7

The Perils of Diplomacy

In its interactions with the Third World, the United States faces the recurring problem already discussed: while militarily strong, it is politically weak. One consequence is the regular need to resort to violence to demolish “popular organizations.” Another is the constant effort to evade diplomatic settlement. These facts being unacceptable, the ideological institutions have the task of portraying them as the opposite of what they are. In particular, the diplomatic record must be recast in such a way as to justify further resort to violence rather than political settlement on the principle that the enemy cannot be trusted, whoever it happens to be (typically receiving the technical designation “Communist,” meaning Enemy of the State).

The conclusion that “Communists cannot be trusted” is fair enough, as long as we add the missing phrase: “Nor can anyone else, particularly, the United States.” The classic demonstration of Communist iniquity is Soviet behavior violating the Yalta and Potsdam agreements, but even this case, which the ideological system selects as its strongest grounds, merely illustrates the truism just expressed. In a careful analysis based on the now fairly rich documentary record, Melvyn Leffler concludes that “In fact, the Soviet pattern of adherence [to Yalta, Potsdam, and other wartime agreements] was not qualitatively different from the American pattern.”1 Turning elsewhere, we find ample evidence to illustrate how political weakness impels U.S. planners to evade peaceful settlement of disputes and to violate agreements and treaties.

The record in Indochina is instructive in this regard. The United States was aware, from the late 1940s, that in supporting the French effort to reconquer Indochina and taking over directly when France abandoned the task, it was confronting the major nationalist forces in the region. U.S. efforts to construct a “political base” for the clients it imposed were a complete failure. As a result of political weakness, the United States was compelled to overturn the Geneva agreements of 1954 at once, to subvert the elected government of Laos in 1958, to escalate the war against South Vietnam in the early sixties while desperately evading the political settlement sought on all sides, and to expand the war to all of Indochina. Finally, when unable to avoid signing an agreement theoretically terminating hostilities in Paris in 1973, the U.S. proceeded at once, for the same reasons, to undermine it in a last effort to achieve by force what it had abandoned on paper.2

The factual record evidently lacks ideological serviceability, so it has been replaced by a mythical reconstruction crafted to satisfy doctrinal requirements. Whatever the facts, the record must show that it is the Communist enemy that cannot be trusted. The importance of this task of sanitizing history has been heightened by the understanding that U.S. was bound to face the same basic problem elsewhere, and would have to respond in essentially the same ways: in Central America in the current period, for example, where political weakness necessitates resort to violence and evasion of diplomacy, along with a concomitant and unceasing commitment to damage control to prevent awareness of the facts.

The principle that the Communist enemy cannot be trusted to live up to agreements coexists, though uneasily, with a second doctrine: we seek negotiations and political settlement, while they refuse, and must be driven to the negotiating table by force. The question might arise, then, why we should use force to drive them to negotiations if they will violate them anyway. But there is no need to solve the paradox, since the questions are academic: in circumstances of U.S. political weakness, as in Indochina and Central America, the U.S. is not pursuing a diplomatic settlement but rather using force to eliminate this threat, and for the same reason, U.S. adherence to agreements is an unlikely prospect. These remarks are obvious, well-supported by the historical and documentary record, and, being unacceptable for a general audience, beyond the limits of respectable discourse.

Let us now consider how these problems are dealt with through “historical engineering.”

Recall that hawks and doves alike debate contra aid on the assumption that its major purpose is the “noble objective” of “democratizing Nicaragua,” and argue that a secondary purpose has been to compel the Sandinistas to agree to negotiations. The opposition of “the left wing of the Democratic Party” to contra aid is “insufficient,” Ronald Radosh explains, because “it does not present any incentive that could force the Sandinistas to the bargaining table.”3 Liberal critics of contra aid often adopt the same premises while questioning the efficacy of this instrument to achieve the desired end: compelling the “Marxist-Leninist regime” in Managua to accept a political settlement.

A slight difficulty with this doctrine has already been discussed. Nicaragua had been pursuing the path of diplomacy since the conflict erupted, while the U.S. sought throughout to overcome the danger of peaceful settlement, whether the issue is monitoring of borders, removal of foreign advisers and guarantees against foreign bases, direct negotiations, appeal to the International Court of Justice and the United Nations, or, repeatedly, the Contadora proposals. Furthermore, U.S.-organized terror had the predictable effect, and surely the conscious purpose, of restricting the possibility of internal freedom. Had the Japanese fascists attained our level of hypocrisy, they might have justified Pearl Harbor on the grounds that it was necessary to compel the United States to overcome its vicious internal racism and begin serious moves towards true democracy, and argued that they must continue the attack because of the harsh measures that the U.S. instituted, demonstrating its totalitarian nature, including martial law and suspension of elementary rights in its Hawaiian colony, dispatch of the Japanese-American population to concentration camps, and measures of internal control and repression4; we may imagine how such an argument would have been received. Hence there are a few problems with the standard version.

Though not all partisans of U.S. state terrorism would go to the extremes of Ronald Radosh in the remarks just quoted, still some historical engineering is plainly in order, including a sanitized version of the diplomatic record. We have seen how this result is achieved in most cases: simply by ignoring or suppressing the facts, rejecting the World Court as an irrelevant “hostile forum,” and so on. Let us have a closer look at how it is done in the case of the Contadora efforts over more than four years.

Reviewing the record, the Times has only this to say:

One treaty was eventually accepted by Nicaragua, which then rejected revisions demanded by the United States and Central American states. In 1986, talks stalled on a new plan.5

Let us inspect the factual record that lies behind this version of history, which places the onus for failure on Nicaragua for foot-dragging and rejection of U.S. proposals, and on some unspecified problem of 1986.6

Until September 1984, the Contadora draft treaty was supported with enthusiasm by the U.S. government. Secretary of State George Shultz described it as “an important step forward” while bitterly condemning the Sandinista Marxists for having “rejected key elements of the draft”; we return to Shultz’s interesting conception of diplomacy, as he expresses it. In June 1984, Reagan informed Congress that aid to the contras must continue so as to pressure the Sandinistas; otherwise, “a regional settlement based on the Contadora principles will continue to elude us.” U.S. diplomats denounced Nicaragua for “blocking a settlement” that the U.S. supported. “In mid-September [1984], at a meeting of the European Economic Community in San José, Costa Rica, Secretary of State George Shultz sent a telegram to every foreign minister present urging that ‘no economic aid be given to Nicaragua because of its refusal to sign the Contadora Peace agreement’.”7

In September 1984, Nicaragua accepted the Contadora draft without reservations, becoming the first Central America state to do so; this is the “one treaty . . . eventually accepted by Nicaragua.” This unanticipated action, a slight embarrassment to Mr. Shultz since it was announced just before his telegram arrived in San José, caused virtual hysteria in Washington. Senior government officials demanded actions “to punish Mr. Ortega and the Sandinistas for accepting the Contadora proposal,” the New York Times reported, apparently without irony. The U.S. then pressured its allies to reject the treaty, suddenly found to be unsatisfactory now that it could be implemented. A leaked National Security Council document exults in the success of these pressures, which “trumped the latest Nicaraguan/Mexican efforts” to achieve a diplomatic settlement.

The mysterious “stalling” of the 1986 agreement—namely, the rejection of the treaty by U.S. clients (unreported) and Nicaragua’s willingness to accept it (barely noted)—we have already discussed. Recall that these events were followed at once by a congressional vote of aid to the contras, to compel the Sandinistas to accept a diplomatic settlement, there being no limit to tolerable absurdity in a good cause.

News columns blame Nicaragua for blocking the plan it accepted in 1986 to the annoyance of the United States. Thus, Bernard Gwertzman reported that the purpose of a Contadora mission to Central America is “to persuade Nicaragua and the other countries to sign” their document8—referring to a renewed effort to persuade U.S. allies to join Nicaragua in accepting the Contadora treaty. Crucially, the press must identify Nicaragua as the source of all tension and conflict, since it is an official enemy.

We might compare the Times version of these events with that of Costa Rica, presented in a report from San José, Costa Rica, in a leading Mexican newspaper:

The US tried by all means available to prevent the signing of the Contadora Group Act for Peace in Central America in 1985 and 1986. The US also strongly pressured Costa Rica, in alliance with Honduras and El Salvador, to block the negotiating process, according to statements made here today by a high official of the previous [Monge] Costa Rican government.

