Mining the Store

THE REAGAN Administration is like the school yard bully who thinks the rules apply to everyone but himself. Late last week the Marxist Sandinista government of Nicaragua announced plans to file suit in the International Court of Justice charging the United States "with training, supplying and directing military and paramilitary actions against the people and government of Nicaragua, resulting in extensive loss of lives and property."

The Sandinistas' case is compelling, if not moot, since the press has reported on American involvement in this "secret war" for more than a year, and Congress has been openly debating the extent of "covert" aid for some time. The latest alleged "action" against our Central American adversaries is CIA control of mining operations in Nicaraguan harbors, an act of terrorism that quite likely constitutes an act of war.

So what does the bully, backed into a corner, decide to do? He picks up his ball and bat and he walks away. Yesterday, the state department announced the United States would not accept International Court rulings on Central America for two years, essentially conceding the U.S. has not a chance against international opinion--critics of the harbor mining include Britain and France.

Of course, the World Court, the judicial branch of the United Nations, has no real power. No enforcement branch follows up its rulings. No country is bound to abide by its pronouncements. Like the rest of the United Nations, the World Court is a good idea that has run up against an insurmountable obstacle: a nationalistic parochialism that makes true global community impossible.

So why is the bully running from the wimp?

We liberals, who claim to support the underdogs, the oppressed, the wimps of the world, like to argue that the bully is running because in the final analysis he has no moral defense. The United States' actions in Nicaragua are immoral, as well as wrongheaded and antithetical to our interests in the region, and the World Court affair shows us President Reagan's brazen disregard for democratic ideals.

Beyond the fact that this move is a several of 40 years of American adherence to the World Court; beyond the fact that the Reagan administration is symbolically choosing military might over judicial settlement--we are learning that Reagan lives in a skewed amoral world.

THE ADMINISTRATION defense rocks of double-talk. First, according to State Department spokesman John Hughes, an international legal battle would draw energy away from the "regional negotiations" which are "the best way to resolve the conflicts in Central America." That makes some sense, but Hughes neglected to mention that the Administration has turned a deaf ear to the Contadora group, which has been pushing for negotiations all along. Nor did Hughes address the discrepancy between the alleged heartfelt desire for negotiation and the real Administration emphasis of late: squeezing a bloated military assistance budget out of Congress and clandestinely mining Nicaraguan harbors without informing key members of Congress.

Second, and more significant, Hughes announced that the administration wants to head off a Nicaraguan attempt to use the World Court as a forum for "anti-American propaganda." Hughes didn't mention what that propaganda might be, but you can assume it would include the charge that we are trying to subvert their government and mine their harbors. This second argument exposes the cynical, anti-democratic side of the administration. No argument was made defending the administration position on legal or moral grounds. And President Reagan's silence on the issue has sent this message: I am the bully, thus I am right. I don't have to justify myself.

Democracy used to work something like this: one person stated a position, another person stated a position, they argued in public, everybody voted. President Reagan doesn't work that way. The President essentially said to Congress. "Even if you disagree with one it's your duty to vote with me on foreign policy." Afterwards National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane suggested that members of Congress should relieve their tingling of dissent by writing letters to the President, not voting against him. Democracy is just too money for these people.

Some of the most trenchant criticism levelled at President Reagan appeared in a New York Times book review two months ago. Assessing a collection of modern humor Roy Blount's review strayed into musings on the political circus:

President Johnson, Nixon and Carter were reflective enough to be anxious about how they were going over with thinking persons; and therefore thinking persons earnestly scorned them. President Reagan is different.

In 1982 a member of the Administration did declare that 'we are being savaged on the fairness issue' and that the President should mount a campaign to convince the public of how unjust it was to call his government unfair. But this President is too smart and not profound enough for that. He never appears to feel savaged. When he seems to savage himself, it is by saying something to blithely beside the point that thinking persons are nonplussed.

We liberals are so befuddled by President Reagan because our dislike for him doesn't bother him a bit. But that's not what's dangerous about the events of the last week. What's dangerous is Reagan's lack of any foreign policy standards. One former CIA official complained to me last year. "The real decisions are made in the basement of the White House by people who are not confirmed and do not testify. These folks use the CIA as their representatives and executors abroad. Congress has little control over it. I wish foreign policy could move back to the State Department, but it's a dream, only a dream."

Democrats, take note in this election year--you are facing a bully who doesn't want to come out of the basement and play democracy.