Changing Course

Concerned about the Reagan administration's policy toward Central America, a group of scholars founded PACCA (Policy Alternatives for the Caribbean and Central America) in the spring of 1982. They recently released a report titled Changing Course: Blueprint for Peace in Central America and the Caribbean. The epilogue of Changing Course, a response to the report released by the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America, is reprinted below.
—The Editors

You come here speaking of Latin America, but this is not important. Nothing important can come from the South. History has never been produced in the South. The axis of history starts in Moscow, goes to Bonn, crosses over to Washington, and then goes to Tokyo. What happens in the South is of no importance.
—Henry Kissinger to Gabriel Valdes, Foreign Minister of Chile, June 1969

On January 11, 1984, the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America released its report. The 132-page document, prepared by a 12-member commission chaired by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, charts a policy course to deal with the unrest and instability of the region.

The Kissinger Report acknowledges that the violent upheavals in Central America are rooted in poverty and repression: "Discontents are real, and for much of the population conditions of life are miserable; just as Nicaragua was ripe for revolution, so the conditions that invite revolution are present elsewhere in the region as well." But the report charges—with an argument built on assertion rather than evidence—that the Soviet Union is the manipulator of indigenous revolution in the region. "The Soviet-Cuban threat is real," the report emphasizes, because "the conditions which invite revolution ... have been exploited by hostile forces."

The prescriptions flow directly from this misplaced diagnosis. The Kissinger Commission recommends a $400 million "emergency stabilization program," substantial increases in military assistance to El Salvador, Honduras, and even Guatemala, as well as implicitly condoning a continuation of the "covert" war against Nicaragua, which the report euphemistically terms an "incentive" for negotiation. To attack the root causes of revolution and thwart future Soviet machinations, the report proposes an $8 billion, five-year aid program with unprecedented U.S. involvement in and responsibility for the economies of Central America.

The commission's recommendations are alarming in two regards. First, the military prescriptions would lead to a deepening of U.S. military involvement in a widening war in Central America. Second, the economic prescriptions would serve narrow private interests in the United States at a heavy cost to U.S. taxpayers as a whole. All historical evidence would suggest that the recommended economic aid program, managed by the current elites in power, would have a negative impact on the great majority of the people in Central America and would not serve the long-term interests of U.S. citizens either. Moreover, as the widespread negative response to the Kissinger Report indicates, adherence to its recommended course will increase political division in the United States.

The commission understands that development cannot occur without peace, which it seeks through military escalation. The Kissinger Report's primary military recommendations, however, commit U.S. military power and prestige to unachievable objectives. The commission proposes that continued military aid to El Salvador be conditioned on certification that human rights are not being violated by the government. Dr. Kissinger dissented for the same reason that President Reagan gave in vetoing the certification process: if the United States has a security interest in preventing a victory of the guerrilla forces, it does not matter what the beleaguered government does. But the diplomatic and political costs for the United States of giving unqualified support to a regime that, according to the Catholic Diocese in San Salvador, has slaughtered 37,000 civilians in the last four years, are unacceptable. Thus, the commission seeks to solve the dilemma by offering a third way out which simply does not exist.

U.S. diplomats have lectured, cajoled, even threatened the Salvadoran military about their murderous behavior, but most of those in charge of fighting have no interest in changing because the more they kill, the less they will have to compromise. Only through terror can the extreme right hope to retain their power. Dependent on the United States as they are, they know that the administration, having made prevention of revolution in El Salvador a prime national security objective, is equally dependent on them. Since these U.S. clients have neither an interest in respecting human rights nor a fear that the United States will abandon them, the certification requirement is window dressing. The true recommendation of the report, issued at a moment of major military setbacks for the government forces in El Salvador, is renewed commitment to military escalation. This comes at a moment when morale of government troops in El Salvador is collapsing.

The assertion of a national security interest in El Salvador leads logically to an increase in U.S. military commitments, should such be necessary to prevent victory by the guerrillas. Since the FDR-FMLN [Democratic Revolutionary Front-Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front] are becoming more effective as a military and political force and the government less so, the United States will soon be confronted with the decision whether or not to intervene with more U.S. military personnel. The thrust of the report would appear to favor escalation, but the tragic implications and costs of committing American young men to a prolonged and bloody guerrilla war in El Salvador are nowhere spelled out. Thus, the commission proposes a military task that cannot be achieved, except at unacceptable cost. To assert a vital interest and be unable or unwilling to defend it militarily—as the Vietnam experience demonstrated—is a recipe for eroding national power and credibility. The commission extends this bankrupt posture beyond El Salvador to Honduras and even Guatemala.