Gerardo Trejos Salas, Vice Foreign Affairs Minister from the middle of 1985 to May 1986, said, “As a first-hand witness, I can affirm that, at least during the time that I was Vice Foreign Affairs Minister in the Monge government, Washington tried by all means available to block the signing of the Contadora Peace Act.”

Trejos presented further details of U.S. pressures on its allies to block “the peace process begun in January 1983.”9

Plainly not a useful version of what—in fact—happened in these years, therefore not one available to readers of the U.S. press.

In 1987, Costa Rican president Oscar Arias advanced a new peace plan. The response to it illustrates further the exigencies of damage control.

This plan, supported by Congress but opposed by the Reagan administration,10 offers the best chance “to persuade Nicaragua to permit a more democratic society and rein in its revolutionary army,” Democratic Senator Terry Sanford announced11—implying, again if words have meaning, that Nicaragua’s “revolutionary army” is illegitimately rampaging in Nicaragua when it seeks to defend the country from U.S. attack. The “political guts” of the Arias plan, Stephen Rosenfeld comments, is that “Nicaragua’s ambivalent fellow Latins” are “to oversee Sandinista delivery on political assurances made to them in the treaty process,” and Nicaragua “shares blame” for the failure of this plan (for which it indicated approval, while the Reagan administration rejected it) because the “Managua Marxists . . . refused to countenance discussion of its own internal democratization, and threw sand in everyone’s eyes.” The central feature of the plan, the New York Times observed approvingly, is that “Nicaragua would ‘democratize’ and the United States would stop aid to the contras,” but the Sandinistas “have long refused to accept an election process that jeopardized their power”12—in contrast to El Salvador, where “the masses,” who “were with the guerrillas” when the terror began according to Duarte (see p. 103, above), were permitted to choose within a narrow center-right spectrum controlled by the military and oligarchy after the murder of the political opposition and the intimidation or outright destruction of its popular base by terror.

The reaction was similar throughout, including the doves.

The Arias plan made no mention of Nicaragua. It called for moves towards democracy throughout the region while insisting upon “the right of all nations to freely choose their own economic, political and social system.”13

Little attention was given to the fact that as part of its efforts to sabotage the Arias plan, the Reagan administration made it clear that “if the administration felt its views and interests were not reflected in the regional arrangements it would continue to fund the Nicaraguan contra rebels despite agreements reached by the [Central American] leaders,” so Reagan “peace emissary” Philip Habib informed “high-ranking senators and their aides.”14 Within Central America, there is no difficulty in understanding that the U.S. and its allies were disturbed over the Arias plan, and why this should be so: “Neither Salvadoran President José Napoleón Duarte or the US administration is comfortable at the prospect of an amnesty and cease-fire arrangement with the FMLN [guerrillas], as called for by the Arias plan.”15 A careful search through the small print reveals that the national media in the U.S. are also aware of this fundamental problem with the Arias plan, and the reason why no plan calling for internal freedom and democracy can possibly be implemented except in some formal sense within the U.S.-established terrorist state:

Salvadoran and Guatemalan officials are reportedly concerned because the plan would require their governments to declare an amnesty for guerrillas, an immediate cease-fire in their battle against rebel groups and permission for the rebels to form political parties and have access to the press.16

Meaningful steps in this direction are inconceivable as long as the state terrorists continue to rule El Salvador and Guatemala. While the opposition in Nicaragua has suffered severe harassment during the U.S. war against Nicaragua, it can at least function without fear of being slaughtered. But as the record of the 1980s clearly shows, this is not likely to be the case in El Salvador and Guatemala as long as the United States remains in command and the security forces it has established or supported maintain unchallenged power. As for Honduras, the provisions for democracy will continue to have little meaning until some basis for popular participation in the political system is established. And as history shows, any moves towards these ends would call forth stern U.S. retribution, in defense of “democracy.”

There are, to be sure, crucial respects in which the Arias plan was directed to Nicaragua rather than to the “fledgling democracies” preferred in the United States, and these should be clearly understood. In the states that conform to U.S. requirements, democratic principles can be adopted at a purely formal level with few meaningful consequences. Control over resources by the military, the oligarchy, and business and professional elites guarantees effective dominance of the political system and the media as long as popular organizations are suppressed, and for that, resort to terror will normally suffice. Willingness to undertake the task of wielding the rod serves as a qualifying condition for receipt of U.S. aid,17 and as recent history demonstrates, the successful use of terror, as in Duarte’s El Salvador, will mobilize the support of enlightened opinion in the United States. If the terror becomes too ugly to be suppressed, it can be attributed to unknown sources, to death squads that cannot be controlled by “the moderate center” that we support, or to Marxist guerrillas. And when its goals have been achieved, we can point to the reduction of terror as proof that our support for “the moderate center” is the right course. “Free elections” can be conducted once the required conditions are established by state terror, to the applause of articulate U.S. opinion, hawk and dove alike. There need be no concern over “freedom of press” or “free access” to the political system, given the threat or application of terror to ensure that the media do not stray from approved bounds and that unwanted political alternatives, which can be designated as “Communist,” are eliminated. All of this is entirely acceptable in a terrorist culture, not only with regard to Central America, where it has been the norm under U.S. influence for many years.

In contrast, it is hazardous for Nicaragua to agree to the conditions of the Arias plan, or any other. If it lives up to them, the fact will be suppressed or converted by the U.S. propaganda system into a proof of their totalitarian nature, exactly as was accomplished in the case of the 1984 elections by the U.S. government disinformation system with the media meekly doing their duty.18 Furthermore, there is little reason to suppose that the U.S. will adhere to any formal agreement that is reached, so that subversion, economic pressures and the other measures available to a terrorist superpower are likely to continue, perhaps eliciting a Nicaraguan reaction that will violate the formal agreements and thus call forth still greater U.S. terror in retribution. A small and weak country facing a violent superpower that can operate with few constraints has quite limited options.

The extraordinary imbalance of forces and the subordination of the intellectual culture to the demands of power guarantee in other ways as well that the Arias plan, or any other like it, will target Nicaragua primarily. It has been critically important for the United States to “trump” any Contadora effort, because the Contadora nations, while subordinated to U.S. power, nevertheless constitute an element in world affairs with sufficient independence to be able to resist U.S. demands, to a limited but intolerable degree. If a peace agreement can be confined to the Central American states, the U.S. ability to dominate the process is considerably enhanced, because of its influence over the participants. In El Salvador, the government would collapse, as would the system of military and class privilege that it was instituted to protect, if it deviated too sharply from U.S. orders. Guatemala, another terrorist state, while not a mere creation of the U.S. government, is still highly dependent on it to preserve its own system of military and class domination. Honduras is barely more than a fiefdom, where the military and the wealthy can maintain their ability to rob the poor as long as they merit the support of the United States. Costa Rica, with a democratic tradition of 40 years, is a business-dominated society with a collapsing economy, unable to maintain the social welfare programs that underlie domestic tranquility or its relatively open internal order without substantial U.S. support. In short, these governments are highly dependent on the United States, and are dominated internally by elements that would naturally be hostile to any forces in the region that might undertake social reform in the interests of the poor majority. When the Reagan administration was weakened by the partial exposures of its clandestine terror network, the countries of Central America gained a margin of maneuver, and were able to move towards a settlement that might diminish the danger of expanding regional conflict. But the U.S. can safely count on them to focus attention on Nicaragua, in accordance with the elite consensus within the United States, when the time comes to evaluate the process of “internal democratization” or other aspects of adherence to any diplomatic settlement. There will be no question of sanctions against El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras for their failure to adhere to such an agreement.

We can hardly doubt that articulate opinion within the United States will adopt state doctrine on these matters. The failure of democratic reforms in the terrorist client states—indeed, the impossibility of such reforms without dismantling the security apparatus that bars any meaningful popular participation in the political system—will pass unnoticed, not tarnishing the success of “democracy.” As we shall see directly, the explicit refusal of Guatemala to accept the terms of the August Central American agreement that it signed was considered too insignificant even to report, and the meaningless gestures made by El Salvador in this direction barely received mention, just as heightened repression there after the agreements were signed was disregarded. The same pattern will surely persist. The U.S. government has determined that El Salvador is a “fledgling democracy,” as it is, by the Orwellian standards of U.S. discourse; this fact suffices for intellectual opinion, in the case of Guatemala and Honduras as well.

