Bringing a Third Force to Bear

By Charles Krauthammer

In her history Nicaragua: Revolution in the Family, Shirley Christian tells of a meeting eight months before the fall of President Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua. Two of President Carter's top Latin American advisers urged that Somoza be forced out quickly to permit creation of a new, moderate government before the Sandinistas could pick up the pieces. Other advisers were opposed, including Robert Pastor of the National Security Council. He recalls, "Pete (Viron Vaky) felt we could and should force out Somoza in the fall of '78, and I felt that we couldn't and shouldn't . . . I felt that Carter should not overthrow a government. I felt we were in the business too long and it was time to get out of that business."

To the chagrin of ex-Presidents-for-Life Baby Doc Duvalier and Ferdinand Marcos, the U.S. is back in the business. And judging from the favorable reaction of liberals and conservatives alike to the American role in Haiti and the Philippines, that business -- intervention -- has once again become respectable.

The first element of the new interventionism was proclaimed in President Reagan's 1985 State of the Union address, and has become known as the Reagan Doctrine. The President pledged American support to "those who are risking their lives on every continent from Afghanistan to Nicaragua to defy Soviet- supported aggression and secure rights which have been ours from birth."

The Reagan Doctrine makes strategic sense, since it is a relatively risk- free way for the U.S. to challenge the newest, most vulnerable Soviet imperial acquisitions. And it makes ideological sense because it puts policy at the service of the native American passion for freedom.

Americans are inclined to support "freedom fighters," but the Reagan Doctrine addresses only one kind: those fighting "Soviet-supported aggression." In practice this has meant anti- Communist guerrillas in four countries (Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia and Nicaragua), all of whom the Administration is now assisting either overtly or covertly.

But what of the countries where people are struggling to "secure rights which have been ours from birth," but where the tyranny is not of Soviet issue? To be consistent and credible, the Reagan Doctrine needs a companion, an idea of how the U.S. intends to advance democracy in a non-Communist setting. The success of U.S. policy in helping the transition to democracy in the Philippines suggests an answer: a doctrine of the third force.

The idea is simple. In friendly countries ruled by dictators, America should use its influence to support a "third force," a democratic alternative to a pro-American despot on the one hand and Communist insurgents on the other. A third-force strategy means not settling for the lesser of two evils, but trying to help build and support a middle, democratic, third way.

This doctrine too makes strategic sense because democracies are the most reliable allies of the West. And likely to remain so. Despots like Marcos are the best recruiters for Communist insurgencies. And it makes ideological sense because, however sentimental it may appear to self-styled realists, Americans care about democracy, and not just within their shores.

Fine, say the realists. But what about the disaster of previous attempts to bring down pro-American dictators and bring a third force to power? What about Iran and Nicaragua? It is true that merely undermining a friendly autocrat is not enough. There must be an alternative. Which suggests that any third-force strategy be undertaken only where the third force really is a force and where it is truly "third."

In Iran there simply was no democratic center. Shahpur Bakhtiar's reign makes Kerensky's look enduring. The choice in Iran really was between the Shah and the deluge.

In Nicaragua the situation was more complicated. There was a center, one worthy of American support. But in the late stages of the revolution, the center allied itself fatally with the Sandinistas. The result was a melancholy repetition of history: once in power, the Marxist-Leninist Sandinistas, armed with superior discipline and unencumbered by bourgeois morality, crushed their centrist allies and hijacked the revolution.

In the Philippines, by contrast, the center, led and unified by the extraordinary Corazon Aquino, retained its independence. It set itself uncompromisingly between Marcos and the Communists. No popular front. No united opposition. No junior partnership with the men with the guns. A third force.

For a transition to democracy, the material conditions, as the Marxists say, must be there. They cannot be merely imagined or created ex nihilo by an outside power. Except, of course, if a country is under full occupation, as ) was Japan under MacArthur. But the U.S. today -- a mere superpower, not a total power -- must work with what exists on the ground.

Thus there are unavoidable constraints on a third-force doctrine. There is no great enthusiasm, even among liberals, for bringing the blessings of multiparty democracy to, say, the Muslim world or sub-Saharan Africa (or for making such political arrangements a condition of American friendship). The reason is clear: we recognize that there are political cultures so alien to democratic traditions that attempts to build them on sand, or worse, on the ruins of an imperfect but functioning autocratic alternative, are bound to be futile and dangerous.

That is a caution, but not a prescription for quiescence. Chile, for example, a country with a century-old tradition of democracy, is home now to a classic third force. Last year a range of political parties representing 80% of the electorate and brought together by the church signed a "national accord" calling for a return to democracy. The State Department quickly moved to support what is undoubtedly the most promising third force this side of Manila.

The right material conditions are necessary for the success of a third- force strategy. But not sufficient. Success requires also American will: an America willing to restrain its legalistic scrupulousness about the inviolability of sovereignty, an America confident enough of its purpose to return, once again, to the business of intervention. In short, America in the Philippines.

The Reagan Doctrine has a companion, the third-force strategy. Together they amount to a broad and consistent American commitment to freedom in both the Communist and non-Communist worlds. To a willingness, eleven years after Saigon, once again to bear, if not any burden, then many burdens for the success of liberty.