One congressional committee voted to cut the military aid he requested for besieged El Salvador. Another sought to ban covert U.S. operations against the aggressive leftist regime in Nicaragua. Polls showed that few voters shared his critical concern over Central America and even fewer wanted the U.S. to become involved in the problem. Yet because he fervently believes his policies are vital to the future of the hemisphere, Ronald Reagan made a bold but politically risky appearance last week before a special joint session of Congress. "A number of times in the past years, members of Congress and the President have come together in meetings like this to resolve a crisis," he said. "I have asked for this meeting in the hope that we can prevent one."
For such a grand occasion, the financial commitment sought by Reagan seemed piddling. As he put it, "The total amount requested for aid to all of Central America in 1984 is about $600 million; that is less than one-tenth of what Americans will spend this year on coin-operated video games." But failing to make such an investment, he insisted, would have dire consequences. "The national security of all the Americas is at stake in Central America. If we cannot defend ourselves there, we cannot expect to prevail else where. Our credibility would collapse, our alliances would crumble, and the safety of our homeland would be put at jeopardy."
Whether Reagan succeeded in heading off a crisis will not be known for months, perhaps years, but his speech could only have helped. It was one of the best of his presidency, forceful yet temperate, without the belligerent anti-Soviet rhetoric that has at times made his foreign policy pronouncements seem more simplistic and militaristic than hi fact they are. "It was a model of teamwork," exulted National Security Adviser William Clark at a meeting of Reagan's senior staff the next morning, reflecting the White House's jubilation over the speech.
The reaction on Capitol Hill was restrained. Congressional critics have been sullen and uneasy about the possibility of becoming involved in a no-win commitment in Central America, but most members are wary of an outright confrontation with the Administration.
Hanging over the dispute, as well as almost every other discussion of U.S. intervention abroad for the past decade, is the chill specter of Viet Nam. Out of fear of repeating that colossal misadventure, Americans have seized hold of its lessons, perhaps inaccurately, perhaps obsessively. There is a strong aversion to undertaking any commitment to shore up threatened pro-American regimes in the Third World, no matter how strategically important they are, and a reluctance to believe that the countries of a region could topple like dominoes, no matter how compelling the evidence of spreading subversion. This is particularly true of Central America, where the political vulnerability clearly also has indigenous causes, including widespread poverty and decades of governmental ineptitude and human rights abuses. "Everyone in Congress is steeped in Viet Nam," says Republican Congressman James Leach of Iowa. "We in Congress abdicated responsibility then, and no one wants to do it again."