A Big Stick Approach

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

Democrats whooped, whistled, clapped and stamped their feet in glee as the totals went up on the House of Representatives electronic Scoreboard. "We got everything we wanted," crowed Norman Mineta of California after a long evening of whipping his Democratic colleagues into line. "This sends a clear message to the President that his policies are misguided." Republicans who supported the Administration were raging and bitter. "There will be great rejoicing in Managua and Havana tomorrow," stormed Bill Young of Florida. A G.O.P. House leader decried the vote, and the way the White House had handled the issue, as "a complete, all-out screw-up--the worst legislative defeat of the Reagan Administration."

Symbolically, it may have been. In practical terms, the 228-to-195 House vote Thursday night to shut off covert U.S. aid to the contra guerrillas who are fighting the Marxist government of Nicaragua will have no immediate effect. The Republican-controlled Senate almost certainly will not approve a similar bill. So the contras' campaign will continue--though whether the Administration can persuade Congress to renew U.S. support for the guerrilla struggle, much less double it as President Reagan wants to do in the new fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, is now in doubt.

As the fiery debate that preceded the balloting illustrated, Ronald Reagan has at last succeeded in getting the U.S. public excited about his Central American policy, but in a manner opposite to any that he ever intended. For there was no question what had caused the defeat. It was a series of ill-tuned revelations, in particular the disclosure that the U.S. had begun a number of highly visible--and, say critics, highly inflammatory--military maneuvers in Central America. Over the next six months, a total of 19 U.S. warships will take part in exercises off both coasts of Nicaragua, and as many as 3,000 to 4,000 American troops will participate at any one time in war games in neighboring Honduras. As the vote drew near, Congress was further roiled by leaks appearing in the press that the Administration planned to expand its covert actions against Nicaragua and possibly to increase the number and activities of U.S. military advisers in El Salvador. All this contributed to a public impression that the Administration is now pushing toward a military solution to the threat of spreading Communist influence in Central America, at the risk of involving the U.S. in what could be a widening war.

That public reaction is surely exaggerated, but the Administration did a woeful job of trying to counter it. The National Security Council and Defense Department shortsightedly failed to brief key congressional leaders about the planned military maneuvers beforehand, then compounded their error by not getting out their side of the story once Government sources opposing the moves began to leak the decisions to the press. Sensing the situation was getting out of hand, Reagan called a news conference on prime-time TV two days before the House vote to protest what he called "the constant drumbeat" of news reports suggesting a newly militaristic policy. In his calmest and most measured tones, he described the naval and military maneuvers as routine (see box) and stressed the economic and diplomatic aspects of his Central American strategy. But how far he still has to go in easing public doubt and worry is shown by the comments of two Republican Representatives, both loyal Reaganites, after the House vote on the Boland-Zablocki bill (for Democrats Edward Boland of Massachusetts and Clement Zablocki of Wisconsin) stopping aid to the contras.

Olympia Snowe of Maine had been against the aid shutoff in committee. But she became alarmed by the plans for the maneuvers and "baffled and confused" by the explanations offered by National Security Adviser William Clark and Secretary of State George Shultz at a belated briefing for House Republicans. So she voted with the Democrats, explaining, "If the Administration went this far, I'm afraid of what's down the road." Lynn Martin, who represents a district that includes Reagan's home town of Dixon, Ill., voted the Administration's way out of loyalty, but with the gravest misgivings. She fears that the purpose of U.S. aid to the contras is no longer just to stop the flow of arms from Nicaragua to the leftist rebels in El Salvador but to bring down the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Said she: "We don't want to be like the Soviets. Besides, those maneuvers sent a warning signal to my little brain: What is this? I'm a conservative who's been with them all the way, but Viet Nam is a lesson." Martin evidently was not reassured by Reagan's specific statement at his news conference that "there is no comparison with Viet Nam, and there's not going to be."