Or consider the crucial matter of freedom of expression. As we have seen, freedom of expression, while important, has limited consequences in Honduras or even Costa Rica, while in El Salvador and Guatemala, formal freedoms can easily be granted, with the understanding that as in the past, attempts to use such freedom will lead to mutilation, torture, disappearance or execution. In Nicaragua, however, the situation is radically different, for reasons already discussed. Radio and television in much of the country are dominated, even in wartime, by foreign broadcasting. In the early 1980s, La Prensa, which has little relation except in name to the journal that opposed Somoza, was the only significant opposition journal in the region; indeed in the hemisphere, if by “opposition journal” we mean one that takes a stand in opposition to the basic structure of the socioeconomic order and is open to critics of it, and if by “significant” we mean that resources are available to reach beyond narrow segments of the population. If true internal freedom were permitted in Nicaragua, as surely it should be, then the resources of the terrorist superpower, of the international business community, and of domestic economic privilege would ensure that the media are dominated by right-wing elements linked to U.S. interests, merely by the workings of the “free market of ideas” under existing conditions. Again, Nicaragua must bear a burden from which other states, which conform to the requirements of U.S. power and privilege, are entirely exempt, None of this implies that the burden should not be borne; only that we should not succumb to the system of delusion carefully erected in our own business-run partial democracy.

For such reasons as these, it is correct that any peace agreement among the Central American states will be largely restricted to Nicaragua, and only its adherence to an agreement, as determined by hostile power, will be a topic of concern.

Returning to the diplomatic maneuvers of 1987, in its continuing efforts to sabotage the Arias plan, the Reagan administration pressured Salvadoran president Duarte to block a scheduled June meeting of Central American presidents in Guatemala. A Guatemalan official reported that Reagan emissary Philip Habib, performing his usual role, was responsible for Duarte’s request for postponement of the meeting, and that Duarte “personally told Guatemala’s president the reason he asked for the postponement was because of US pressure.”19 Another meeting was scheduled for August 6, after preliminary discussions with the Contadora countries as intermediary; their intervention produced a version of the Arias plan for the presidential summit on August 6. The Reagan administration had assumed that it would succeed in blocking the Arias plan. Testifying before Congress on July 9, Philip Habib refused to consider the possibility, raised in questioning, that the plan might be approved by the Central American nations, answering simply that “It can’t happen.”20

In a last-ditch effort to undermine the Central American efforts, the Reagan administration produced its own “peace plan” on August 5, with the obvious intent of sabotaging the scheduled August 6 meeting of the Central American presidents and laying the basis for renewed contra aid. The Reagan plan, proposed jointly with Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright, was radically different from the Arias plan. As noted earlier (18f.), it imposed no conditions on U.S. allies and called for dismantling the political system in Nicaragua including the scheduled 1990 elections, and unilateral disarmament for Nicaragua, in return for a meaningless “pledge” that the U.S. would stop running the proxy army. The tactic worked in the United States, where the plan was taken quite seriously, but backfired dramatically in Central America. The presidents meeting in Guatemala signed an agreement modelled on the Arias plan, which “differs significantly” from the Reagan proposal, as elements of the media perceived.21 “The U.S. initiative provided the ‘glue’ to bring together the often-hostile Central Americans, said one Guatemalan diplomat” quoted in the Wall St. Journal: “I think it was an incredible tactical error on the part of the U.S.,” he added,22 undermining Washington’s effort to block a political settlement. In Guatemala City, the Central America Report commented that the U.S. initiative “aroused the nationalistic instincts of the Costa Rican and Guatemalan delegations,” which felt “insulted.” President Cerezo of Guatemala stated that “Nobody should fall into the trap of giving too much importance” to the Reagan plan, and President Arias “scratched a Honduran proposal to include the Reagan plan in the agenda” of the presidents’ meeting.23

In Europe, it was recognized at once that “Reagan’s hasty and bungled proposal bodes ill for a change in US policy in the region,” and that Central American countries “interpret it as a move to torpedo their own initiatives.” Washington correspondent Alex Brummer of the London Guardian expressed his surprise that the Reagan proposal was “treated with extreme deference in the [U.S.] media” immediately after the Iran-contra revelations: “It is quite startling that the Reagan plan, which has been seen as nothing more than a spoiler elsewhere in the world, has been so well greeted in the US.”24 Startling it may be, but not surprising in a terrorist culture, nor in any way unusual.

When the Reagan-Wright plan was proposed, there were questions about its seriousness, but George Shultz rejected them forcefully, stating “this is not a ploy” but rather a proposal that is “reasonable, sensible,” a further expression of the “refreshingly blunt candor” that entrances Congress and the media. A few days later, after the failure of this attempt to sabotage the Arias plan, administration officials made it clear that these assurances were lies. “White House officials concede,” the press reported, “that they drafted the Wright-Reagan plan with a focus on domestic political aims”—namely, to lay a basis for renewed contra aid after the anticipated Nicaraguan rejection of this impossible proposal—“rather than diplomacy, and that the approach backfired” when the Central American countries, rejecting the Reagan proposal, approved a version of the despised Arias plan. White House officials confirmed that they offered the Reagan-Wright plan “because they thought prospects for getting more aid for the Nicaraguan rebels, or contras, from Congress would improve if the Sandinistas refused to negotiate”—meaning, if they rejected the Reagan-Wright plan as was anticipated; “Aides said they also believed the announcement of the plan would confuse the meeting of Central American Presidents . . . in Guatemala two days later and probably scuttle their attempt to agree on a peace plan of their own that most Administration officials considered unacceptable.”25

Throughout these August 1987 events, the damage control operations proceeded, though considerable backtracking and some rather convoluted reasoning was necessary as the events developed. It was necessary to achieve several aims: (1) to ensure that the Central American plan is interpreted as essentially similar to the Reagan plan in focusing attention on “democratization” in Nicaragua alone; (2) to place the onus on Nicaragua for breakdown of the agreements, real or contrived; and (3) to craft a proper version of history. The approved version must be that U.S. pressures were the crucial factor in compelling the Sandinistas to agree to a political settlement—namely, one that they had tentatively approved while the Reagan administration sought in every way to undermine it; and generally, in compelling them to pursue the diplomatic options that they had been requesting for 6 years while the U.S. “trumped” these efforts at every turn. Given the unfortunate fact that the Central American presidents approved a diplomatic settlement that the Reagan administration desperately sought to sabotage, history must show that U.S. violence and the forthright Reagan-Wright plan were instrumental in bringing about this agreement. A difficult task, one might think, but not beyond the resources of the Free Press. It is instructive to pursue the process of historical engineering step by step through the first crucial weeks.

Stage one began when Washington announced the Reagan-Wright plan. As noted earlier, it was evidently impossible to perceive, even in the full glare of the Iran-contra hearings, that a Reagan pledge to cease aid to the contras in return for Nicaraguan demobilization is pure farce. Editorials interpreted the Reagan-Wright plan as “a fresh opportunity” for Managua to show good faith, adding that “Congress and the White House deserve credit for their effort to move the process forward” (Christian Science Monitor). Welcoming the proposal, the Times editors stated that with this effort to undermine the Arias plan, “the White House has made clearer its backing for the regional peace effort promoted by Costa Rica’s President, Oscar Arias”; they warned that Congress “has to be clear-eyed” and called on Washington “to keep the faith with all of Central America’s democrats—including the internal opposition in Nicaragua—in opposing thuggery from every quarter, Sandinista or contra.” “Every quarter” did not include Washington, in the “clear-eyed” vision of the editors.26

In the news columns, James LeMoyne stated that the Arias plan “shares the central intent of Mr. Reagan’s plan, which is to demand internal political changes in Nicaragua,” shading the facts in accord with Washington doctrine. He added that a “written interpretation” within the White House explained that Washington would not be required to cut off aid to the contras under the Reagan plan, “but would reduce it only in relation to the degree to which the Sandinistas permit the rebels to take part in Nicaraguan politics and society,” as judged in Washington, thus granting the U.S. the right to continue the war after Nicaraguan demobilization and disarmament, a small fact that escaped notice. LeMoyne reported further that all Central American participants in the conference “were gratified” by Reagan’s proposal, “except Nicaragua,” which “offered a far more hostile assessment,” risking isolation27; this claim was at once undermined when the Central American countries responded to the “incredible tactical error” of the Reagan administration by dismissing its proposal and endorsing, in effect, the “significantly different” Arias plan that Washington opposed, leaving Washington entirely isolated.

