Intervention in Central America - 29 July 1983

In this pitiless continental heatwave which has made scores of great cities sizzle under hideous temperatures, has killed off hundreds of thousands of chickens and herds of cattle and literally cooked and rotted on the ground millions of acres of Indian corn, not to mention killing off about 180 humans, it was not to be wondered at that there have been no vast parades of protestors, no obvious arousal of the people on any national issue.

I almost mentioned last week the extraordinary indifference of the newspapers to the first announcement that within the next few weeks, impressive United States naval and marine manoeuvres will be underway in the trouble zone of Central America of both the Caribbean and the Pacific coasts.

This was reported, of course, but in single-column stories as we should report last year's or next year's routine manoeuvres in any ocean. However, as the president insistently asks for money to support the governments of El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and finds the Congress cutting his requests by about two-thirds, and as for Central American governments, Mexico, Columbia, Panama and Venezuela plead with Washington to join them in some unspecified negotiated settlement, most of all as the declared Marxist revolutionary government of Nicaragua appears to be standing its ground against the guerillas trained and aided by the United States. The president has certainly succeeded in getting one point across to the Congress and the people, which is that much of Central America is in ferment and that if the government of El Salvador, which the United States supports, fell and the revolutionary government of Nicaragua, which it does not support, triumphs then most of their neighbours would probably be ripe for revolution.

That's about as far as the so-called consensus goes as much as everybody agrees on. There's no general agreement what to do about it. A minority in the White House, the Pentagon and in Congress would like to give vastly more economic aid and considerably more military aid, by way of training and arms, to uphold El Salvador and to bring down the government of Nicaragua.

Outside this minority, there is not one opposing view, there are several, some in opposition to each other. Most of the Senate and the House of Representatives, it's safe to say, are either weary or scared. They're weary about any further military or surrogate military moves by the United States which might find this country backing into a war in the Caribbean. They're scared of their constituents, for the polls began a few months ago by showing that barely 40% of Americans could untangle the identities of the El Salvadorian good guys and the Nicaraguan bad guys, simply couldn't say what was going on. But suddenly now, with no evidence that more people understand or have thought through a Central American policy, the people back home are letting their Congressmen know that whatever seems to be at stake, they didn't bring up their boy to be a soldier. A small, but vocal, minority wants the United States to abandon the belligerent countries of Central America as none of America's business.

I hesitate to say how the Democrats feel because as the opposition they're bound to oppose the president and deplore almost any move he makes as a step towards war. But you have to bring in the body of the Democrats who are in a majority in the house, and a powerful minority in the Senate, because they are the ones who are busiest with warnings of how American technical advisors in Vietnam grew almost in visibly into American fighting men in the end half a million strong.

But while as the president insists the whole American operation in Central America may bear no resemblance to the situation in Vietnam, what the Vietnam experience did in the long run was to remind the Congress – and to keep the memory green – that a declaration of war is no part of the president's function or constitutional power, it rests solely with the Congress.

And there are, in addition to the Democrats, plenty of Republicans who feel the same way, who are determined that while they are in Washington, United States forces will not again respond as they did in the Gulf of Tonkin, as they did in Vietnam to a presidential order, so that too late to do anything about it, Congress found that its exclusive war-making power had been sidestepped.

You can see why and how President Reagan feels hideously frustrated. He's all too well aware of the strong feeling throughout the country against any overt involvement of American forces in the Caribbean. The president, of course, must know things that we and Congress do not know about the extent of the Soviet and Cuban and PLO involvement by way of arms and men. If, as he appears to believe in all sincerity, the plight of El Salvador and the endurance of the Nicaraguan government do represent a positive threat to the security of the United States, then surely he should recognise that the United States may have to fight for it, but the mood of the country, quite apart from the intelligence of its Congress, is against such a recognition.

