Reflections on Victory: The United States and Central America

REFLECTIONS ON VICTORY:. THE UNITED STATES AND CENTRAL AMERICA Piero Gleijeses I.n Central America and the Caribbean the twentieth century was ushered in by U.S. Marines sent by Presidents Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson to tell the natives of their new destiny and to teach them, in Wilson's immortal words, "to elect good men." The Pax Americana was established. Nowhere else in the world would America's influence be so pervasive. But in the late 1970s, armed men of the Left seized power in Nicaragua and challenged the pro-American stability of El Salvador and Guatemala. Now, after a decade of struggle and pain—years in which Central America crowded the front pages of the American press and demanded inordinate attention from the U.S. establishment—now, we can pause and reflect. The challenge has been hurled back, a spent wave full of blood. The guerrillas have been defeated in Guatemala and kept at bay in El Salvador. Above all, Nicaragua is free—free of Sandinista rule. The Sandinistas have been humbled at the polls in the first free elections in Nicaragua's history, possible only because ofthe constant prodding ofthe Piero Gleijeses is associate professor of American foreign policy and Latin American studies at SAIS. His publications include The Dominican Crisis (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), Tilting at Windmills: Reagan in Central America (Washington, D.C.: Foreign Policy Institute, 1982), and Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States (forthcoming, Princeton University Press). He has also published numerous articles in a variety of professional journals. 167 168 SAISREVIEW United States. In Central America the twentieth century will end as it began—as the American century. Vindication Partisan rivalry must not cloud the truth: this was Ronald Reagan's victory. Like most Third World leaders, the Sandinistas did not believe in free elections. Left alone, they would have held onto the power they had seized. It was Ronald Reagan, a latter-day Wilson, who created the conditions that forced them to the polls. Ronald Reagan and his little band of crusaders—people like Alexander Haig, Jeane Kirkpatrick, William Casey, and Elliot Abrams—pummeled the Sandinistas and shoved the often reluctant U.S. bureaucracy. True, militarily the Sandinistas emerged victorious. As Reagan began his second term, the Pentagon warned that a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua would be too costly: four to six U.S. divisions, a lengthy military occupation, and thousands ofAmerican casualties. The Contras were not an impressive force, CIA analysts and Pentagon officers pointed out, for they lacked the stamina and the commitment of, for instance, the Salvadoran guerrillas. But the destructions of the Contra war, and the cost of the military build-up required to discourage a U.S. invasion, wreaked economic havoc on Nicaragua. As did Reagan's 1985 economic embargo and other, even more crippling measures: as early as 1982, for example, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) were ordered by the United States to refuse all economic aid to Nicaragua. By the end of President Reagan's second term, Soviet aid was all that was saving a prostrated Nicaragua from collapse. And under Mikhail Gorbachev, Moscow's willingness to foot the bill was on the wane. In despair, the Sandinistas consented to free elections—elections they believed they would win. Their defeat was the vindication ofPresident Reagan's policy. But just as there could have been no victory without Reagan, so too there could have been no victory without the Democrats' willingness to tolerate the Contra war and the economic sanctions and to avert their eyes while the Reagan administration ordered the World Bank and the IDB to violate their own charters. Thus, even if Reagan deserves most of the credit, the defeat of the Sandinistas is, in the truest tradition of U.S. policy in the region, a bipartisan victory.1 1. Just as were the 1954 overthrow of President Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and the 1965 invasion of the Dominican Republic. REFLECTIONS ON VICTORY 169 A Question of Cost Victory is particularly sweet because the cost has been so low. The Contra war may have claimed 30,000 Nicaraguans, but fewer than a...