(3 of 4)
The emphasis on that argument is relatively new. In the past, the Administration has more often justified its actions in Central America by stressing that the Sandinistas were shipping arms to insurgents in El Salvador. The U.S. has also pointed to signs of creeping totalitarianism in Nicaragua, as the Marxist-led regime has curbed press freedom, expropriated the property of private entrepreneurs and built a pervasive security apparatus with the aid of Cuban and East German advisers.
The switch in reasoning seemed to reflect the Administration's recurring tendency to speak with different voices about Nicaragua. Privately, some Pentagon sources attributed the hyping of concern over the Bakuriani and its cargo to officials at the White House and National Security Council. The State Department also expressed frustration over the way the MiG issue had materialized: on his way to the OAS meeting, Shultz characterized the original leak as "a criminal act." For his part, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger coolly deplored the "hysteria" that had arisen over the incident, even as the Pentagon provided the varying rationales for U.S. unhappiness with the Sandinistas.
The same fractiousness is evident in the Administration's solutions for Central America. Hard-liners in Washington, including CIA Director William Casey and U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, seem to believe that in the long run it is impossible to deal with the Sandinistas. They would prefer to see the Managua regime ousted from power, although any action by the U.S. toward that end is expressly forbidden by a 1982 resolution of Congress. More moderate officials, including Shultz, believe that diplomacy can play a role in curbing Nicaragua's radical tendencies. In their view, the U.S. must show that it has the power and the will to halt the spread of Communism, but that should be balanced by a willingness to negotiate a regional settlement.
Thus, as the Nicaraguan debate continues to percolate within the Administration, the U.S. tends to pick and choose among different reasons for confronting the Sandinistas. Among the hardliners, the latest outcry may have the ultimate aim of restoring shattered congressional support for the rebellious contras. That prospect, however, has grown even less likely in the wake of the controversy over a CIA-drafted counterinsurgency manual (see box). Among moderates, the hope is to force the Sandinistas to accept a version of the so-called Contadora peace process that will adequately guarantee security and democracy in the region.
For their part, the Sandinistas are intensely concerned about U.S. activity in the area. Up to 1,000 U.S. military personnel are involved in seven separate regional exercises. The U.S. contingents include about 120 Army engineers who are building roads near Honduras' Palmerola Air Force Base, a company of infantrymen patrolling near the same site, and a dozen servicemen who assisted at a Salvadoran-Honduran naval exercise that ended last week. Most of the recent arrivals are early harbingers of a major U.S. joint exercise with Honduras known as Big Pine III, which will take place sometime after the first of the year. Previous Big Pine maneuvers have involved upwards of 5,000 U.S. servicemen.