Rollback or William M. Containment? LeoGrande The United States, Nicaragua, and the Search for Peace in Central America I whenRonald Reagan came to office in 1981, his Administration’s foremost objective in Central America was the same as President Carter’s had been: to prevent the Sal- vadoran revolutionary movement from coming to power. This objective de- Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/isec/article-pdf/11/2/89/690923/isec.11.2.89.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 rived from the familiar imperative of containment-not to lose any additional countries to communism (or, in its Latin American variant, not to allow “another Cuba”). Many in the Reagan Administration, however, were not content with containment; instead, they were eager to try to roll back communism in the Third World-an agenda that gained considerable impetus in the second Reagan Administration and came to be known as the Reagan Doctrine.’ As applied in Central America and the Caribbean, the rollback doctrine was aimed at Nicaragua and Grenada and perhaps, if fortuitous circumstances arose, at Cuba as well. Not everyone in the Administration shared this zest for “pro-insurgency.” Professionals in the national security bureaucracies generally saw the new doctrine as reckless, dangerous, and ineffective. But many of Reagan’s po- litical appointees, drawn as they were from the Republican Party’s ideological right, were more than willing to conduct a high-risk foreign policy if it held out hope of rolling back the Soviets’ ”Evil Empire” at the periphery. This division meant that policy toward El Salvador was easier to agree upon than policy toward Nicaragua. The objective of defeating the Salva- doran rebels was universally accepted; disagreements, though often sharp, were merely tactical. Nicaragua proved to be more contentious because it crystallized the Administration’s internal division: should the ”communists” in Managua be overthrown or should they simply be contained? The tension between the adherents of containment and those of rollback has produced a policy that often appears schizophrenic and difficult to decipher because the fundamental objectives behind it are in dispute. This schism was most clearly manifested in the debate over whether to seek some sort of negotiated accord William M. LeoGrande is Associate Professor of Political Science in the School of Government and Public Administration at the American University in Washington, D.C. He is co-editor of Confronting Revo- lution: Security Through Diplomacy in Central America, recently published by Pantheon. 1. By 1986, the Administration was more or less publicly providing support to insurgencies against ”communist” regimes in Nicaragua, Angola, Cambodia, and Afghanistan. [nternational Security, Fall 1986 (Vol. 11, No. 2) 0 1986 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 89 International Security 1 90 with the Sandinistas based upon international security issues or to press instead for the elimination of the Sandinista “cancer.”2 The aim of this article is to chronicle the various efforts to achieve a diplomatic settlement of the conflict between Nicaragua and the United States, and of the tensions between Nicaragua and its Central American Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/isec/article-pdf/11/2/89/690923/isec.11.2.89.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 neighbors. The recurrent motif in all the diplomatic efforts, bilateral and multilateral, formal and informal, has been the unwillingness of the United States to fully support them because of its own internal disagreement over its ultimate objectives in Nicaragua. Despite enormous changes in the regional situation over the past six years--the birth and growth of the contras, the escalation of the rhetorical war between Nicaragua and the United States, the creation of Contadora- the diplomatic deadlock between Nicaragua and the United States has re- mained fundamentally unchanged. Since at least early 1981, if not earlier, the Sandinistas have indicated a willingness to make concessions to the United States regarding their foreign policy (specifically, their support for other Central American revolutionaries and their military ties to Cuba and the Soviet Union) in exchange for Washington’s acceptance of their revolu- 2. The literature on Nicaragua and on relations between Nicaragua and the United States is vast and growing rapidly. The best history of U.S.