In its recent issues, the National Catholic Reporter (May 27 and June 3) has accepted the Sandinist Nicaraguan government’s view of Nicaragua and of the United States. It has done this, in part, by relying on a chronology prepared in affiliation with a Managua-based institute clearly under the censorship of the Nicaraguan government, the Instituto Historico Centroamericano. This institute has an affiliate in the U.S. in the building which houses International Programs at Georgetown University. Named (in English) exactly like its source in Managua, The Central American Historical Institute has no academic standing at Georgetown University. It receives, it says, a great deal of its Nicaraguan information directly from its Nicaraguan affiliate.
To show in detail the inaccuracies and misrepresentations present in the recent NCR reports by Terry Berg and Betsy Cohn of the Center, and by Arthur Jones (relying heavily on partisan sources like Lawrence Birns of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Professor William LeoGrande of American University, and Donald Graff of the Newspaper Enterprise Association) would require more space than the original articles.
So let us simply assume that NCR’s view of the conflict represents one of several perspectives held by persons of good will. Are there other perspectives?
The study of Nicaragua’s role in Central America conducted by House Democrats, for one, has a quite different perspective. The Select Committee on Intelligence has reported, for example: “(the Salvadoran insurgency) depends for its life-blood — arms, ammunition, financing, logistics, and command-and-control facilities — upon outside assistance from Nicaragua and Cuba. This Nicaragua-Cuban contribution to the Salvadoran insurgency is longstanding. It began shortly after the overthrow of Somoza in July 1979. It has provided — by land, sea, and air — the great bulk of the military equipment and support received by the insurgents.”
Thus, the left wing of the Democratic Party recognizes the same realities the Reagan Administration does, but proposes a quite different line of action. This is both natural and desirable.
Indeed, we may expect that a Democratic Administration victorious in 1984, should victory occur, will take a more overt confrontational position toward Nicaragua than the Reagan Administration. As the Party containing within it the highest proportion of “doves,” the Democratic Party has historically been best positioned to be the “war party.” It is harder to persuade the Democratic Party of dangers to the United States; yet, once persuaded, the Democrats more readily lead the country into military action.
At present, some commentators try to downplay the worst aspects of the Sandinist regime (although even Arthur Jones is reluctant to support its actions fully). Some hold that the U.S. should do nothing negative to injure or to bring down the Sandinist junta. Others hold that the U.S. should “buy off” the Sandinists, by giving them economic and other peaceful assistance in order to woo them away from their current reliance on the Soviets.
This policy is crass; it is also based on wishful thinking. There are no differences in principle, none whatever, between the Sandinist junta and Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy; none has ever been stated, none can be stated. In every international forum, in their verbal assurances on diplomatic missions to Bulgaria, Poland, North Vietnam, Libya, the Soviet Union, Cuba, and elsewhere, and in the tangible military aid which they seek and accept, the Sandinists have made clear beyond the shadow of a doubt their commitment to socialist revolution and to strategic solidarity with the Communist bloc.
Arthur Jones reports Professor LeoGrande (a champion of Cuba) as saying that the Nicaraguans cannot be called Marxist-Leninist because they have still allowed sixty-five percent of the economy (80 percent in the export sector) to remain in the private sector. It is not, and cannot be, asserted that the reason for this temporary expedient is principled; it is pragmatic.
It is, in any case, wise. Even Cuba has learned (like the USSR and China) that an economy based upon private ownership, incentives and markets works better than a collectivized economy. Moreover, it wins greater loyalty and cooperation from its citizens. It does, however, create independent sources of dissent and opposition.
Quite clearly, Nicaragua is not yet a totalitarian state. The Catholic Church under the heroic Archbishop Obando y Bravo, supported by Pope John Paul II and (it appears) a large majority of Nicaragua’s Catholics, is vitally critical of the Sandinist junta and its ideology. Opposition political parties are not allowed full public activities, but neither have they been crushed entirely. At least one newspaper, La Prensa, although vigorously censored, still survives to resist by wit and bravery.
If the Sandinists desire to lead Nicaragua into still deeper poverty through collectivist methods, and to destroy every institution of dissent and liberty, that in itself would pose few dangers to the United States or even to Nicaragua’s neighbors.
But Marxist-Leninist commitments do not permit isolationism. Marxism-Leninism involves an operational vision of history in motion. It promotes (like Gregory Baum) a theory of truth based not upon correspondence with reality but upon the future success of militant revolution. In Marxist-Leninist thought, the revolution in Cuba and in Nicaragua is part of a worldwide revolution led by the Soviet Union, participated in by Vietnam, Libya, Bulgaria, Poland, Rumania, the P.L.O., Syria, and many other heavily armed powers.
In the official view of the Nicaraguan government, the revolution in El Salvador is not only a sister revolution but part of the same revolution. The leaders of the Sandinist junta are not “soft utopians.” They are “hard utopians.” They believe in armed might, strengthened by the worldwide socialist bloc. They choose to be dependent upon this bloc because they are committed to its moral vision, and because they hate the United States and its allies, not only for past deeds but also for their democratic capitalist vision.
Some analysts recognize these undeniable features of Sandinist declaratory theory and observable practice, but say, so what? Such analysts hold that if a nation wishes to be Marxist-Leninist and to ally itself with the USSR, Bulgaria, Libya and the rest, that is its own business. In such matters, although nowhere else, they believe in laissez–faire.
Their assumption is that Marxist-Leninist states are isolationist; they will mind their own business. The facts are otherwise.