A more specific, and widespread, anxiety about the maneuvers was voiced by Maryland Democrat Clarence Long. Said he: "My worry is that this will provoke an incident, a 'sinking of the Maine,' that will force us into action." One questioner at Reagan's news conference noted that the units involved in the maneuvers have orders to defend themselves if they are fired upon. The President replied that this is a standard order to all U.S. military forces everywhere. He amplified: "We don't want war, but I don't think that you prevent war by letting your personnel out there become the victims."

It was precisely to cope with doubts such as those expressed in Congress that Reagan two weeks ago appointed a twelve-man commission headed by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The commission's charter is to study all aspects of Central American policy and recommend a long-range plan judged capable of winning bipartisan support. But the momentum of events may not wait for the commission's report, and much of that momentum has been spurred by the Administration itself. Visiting Washington last week to get the commission organized, Kissinger announced plans to conduct a study so comprehensive that its conclusions will not be ready until February. The Administration long before then will have to offer a more convincing explanation of its purposes in Central America if it is to retain enough public support to carry out its policies. Said the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer, in an editorial headlined LATIN POLICY BLUSTER: "If President Reagan encouraged any hopes that the bipartisan commission he appointed might broaden his view of Central America, he is doing everything possible to douse them."

In fact, Reagan and his advisers may need to think the strategy through themselves considerably more thoroughly than they have done to date. The decisions that are causing so much uproar have been taken largely in response to the pace of events, and they have led to major disagreements within the Government. The military and naval maneuvers, to take the most prominent example, have been justified by the Administration partly as a response to a reported increase in the number of Cuban military advisers and the quantity of arms from Soviet-bloc countries showing up in Nicaragua. But the significance--and the extent--of that reported buildup is still in dispute within both the State Department and the CIA. Indeed, the maneuvers appear to have been prompted primarily by simple impatience to do something dramatic. It is indicative of the problem that what turned out to be the spectacularly maladroit timing of the start of the maneuvers was dictated by a trivial consideration: Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger thought that diverting the aircraft carrier Ranger to the Nicaraguan coast from a scheduled cruise to the Far East would save fuel.

Policy made in such an ad hoc manner has left important questions unanswered. Is the U.S. in fact committed to overturning Nicaragua's Sandinista government, or only to harassing it enough to keep it from fomenting Marxist revolution throughout Central America? Reagan and his advisers have made statements that can be interpreted either way. How serious is the Administration about promoting negotiations for a regional agreement that would ban all foreign military advisers and cross-border arms shipments in Central America? Reagan last week had Special Envoy Richard Stone hand-carry a letter to the Presidents of the so-called Contadora countries (Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Panama, which first met last January on the Panamanian island of Contadora) praising their efforts to work out such a regional pact. In so doing he quite unintentionally joined, of all people, Cuban President Fidel Castro, who lauded the Contadorans' efforts. But the Administration at the same time gave a cautious reception to a Nicaraguan offer to participate in multilateral peace talks and negotiate six specific points. Indeed, Reagan's letter to the Contadora Presidents stressed the need for democracy in the region in terms that seemed to imply that an internal transformation of Nicaragua's Sandinista regime would have to accompany any regional compact.

Most basic of all, perhaps, are questions about who is making U.S. policy, whatever that policy is. State Department officials complain strongly that, in the words of one, "we are suddenly out of the information loop on a lot of stuff." One top diplomat talks of the "crazy kooks" in the Pentagon who in his view are putting too much emphasis on military moves. Any such kooks do not include the Joint Chiefs, who have made it plain that they are concerned about increased military involvement in the region. Jeane Kirkpatrick, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, has been widely regarded as the Administration's intellectual guru on Latin American policy. She has argued long, hard and convincingly within Administration councils that the loss of Central America to Communist revolutionary regimes would be a devastating blow to U.S. security interests. But Kirkpatrick learned about the naval maneuvers from a reporter's questions. She is believed to consider the timing of the military ventures as very poor.

Newer and lesser-known names are rising to prominence. One is Fred Ikle, 58, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, a scholarly, low-voiced, pinstripe hawk who favors putting maximum pressure on the Sandinista regime. He has the ear of Weinberger, who according to Pentagon colleagues has been too preoccupied with budget matters and congressional relations to devote much personal attention to Central America. The Secretary is believed to allow Ikle and Deputy Assistant Secretary Nestor Sanchez to shape the Pentagon position that Weinberger presents at interagency meetings.

