Resisting A "Munich In Our Time": Why President Bush Must Reject The New Central American "Peace" Plan

Fifty years ago, leaders of democratic countries met with the dictator of a repressive, totalitarian and heavily militarized state whose territorial ambitions threatened the security of all nations in the region. The region in question was Europe, the meeting’s venue, Munich. In short order, the demands of the dictator were accommodated at the expense of an interested — but uninvited — party. In the expedient quest for peace, Czech freedom was sacrificed in the vain hope that Hitler would be appeased and wider war avoided.

A strikingly similar scenario has just been played out in Tela, Honduras. There, four democratically elected Central American presidents met with Daniel Ortega, the communist leader of Nicaragua. On August 7th, the five leaders signed an accord that is, in the words of Ortega, the "death sentence" for a party not invited to the meeting — the Nicaraguan Democratic Resistance (also called Contras).

Once again, as at Munich, appeasement is the policy. Once again, those who would resist totalitarian oppression by force of arms are being betrayed by others altogether too willing to accept any pretext for accommodating it in the name of "peace." This time, however, the inevitable consequences of appeasing aggressors must be avoided — for the sake of democracy in Central America and of fundamental U.S. interests throughout the region.

Tela: A Fatally Flawed Agreement

The accord signed in Tela is egregiously deficient in two respects:

First, it requires the immediate cessation of any and all aid, support and refuge granted the Nicaraguan Resistance by Honduras. Within ninety days of signature, the Resistance is to be disarmed and disbanded. The Honduran foreign minister has subsequently raised the contingency of "coercive methods" toward that end. In other words, the ultimate threat the Sandinistas face — namely the prospect that the Resistance will resume combat operations if promises of democratic liberalization are not fulfilled — will be eliminated some three months before elections are to be held in Nicaragua, now scheduled for February 1990.

To obtain this outcome, the Sandinistas had to do little more than repeat their oft-breached commitment to hold free and fair elections. The agreement provides for United Nations and Organization of American States supervision of the polling; Managua has invited former President Jimmy Carter to be an observer. Notwithstanding such window-dressing, there is little reason to believe either that the present pledge will be realized where earlier ones were not, or that any stipulated mechanism will, in the absence of the armed Resistance, enforce Sandinista compliance.

Second, the Tela accord fails to require similar steps on the part of the participating states with regard to the guerrilla war being waged in El Salvador by the Marxist FMLN. This war could not continue without the major support of Nicaragua and its paymasters — Cuba and the Soviet Union. The signatories did nothing more than exhort the FMLN to "carry out a dialogue which leads to abandoning the armed struggle."

This pathetic formulation, which leaves those fighting to crush democracy in El Salvador free to do so even as it crushes those fighting for democracy in Nicaragua, is the more astonishing for the following fact: Unlike the Sandinista regime, El Salvador has already proven its commitment to democratic government by holding free and fair elections and by honoring their outcome through the peaceful transfer of political power from one party to another.

The Run-up to Tela: The Making of a Travesty

This dismal outcome from the Tela meeting was entirely predictable. Indeed, in its 4 August analysis entitled The Fight for Democracy in Central America: The Bush Administration Must Stay the Course, the Center for Security Policy anticipated precisely this outcome. It did so in light of the fact that several insidious factors were converging to seal the Nicaraguan Resistance’s fate and preclude the efforts of El Salvador’s President Christiani to ensure, at a minimum, parallelism between the treatment accorded the anti-Sandinista Resistance and the guerrillas threatening his own government.

Sandinista Diplomacy: The Sandinistas worked shrewdly to develop the perception that they were, at last, committed to a process of genuine democratic reform. Particularly effective in this regard was Managua’s success in obtaining an accord with its domestic opponents on the eve of the Tela meeting. That accord reaffirms the Nicaraguan government’s pledge to hold elections and calls for the disbanding of the Resistance.

This well-timed public relations gesture had the effect of making complaints about the Sandinistas history of broken promises seem irrelevant — or at least passe.

Ambivalence from the Bush Administration: President Bush, to his credit, made a personal effort to prevent the Tela summiteers from producing this disastrous accord. In particular, he is said to have called each of the democratically elected presidents personally and lobbied them directly.

