National Review: So long, contras? - peace plan for Nicaragua

So Long, Contras?

THE ADMINISTRATION came into the month of August supporting the Contras. Then it was supporting the Contras and the peace plan jointly proposed by President Reagan and Speaker Wright. Now it is being pressured to support the Central American presidents' plan, which lets the Contras sink. From thesis, to synthesis, to antithesis, all in a few weeks.

The Administration made two errors in offering Reagan-Wright in the first place. The first was to assume that the Sandinistas would be stupid forever. This was not a totally unfounded assumption, for the Managua regime has made PR blunders in the past, the biggest being Ortega's 1985 jaunt to Moscow a week after Congress had turned down Contra aid. The hope, evidently, was for one more flamboyant defial, after which Congress could be cajoled into fighting Communism for one more year. But, as in blackjack, luck doesn't run forever. Manague signed on with the Central Americans, and now it is Washington that looks stubborn.

The second error was more basic: persisting in the contradiction that has bedeviled Reagan's Nicaragua policy from day one. What are the Contras for? To replace the Sandinistas, or to make them talk? If the former, then we need negotiate only in the sense that General Washington negotiated with General Cornwallis at Yorktown. If the latter, then the end for which the Contras exist is already in sight. Nicaragua has talked to its neighbors, and now it is willing to talk to us. Adolfo Calero can open a restaurant in Miami, and the peasants in the field can just fade away.

The Administration, Reagan has made clear, still does not want that to happen. But the burden now lies on him, more heavily than it did a month ago. The focus of the debate has shifted, from how much to give the Contras, to how well the peace process is going. The immediate danger to the Contras will occur between September 30--the day on which the current aid package runs out--and November 7-- the day on which, under the Central American plan, the ceasefire is supposed to begin (you can kill a lot of Contras in five weeks, especially if they're out of bullets). But the greater danger is that they have become hostages to a process in which they have no role, conducted in part by their mortal enemies.

Nations, like individuals, can live with contradictions for a long time. You are spared the consequences of choice, and up to a point you can have your cake and eat away at it too. But the point arrives, later if not sooner, when the conflict latent in the situation comes to a head, and one side or the other of the contradiction must wither away. The side that is withering now is that of the Nicaraguan democratic resistance.