-Nicaraguan relations is still Richard Millet, Guardians of the Dynasty (New York: Orbis, 1977). On the internal situation in Nicaragua both before and after the 1979 revolution, see John A. Booth, The End and the Beginning: The Nicaraguan Revolution (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1982); Thomas W. Walker, Nicaragua: The Land of Sandino (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1981); and Dennis Gilbert, “Nicaragua,” in Moms J. Blachman, William M. LeoGrande, and Kenneth Sharpe, eds., Confronting Revolution: Security Through Diplomacy in Central America (New York: Pantheon, 1986). A number of recent books focus on developments in Nicaragua since the revolution. Among the best are two volumes edited by Thomas W. Walker, Nicaragua in Revolution (New York: Praeger, 1982) and Nicaragua: The First Five Years (New York: Praeger, 1985). Carlos M. Vilas, The Sandinisfa Revolution (New York: Monthly Review, 1986), provides an account sympathetic to the Sandinistas, and Shirley Christian, Revolution in the Family (New York: Vintage, 1986) provides one sympathetic to their opponents. Bruce Marcus has edited a very useful volume of key speeches by Sandinista leaders, Nicaragua: The Sandinista People’s Revolution (New York: Pathfinder, 1985). On relations between Nicaragua and the United States, see the extensive collection of articles and documents in Peter Rosset and John Vandermeer, eds., The Nicaragua Reader: Documents of a Revolution under Fire (New York: Grove Press, 1983). For a discussion of the covert war and a first-hand account of the contras, see Christopher Dickey, With the Contras: A Reporter in the Wilds of Nicaragua (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985). The broader international implications of the Central American conflict are discussed in Richard E. Feinberg, ed., Central America, International Dimensions of the Crisis (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1982); Joseph Cirincione, ed., Central America and fhe Western Alliance (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985); and Andrew J. Pierre, ed., Third World Instability: Central America as a European-American Issue (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1985). Rollback or Containment I 91 tion. The Carter Administration implicitly accepted this bargain; the Reagan Administration would not. Within the Reagan Administration, the faction that The New York Times dubbed ”the war party’’ has successfully blocked any diplomatic settlement that would require coexistence between Washing- ton and Managua because that would end any hope of getting Nicaragua Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/isec/article-pdf/11/2/89/690923/isec.11.2.89.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 back from “communism.”3 Hesitant Diplomacy: The Pezzullo and Enders Initiatives Initially, Reagan’s policy toward Nicaragua was a function of the effort to win the war in El Salvador. Nicaraguan assistance to the Salvadoran rebels (the Revolutionary Democratic Front-Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation, FDR-FMLN) had expanded during the months prior to their “final offensive” of January 1981 and was seen within the Administration as an essential element in the war. Secretary of State Alexander Haig, in particular, firmly believed that the key lesson of Vietnam was the need to ”go to the source” to defeat a guerrilla insurgency, i.e., to cut off the guerrillas’ logistics. Initially, U.S. policy focused on how to halt Nicaragua’s aid to the FDR- FMLN. U.S. Ambassador Lawrence Pezzullo was able to convince the new Administration that it could restore the understanding Washington had with the Sandinistas before Reagan’s election-that U.S. economic aid was contin- gent upon Nicaraguan restraint in El Salvador. Although the Sandinistas responded positively to Pezzullo’s efforts by reducing their aid to the FDR- FMLN, hard-liners within the Reagan Administration were determined to win Nicaragua’s acquiescence not to the carrot of economic aid but to the stick of threatened military action. On April 1, 1981, U.S. economic aid was cut Shortly thereafter, Pezzullo left his post as ambassador and retired from the Foreign Service. In August 1981, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Thomas 0. Enders initiated a second effort to restore the earlier understand- ings with Nicaragua. The United States set forth two basic conditions for improving relations: Nicaragua had to cease its support for the guerrillas in El Salvador and to halt its military buildup. Washington also proposed that Nicaragua join with the other Central American nations in an agreement to 3. “It Takes Two to Contadora“ (editorial), The New York Times, May 22, 1986. 4. “US.Halts Economic Aid to Nicaragua,” The New York Times, April 2, 1981. International Security I 92 ban the importation of sophisticated weapons. In exchange, the United States offered to sign a nonaggression pact with Nicaragua under the terms of the Rio Treaty, make an effort to close the paramilitary training camps for Ni- caraguan exiles that had sprung up in the United States, and ask Congress to restore economic assistance to Nicarag~a.~ Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/isec/article-pdf/11/2/89/690923/isec.11.2.89.pdf by guest on 30 September 2021 No agreement was reached on any of these issues. The Nicaraguans denied that they were providing material assistance to the Salvadoran rebels and rejected the U.S. demand that they limit their military buildup, as a violation of their sovereignty. Moreover, the Nicaraguans did not trust the U.S. to meet its commitments. The Rio Treaty already prohibited the United States from resorting to force or the threat of force in its relations with Nicaragua, and the U.S.