Bad Signals

LETS SAY YOU are a leader of the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. After four years of authoritarian rule following the overthrow of dictator Anastasio Somoza, you recognize that you are losing support among the left-leaning democracies and are wasting valuable resources funding an enormous fighting machine to oppose the U.S. backed counter-revolutionaries operating from Honduras. So you make some significant conciliatory gestures to your critics. For example, you ask more than 2000 Cuban civilians and military advisors to return home, you lift censorship controls on the press; you engage in dialogue with the opposition parties; you plan elections for 1985: and you start to actively seek a peaceful solution to the Miskito Indian problem.

Probably, you would expect even a small gesture in return from Washington. But no such luck. When your Interior Minister Tomas Borge applies for a visa to travel to this country, he is turned down.

Now let's say you are a member of the Salvadoran government. For the past five years, you have been having a difficult time getting the U.S. Congress to approve increasing amounts of military aid for your country. The Congressmen are worried about human rights excesses and the actions of rightist death squads in particular. You begin to think that maybe you should crack down on the death squads in order for aid to continue, particularly when the U.S. ambassador. Thomas R. Pickering, publicly criticizes the recent increase in death squad killings. After all, President Reagan has been your most effective advocate for dealing with Congress, so when one of his appointees takes you to task...

But suddenly, your fears are assuaged. Reagan kills a bill extending his twice-a-year obligation to certify progress on human rights and land reform as a condition for maintaining military aid. The bill, admittedly mostly symbolic in nature, was nonetheless a stumbling block for your efforts to elicit aid. Now there will be no need to anger the extreme right by stopping the death squads.

"It was a great political error," said a Latin American diplomat referring to the visa denial. "People are always worrying that Reagan does not know how to play this delicate game of international relations." Such concerns are hardly new; the Administration has proven remarkably adept at sending the wrong signals in the past, particularly concerning Central America. But what makes last week's two "initiatives" so grating is the fact that Washington botched one clear cut opportunity to reduce tensions in the region and soured the fruit one long term policy had begun to bear.

Managua's attempts at conciliation in spite of this Administration's policy of confrontation was an ideal opening for Washington to come to a settlement with the Sandanistas. After all, the Nicaraguans were the ones backing down, an all important consideration given Reagan's John Wayne style of diplomacy. And the increasing criticism from this country of Salvadoran human rights excesses appeared of late to be producing a few positive results: for example, the Ministry of Defense transfered and demoted several officers accused of rights violations, including the intelligence heads of the Treasury Police--noted rights abusers--and the National Police. The visa denial and the bill veto put at least a temporary chill on both developments.

Now let's say you are an American voter standing in the voting booth on a November day in 1984. You are concerned about the foreign policy direction this country has taken over the last four years. The choice before you is a simple one: Reagan or someone else. Which lever do you pull?