120 Army engineers who are building roads near Honduras' Palmerola Air Force Base, a company of infantrymen patrolling near the same site, and a dozen servicemen who assisted at a Salvadoran-Honduran naval exercise that ended last week. Most of the recent arrivals are early harbingers of a major U.S. joint exercise with Honduras known as Big Pine III, which will take place sometime after the first of the year. Previous Big Pine maneuvers have involved upwards of 5,000 U.S. servicemen.

In addition, a U.S. naval group of some 25 vessels, including the battleship Iowa, has just finished amphibious maneuvers near Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico, where the aircraft carrier Nimitz is also steaming. While none of the exercises are directed at Nicaragua, Humberto Ortega Saavedra, Commander of the national army, voices typical Nicaraguan suspicion. Says he: "A powerful country like the U.S. has the luxury of threatening and then not following through. A country like Nicaragua can't ignore the threat."

In fact, crying wolf has some practical benefits for the Sandinistas. It draws international attention away from the nine-man National Directorate's continued stranglehold on power at home, despite the claims of pluralism attached to Nicaragua's much heralded elections.* The country's opposition politicians had hoped to discuss the distribution of power, among other issues, in a series of "national dialogue" meetings with the Sandinistas in Managua. Instead, the Sandinistas have tried to turn some of the dialogue meetings into propaganda sessions condemning U.S. "aggression." Says Enrique Bolanos Geyer, head of the Nicaraguan private enterprise group known as COSEP: "Fine, let's condemn aggression. But what about national problems?"

No problem is more serious for Nicaragua than its palsied economy. For the third consecutive year, the country is suffering a major trade deficit, projected to reach $400 million in 1984. Servicing the $3.5 billion foreign debt this year is expected to take all of Nicaragua's $400 million in export earnings. The regime has already missed one payment on about $7 million in loans to the World Bank. Says a European diplomat in Managua: "The real danger here is not an invasion, it's the real possibility of the country going bankrupt. It's close to the brink now."

The burdens of constant military mobilization are adding rapidly to those conditions. This year, the Sandinistas are expected to spend $500 million to keep 100,000 Nicaraguans under arms. That is about 25% of the national budget. "They can't take four more years of this," notes a sympathetic diplomat. "The comandantes know this." If so, they are not showing it.

--By George Russell. Reported by Ricardo Chavira/Managua and Bruce van Voorst/Washington

* Final results were announced last week: the Sandinistas received 63% of the 1.17 million votes cast, winning 61 seats in a new, 96-member National Assembly.

With reporting by Ricardo Chavira, BRUCE VAN VOORST