Washington and the Sandinistas take turns crying wolf
Once again the familiar tremors swept through Nicaragua. In the streets of Managua, the capital, dozens of Soviet-made T-55 tanks clattered into defensive positions. Antiaircraft crews manned their batteries, while zealous neighborhood defense committees scurried to dig air-raid trenches. Some 20,000 volunteer coffee pickers were reassigned to local militia units as the Sandinista government announced a "state of alert" affecting the country's 100,000-member military and security forces. For the third time in two years, the Sandinistas were loudly convinced—or so they said—that U.S. troops were about to invade their soil.
Most Nicaraguans, however, remained calm. Despite the government's repeated alarms, residents of Managua made their way to work as usual on the city's overcrowded buses. Schoolchildren played outdoors, even gathering in clusters around the squat, forbidding tanks. Occasionally the civic mood was shattered by a sonic boom, which the government attributed to high-flying U.S. SR-71 spy planes violating Nicaraguan airspace. Despite the noisy interruptions, few Nicaraguans seemed concerned about the putative Yanqui invasion.
A similar case of schizophrenia seemed to be afflicting the Reagan Administration. At a meeting of the 31-member Organization of American States in Brasilia, Secretary of State George Shultz pooh-poohed the Nicaraguan war hysteria as "self-induced... based on nothing." Said he: "Obviously they're trying to whip up their own population. But I can't imagine what the reason is for doing that." Then Shultz provided a possible answer. The U.S., he said in reference to Nicaragua's Soviet-sponsored arms buildup, was "trying to work in any way we can to cast this aggressive and subversive influence out of our hemisphere."
At the State Department and the Pentagon, those sentiments were stated more sharply. Even as U.S. officials repeatedly denied any aggressive intentions toward Nicaragua, they continued to issue stern warnings about the Central American republic's military buildup, especially the possible acquisition by the Sandinistas of high-performance Soviet-bloc aircraft. The U.S., said Pentagon Spokesman Michael Burch, would "provide whatever assistance is necessary" to protect its hemispheric interests. Did that include military intervention? Said Burch: "I'm not willing to include or exclude anything."
The superpower and the minipower had different motives for cranking up the mutual war of nerves. In the wake of President Reagan's election victory, Washington seemed intent on setting what one official called "the limits of U.S. tolerance" toward Marxist-led Nicaragua. After their somewhat less than democratic election triumph on Nov. 4, the Sandinistas seemed determined to keep building up their arsenal as rapidly as possible. Neither stance boded particularly well for the process of negotiated peace in the region, which both sides claim to support.