But if there is a key figure on Central American policy, it is National Security Adviser Clark. A former California state supreme court judge, an intimate of Reagan's since the mid-'60s, when he was chief of staff to the then Governor of California, Clark had no foreign policy experience when Reagan brought him to Washington in 1981. He is motivated primarily by a nearly fanatic devotion to Reagan's interests and a visceral antiCommunism.

Clark's first job in the Administration was deputy to then Secretary of State Alexander Haig, who argued vociferously that the Soviet Union was going to "test" the U.S. in Central America by promoting leftist revolution. Haig went so far as to draw up contingency plans for blockading Cuba to prevent the shipment of Soviet arms from there to Nicaragua and to rebels in El Salvador. He was ordered by the White House to tone down the bellicose talk, and through most of 1982 the region got a relatively low policy priority. But last whiter Clark, by then transferred to the National Security Adviser's post, began moving to bring Central America back to front and center among Administration concerns. He formed an unlikely alliance with Kirkpatrick, an academic intellectual who is his temperamental opposite but often supplies a detailed rationale for positions that Clark reaches by instinct.

Clark in February dispatched Kirkpatrick to the region on a fact-finding tour. She returned with a gloomy assessment of the entire Central American situation. Her findings prompted the Administration to ask for an additional $110 million in military aid to El Salvador in fiscal 1983, on top of Reagan's original request for $61.3 million. Another point on which Clark and Kirkpatrick agreed, with the support of CIA Director William Casey, was that Thomas Enders, then in charge of Latin American policy at the State Department, should be replaced. They felt that Enders was moving too slowly and cautiously. In May, Clark took the lead in getting Enders ousted and reassigned as Ambassador to Spain, a move that resulted in Clark's primacy over Central American policy.

Though Reagan dramatized the Administration's concern about Central America by giving a speech to an extraordinary joint session of Congress on April 27, the legislators balked at his Salvadoran aid requests. To date Congress has voted only about half of the money the Administration sought. Also during the spring, the right-wing contras stepped up their hit-and-run raids into Nicaragua from bases and training camps in Honduras. By then, it was public knowledge that the CIA was heavily involved in these "covert" operations, training the contras and supplying them with arms. Restive over this far from secret war, congressional leaders demanded to know where the Administration's Nicaraguan policy was heading. With criticism also building of the Administration's approach in El Salvador, Clark in June began another inter-agency review, which quickly flowered into the explosive controversy of today.

The policymakers agreed readily enough on the main elements of the assessment. The Salvadoran government was making some headway in a new offensive against the leftist guerrillas, but might not be able to maintain its momentum with no more U.S. aid than it is now getting. In Nicaragua, the contras had been unable to capture any towns, but they were attracting recruits faster than the CIA could arm and train them. An apparently worried Nicaraguan government had responded by calling in more outside help. According to the Defense Intelligence Agency, some 1,200 Cuban military advisers had been spotted in Nicaragua following a visit by General Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez, once the head of the Cuban force in Angola. Also, in the first six months of 1983, Nicaragua had received eleven shiploads of arms from Soviet bloc countries, just three fewer than came in during all of last year.

The significance of that buildup was, and still is, in dispute. Some CIA experts thought the actions were aimed primarily at strengthening Nicaragua internally. But the Defense Department was concerned that it might be the prelude to a Nicaraguan strike at Honduras or Costa Rica, another neighboring country from which anti-Sandinista exiles have been conducting guerrilla operations against Nicaragua. The same fear had been expressed by Honduran officials, who were concerned that by letting the main group of contras set up bases and train in their country with U.S. arms, they might be exposing themselves to Nicaraguan invasion. The Sandinistas, for their part, charge that the contra campaign is designed to provide a pretext for a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua.

