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Haig has been out front on the El Salvador issue from the first days of the Administration. He overcame objections by Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger that it did not make military sense to stake so large a claim on such an uncertain battlefield and by top White House advisers who were reluctant to detract national attention from the President's economic program. Convinced that this battle would be cleanly and quickly won, the Secretary of State designated El Salvador as the location for a U.S. showdown—not just with a band of 6,000 leftist guerrillas, who were then in disarray, but with the international Communist threat. At one of his first staff meetings, TIME has learned, Haig delivered a stemwinding speech about the need for the U.S. to stop being pushed around by Soviet proxies in the Third World. By calling for an end to the policies of accommodation that Jimmy Carter had pursued with the emerging revolutionary government in Nicaragua, Haig sought to establish quickly his hardline credentials within the new conservative Administration.
In Haig's view, accommodation with the Marxist, pro-Cuban Sandinistas was foolish because Nicaragua was already "lost." Meanwhile, the government of El Salvador, which has committed itself to land reform and fair elections, stands threatened by subversion; El Salvador's conquest by leftist rebels would have a falling-domino effect on the fragile democratic government in neighboring Honduras as well as the insurgency-threatened rightist regime in Guatemala. Haig's ultimate fear is that the entire region, from Mexico to Panama, might fall into the Soviet orbit, which would not only threaten America's vital security interests, but would also show the world that the U.S. is unable to contain the spread of Communism even in its own backyard.
This concern about the spread of Communism in the region is clearly legitimate. Thus the conflict, in its possible consequences if not its origin, is indeed part of the East-West rivalry. But a stark East-West emphasis obscures the deeper reasons for turmoil in the Central American isthmus (see following story). Much of the unrest in these countries stems from indigenous problems, most notably, as former State Department Official William Bowdler puts it, "the legacy of exploitation and abuse of the impoverished majority by the privileged few." By underplaying these factors, the U.S. often ends up backing regimes that turn out to be doomed—and perhaps deserve to be. Meanwhile, the Soviets benefit from having popular rebel movements pushed into their embraces, despite the ample record of the brutality of Communist regimes.
Another potential consequence of the Administration's heated rhetoric is that the region could eventually be divided along ideological lines, provoking a general war pitting the military establishments of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala against Nicaragua and the region's leftist insurgents. Ironically, that possibility is further strengthened by widespread talk about a negotiated settlement, one consequence of which would be to drive the right into even more desperate acts. On balance, by leaping voice first into an anti-Soviet showdown in Central America, the Administration may well have alienated many of the moderate elements it hoped to bolster.