At the critical end of the spectrum, Tom Wicker expressed doubts about Reagan’s plan, noting that he “has been at least as reluctant a negotiator as anyone in Managua,” something of an understatement.28 But “the United States has no historic or God-given mission to bring democracy to other nations,” as Reagan is attempting to do according to state doctrine, taken as sacrosanct; and the threat of renewed aid to the contras if the Sandinistas do not accept Reagan’s proposal “is unlikely to cause them to make the demanded reforms” when they were “unwilling to make them” under military pressure, the assumption being that the military pressure was not a factor in the suspension of internal rights but rather was an effort to restore them, a curious reading of the historical record. At the other extreme, former Times executive editor A. M. Rosenthal was euphoric, calling upon those who “would rather have the war continue than see if the Reagan administration can possibly end it” to abandon their cynical ways and “give peace a chance.” He described the Reagan plan as “close to the plan that had been proposed by President Arias of Costa Rica . . . “ (admittedly, “with some exceptions”). Though the Reagan plan “could lead to a Sandinista double-cross about political freedom,” still this hope for a “decent solution” should “be taken with total seriousness.”29 Ronald Radosh was even more enthusiastic. The “Wright plan,” as he called it, is “the first major effort to end the Nicaraguan civil war”—translating from Newspeak: the first U.S. government effort, designed to fail as was quickly conceded and thus to perpetuate the U.S. attack against Nicaragua. “The major provisions of the proposal match and build on those suggested” by President Arias, he added, a transparent falsehood. The Wright plan “builds on [the] understanding” of the Nicaraguan opposition “that it is not the contra war that has forced the Sandinistas to resist democratization”; rather, “most Nicaraguans” know, so he has determined by careful study of Nicaraguan opinion, that it was Sandinista policies, “not the United States, that led to an increased armed opposition.” Other obiter dicta of a similar nature follow, always untroubled by fact.30

The Reagan effort having failed, the damage control operation had to shift to stage two. Noting that the peace plan signed by the Central American presidents was “significantly different” from the Reagan proposal and “closely follows” the Arias plan, James LeMoyne reported that its internal democratization provisions are “seen as particularly directed toward Nicaragua,” as indeed they are in Washington, therefore in the Free Press; evidently LeMoyne had forgotten his earlier insight that El Salvador and Guatemala can hardly accept amnesty, cease-fire “and permission for the rebels to form political parties and have access to the press.”31 “These provisions, if carried out by Nicaragua, would be a major concession by Sandinista officials, who have sharply limited political organization and press freedom in recent years,” LeMoyne continued, not mentioning the background, the state of civil liberties in the “fledgling democracies,” or the fact that international observers of the Nicaraguan elections of 1984 compared them quite favorably with those in El Salvador; in fact, the extensive evidence on this matter has been effectively suppressed by the New York Times, as elsewhere in the U.S. media. Crucially, LeMoyne does not mention that “these provisions” can hardly be carried out in El Salvador and Guatemala without dismantling the U.S.-backed apparatus of state terrorists. But all of this is beside the point for the two usual reasons: atrocities conducted by “our side” are not atrocities, but rather errors in a noble cause; and since it all happened yesterday, we may appeal to the doctrine of “change of course” if anyone should be so obtuse as to remark on these irrelevancies.

Others can perceive some possible problems apart from the “Marxist-Leninist totalitarians” in Managua. Asking “what chances does the regional consensus have,” the Central America Report in Guatemala City answers: “Much will depend on the ability to influence Honduras and El Salvador not to stray from the spirit of the agreement and the cooperation of the Democrats and liberals in Washington,” who have the task of keeping White House terrorists under some sort of control. Furthermore, as Guatemalan Defense Minister Héctor Gramajo announced at once, the agreement “does not apply to our country.” The rector of the Jesuit university in San Salvador commented a few weeks later that “Nicaragua will be the [country] most in compliance” with the peace plan and that others “may fail” to comply.32

Reactions in the U.S., however, followed a different course. Former Times chief editor A. M. Rosenthal denounced efforts to “destroy the contras, whose existence brought about the opportunity for negotiations,” an audacious version of history, but the one required, and therefore True, though transparently false for familiar reasons already discussed. Washington Post editor David Ignatius held that peace prospects “seemed to improve slightly following President Reagan’s proposal for a cease-fire and the adoption of a peace plan by leaders of five Central American countries.” In the real world, peace prospects declined with Reagan’s effort to undermine the negotiations in progress, and improved slightly after it was rejected, though U.S. opposition continued to make peace a remote prospect. For Ignatius, however, the problem for the future is not continuing U.S. opposition to a political settlement but rather establishing “a democratic Nicaragua”; that “is what the [contra] war has been all about,” so Washington doctrine stipulates, thus again establishing the claim. A reconciliation in Nicaragua will be difficult, he adds, because “both sides have blood on their hands”: namely, as he goes on to explain, many contra soldiers have been killed in battle and “the Sandinistas have similar tales and totals.” By the standards of the culture of terrorism, this is a fair accounting of the atrocities by “both sides.”33 One would perhaps find a similar accounting, with similar justice, in the literary productions of Abu Nidal.

The editors of the Washington Post noted “the hesitation in Mr. Reagan’s embrace of the Arias plan,” but urged that “he deserves some forbearance” for his courage in coming this far, “at no small cost to his standing with loyal constituents.” But “the main burden rests on the Sandinistas,” not the U.S. aggressors. The reason is that “Mr. Reagan has Congress keeping a wary eye on him,” monitoring his every act with the hawk-eyed vigilance exhibited so dramatically in past years: “The Sandinistas should have the whole hemisphere’s wary eyes on them.” No eyes need be cast upon client states, since their good faith in creating the conditions for democracy and eliminating internal repression can be taken for granted; or perhaps they will be monitored by Shultz, Abrams, and the Washington Post.34

The Wall St. Journal described the discomfiture in Washington after a version of the Arias plan was accepted in Guatemala City. The Reagan-Wright plan, two Journal reporters observe, was conceded to have been a fraud (after it had failed), intended to lay the basis for renewed contra aid when the Sandinistas rejected it. But damage control requires that we identify the Reagan plan with the Arias plan that Washington sought to undermine. Thus they continue: White House officials “concede privately that they never expected the Sandinistas to call Mr. Reagan’s bluff by participating in a peace plan that had the backing of other Central American countries.” This statement makes sense only on the assumption, here intimated, that the Reagan plan was the plan approved in Guatemala City by the Sandinistas, “calling Mr. Reagan’s bluff.” It would make no sense to say that the Sandinistas “called Mr. Reagan’s bluff” by signing a peace plan that he had vigorously opposed and struggled to undermine. In fact, the Central American countries rejected the Reagan effort to torpedo the negotiations and signed an agreement similar to the Arias plan, for which Nicaragua had indicated measured approval all along. The Journal also fails to note that accurately understood, the Reagan effort was simply a replay of 1984, when the Sandinistas did indeed “call Mr. Reagan’s bluff” by accepting the Contadora proposals.35

The Wall St. Journal reports further that

to convey what it considers the proper degree of skepticism at today’s session [of Latin American ambassadors convened by the State Department in Washington], the administration will give U.S. envoys a copy of the 1973 Paris Peace agreement that was negotiated to end the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The agreement was subsequently ignored by North Vietnam.