Clark sided with the worriers, and Pentagon planners, led by Ikle, successfully argued for a show of U.S. force to give the Nicaraguans pause and reassure the Hondurans and Costa Ricans that the U.S. would not let them be overrun. To that end, the Pentagon revved up planning that had begun as early as last February for naval and military maneuvers. The Defense Department last spring had won approval in principle from all agencies involved in Central American policy that maneuvers should be conducted, but had not specified how big or how long they would be.

The size and timing of military maneuvers is not ordinarily a matter that comes before top-level policy committees or is discussed with Congress. No exception was made with the Central American exercises, despite the fact that their purpose and nature, in particular the massing of ships off one country, clearly would inspire international concern. At his news conference, however, Reagan tried to down-play their significance. He asserted: "I don't know the number of ships involved."

Clark's failure to realize that letting the Pentagon go off on its own when the debate over Central American policy had become so heated was a blunder. But the National Security Adviser has a penchant for secrecy, and Clark, the Defense Department and the White House apparently hoped to keep the maneuvers quiet until they were well under way, then merely confirm what was happening.

Just who foiled this plan by first leaking the news and for what purpose is unclear. There are different theories: that it was a dissident official who hoped to make trouble for the policy, or perhaps a Pentagon civilian who could not resist the temptation to brag. In any case, once the news was out, Administration officials happily confirmed it off the record and in a tone that seemed almost calculated to revive memories of Teddy Roosevelt's gunboat diplomacy. Said one: "We want to persuade the bad guys in Nicaragua and Cuba that we are positioned to blockade, invade or interdict if they cross a particular threshold."

Another, scarcely less controversial recommendation that came out of the policy reviews was for a major increase in CIA funding of the contra guerrillas, to an estimated $35 million in fiscal 1984, a move that would happen only in the increasingly unlikely event that Congress could be persuaded to vote the money. White House officials talk of eventually arming as many as 20,000 guerrillas. There are about 10,000 now, but only 2,000 to 3,000 are trained and carry modern weapons.

The CIA was not at all unanimous in pushing this idea. Says a former high-ranking agency official: "There are plenty of people at the CIA who fear the agency will be dragged back into the mud again." Many senior intelligence operatives are concerned that the U.S. could not control so large a contra force. Others are convinced that any increase in U.S. aid would simply be offset by stepped-up Cuban support for the Sandinistas.

Officially, the purpose of American aid to the contras is "symmetry": as long as Nicaragua supplies arms and aid to guerrilla rebels in El Salvador, the U.S. will do exactly the same thing for rebels in Nicaragua. That at least implies a willingness to call off the contra campaign if Nicaragua ends its support of the Salvadoran leftists. But some CIA officials fear that a major increase in funding would create a contra force so well trained and heavily armed that it might continue its insurrection even if the U.S. tried to get it to stop. That could trigger a retaliatory Nicaraguan invasion of Honduras or Costa Rica, which the U.S., after the military and naval exercises aimed at deterring exactly such an event, would in effect be committed to oppose with its own forces.

CIA Director William Casey and other civilians at the top of the agency, however, overrode those objections, arguing that the benefits of increased pressure against the Sandinistas outweighed the risks. This proposal too leaked, and at the most damaging time possible, just when the House was about to vote on a shutoff of aid to the contras during the remainder of this fiscal year.

Some other aspects of the Administration's new Central American moves are less clear. During Clark's interagency meetings, the Pentagon proposed scrapping the Administration's self-imposed limit of 55 American military advisers in El Salvador (actually, the number now is 47) and increasing the force to 125. Its argument is simply that 55, or 47, advisers are not enough to tram Salvadoran forces on the scale required to defeat the leftist guerrillas. The Pentagon also proposed that the advisers be allowed to accompany Salvadoran government forces in the field, which is prohibited now, though they still would not be allowed to join in actual combat. Asked about a larger force at his news conference, Reagan insisted that "no one has presented a proposal to me about increasing the number" of advisers. His comment probably indicates that the Administration, at least for the moment, judges an increase in the number of advisers to be too politically explosive for presentation to Congress.