By not clearly condemning the secret war against Nicaragua, the commission lent its voice to the continuation of that war. Aware that more than 10,000 "contras" financed by the United States are attacking Nicaragua, the commissioners evidently believe that military pressure either will cause the Nicaraguan government to change its internal policy in "desirable" directions, or will cause the overthrow of the Sandinistas. Neither is likely.

As one of the commissioners, Mayor Henry Cisneros of San Antonio, indicated in his dissent, the attempt to support domestic opposition by enlisting it in covert operations backfires. The government has little incentive to negotiate and compromise with domestic political forces that are perceived as acting in concert with a hostile foreign power in the region, particularly when that power seems committed to its very overthrow.

The Nicaraguan revolution faces domestic opposition, but there is nothing to suggest that a military force operating from Honduras and Costa Rica can overthrow a government that retains wide popular support and national legitimacy. In more than three years of attacks, the "contras" have been unable to occupy and hold any Nicaraguan territory. The Sandinista government has armed a large part of its population and apparently can rely on it to fight forces that are viewed as agents of the United States committed to restoration of the old order. U.S. tax coffers are supporting a campaign of terrorism, murder, and sabotage. Regrettably, the Kissinger Commission did not identify what vital interests of the United States are served by these activities which the administration subsidizes but cannot acknowledge because they violate our laws, ideals, and values.

Ironically, no coherent argument is presented for the assumption that the revolutions represent a threat to U.S. national security. Lacking in evidence and analysis, the report's case is reduced to the assertion that there is a "Soviet-Cuban thrust to make Central America part of their geostrategic challenge" to the United States. As Senator Daniel Moynihan suggested, this is a "doctrinal position," divorced from reality. The Nicaraguan government has stated that it will not accept a Soviet base (nor has the Soviet Union indicated any interest in bearing the economic burdens necessary to gain one). Having struggled for national independence, it is inconceivable that post-revolutionary governments would elect to become Soviet bases, particularly since their economies are highly dependent upon Western aid and trade. The Soviets do not need a missile base in Central America and are not likely to risk exploring whether the United States will permit one.

The report makes much of a domino theory that suggests that revolutions spread like communicable diseases. Ideas and examples do travel. It is hard to understand why the United States should be opposed to the spread of models that work, such as health and literacy programs, no matter who develops them. U.S. influence in the region depends not on quarantining ideas and programs, of other countries, but on demonstrating a genuine interest in development and democracy in the region, rather than viewing the countries as so many pawns in a geopolitical chess game. It is noteworthy that the principal "dominoes" of the region for whose sake the security policy is ostensibly pursued—Mexico and Panama—oppose the military course of U.S. policy in Central America. The Commission Report eschews analysis, however, relying on reiteration of a Communist peril: "No nation is immune from terrorism and the threat of armed revolution supported by Moscow and Havana." "Such extreme language," as Senator Edward Kennedy commented, "raises the stakes of the contest to such a level that anything short of total military victory becomes unthinkable."

The commission's economic program calls for two new economic institutions and for U.S. entry into a third that already exists. A new Central American Development Organization (CADO) would be created to supervise the allocation of about a quarter of U.S. bilateral economic assistance to the region. A new Central American Development Corporation would promote and finance privately owned projects. The United States would join the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) which finances public and private economic projects in Central America.

Behind a shield of stepped-up military aid, the United States would take direct responsibility for organizing the economies, societies, and cultures of the region. U.S. personnel would train Central America's teachers, doctors and police. Experts from the United States would design the region's land and urban reform programs; U.S. union organizers would guide Central American unions; U.S. political scientists would carve Central American democratic institutions. A U.S. representative, armed with veto power over $2 billion worth of aid, would "negotiate" with representatives of the region's recipient countries on the conditions for getting the money. The program is suffused with prevailing U.S. economic and political ideology. The emphasis is on free markets, with a heavy role for private enterprise, especially U.S. corporations. These new institutions would reinforce the strong influence over Central American economic development which the United States already exercises through its commanding position in the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank Group, the Inter-American Development Bank, and various bilateral aid and loan guarantee programs.