This “Vietnam experience” is one factor in administration “skepticism” about the Central American agreement, the Journal continued. This interesting farce was extended the following day in the lead story by Neil Lewis in the New York Times, discussing the meeting in Washington led by Elliott Abrams. Along with the obligatory falsehood that the Central American agreement “is principally focused on Nicaragua,” Lewis reports that copies of the 1973 Paris agreement were distributed to the envoys “as a case study of how an agreement with ambiguous provisions could be exploited and even ignored by a Communist government.” Lewis then adds his own gloss: “In violation of the 1973 accord, North Vietnam overran South Vietnam and united the two parts of Vietnam under its banner in 1975.36

In these news reports, we see illustrated the utility of a carefully crafted historical record, designed by the loyal media to serve the needs of state power. It was not quite correct to say, as I did earlier, that the Paris peace agreements of 1973 have been forgotten. It is only the facts that have been forgotten, or to be more accurate, suppressed from the very day the agreements were announced; the version provided by the state authorities is well-remembered, and was immediately invoked as part of the effort to undermine the Central American peace plan.

In the unlikely event that the envoys gathered by the State Department had taken the trouble to read the Paris Peace agreement in conjunction with the simultaneous pronouncements of Henry Kissinger and the White House, they would have made the enlightening discovery that the U.S. government announced at once, in the clearest and most unequivocal terms, that it would violate every major provision of the agreement and continue to try to attain its aims by force.

The Paris agreements committed “the United States and all other countries [to] respect the independence, sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of Vietnam as recognized by the 1954 Geneva agreements on Vietnam,” identifying the 17th parallel separating North and South Vietnam as a “provisional . . . military demarcation line” pending reunification of Vietnam by “peaceful means” and “without foreign interference.” In the South, the agreements recognized two parallel and equivalent “South Vietnamese parties,” the U.S.-backed GVN and the PRG, based on the NLF (National Liberation Front, “Viet Cong” in the terms of U.S. propaganda). These two parties were to achieve national reconciliation by peaceful means under conditions of full civil liberties while “Foreign countries shall not impose any political tendency or personality on the South Vietnamese people” and “the United States will not continue its military involvement or intervene in the internal affairs of South Vietnam.” The two South Vietnamese parties will settle “The question of Vietnamese armed forces in South Vietnam . . . without foreign interference,” and the U.S. is barred from introducing advisers, technicians, or war material into South Vietnam and must withdraw all such personnel within 60 days.

These are the essential terms of the Paris Accords. Turning to Washington, Kissinger and the White House announced before the ink was dry that they were rejecting the agreements they had signed in every critical respect, and they did so with complete clarity and forthrightness. Washington announced that it would maintain the right to provide “civilian technicians serving in certain of the military branches,” and proceeded to keep or introduce 7,200 of them, including “retired” military men under the supervision of a U.S. Major-General, thus nullifying the provisions on U.S. personnel. More significantly, the U.S. announced that it would continue to regard the GVN as the “sole legitimate government in South Vietnam”—thus nullifying the central provision of the agreement—with “its constitutional structure and leadership intact and unchanged”; this “constitutional structure” happened to outlaw the second of the two parallel and equivalent parties along with “pro-communist neutralism” and any form of expression “aimed to spreading Communist policies, slogans and instructions,” and the GVN, with U.S. backing, announced that such “illegal” activities would be suppressed by force, as they were, thereby nullifying what remained of the agreements.

In short, the U.S. announced at once that it intended to disregard every essential provision of the scrap of paper it had been compelled to sign in Paris after the Christmas B-52 bombings of Hanoi and Haiphong had failed to force North Vietnam to sue for peace on American terms. These terror bombings were undertaken in a final effort to compel Hanoi to abandon the October 1972 agreement that the United States had rejected after indicating its acceptance. The January 1973 Accords reinstated the essential provisions of the October agreements, in fact those of NLF proposals from over a decade earlier, which Washington had undermined by violence for the usual reasons of political weakness. But all of this was beside the point, given the instant announcement that Washington did not have the slightest intention of adhering to the agreements that it could no longer evade.

Had the envoys reviewed the record of what transpired next, they would have discovered that the U.S. government proceeded to implement its clearly stated intentions at once, in explicit violation of the clear and unambiguous terms of the Paris agreements it had just signed. In public and in congressional testimony, U.S. officials expressed the administration’s pleasure in the early successes of the resort to violence by its South Vietnamese clients, with U.S. backing, to eliminate any possibility that the actual terms of the accords might be realized. The media, including the most outspoken doves, adopted the administration statement of intent as the actual terms of the agreement, thus guaranteeing that U.S. violations would proceed with impunity and that the inevitable response by the Vietnamese enemy would be interpreted as yet another proof of Communist iniquity.37 This remarkable display of media servility laid the basis for the renewal of the war as U.S.-backed violence elicited the predictable response after the attempt of the hated enemy to observe the agreements proved hopeless, and also laid the basis for the interpretation of “the Vietnam experience” now conveniently invoked as the U.S. considers how best to undermine the unwanted peace plan proposed by the Central American states.

It would take little effort for journalists and others to convince themselves that these are the essential facts of the matter, but such independence of mind is next to inconceivable in a highly conformist intellectual culture.38

We may, incidentally, feel confident that the fanciful tales spun to conceal the meaning of the Central American agreement will be exploited in some future effort to justify the use of violence by the state managers.

Outside of the media, others too dedicated themselves to establishing the version of the Central American accord dictated by Washington. New York Mayor Edward Koch announced that “he had been asked by an independent committee made up of Americans to observe the implementing of the five-nation Central American peace plan,” and would therefore lead a delegation to Nicaragua to monitor its compliance with the accord. They will undoubtedly find violations, though nothing comparable to what an honest investigation would quickly reveal in the “fledgling democracies,” which are beyond the scope of the narrowly and precisely focused libertarian concerns called into operation by the state authorities. The “independent committee” is not identified, apart from one member, Charles Robb, “a member of Freedom House, a nonprofit organization devoted to encouraging democracy around the world.” Further inquiry suggests that Freedom House is sponsoring this effort to monitor Nicaragua’s compliance with the accord, that being the only serious issue, as stipulated by the state. In the press, it is a “fact” that Freedom House is “devoted to encouraging democracy around the world”; it is so regarded by the state and elite opinion, so that no verification is necessary. Investigation would quickly show that the Freedom House conception of “democracy” conforms very well to official demands, as does their conception of the ways a Free Press should be mobilized in the service of state power.39

In a classic of state propaganda disguised as “news” James LeMoyne reviewed the Central American agreement, modifying it to correspond to the Reagan proposal that was rejected. Again adopting Washington doctrine, he states that though the treaty is “regional in scope,” “there is no doubt that its main provisions are principally directed at Nicaragua and will affect Nicaragua more than any of the other nations that signed the accord”—true, of course, under the conditions of media obedience discussed earlier, but this is presumably not LeMoyne’s point. The agreement, he continues, requires that the Sandinistas “agree to stop running the country like a one-party revolutionary socialist state” and replace their “Cuban-style Marxism” by “a kind of Mexican one-party state” (quoting an unnamed “diplomat”). Putting aside the accuracy of the characterization, observe how easily, with a mere stroke of the pen, we dismiss the problem of dismantling the reigning security systems that make any talk of “internal democracy” mere black humor in the U.S. client states.

Even with this convenient interpretation, LeMoyne’s “news report” still perceives problems in the Central American plan. “One major issue the treaty does not cover is security concerns.” One example is mentioned: “Soviet military aid” to Nicaragua, which apparently has no security concerns in the shadow of the “enforcer,” just as U.S. military aid to its clients raises no security concerns for anyone in the region— peasants in the Salvadoran hills, for example. Another problem is that the Salvadoran guerrillas “have repeatedly refused” Duarte’s “appeal that they give up their guns, form political parties and run in elections”—thus presenting themselves as a sacrificial offering to the security forces, who will gladly slaughter them as in the past, if the need arises, a prospect that is not a problem. LeMoyne quotes Salvadoran and Honduran officials along with Western diplomats (probably from the U.S. Embassy) and Costa Rican officials who are permitted to discourse on why “Nicaragua had agreed to the treaty.” To provide appropriate balance, one Nicaraguan is also quoted: rebel leader Pedro Joaquín Chamorro, who vows to continue the fight until he perceives “an irreversible track to democracy in Nicaragua”—in his sense of democracy, which, as we have seen (chapter 6), excludes the Sandinistas from participation.40