Still to be decided also is the level of future economic aid that the Administration will request for friendly Central American countries. Seeking to counter charges that his policy is veering toward militarism, the President put stress last week on economic aid. Said he at his news conference: "For every one dollar we provide for security assistance to that region, we provide three dollars for economic and human development." There have been published reports that the Administration would request an additional $400 million in military and economic aid for Central America next year, a 50% increase, over the amount requested for fiscal 1983. But that was inaccurate: Clark's policy reviewers had already decided against asking for any increase at all. The apparent reasoning: now is not the time to raise the subject with a Congress that insists on cutting in half even the present request for military assistance to El Salvador.

In addition, although everyone in the Administration would like to see an increase in aid, there are divisions about how much, over how long a period and in what form. Kirkpatrick insists that the trouble in Central America is primarily economic and social: the poverty, hunger, illiteracy and disease that win masses of recruits for Marxist revolution. She has long advocated a "Marshall Plan" for the area that would provide a sharp and continuing increase in aid well into the future. Three times she wrote a recommendation for such a plan into drafts of Reagan's April 27 speech to Congress; all three times, State Department drafters took it out. Their primary argument was that unlike Western Europe after World War II, Central America does not have the skilled workers and political institutions to make good use of a sudden influx of financial aid.

The idea of a Central American Marshall Plan came up again at Reagan's news conference. The President replied that additional economic aid would not necessarily have to come from the Government. If private investors could be offered adequate guarantees that capital put into Central America would be safe, he said, "there is far more in the private investment pool" than any government could offer. In any case, he said, developing a long-range aid strategy is a large part of "what we've appointed the [Kissinger] commission for."

The Administration's diplomatic strategy is only slightly more clear than its murky aid designs. The policymakers participating in Clark's review did agree that increased diplomatic activity had to accompany the ship and troop maneuvers and planned step-up in help to the Nicaraguan contras, so they recommended that Special Envoy Stone be dispatched on another trip to Central America. What he might be expected to accomplish, however, is uncertain.

Stone has been trying to make contact with the Salvadoran guerrillas, and the official line from the State Department is that he will meet them "without preconditions." But Reagan last week described part of Stone's mission as an attempt "to see if [the guerrillas] would not meet with the peace commission that was created by the El Salvadoran government to discuss participating in the democratic process in the elections that are coming up before the year is out," which would seem to imply a very large precondition indeed.

Two weeks ago, Nicaraguan Leader Daniel Ortega Saavedra outlined a peace plan that would bar foreign military advisers and arms shipments in the region. He was seconded last week by Castro, who said Cuba would be willing to stop arms shipments to Nicaragua as part of a regional pact. The fact that Nicaragua wants to talk at all was hailed by some American analysts as a sign that U.S. pressure on the Sandinistas was beginning to yield results. But the Nicaraguan plan was criticized as unverifiable, though surely verification procedures would be a major subject of negotiations. The Nicaraguans' call for "a total halt to the supply of arms by any nation to the conflicting forces in El Salvador" was viewed as significant. It marked the first time that the Nicaraguans had even tangentially mentioned foreign arms supplies to the Salvadoran guerrillas. But whatever encouragement could have been taken from Ortega's speech was quickly overshadowed by word of the U.S. military maneuvers.

Though leaders of the Contadora countries were careful not to say anything that might offend Washington, some U.S. allies were less restrained. Said French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson, on a visit to Brazil: "The presence of American aircraft carriers off the coast of Nicaragua is certainly not going to contribute to peace in the region." The Soviets, as might be expected, rushed to make propaganda capital out of the military moves. Said the official news agency TASS: "This is what stands behind the demagogic declarations of the White House incumbent concerning his striving for peace in Central America where, through Washington's fault, the flames of an armed conflict are spreading now."

For the moment, however, the key Central American negotiations are not between the Administration and foreign friends or foes, but between the Administration and Congress, and indeed within the Administration itself. Clark's conduct of this sensitive matter so far has been somewhat clumsy. The National Security Adviser, critics say, often speaks of Congress as a body that is supposed to ratify presidential decisions; ratify is one of his pet words.