The 7,000 guerrillas of El Salvador have no visible means of support for food, communications gear, weapons, ammunition, and explosives. They control no factories or sources of food and money. Moreover, if anyone should wish to assassinate their leaders, the place to find them, as conveniently as not, is in Managua, where two of them died earlier in 1983 in most mysterious and as yet implausibly explained circumstances.
Planes bearing arms for Nicaragua have been interrupted en route from Libya in Brazil; even as I write, a Bulgarian ship is unloading military equipment in a Nicaraguan port. Thousands of Nicaraguans and Salvadorans have been receiving military training, on rotation, on Cuba’s Isle of Pines.
I have talked in recent months to Jose Estaban Gonzalez, former head of the Human Rights office in Nicaragua, whom Somoza described as his number one enemy; to bishops from El Salvador and Nicaragua; with small businessmen still holding on (but barely) in Managua; with Stedman Fagoth, Moravian leader of the Miskito Indians, and with many other democrats from the region.
What such persons fear is not what NCR fears. What they fear is a “deal,” a kind of Hitler-Stalin non-aggression pact, by which in exchange for promises of non-belligerence in Central America, the U.S. will abandon the Nicaraguans who once risked their lives for, and still desire, democracy to the tender care of a Marxist-Leninist regime which will run Nicaragua for the next generation as Castro has run Cuba.
They know, as we do, what the poet-priest Ernesto Cardinal said after his first red-carpet visit to Cuba: “It was like a second conversion. Before then, I saw myself as a revolutionary, but I had confused ideas. I was trying to find a third way, which was the Revolution of the Gospel, but then I saw that Cuba was the Gospel put into practice. And only when I converted to Marxism could I write religious poetry” (New York Times Magazine, March 13, 1983). They know that they are in the hands of ideologues and dreamers, ruthless enough to do whatever is necessary to maintain domination.
Perhaps the NCR desires such a regime, and such an ideology, to dominate Nicaragua and, possibly as well, Central America. It is quite clear that the bold and adventurous Yuri Andropov is willing to finance it and to support it.
Let us suppose we follow the advice put forth by Senator Christopher Dodd (and Bianca Jagger): Do nothing until the military threat of Marxist regimes in Central America grows larger. This is proposed as a way of avoiding bloodshed and of diminishing risks.
I would like to have on record my view that such a policy is a recipe for horrors not yet imagined. It is an almost certain, way of encouraging greater repression within Nicaragua, as resistance to the Sandinists grows. Even now, the Sandinists cannot risk a genuine election; they know they would be voted out. (In El Salvador, Napoleon Duarte was braver.) Meanwhile, more and more Nicaraguans, now obliged to choose, choose to side with the new revolution. Does anyone believe that Marxist-Leninists will not know what to do with the growing numbers of dissidents? Or with “terrorists” who begin to bomb powerlines and burn crops in Nicaragua, as is now done by the allies of the Sandinists in El Salvador every day?
Those who think that Miguel D’Escoto, Sergio Ramirez, Daniel Ortega and their brash young colleagues (Tom Quigley of the U.S. Catholic Conference blames their “mistakes” on their “youth and inexperience,” as if they had no time-tested handbooks to fall back on) are really “Christian revolutionaries” and apostles of “peace and justice,” have not been paying attention to public declarations and public deeds.
The price of such illusions will soon enough be paid. The longer those illusions go undispelled, the higher that price will mount.
No one has asked me for advice, but that has never stopped me before: The United States should cut the links between the Sandinists and the rebels in El Salvador. Unidentified aircraft, especially at night, should be shot down. A naval blockade halting arms from Nicaragua should be set in place. (If, as a few still say, there are no arms shipments from Nicaragua, no damage will be done.) Diplomatic efforts to schedule internationally supervised elections in Nicaragua, as in El Salvador, should go forward.
Finally, the U.S.-U.S.S.R. agreement of 1962 concerning Cuba should be renegotiated in the light of Cuban activities in Nicaragua and El Salvador. The strategic support for the Sandinists and for the rebels in El Salvador has its main base in Cuba. Cuba, perennially insolvent, is entirely dependent upon the financial support of the Soviet Union. Cuba cannot act without clearance from its owners.
For many reasons, a Republican administration cannot act in the way the United States ought to act to stop the bloodshed and to create democracy in Cuba and Central America. A Democratic administration can. Like Lyndon Johnson in 1964, the Democrats in 1984 will campaign for peace. But illusions will not last. The Nicaraguan junta, corrupted by absolute power, will make mistake after mistake. The rebels in El Salvador, no closer today than four years ago to popular support or even numerical growth (except in arms), will commit more and more acts of terrorism, especially against Americans. The judgment of the American people will change. So will the judgment of the Democratic party.
In the name of peace, the NCR is now on record in support of appeasement. The revolutionaries in Central America will not be cheaply bought off. Appeasement only guarantees that the inevitable combat will be bloodier. When the NCR shows cynicism toward the Sandinists equal to its cynicism toward Reagan, even NCR will change its policy.
For if the NCR were operating in Nicaragua, Tom Fox and Dawn Gibean, like Jose Estaban Gonzalez and Umberto Belli and many others, would already have been placed in jail or forced to flee. Their counterparts in Nicaragua, who are democrats, devout Catholics, and in opposition to Marxism-Leninism deserve not only distant sympathy but tangible assistance. The sooner they receive it, the less bloody the transition from tyranny will be.