On the same day, Canada’s counterpart to the New York Times also reviewed the Central American agreements. The article quotes “regional political analysts” on Reagan’s “flagging prestige” as revealed by the fact that the Central American presidents “pointedly refused to discuss a proposal made by Mr. Reagan just before the summit.” Observers and participants generally “left no doubt they saw the meeting as a rebuff to the United States and a milestone of independent decision in an area Washington has long considered its backyard.” Latin American “officials speaking privately often express irritation over what they see as U.S. indifference and arrogance,” and this case was no exception, with the conservative Guatemalan press joining in with the conclusion that “the summit had damaged Mr. Reagan’s image.”41

A few days later the contra leadership announced that they would maintain their military apparatus intact and reserve the right to continue to receive weapons until there was “a genuine guarantee of lasting freedom of expression and political organization” in Nicaragua, by their standards, and demanded direct negotiations with the Sandinistas while remaining a foreign-supplied military force. Whatever one thinks of this decision, it amounts to a rejection of the regional peace treaty, which assigns no role to nongovernmental armed forces and calls for their dissolution. It was therefore reported under the headline “Nicaragua Rebels Pledge to Accept Latin Peace Plan,” namely, the one they had just announced that they would reject.42 As part of its pretense that the proxy army has the status of an indigenous force, Washington interprets the agreement as requiring negotiations between the Nicaraguan government and the contra civilian front established by the Reagan administration. This version goes well beyond the text, but if history is a guide, we may expect it to prevail.

The contra leaders proceeded to ask “President Reagan to seek Congressional approval for renewed military and non-lethal aid for the contras, but to hold the military aid in escrow unless the Nicaraguan Government fails to comply with terms of a peace plan now being negotiated,” as determined in Washington and Miami. They reported that they had “enough money and material in the pipeline to sustain them during the five weeks after the authorization to fund them expires,” until the proposed November cease-fire43; other reports indicate that their supplies would last well beyond, and there is little reason to doubt that the U.S. government will provide further military support, if it so chooses, in one or another way. Contra leader Pedro Joaquín Chamorro travelled to Montevideo, Uruguay, in early September at the invitation of CAUSA, a branch of Reverend Moon’s Unification Church which, as reported by the Uruguayan media, “is a terrorist organization whose South American headquarters are apparently based in Montevideo.” Chamorro “came to solicit his host’s ‘humanitarian and military’ aid for [the] contra cause.”44

Meanwhile killing of civilians continued. Immediately after the “acceptance” of the peace plan, an ambush of a civilian vehicle by the “sons of Reagan” in northern Jinotega province killed 5 employees of the Agrarian Reform Ministry, wounding two others, barely reported and eliciting no comment. The New York Times chose to ignore the story, preferring speculations by its Managua correspondent as to whether Nicaragua would live up to its promises. No articles appeared datelined Washington speculating on the likelihood that the U.S. would suddenly begin to adhere to agreements and international law, nor were there articles datelined New York speculating on the possibility that the world’s greatest newspaper, in an equally startling reversal, would monitor Washington’s ongoing behavior, thus accepting, for the first time in its history, the most elementary obligation of a free press. A formal protest by Foreign Minister Miguel D’Escoto to George Shultz was also ignored in the Newspaper of Record.45

The government of Nicaragua at once “endorsed the [Central American] proposal energetically,” stating that “it was prepared to lift a state of emergency, restore full press and political freedoms and allow former rebel leaders to return to the country and engage in open political activity” if the U.S. ends contra aid, and went “beyond the letter of the peace agreement” by announcing “Nicaragua’s intention to remove all foreign military advisers from the country,” a matter not touched upon in the agreements. The government also arranged public meetings with the opposition and Cardinal Obando to form the National Reconciliation Commission called for in the agreement.46

The Guatemala agreement had specified that each of the five Central American countries should establish such a Commission to ensure compliance with democratization and other conditions. The Commission was to consist of a government official, a prominent private citizen, a Bishop, and an opposition figure, the latter two selected by the government from lists provided by the Church and the opposition parties. On August 25, Nicaragua became the first country to abide by this agreement, selecting Vice-President Sergio Ramírez, Gustavo Parajón (president of the Judicial and Human Rights Commission set up by Protestant churches), Cardinal Obando, and Mauricio Díaz of the Popular Social Christian Party, who “votes regularly against the Sandinista National Liberation Front in the National Assembly,” and whose party “has criticized Sandinista policies on the economy, education, and relations with the Roman Catholic Church.” Cardinal Obando, the most prominent and outspoken opponent of the Sandinistas, was named president of the Commission.47

It would be difficult to imagine a more forthcoming fulfilment of the agreement. Accordingly, the U.S. government at once denounced the Sandinistas for having “stacked the council in their favor,” thus proving that they are “only paying lip service to the Latin American peace accord,” a charge prominently displayed. The fate of the Commissions elsewhere remained undiscussed.48

Two weeks later, on Sept. 7, President Duarte established the Commission in El Salvador. The Commission contains no critics of the regime apart from the right-wing opposition. The “prominent citizen” selected was ex-President Alvaro Magaña, “the conservative banker the Salvadoran military proposed as president in 1982 when the U.S. vetoed death-squad leader Roberto D’Aubuisson,” Chris Norton observes. Magaña was selected to be president of the Commission, and a conservative Bishop was named Commission secretary. The other members were the head of the rightist Arena Party and the secretary-general of the Christian Democratic Party. Norton continues:

Diplomats interviewed here [in San Salvador] say that in contrast to Nicaragua’s commission—to which the government named a principal opponent—the Salvadorean commission has no such figure. “They’re all sympathizers of the right and the military,” a Latin American ambassador says. “With this panel Duarte has closed the political spaces for dialogue.”49

The signing of the agreement was also followed by a wave of repression to which we return, arousing no comment here.

The contrast to the appointment of the Nicaraguan Commission is striking in two respects: (1) while the Nicaraguan Commission was headed by the most outspoken critic of the regime and was broadly based, the Salvadoran Commission was restricted to the center-right and headed by the U.S. candidate for president; (2) while the appointment of the Nicaraguan Commission elicited an immediate outburst of abuse against the treacherous Sandinistas, Duarte’s moves passed in silence, not suggesting that Duarte is failing to live up to the spirit of reconciliation and only paying lip service to the Central American accord.

The same comparison holds with regard to the other “fledgling democracies.” The announcement by the Guatemalan military, the effective rulers, that Guatemala was not subject to the agreements appears to have passed with no notice. The same was true of the announcement by Honduras that “it considered itself exempt from a provision in the Arias peace plan to establish a National Reconciliation Commission,” on the grounds that “there are no internal rifts or Nicaraguan contra camps in the country,” and plainly no problems of internal democratization or free elections for such a Commission to pursue in accordance with its mandate.50 Furthermore, Honduras has given no indication that it intends to live up to the terms of the agreements by dismantling the bases on its territory from which the contra armies operate and that are used to supply them by air drops, nor could it do so even if it chose, given the realities of force in the region as determined in Washington. Guatemala did proceed to establish a Commission on September 9, selecting the Vice-President, the leader of the Conservative Party, a Bishop, and as private sector delegate, the co-owner of the most rightist newspaper in the country, reputed to have been a personal friend of General Ríos Montt, perhaps the most extreme of the recent batch of mass murderers. The government did not appoint Guatemala City Archbishop Prospero Penados del Barrio, “a highly regarded and ardent critic of human rights violations.”51 The Commission of Reconciliation, then, will deal with problems arising within the spectrum from ultra-right to center-right, in the most violent country of the region, the one with the longest-running guerrilla struggle. All of this too appears to have passed without notice. As U.S. allies or outright clients, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are exempt from the conditions of any agreement they might sign, which the U.S. government will ensure is “directed at Nicaragua” (James LeMoyne).

As always, the state establishes its priorities, the intellectual culture, with the rarest of exceptions, takes its cues and obeys.

