A Reagan doctrine? - U.S. relations with Central America

WITH THE GALLOPING dissolution of the Contra effort in Nicaragua, the whole Central American package as envisioned by Ronald Reagan and as supported by the commission he invited Henry Kissinger to head seems to be on the way out. With it goes what we happily referred to as th"Reagan Doctrine." We tend to coin these doctrines rather too quickly, it being journalistically easy to do. Thus the "Nixon Doctrine" called, after the historic meeting at Guam, for a new formula: the United States would supply arms; the countries at bay, the fighting men. The Brezhnev Doctrine specified that no nation once Sovietized would ever be permitted to leave the mother camp. The Nixon Doctrine foundered in Vietnam, the Brezhnev Doctrine is in the process of foundering in Afghanistan, and the Reagan Doctrine is as dead as the Contra movement.

A pity, because the Nixon-Reagan formula is essentially the correct one. The United States has a strategic interest in protecting those who wish to protect themselves against annexation by the Soviet empire. In Afghanistan, the Reagan Doctrine worked-because there was bipartisan support for backing the freedom fighters and because the vulnerability of the Soviet aggressor force to the Stinger missile proved the critical military datum.

In Central America, Mr. Reagan was not able to muster a standing majority in Congress, and public opinion was slow, fitful, and ambiguous. There were too many Nobel and other prizes floating about for anyone who called for a "diplomatic" solution, which is defined as letting the Sandinistas do pretty well whatever they wish to do, short only, one supposes, of direct, overland aggression against El Salvador, Honduras, or Costa Rica.

George Bush has a background in intelligence work and knows, or should know, that there are certain kinds of operations that work or do not work depending on the secrecy that shrouds their execution. It is almost certainly too late to mount a successful black operation designed to bring down the government of Daniel Ortega, and legislative and constitutional scruples need to be faced and a fresh doctrine minted. Its dimensions should be strategically different from those Mr. Reagan adopted. The enemy, in Nicaragua, isn't so much the Sandinistas as it is-Castro's Cuba. In his inaugural address, President John F. Kennedy said that the Western Hemisphere would continue to be "master of its own house." Three months later, he gave in to Castro at the Bay of Pigs. We have yet to have a President who is thoughtfully pledged to the restoration of the Monroe Doctrine, the maintenance of which John Kennedy was implicitly pledged to.

It may just be that Castro is ripe for plucking. Fourteen million dollars of Soviet hard currency every day, which is the cost to Gorbachev of maintaining his satellite, comes to a whole lot of vodka and caviar shipped out, by a nation hungry for dollars. If Bush wants seriously to get the West's act together, he should begin by applying pressure on the Soviet Union to put pressure on Cuba. . . . Central Americans would be only the most immediate and obvious beneficiaries.