Thomas W. Walker - Reagan Versus the Sandinistas: The Undeclared War on Nicaragua

Reagan versus the Sandinistas

The product of research and investigation by a team of sixteen authors, Reagan versus the Sandinistas is the most comprehensive and current study to date of the Reagan administration's mounting campaign to reverse the Sandinista revolution. The authors thoroughly examine all major aspects of Reagan's "low-intensity war," from the U.S. government's attempts at economic destabilization to direct CIA sabotage and the sponsorship of the contras or freedom fighters. They also explore less-public tactics such as electronic penetration, behind-the-scenes manipulation of religious and ethnic tensions, and harassment of U.S. Nicaraguan specialists and "fellow travelers." The book concludes with a consideration of the impact of these activities and their implications for international law, U.S. interests, U.S. polity, and Nicaragua itself.

Reagan versus the Sandinistas is designed not only for courses on Latin America, U.S. foreign policy, and international relations, but also for students, scholars, and others interested in understanding one of the most massive, complex effortsshort of direct interventionorganized by the United States to overthrow the government of another country.

Thomas W. Walker, professor of political science at Ohio University, is the author of Nicaragua: The Land of Sandino (second edition, 1986, Westview).

The Undeclared War on Nicaragua

edited by Thomas W. Walker

First published 1987 by Westview Press

Published 2019 by Routledge
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Copyright 1987 by Taylor & Francis

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Reagan versus the Sandinistas.
Includes index.
1. United StatesForeign relationsNicaragua.
2. NicaraguaForeign relationsUnited States.
3. NicaraguaPolitics and government1979
4. United StatesForeign relations1981
5. Reagan, Ronald. I. Walker, Thomas W.
E183.8.N5R43 1987 327.7307285 87-2036

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-28510-4 (hbk)

Lest history once again be written by the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor

In mid-1986, both branches of the U.S. Congress voted approval of $100 million worth of overt, mainly military, aid to the counterrevolutionary (contra) forces fighting to overthrow the government of Nicaragua. The money itself was not important. Since November 1981 when the Reagan administration first decided to create a surrogate army to harass the Sandinistas, it had been quite successful in channeling hundreds of millions of dollars to the "freedom fighters," as Reagan would come to call them. Some of this money had been initially allocated by the U.S. Congress to help interdict an alleged flow of arms from Nicaragua to the Salvadoran rebels. (The contras, in fact, never interdicted anything.) Some may have come through unmonitored CIA slush funds. Other assistance appears to have been laundered through Israel and pro-U.S. military establishments in the region. Large quantities of U.S. military supplies were simply left behind to be picked up by the contras following each of a series of joint U.S.-Honduran military maneuvers close to the Nicaraguan border. Finally, a very successful "private" contra fund-raising campaign had been organized under the close supervision of an office in the White House. What was important about the $100 million, if not the money itself, was the fact that passage of that appropriation gave formal bipartisan approval to Ronald Reagan's longstanding crusade to overthrow the Sandinistas. It was essentially a declaration of war. From this point onward, a long, bloody conflictwith unspeakably tragic consequences for both the United States and Central Americaseemed very likely. For those of us who had studied the Sandinista revolution from within, the possibility that Nicaragua could be subdued without tremendous bloodletting was essentially zero. Yet congressional approval was sure to give legitimacy and virtually irreversible momentum to the anti-Sandinista program already in advanced stages of implementation by the CIA, the Pentagon, the Department of State, and others. Though the situation in Nicaragua would not be identical to that in Vietnam-history rarely repeats itself exactlyit seemed destined to rank as one of the great human tragedies of the second half of the twentieth century.

If not yet fully guaranteed, this scenario had loomed as a clear probability from early in the Reagan presidency. Even then, it appeared extremely unlikely that Washington would agree to a negotiated peacethough that option was always tantalizingly present. Therefore, against this backdrop in mid-1985 I began mulling over ways of systematically documenting and disclosing what had already become the most massive effortshort of direct intervention by U.S. troopsever mounted by the United States to overthrow the government of another country. The urgency of the matter and the need to research simultaneously a bewilderingly wide range of topics led finally to a decision to organize a group effort. Accordingly, within the next few months I designed a chapter outline, enlisted authorsmost of them researchers already at work on their topicsand signed a contract with the publisher. By late that fall the book was under way. This volume, the manuscripts for which were completed in mid-1986, is the product of that team effort.

This book is designed to examine systematically the undeclared war on the Nicaraguan revolution. focuses on impact and implicationsfor Nicaragua, international law, U.S. foreign policy, and the U.S. polity and society.

Thomas W. Walker

THOMAS W. WALKER

Located at the geographic center of Central America, Nicaragua is the largest country in the region. Even so, its 91,943 square kilometers of surface make it only slightly larger than the state of Iowa. And its population of a little over 3 million is also only slightly greater than Iowa's 2.8 million. Given Nicaragua's low population density, abundant natural resources (good land, timber, gold, petroleum), access to two oceans, and long-recognized potential as a site for a transoceanic waterway, one would expect Nicaraguans in general to be prosperous. In fact, however, when the Sandinistas overthrew Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979, the social conditions of the majority of Nicaraguans ranked that country with the two or three most backward of Latin America. The explanation for this apparent paradox lies in Nicaraguan historyone of the most unfortunate of the hemisphere.