The commission has thus proposed a program of U.S. responsibility for the battered economies of Central America that is unprecedented in the post-World War II era. The plan smacks more of the British East India Company than the Marshall Plan. The post-war Marshall Plan for Europe also had a political objective, but its success was due to its emphasis on eliciting regional initiative and planning. The local energies, institutions, experience, and political will were all in place. U.S. money and ideas served as the catalyst. In Central America, the U.S. role is not that of catalyst, but of reorganizer of chaos and repression. Even if our geopolitical motives for undertaking this enormously expensive commitment were not so clearly revealed, such an intrusive role in the internal affairs of the region would be bitterly resented and would feed the very nationalist currents which the administration is trying to contain.

The history of the last generation suggests why the North-Americanization of Central America is doomed to failure. In 1961 the United States attempted to counter the appeal of the Cuban revolution by offering Latin America the Alliance for Progress, an $18 billion initiative for peaceful reform. As the commission report admits, the alliance helped to stimulate growth in Central America, but failed to produce either structural economic change or political reform. Since the aid was not targeted at basic human needs, it only served to widen the gap between rich and poor. Moreover, the extensive military and police operations designed to provide the "shield" for the development program strengthened the most vigorous enemies of democracy and reform in the hemisphere. By the late 1970s, the growth came to an end, inequality had worsened, and much of the hemisphere was ruled by U.S.-backed military dictators.

The commission's recommendations repeat the same error. To implement equitable development would require removal of elites who have no interest in reducing their privilege. Yet the military thrust of the commission's policy is designed to bolster those very elites in El Salvador and Guatemala, and to undermine Nicaragua, one of the few countries in the region that has a leadership interested in redistribution of wealth and power.

Fundamental redistribution will succeed only if there is popular participation rather than elite domination of the decision-making process. This is a vital aspect the Kissinger Commission neglected both in its whirlwind fact-finding visit to the region and in its published report. Finally, the ultimate formulation of any sensible solution for the region cannot come from ideas imposed from outsiders, but instead must be rooted in Central Americans' own experience and interpretation of their history, something the Kissinger Report only superficially addresses.

The Kissinger Commission's Report proceeds from a commendable statement of principles to a disastrous recommendation of policies. Many of the principles it espouses, such as self-determination, concern for human rights, support for democracy, are those which inform PACCA's Changing Course: Blueprint for Peace in Central America and the Caribbean. How is it possible that the same principles can lead to such widely divergent policy recommendations? The Kissinger Commission arrived at its self-defeating conclusions by ignoring history and misperceiving current reality. The result is a policy course that leads inescapably towards military escalation.

The effects of a long history of invading, subverting, and dominating the nations of Central America are simply glossed over. The report reviews this history and then cavalierly concludes:

Perhaps the United States should have paid more attention to Central America sooner. Perhaps over the years we should have intervened less, or intervened more, or intervened differently. But all these are questions of what might have been. What confronts us now is a question of what might become.

No one wishes to dwell on mistakes of the past, but it is impossible to evaluate the commission's own program without taking history and resulting attitudes in the region into account. Nicaraguan suspicion of U.S. policy objectives can only be understood by comprehending the U.S. role in creating and sustaining a Somoza dynasty, which the commission labels a "kleptocracy." It would be hard to support the covert war against Nicaragua had analysis been made of the long-term consequences of the "successful" CIA operation in Guatemala. The overthrow of a nationalist reform government there in 1954 has produced a legacy of repression and horror and a generation of internal war.

The Kissinger Commission ignores the legacy of past U.S. actions and compounds its consequences by advocating more of the same. In the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the commission asserts that the governments of El Salvador and Guatemala are reformable, that the powerful in those countries will support structural economic reform and democratization. At the same time, the U.S. interest is defined as requiring unremitting hostility to Nicaragua. To conclude, as the commission does, that "of the nations in the region, only the Sandinista leadership in Nicaragua ... has been ambiguous about—if not hostile to—open, multi-party political contests ..." is caricature, not serious analysis. The commission could not be unaware of the jailed, maimed, murdered opposition leaders in Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, and the grotesque record of "free" elections in those countries.

Time is running out for the United States in Central America. By constructing an elaborate rationale for intensifying policies that cannot work, the Kissinger Commission has failed a historic challenge. The citizenry and the Congress must act to change our course before it is too late.