Unfortunately, the president’s personal diplomatic efforts were seriously undermined by the actions of others in his administration. Important elements within the Bush Administration signalled their desire to have the Nicaraguan Resistance disbanded by, for example:

failing to distribute some $70 million in currently authorized U.S. economic assistance to Honduras, raising additional Honduran doubts about U.S. commitments;

announcing shortly before the Tela summit the closing of the Contras’ Miami office — a most unsubtle indication of the United States’ waning support for the Resistance and its attitude on the propriety of third countries playing host to the anti-Sandinista forces;

bypassing the recognized Resistance leadership to arrange a series of meetings with — and regional tour for — Contra field commanders. This had the effect (calculated or not) of sowing discord within the movement and raising questions about who spoke for the Nicaraguan Resistance; and

voting at the United Nations Security Council on 27 July (reportedly without White House clearance) for a resolution to disband all resistance forces in Central America. This remarkable step occurred on the very day President Bush was telephoning Central American presidents to urge them not to agree to such a formulation in Tela.

Strikingly, such subversion of President Bush’s approach to the Tela agreement did not cease with its signing. Some within his administration have been quoted as complaining that it was "counterproductive" for the President to have made personal efforts to embolden the democratic presidents to resist the Sandinista plan.

The Foreign Policy of the Left in the U.S. Congress: The Left in Congress also bears a significant part of the responsibility for the Tela betrayal. Staff representatives of Senator Christopher Dodd (a leading opponent of the Nicaraguan Resistance) for example, reportedly were present at the Honduras meeting.

These self-appointed spokesmen for the United States Congress evidently sought to impress upon the leaders of Honduras and El Salvador that there would be dire consequences for U.S. aid to the latter’s beleaguered countries if either nation blocked an accord that required the Resistance forces to be disbanded at once. The blackmail worked; both presidents evidently believed that Congress would determine the fate of American foreign assistance to their countries — irrespective of President Bush’s preferences — and neither of them could stand up to the threat of an aid cutoff.

The Implications of Tela

In February of this year, President Bush said of his commitment to the Nicaraguan Democratic Resistance forces:

"Let’s be sure that we not leave the resistance standing alone, leave them twisting out there without fulfillment of the commitment to democracy on the part of the Sandinistas."

The Tela agreement codifies the formal repudiation of President Bush’s words. Were he now to embrace it, he would not only be abandoning his own, stated position; he would also be acquiescing to congressional and Sandinista pressure with extremely pernicious consequences for both the Resistance and his presidency.

The Congressional Dimension: The Tela agreement requires Honduras to cut off even humanitarian assistance to the Nicaraguan Resistance. This has been a long-standing goal of the Contras’ congressional opponents. The Resistance forces will, as a result of this accord, likely be faced with a new congressional dictat: Disarm and disband in accordance with the latest "peace" plan and receive U.S. funds solely for demobilization and relocation, or face a complete cut-off of American foreign aid. As a practical matter, the effect of this policy would be to try to compel the Resistance to disband by starving its forces into submission.

Unfortunately, the president’s ability to contest this outrageous betrayal of the Resistance is, at present, sharply circumscribed by the deal Secretary of State James Baker fashioned earlier this year with Congress. Under its terms, the chairmen of several congressional committee were given effective veto power over any aid to the Nicaraguan Resistance provided after 30 November 1989. One of these chairmen, Sen. Claiborne Pell of the Foreign Relations Committee, has already indicated that he would oppose further aid to the Contras except for the purposes of disbanding and relocating them.

The Sandinista Angle: When Daniel Ortega called the Tela agreement a "death sentence" for the Democratic Resistance, he almost certainly had in mind its effect on the democratic opposition inside Nicaragua. The anti-Sandinista forces within the country were already divided; the perception that the Contras will be eliminated as a political factor can only make the alternative offered by the democratic elements appear more implausible to the voters. Indeed, the Sandinista’s new-found enthusiasm for elections may be directly traced to the growing likelihood that they will secure at least a plurality when the polling occurs.

As remote a possibility as it might appear at the moment, should the electoral prognosis change dramatically by January 1990 or so, a further defect of the Tela agreement may become evident. If the Sandinistas are forced to chose between cancelling the election and losing it, the smart money says they will do what totalitarians typically do — they will prevent the free election from taking place.

The principal risk inherent in such a course of action would, of course, be that it would be seen by the international community as a particularly flagrant and outrageous breach of contract on the part of the Sandinistas. This risk could be greatly attenuated, however, if the Ortega regime can credibly blame others for failing to meet the conditions required for the vote to proceed.

Enter the Tela agreement. Unless it is repudiated, this accord could provide the Sandinistas with precisely such an excuse — a multilaterally endorsed one at that! If the Resistance forces are not disarmed and disbanded pursuant to the new "peace" accord, and it appears unlikely at present that either Honduras or the international peacekeeping force will in fact forcibly strip the Contra forces of their weapons or relocate them, the Sandinistas can blame the Hondurans, the other Contadora nations and/or the United States for "preventing" them from democratizing Nicaragua.

