NICARAGUA TRICKERY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350006-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 24, 2012
• Sequence Number: 6
• Publication Date: April 9, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350006-6
ARTICLE .
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WASHINCTON POST
9 April 1985
Philip Geyelin
Nicaragua linckery
House Speaker Tip O'Neill shouldn't have ment lays down its arms and enters negotia-
called President Reagan's new "proposal for tions to restore democratic principles and
peace in Central America" a "dirty trick." processes in Nicaragua. After 60 days, the
The president's Easter-oriented effort to president would be free to apply the "covert"
rescue $14 million for a "covert" counterrevo- money to military purposes unless both sides
lutionarv effort in Nicaragua is tricky. But it ask him not to. How this would play out, as-
was offered as a policy, which means you have
every right to take it seriously as the adminis-
tration's best shot at what it perceives to be a
mortal threat to U.S. security.
Looked at that way, it comes off as shallow,
shortsighted, reactive and apocalyptic. "If we
provide too little help" to the "brave members
of the democratic resistance" in Nicaragua,
what then? The president's answer has to be
quoted to be believed:
"Our choice will be a communist Central
America, with communist subversion spreading
southward and northward. We face the risk
that 100 million people from Panama to our
open southern border could come under the
control of pro-Soviet regimes and threaten the
United States with violence, economic chaos
and a human tidal wave of refugees." '
If that strikes you as a bit much, consider the
alternative the administration says will result if
Congress will only pay up: a Sandinista regime
either changing its Maridst-Leninist spots and
sum ing the Sandinistas reconsider their instant
rejection, is impossible to predict. The proposal
may be appealing enough to win over Congress
?without resolving anything in Nicaragua.
So what is the answer? The best critiques
I've heard of the Reagan proposal came before
it was unveiled. One was a statement from the
Inter-American Dialogue, a private group with
bipartisan U.S. membership, combined with
prominent figures from Latin America and
Canada. The other was from the Republican
chairman of the Senate Intelligence Commit-
tee, Dave Durenberger of Isirmnesota? in a
late last month to the National Press
lub.
Both stressed the sanctity of "non-interven-
tion"?for Nicaragua. Both concluded that any
durable solution to the region's security problems
would have to be regional rather than unilateraL
"Regional collective action is a tool we have
simply overlooked thus far," said Durenberger,
whose "first principle" was that any long-term -
negotiating a return to the original democratic commitment to policy. . ? must avoid
principles of the revolution, or being somehow , confrontation over peripheral issues. . . .If the
president makes a $14 million program the cen-
terpiece of his policy, he will only stolce the fires
of controversy in this country.'
Leaving aside the difficulty of organizing an ef-
fective regional solution to Central America's se-
curity problems, the distinction made by both the
Dialogue and Durenberger between aspirations.
and realizable objectives goes to the heart of
supplanted (we don't say "overthrown").
The chances of the former being scarcely
worth weighing, success would seem to depend
on the contras' carrying the day. The presi-
dent's own military advisers concede that
would take "years"?even with U.S. support.
? The administration speaks seriously of
planting democracy overnight in a society that
suffered for decades under the repression of the what's wrong with the administration's approach.
Somoza dictatorship. If the necessary ingredients It is all very well for Ronald Reagan to wish for a
for that outcome are readily at hand (tradition, democratic Nicaragua, a reduction in Nicaraguan,.
experience, trained leadership, discipline, eco- - armed forces, the removal of all unsavory ele-:
nomic resources, institutions), you have to won- ments.
der why the original Sandinista revolution was so But an effort to achieve all this by blatant, uni-
? swiftly betrayed. ' lateral U.S. intervention in Nicaragua's internal
The president would promise to use the coy- , affairs works against a regional will to resist any
? eted $14 million only for "humanitarian" sup- external intervention by Nicaragua in its neigh
port of the contras while the Sandinista govern- bors' internal affairs.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/24: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302350006-6