In subsequent weeks, Nicaragua took a series of steps towards meeting the conditions of the agreements on internal freedoms, for example, permitting the pro-contra journal La Prensa to reopen. No detectable steps were taken elsewhere. Thus in El Salvador, no one suggested permitting La Crónica and El Independiente to open, and indeed, such a proposal would be absurd, since there is every reason to suppose that an attempt to create an independent press would, once again, call out the death squads run by the U.S.-backed security services, at least if it began to have any substantial outreach—in accordance with the usual interpretation of the “clear and present danger” concept of free speech, within U.S. dependencies. No steps were taken in either of the two U.S.-backed terror states to create conditions under which journalists would be permitted to speak their minds without fear of state terror. No openings were developed in Honduras or Costa Rica for dissident media, but then, the problem of free expression is handled here, as in the United States, by the exigencies of the market, where media corporations that deliver audiences to advertisers have the resources to control the information system, along with other means deriving from the distribution of wealth and effective power.

Discourse on these matters continued to pursue predictable lines. The optimists believe that “even the Nicaraguan government is willing to comply with the peace plan.”52 The pessimists are skeptical of the intentions of the Marxist-Leninist totalitarians. Like President Arias, liberal opinion in the United States wants to see a business-run capitalist democracy in Nicaragua, and has only limited concerns with the terror states since they meet the primary condition: they respect the rights of the privileged and are dedicated to the Fifth Freedom. Arias does note that “social injustice and exploitation of the many by the few” poses a problem in Central America, but “obtaining democracy in Nicaragua is the key to ‘durable peace’ in the region, Arias says.”53 Articulate opinion within the United States agrees, across the very narrow spectrum. Democracy already exists in the Orwellian sense in the other signatory states, though further improvements would be nice. If we could bring ourselves to attend to such trivialities, we would be happier if fewer people were starving in Honduras or surviving in military-run concentration camps in Guatemala; and liberals, at least, hope that it may some day be possible to escape the ever-present fear of torture and assassination in El Salvador. But these are distinctly lesser problems, as long as wealth and privilege are secured and U.S. domination is not threatened. The framework of news reporting and discussion is therefore understandable, and it is not difficult to predict its future course.

President Duarte welcomed the leaders of the U.S. proxy army to San Salvador and consulted with them, eliciting no comment. A similar public meeting between President Ortega and the civilian leadership associated with the guerrillas in El Salvador might have fared differently in the media. Similarly, President Ortega’s announcement “that, like 100 other leaders around the world, he has accepted an invitation to sit in the stands at the 70th celebration of the Russian revolution this November in Moscow,” aroused predictable outrage at this further proof that he is merely an agent of the USSR. Less was heard about the Honduran delegation sent to Moscow in Sept. 1987 “to discuss the possibility of opening more export markets in the Eastern European Bloc.”54

President Reagan announced at once “that he would continue to support the rebels, and may seek additional military aid to tide over rebel soldiers until the Sandinistas had demonstrated good faith by carrying out internal changes,” as determined in Washington, “a move that would kill the peace plan,” Nicaragua observed. To further underscore its rejection of the plan, the Reagan administration announced that it “has decided that a regional peace plan for Central America cannot work unless the United States provides long-term support for the rebels in Nicaragua, perhaps even months after a cease fire”; “We want to try and work with [the Central American plan] and we are not against it,” a senior official stated while announcing this clear intent to subvert the agreement: “If any of them think we are trying to subvert the agreement it is crucial they understand we are not,” he added.55 The device is the familiar one: reject the peace agreement while offering an interpretation diametrically opposed to it in the expectation that it will be adopted within the ideological institutions, thus nullifying the actual agreements and placing on the enemy the onus for the eventual failure that the U.S. is working to ensure. In short, the model that was employed with perfection in January 1973, though it is difficult to imagine that that triumph will be fully reenacted.

The White House announced further that it continues to regard the Reagan-Wright plan as “the operative agreement,” while characterizing the Guatemala plan as “more a preliminary agreement than a final peace treaty” (Elliott Abrams), and adding that the U.S. reserves the right to modify it in accord with its own goals. Democratic congressional leaders made it clear that they would permit the administration to continue to use contra aid funds appropriated for the year ending September 30 after that date, though the administration has no “legal authority” to do so,56 thus doing what they can to ensure that the war will continue and that the Central American peace agreement will fail.

Pursuing its efforts to “trump” this latest attempt at a peaceful settlement, the Reagan administration sent point man George Shultz to the Senate on September 10 to announce a request for renewed aid to the contras. To make absolutely clear the administration intent to sabotage the Central American accord if possible, the new request called for a substantial increase over the preceding year, $270 million extending over l8 months, hence into the next administration; the request is calculated at a rate of $180 million per year, up from the current $100 million. Shultz announced, with his usual candor, that “This president will not stand idly by—this Secretary of State will not stand by—and permit countries as near to our borders as Nicaragua to become a place from which the Soviet Union and its allies can militarily threaten our friends or our country’s national security.” Therefore we must provide even more lavish funding than before to maintain the proxy army, which will collapse without extensive support from the Godfather, since unlike guerrilla forces, it has been able to establish no self-sustaining base within Nicaragua. An unstated feature of the Shultz proposal is to shift the spectrum of the discussion to the right and to lay a basis for blaming the cowards and Comsymps who refuse to go along for whatever problems arise in the subsequent period; and there are sure to be many, considering the terrible situation in the region, even if by some miracle the U.S. were to live up to a political agreement, violating well-established precedent.

Shultz informed the Senate “that peace negotiations under way in the region would not succeed unless the United States continued to support the rebels trying to topple the Soviet-backed Government of Nicaragua,” the New York Times observed, failing to add that the accord signed by the Central American presidents calls upon “the Governments of the region, and the extra-regional governments which openly or covertly provide military, logistical, financial, propagandistic aid in manpower, armaments, munitions and equipment to irregular forces or insurrectionist movements to cease this aid, as an indispensable element for achieving a stable and lasting peace in the region.”57

In short, the Reagan administration request is in explicit violation of the indispensable condition for peace, formulated as a central feature of the accord. It could not be more clear and explicit that George Shultz is calling upon Congress to join him in ensuring that the political settlement will founder, so that the U.S. may proceed in the preferred course of violence. The familiar record replays.

One might also observe that the indispensable condition for peace need hardly have been written into the peace agreements. For the United States to organize attacks against Nicaragua from the Honduran bases it has established for its proxy army is already a violation of international law, and the World Court had already ordered the United States to desist from these illegal actions. The Central American agreements do not have a higher status than international law or the decisions of the World Court, for which the United States has already shown its utter contempt with the support of elite opinion; and these agreements, to which the United States is not a signatory, are not more binding on the United States than its solemn commitments to international law and the decisions of the World Court. Thus if the U.S. government chooses to observe the requirements of the Central American agreements, this will simply be a matter of expedience, resulting from the perceived cost of failing to do so, a fact that might be borne in mind by the domestic population in the United States, the only force that can impose these costs.

On September 17, Congress turned down the request for an immediate increase in military support for the proxy army, choosing instead to provide several million dollars in “humanitarian” aid—while acknowledging that there are substantial unspent funds in the contra pipeline (and, as usual, disregarding the fact that the administration will use the “humanitarian” aid for any purpose it wishes, and will persist in funding its mercenary forces in other ways, if it so chooses). House Speaker Jim Wright explained that Democrats “don’t want to cut off food and medicine. They’re not that cruel or heartless or foolish.”58

The important word is “foolish”; Democrats understand very well what the political consequences would be of refusing to provide “humanitarian” aid for the contra forces maintained in Nicaragua by regular air drops, which will evidently have to continue, in violation of any reasonable interpretation of the Central American agreements or of Nicaraguan sovereignty, just as the Honduran contra bases will have to remain intact. Apart from what this implies about observance of the agreements, the threat of renewed attack at the discretion of the United States thus remains operative, with the consequence that Nicaragua must remain mobilized for war, We can test whether Democrats are not “cruel or heartless,” as alleged, by asking whether they also pass legislation providing food and medicine for the victims of U.S. atrocities, or whether they persist in following meekly behind the White House, which not only manages the atrocities but maintains an embargo that has had very serious effects on living standards and health care in Nicaragua. The conclusion is that the Democrats remain “cruel and heartless,” though not “foolish.” The frank acknowledgement on all sides that the contra forces cannot survive without U.S.-provided aid again expresses their understanding that these are not authentic guerrilla forces, but a foreign-directed mercenary army with no viable social base; no one is proposing that for humanitarian reasons, food and medicine be provided to the Salvadoran guerrillas—who are, at the very least, as deserving as the contras—to enable them to survive during a cease-fire. Another topic off the agenda in the terrorist superpower is any inquiry into how the Salvadoran guerrillas manage to survive, and what is the basis for their popular support.59