The other evening, in a 35-minute press conference, only two questions were put to him that did not have to do with Central America. He was figuratively pinned to the wall by a volley of questions that were not so much questions as charges, suspicions, accusations. He protested at what he called a constant drumbeat of suspicion sounded by the press. He was pressed to say whether he meant to increase the number of advisors in El Salvador, he was asked if the despatch of our military might to the region was anyway to show that we oppose force. Wasn't there in these pending manoeuvres a contradiction, wouldn't this be a good time not to risk misunderstanding or provocation and cancel the manoeuvres?

I was surprised that no one spelled out, or got the president to spell out, the elements of the manoeuvres. I better say what they entail. The main fleet is due to sail next week from Italian waters; it consists of the aircraft carrier Coral Sea, escorted by nine ships. And this week, there are to be war games underway in Honduras, which is on Nicaragua's northern border, the most inflammable or – as the military might say – the most sensitive border in the whole region.

Later this year, over 4,000 American troops are due to begin ground exercises in Honduras. Now if that were the whole complement, their manoeuvres could reasonably be called "routine", but what was hardly mentioned until after the president's press Ccnference was the fact that the Coral Sea carrier is to be joined by another, the Ranger, which was headed for Singapore and has been diverted, with seven escort ships, to Nicaragua's Pacific coast and the battleship New Jersey has been despatched from the Far East to cruise off El Salvador's Pacific coast. What is to be their function?

Standard manoeuvres says the president. It was even more surprising that nobody at his press conference reminded him that only a few days ago he'd said that these forces might very likely undertake a blockade against the ships bringing in supplies to El Salvador's guerillas and Nicaragua's government.

Quite apart from the fact that this blockade would have to expand over thousands of miles of blue water if it was to be effective, the simple device of transshipment would mean you'd have to patrol and block the approaches to Mexico, to Guatemala, to Costa Rico on both oceans.

Quite apart from that, there is the rather chilling fact, which was not brought up either, was that a blockade is in any language an act of war. The president said that a Soviet freighter had been identified lately that was heading towards a Nicaraguan port on the Pacific, it was carrying helicopters and other equipment, but he said no one shot at them. But how about the next Soviet frieghter, and the one after that?

Twenty-one years ago, in the closest brush we've had with a big war during the so called "Cuban missile crisis", President Kennedy was careful to say that he was establishing a naval quarantine, not a blockade – the presumption, which saved the Kennedy administration from being accused of an act of war – was that approaching vessels would be examined and allowed to pass if they carried no war material. At any rate during that terrible weekend, it was well understood that any Soviet ships approaching the sea forces would be challenged to turn around or fight. Mr Khruschev turned his ships back.

The president also pointed out that all the American ships will cruise in international waters outside the 12-mile limit. "But suppose," someone asked, "the American forces down there engaged in military exercises were fired upon and were forced to fire back, what then?" This was a naive question handled it easily – the manoeuvres would not put Americans in any reasonable proximity to the border, it would have to be something in the nature of a terrorist attack, something that could happen in a base here in America.

Then again, suppose Nicaragua attacked its neighbour Honduras – friendly to the United States – would the United States assist Honduras militarily under the terms of the Rio mutual defence pact treaty? The president said "we haven't considered that", but maybe its time to consider, since that 1947 pact commits every American state to regard an attack on one as an attack on all.

So while Central America has suddenly loomed large and threatening in the public consciousness, it's not the large and legitimately debatable question of what should be American policy there, it's an irritable and bitter argument over whether the coming show of American air and naval power down there is wise, is prudent or is dangerously provocative.

Some say that if the president had not so acted, the revolutionaries and their exporting friends the Russians and the Cubans would have grown bolder, some say the manoeuvres will give them pause, some say the manoeuvres represent a clumsy thrust of gunboat diplomacy, some say that to have done nothing would convince the Russians, the Cubans and the Nicaraguan government that America is slumped in comfort and luxury and ultimately wants peace at any price. Always a dangerous signal to send to any potential enemy.

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