The establishment of a bipartisan commission should have been uncontroversial. Indeed, though the idea originally came from Kirkpatrick, it was formally suggested by some influential Senators and Representatives. Clark, however, informed only a few members of Congress that Reagan was about to appoint the commission, and failed to consult with the Republican leadership on the people his National Security Council staff was proposing as commission members. Senate Republican Leader Howard Baker of Tennessee learned who would be on the commission from Democratic Senator Henry Jackson of Washington, whom Clark did consult. "Talk about teed off!" says one White House staffer. "Baker was red hot."

Clark also stumbled when news of the naval and military maneuvers leaked out. On a rare visit to Capitol Hill, Clark sought to cool the fury by remarking that the maneuvers were no sudden action but had been planned since February. That only made Senators and Representatives angrier that they had not been consulted. The National Security Adviser also proved unresponsive to some obvious questions.

Part of the unease in Congress, however, is prompted not by inept legislative tactics or even doubts about what seem to be poorly coordinated strategic decisions, but by a feeling that the Administration is trying for a "quick fix" in Central America (see ESSAY). Discouraged by the length and uncertain prospects of economic and diplomatic efforts, irritated by the difficulties of winning congressional approval for their strategy and feeling themselves under pressure to produce measurable progress in Central America before the 1984 presidential campaign gets fully under way, some White House advisers are pushing for a combination of military moves and covert activity that might yield speedy results.

The trouble is that there is no quick fix, even granting the greatest imaginable success for Administration policy. Suppose, for example, Nicaragua and Cuba, intimidated by the military maneuvers and the contra campaign, agreed to a verifiable end to their provision of arms and advisers to the Salvadoran guerrillas. There is no doubt that would be a blow to the insurgents: Arquimedes Canadas, once one of their leaders, said last week in Washington that Cuba has "directed the activities" of the Salvadoran insurgents since 1980. Even so, the Salvadoran insurrection may have developed enough momentum by now to continue for years on its own. Go further still and suppose that the Sandinistas agree to free elections in Nicaragua on terms that induce the contras to lay down their arms and join in a political struggle. That struggle also would take years. And then there is the more pervasive problem of fostering economic growth and democratic reform among repressive regimes throughout the region. Doing that will require, if not exactly a Marshall Plan, then at least a longterm, steady U.S. commitment.

Such an effort is well worth making. There are compelling reasons why a Communist Central America would be dangerous to U.S. interests: the threat to the Panama Canal and vital Caribbean shipping lanes; the worldwide blow to the prestige of an America that could not stop the spread of a hostile force in what Reagan has called the nation's "front yard." Finally there is the threat that U.S. leaders rarely mention but that weighs heaviest on the minds of geopolitical analysts, namely, that successful Marxist revolutions in the small states of the isthmus could pull Mexico to the left, confronting the U.S. with a populous (75 million) enemy along a 2,000-mile, at present, undefended border. It is not only in Washington that this thought crops up. Soviet officials have mused aloud about how much easier their worldwide competition with the U.S. would be if American energies were diverted by a Western Hemisphere analogy to the threat the U.S.S.R. faces along its own border with a hostile China.

But if the Administration merits criticism for its uncoordinated policy, Congress deserves a full share too. It often seems to be demanding a strategy that runs no risk of war and involves no application of U.S. military power whatever, yet will accomplish goals that need a degree of force or intimidation to achieve. Military aid to friends in Central America, as well as the implicit threat of direct U.S. military intervention, give spine to American diplomatic and economic initiatives. By cutting even the modest aid requests that the Administration has made, Congress runs a risk of pushing American policy into the trap warned against by Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Adviser to Jimmy Carter. Said Brzezinski, of foreign ventures generally: "We are forever in danger of getting just enough involved not to succeed, yet still to be responsible for failing." Unhappily, the Administration's bungling and Congress's rebuff last week have made that risk in Central America all the greater.

--By George J. Church.

Reported by Laurence I. Barrett, Johanna McGeary and Christopher Redman/Washington

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