Henry Kissinger chimed in with an endorsement of the Reagan-Shultz plan to undermine the peace agreements, perhaps chuckling quietly over his success in doing the same in 1973, with the loyal media in tow. “Both sides of our domestic debate should have an interest in” military aid to the contras, he explained: “Congress should vote contra aid for an 18-month period on the present scale [that is, at the rate of $100 million annually] to permit a new Administration to set its own policies and to avoid having an issue of fundamental national consequence overwhelmed by the politics of an election year.” Note the typical fear that with the heightened attention of the public during an election year, the domestic enemy might have an unwanted influence on the decisions of the state managers. With the grasp of history for which he is famous, Kissinger denounced opponents of contra aid, who “have refused to accept the reality that without the contras there would not have been any movement on the negotiating front”; the facts of the matter, we have already reviewed. Contra lobbyist Penn Kemble, identified as president of the National Council of PRODEMCA, “a nonpartisan citizens’ education group that supports democratic development in Central America” (in translation: a state-subsidized group that backs the use of terror to prevent any threat of meaningful democracy in Central America), added his recommendations. To ensure the success of the peace plan, “thousands of democrats from other countries” should converge on Managua on November 7 to support returning “resistance leaders” in a public demonstration; no “democrats” need converge on other capitals, because Nicaragua “is surrounded by democratic states”: Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala come to mind. Furthermore, “The United States must find the means to keep the resistance forces intact, and inside Nicaragua,” meaning that the U.S. must continue its daily flights of military and “humanitarian” aid to the “resistance” in explicit violation of the peace agreement that we will support with a demonstration in Managua. The co-author of the memorandum cited earlier calling on the U.S. government to find some way to create a popular base in Nicaragua for its “proxy army,” a realist, understands that the “resistance” cannot survive without such regular and massive external assistance, in contrast to indigenous guerrilla forces with a popular base, as in the “democracies” of the region.60

In a further effort to elicit a hostile reaction from Nicaragua that could be exploited by the propaganda machine, the U.S. government sent Secretary of Education William Bennett to Managua, where he gave a news conference and delivered a public lecture before an audience of 700 people, most of them from the political opposition, in which he denounced Nicaragua as a despotic tyranny, stating that there would never be freedom in Nicaragua as long as the Sandinistas were in power; announced that “We will support the Contras, we will not abandon the Contras”; and described the contras as “brave men and women” who “fight to secure the blessings of liberty,” comparing them with the American patriots who produced the U.S. Constitution, which he lauded in this bicentennial celebration. U.S. Embassy officials kept Bennett from a meeting at the opposition Social Christian Party headquarters because a group of some 40 people were outside, including wounded war veterans, in a peaceful demonstration in which “they were chanting, ‘We only want peace, Mr. Bennett, not war’,” according to Bennett’s aide. “We didn’t want a situation in which Sandinista television stations would show the secretary walking past all those war wounded with their stumps and bandaged limbs,” a U.S Embassy official told reporters. The U.S. lodged an official complaint with Nicaragua over this incident. Unfortunately, however, despite the deliberate provocation, there was no harsh response from Nicaragua. The U.S. conceded that no barriers were raised to Bennett’s trip or public lecture, which was front page news in the Nicaraguan press, and the only response was a statement by Foreign Minister Miguel D’Escoto that “It’s a sadly typical North American attitude that Nicaragua has known throughout its history. It’s a superior, disrespectful characteristic of this superpower government.”61

Secretary Bennett was overflowing with self-adulation about the glories of America and its Constitution as he courageously denounced the Sandinista tyrants in their lair. He also gave a judicious appraisal after his one day visit, informing reporters that he had discovered that the Sandinista government has little popular support, but has not yet become “a Marxist-Leninist totalitarian state,” though it is well on the way. He did not speculate on what the reaction would have been in the United States, Israel, or other countries that rank high in his esteem to a comparable visit by a spokesman for a hostile power conducting terrorist attacks against the country, making comparable public statements; naturally, for such a visit never would have been permitted in the first place. Nor, according to reports, did this distinguished educator, philosopher, and student of the Constitution include in his patriotic rhetoric any conclusions about how we would react today to a Third World revolution that adopted the practices followed by the Founding Fathers and their descendants, endorsing literal human slavery, organizing genocidal destruction of the native population, disenfranchising males without property, women (for a mere 130 years), and people of the wrong color (for a mere 180 years), and so on—bearing in mind that the American colonies were probably the richest area of the world, and even in absolute terms surpass most of the Third World today in crucial respects. Such thoughts would plainly be inappropriate while denouncing one’s victims from on high, just as they are at home.

Secretary Bennett observed that there was “nothing overly coy or subtle” about the decision to send him to Nicaragua, where the freedoms protected by the U.S. Constitution “do not obtain,” he proclaimed loftily. Bennett was the only Cabinet member to travel overseas on a presidential mission to mark the anniversary of the Constitution, from which we are to conclude, presumably, that elsewhere the freedoms protected by the U.S. Constitution do obtain, just as we are to assume that they did obtain for dissidents during World War I, Japanese-Americans during World War II, Blacks in Mississippi—to mention a few of innumerable examples during years when the national territory was under no threat.

On the same day that Shultz announced Washington’s intentions to disrupt the Central American agreements, the Reagan administration again signalled its displeasure with the errant Costa Rican President who had violated his trust by attempting to pursue a diplomatic settlement. The White House “rejected plans for President Arias of Costa Rica to make a formal speech to a joint meeting of Congress” in late September 1987, as proposed by House Speaker Jim Wright, so that he “will instead deliver more informal remarks to a gathering of legislators, Capitol Hill sources said yesterday.”62

The President followed with a warning that the Central American peace plan is “fatally flawed”; he “said he believed the requirement that the United States end aid to contras while letting the Nicaraguans still receive aid from the Soviet Union was a fatal flaw, and ‘a loophole that the Sandinistas could take advantage of’.”63 This “loophole” could be closed by permitting Nicaragua some other means for self-defense against a terrorist superpower, but that insight appears to be beyond the resources of the Free Press.

Elliott Abrams elaborated further “that the peace plan can be salvaged but only if it is changed to ban Soviet and Cuban aid to Nicaragua,” so that the economy, now thankfully ruined by the U.S. assault, will completely collapse, and the country will be defenseless against further U.S. attack; U.S. aid to its clients may persist, however, and U.S. power can continue to be effectively used to ensure that Nicaragua has no other source of support. The leading democrat, Arturo Cruz, went a step further, expressing his hope “that internationalists and solidarity groups stop meddling in Nicaragua.” It is important to prevent a Ben Linder from setting up a tiny generator in a remote and impoverished village lacking electricity, and to keep Americans from learning first-hand about a country that their government seeks to destroy. Cruz is not on record as opposing hiring of Israeli mercenaries by “the sons of Reagan” at $10,000 per month, even more than he received from the CIA and Ollie North for his services as front man, or as condemning other U.S. and foreign volunteers for the “freedom fighters”; and “internationalists” who visit Israel to do volunteer work on state-subsidized militarized collectives (from which the non-Jewish citizens of the state are effectively barred) have aroused no visible protest. Nor does the president of Democratic Action for Nicaragua raise objections to U.S. government projects, bringing their form of development to countries of the region. It is only when citizens seek to act on their own that the official “democrats” become concerned; when they are following the orders of higher authorities, all is well.64

In a radio speech, Reagan emphasized that “there should be no uncertainty of our unswerving commitment to the contras” in their battle against what the reporter terms “the Moscow-backed Government in Nicaragua,” failing to remind us why it is “Moscow-backed.”65 Thus the U.S. government again announced its intention to reject the “indispensable element for achieving a stable and lasting peace in the region,” and to persist in the unlawful use of force. And if “the negotiations fall apart” for some unidentified reason, as the reporter puts it, those who did not actively support U.S. international terrorism will bear the burden for the failure. This is a crucial requirement, laying the groundwork for future U.S. violence “in defense of freedom.”

And so the travail of Central America moves on to its next phase.66