Nicaragua: the moral and strategic stakes - George P. Shultz's address before the American Bar Association on Feb. 12, 1987

US Department of State Bulletin, March, 1987

Nicaragua: The Moral and Strategic Stakes

Secretary Shultz's address before the American Bar Association in New Orleans on February 12, 1978.1

As Americans, we have all grown upknowing certain fundamental facts about our country. We know that we are free and have fought to remain so. We know that we are strong and must sacrifice to remain so. We know that the world is dangerous but that in it we have allies who have helped us and whom we have helped. And we know that we are surrounded by friends and oceans and that throughout our history our enemies have, blessedly, been far away. For more than a century and a half after the proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine, this latter fact--that geography is our ally and our neighborhood is peaceful--has been a key to our security and our ability to protect our interests by projecting power across the globe.

The oceans have done more thanhelp to preserve our security and independence. They have also enabled us to cultivate freedom. Since the American Revolution, our hemisphere has stood for something: for opportunity; for the chance to start over; for the freedom to choose your own leaders and way of life; for tolerance. What was new about the New World was not just its break with the past but the insistence that freedom was the proper measure of nations.

The realities of the New World haveoften fallen tragically short of these ideals. The majority of this hemisphere's citizens have not enjoyed the blessings and opportunities of North America. Nor was there freedom here for preconquest natives or for those who arrived afterward as slaves. Latin America has suffered dictatorship and instability for most of its history. As recently as a few years ago, only one-third of Latin America enjoyed democratic government.

Now all that is changing--a changethat bears witness to the power of our shared ideals. Over the past 10 years, Latin America has experienced an extraordinary democratic awakening. In country after country, from Argentina to El Salvador, civilian rule has replaced military dictatorship. Today, 90% of the people of Latin America and the Caribbean enjoy democratic government.

Latin America's turn to freedom is amoral victory for democracy, self-determination, and the rule of law. For the United States, it is a victory with strategic importance as well. Technology in the postwar era has shrunk the globe, while politics has divided much of it into two opposing camps. Faced with a smaller world and powerful adversaries, the free nations have learned that we must band together against common threats to our security and civilization. Thus, the democratic explosion in Latin America is not only a triumph of the spirit; it is a strategic asset for the United States and its allies.

In Latin America, therefore, ourmoral principles and strategic interests coincide. The United States believes and affirms that--and I quote from the Charter of the Organization of American States (OAS)--"The historic mission of America is to offer man a land of liberty.' We recognize, moreover, that the security of this hemisphere depends on our own determination to keep would-be aggressors at bay.

Strategic Realities

Early in the Second World War, GermanU-boats destroyed U.S. merchant shipping in the Caribbean at a faster rate than we could replace it. We saw then that there are limits to the security offered us by oceans and friends. Nevertheless, we have continued to base our strategic doctrine on forward defense and on collective defense.

This has meant that we have beenspared the burden borne by many countries of drafting our youth into large standing armies to defend our own borders. We have also managed to reduce the costs of a modern defense establishment by not having to maintain the quantity of ships and planes around our own perimeter that would be required if there were a greater threat in our own neighborhood or if we did not have a network of friends to participate in our mutual defense efforts.

One serious blow to this hemisphere'ssecurity was struck in 1959, when Fidel Castro established a communist dictatorship in Cuba and brought that island into the Soviet camp. In short order, it became clear that Castro was a communist, that he was a thoroughly dependent and dependable ally of the Soviets--so much so that they sought to deploy nuclear weapons in Cuba but, in the event, were not able to do so because of our firm and determined opposition.

Today, the Soviet Union does, however,use Cuba as an important military base in this hemisphere. From Cuba, the Soviet Union flies reconnaissance flights up and down the east coast of the United States; in Cuba, the Soviet Union has a port of call for its submarines; from Cuba, the Soviet Union monitors U.S. communications, using one of the largest and most effective electronic surveillance sites in the world. Cuban troops act as Soviet surrogates in Ethiopia and Angola; the Cuban Government smuggles arms and provides aid and training to guerrillas and terrorists throughout the Western Hemisphere. In the event of a conventional war in Europe of the Persian Gulf, Cuba would constitute a threat to our ability to aid our allies and defend our strategic interests in those vital regions.