President Bush’s Choice

For all of these reasons, the Tela agreement is a disaster for democracy and peace in Central America. As such it represents a serious defeat for U.S. policy in the region and for President Bush, as well. It leaves the president with a strategic choice between only two options: to go along or to resist.

"Going along" would require the United States formally to abandon the Resistance forces despite the absence of guarantees of their safety or confidence that the goal for which they have fought and died for eight years — genuine democracy in Nicaragua — will be realized. If this deplorable abdication of responsibility and leadership were not bad enough, the president would also be required by this policy approach to accede to congressional efforts to strangle the Contras into giving up their cause.

"Resisting," on the other hand, would require President Bush to reaffirm his principled stand that until democracy is established in Nicaragua, the United States has the responsibility to support the Resistance and to resist the combined pressure of the Sandinistas and the Left in Congress to cut off U.S. support. Of necessity, the president will have to do something he does not relish and usually scrupulously avoids — engaging directly and personally in a struggle over the direction of American policy.

Resisting Tela: A Three-Part Policy

The course of resisting Tela will require a three-pronged policy effort:

Continue U.S. Assistance to the Resistance: President Bush must undertake a high priority effort with the public and the Congress to ensure the continued flow of U.S. humanitarian assistance — and military assistance as required — to the Nicaraguan Resistance forces. Such assistance must be unencumbered by pressure to disarm or disband unless and until honest elections have been held and full democratic rights established in Nicaragua.

This will require, of course, the Bush Administration to put its own house in order on Central American policy. That means the disciplining of officials who contributed to the sabotaging of the president’s approach to the region in the run-up to the Tela meeting.

It will also oblige the president to draw up a new modus vivendi with the Congress, jettisoning the ill-fated plan agreed upon last February, if for no other reason than because of its dubious constitutionality. There is no getting around it: Either the president will establish the direction and character of U.S. foreign policy or he will have it dictated to him by the leftist congressional faction that is determined to eliminate the Nicaraguan Resistance.

No Sweetheart Deal for the FMLN of El Salvador: President Bush must insist that the Democratic Nicaraguan Resistance be accorded no less favorable treatment than that granted the Marxist FMLN of El Salvador. Indeed, if any group should be obliged to disarm and disband its forces at once, it is the FMLN guerrillas — who reject democracy and who have failed to win popular support in El Salvador’s recent elections.

In this regard, the president could take a page from the Congressional Left’s book. The leaders of the Central American democracies should be put on notice that future U.S. assistance to their countries will be made contingent upon much more symmetrical treatment of the two insurgent movements.

Holding the Soviets Accountable: The president must demand that the Soviet Union and its militant allies stop pouring military aid into Central America and the Caribbean. Glasnost and perestroika have thus far not produced perceptible change in the Soviet agenda for Central America. To the contrary, since U.S. military aid to the Nicaraguan Resistance was cut off months ago, Soviet aid to the Sandinistas — including massive military aid — has remained constant at roughly $1 billion per year.

In fact, the Soviets continue to expand military bases in Nicaragua; military shipments to the FMLN in El Salvador have risen; and Cuba has continued to foment subversion throughout the region. Simply put, the Soviet Union’s unflagging efforts to extend its influence and presence in this region of vital interest to the United States greatly complicate — and may well preclude — the fostering of democracy there.

It is essential that President Bush hold the Soviets accountable and that he obtain a commitment from Mikhail Gorbachev that there will be an immediate end to the subversive efforts of the Sandinista and Castro regimes whose economies depend critically on Soviet financial support. This is a crucial litmus test, both for the prospects for democracy in the Western hemisphere and for future U.S.-Soviet relations.

Conclusion

There are powerful voices of appeasement, including some within the U.S. Administration, urging President Bush to acquiesce to the new Central American "peace" agreement. The Center for Security Policy believes he must firmly reject and resist the Central American "Munich" at Tela. He must, instead, take the case to the American people and to the Congress that — until such time as democracy is firmly established in Nicaragua — assistance to the Democratic Resistance is of enormous importance to U.S. security interests.

Doing so will require the sort of clarity of vision and courage of convictions that caused Winston Churchill to revile an equally flawed agreement at Munich fifty years before. Not doing so will have grave consequences.

How George Bush deals with the Tela agreement will critically determine the fate of democracy in Nicaragua and the cause of freedom throughout the Central America. It will also do much to shape the character of his Administration by answering the most important questions any president must address. Will he lead the American people and the Congress, or will he be subservient to the congressional Left in foreign policy matters? Will he ensure that the long-term security interests of the United States will govern American diplomacy, or will he allow them — and the cause of freedom — to be subordinated to the shortsighted partisan agenda of an ideologically hostile faction on Capitol Hill?